Every Night Is Ladies’ Night

Every Night Is Ladies’ Night

Forget what the French say about the benefits of red wine: When it comes to putting on muscle, no booze is better than some booze. At least for men. A new study conducted by scientists at the University of North Texas found that alcohol does not interfere with the muscle-building process in women as much as it does in men. The researchers took a group of trained men and women and gave them either alcohol or a placebo and then had them complete identical workouts. In the placebo groups, the training elicited similar responses in protein synthesis. However, the men who consumed the post-workout cocktail experienced significantly attenuated levels of protein synthesis, potentially blunting the hypertrophic adaptation of the workout. Interestingly, the women who consumed alcohol did not suffer from the same anabolic drop-off as the men. So women can go straight from the gym to happy hour, but men should go straight home.