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Butcher's Dog! Regular
outdoor fitness tips from the canine on creatine. Cold wet
nose and glossy coat guaranteed.
Booze and Lose?
Nothing beats a nice pint halfway through
a walk or a quick swig from a hip flask on top of that
winter Munro, but honest, you'd be better off sticking to
water until you're safely down and in the pub, here's
why...
Performance Mullered Tests suggest
that there's a linear relationship between alcohol
concentration in the blood and performance in hand-eye
coordination tests. So, the more you drink, the more likely
you are to miss that vital ice axe placement or place your
foot on the wrong bit of that boulder... Hello stumble,
hello sprained ankle... And the effect lingers afterwards
compromising balance, coordination, reaction times, strength
and speed. Think about that when you're hitting the beers
the night before a big mountain day.
But you think you're better...
Alcohol depresses your central nervous system and screws
up your judgement by removing inhibitions. That's why drunk
people start fights. The problem is that at the same time
you think you're fine, or even better than fine. As you can
imagine this goes great in combination with impaired
performance, so while your abilities are actually reduced,
you think they've improved. Nice...
It dehyrates you... Booze is a
powerful diuretic, you know it too, and dehydration is the
last thing you need in the outdoors. Not only does your
performance drop off with even relatively low levels of
dehydration, but it increases the potential for injuries,
muscle tears, cramps and so on, plus it can take several
days to fully recover from severe dehyration. If you're
losing around a litre of water per hour through exercise,
it's the last thing you need on top. And hangovers,
dehydration folks, a very bad way to start a tough
day.
And makes you fat... A gramme of
alcohol contains seven calories, only slighlty less than fat
at nine calories and they're empty calories too. But it's
actually worse than that. Alcohol dismantles essential amino
acids and stores them as fat, so it disproportionately
increases fat storage - which is why all those middle-ages
squash players are such porkers...
It screws up your ability to absorb other
nutrients and ups lactic acid production too, so make your
muscles sore and slows down recovery from exercise.
It screws up your heart function...
There have been experiments that show alcohol depresses
function on the left side of the heart, which is the bit
that pumps oxygenated blood out to the rest of the body, so
there's a good reason why you feel less fit when you're
hammered, you really are impairing the ability of your
muscles to function.
But I can carbo load on beer right?
Erm, sorry, wrong. Alcohol may be packed with delicious
calories, but while alcohol is absorbed fast, the energy is
release slowly because it's metabolised in the liver -
causing long term damage - rather than in the muscles. It
does nowt for muscle energy. Sorry.
But at least it warms you up...
Actually alcohol cools you down. It dilates the blood
vessels close to the skin, ups flow of blood to the surface
so you feel warmer, but in reality you're pumping heat out
into the cold. This is the opposite of what the body does
naturally to conserve heat - normally it constricts blood
vessels to reduce heat loss from the surface of the skin.
There's also some evidence to suggest that alcohol also
impairs shivering, which is the body's automatic reflex
response to generate heat.
What the heck... We don't expect
you to stop drinking, let's be realistic eh, but be aware
that it's not good for you, man or dog. No, not even for
carbo-loading. Mine's a pint of Guinness please.
Woof!
The Butcher's Dog
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