Bengaluru: Many youngsters these days are under the mistaken notion that drinking beer helps build muscles! Experts claim nothing can be farther from the truth.
They explained that drinking beer no way helps build body, rather it produces saturated or unnecessary fat, which is difficult to eliminate.
Eashwar Amarnath, model and physical trainer from the city, said, “Beer is a carbonated drink which has sugar content in it. Drinking beer doesn’t help build any kind of muscle or fitness, it simply creates unnecessary fat.”
Among the youth, the current trend is to build heavy muscles and they also face lot of peer pressure. Quite ironically this fitness craze is also one of the
reasons why they get hooked to drinking beer at an early age, activists complain.
“Many youngsters think that if they drink beer they can grow muscles but end up becoming alcoholics,” said Nagasimha G. Rao, a child rights activist.
A study by Journal of Applied Physiology shows that drinking beer loosens the muscle and leads to adverse effects many a times.
Dr Chirag Those, specialist in arthroscopy, sports injures and joint replacement surgeries at Fortis hospital said, “Many fitness enthusiasts tend to consume beer in order to build muscles, and the reason is beer contains protein but not in good amount which they often fail to notice. A bottle of beer contains about a gram of protein. Muscle tissue requires high amount of protein for the growth and repairment of tissues.”
There are two types of fat; one is saturated and another is unsaturated. The saturated fat is unhealthy and produces belly and is very difficult to reduce, while unsaturated fat is a healthy and is gained by eating healthy food.
Dr. Saad Hafeez Usmani, cnsultant - internal medicine at Columbia Asia Hospital Whitefield said, “Consumption of beer suppresses muscular protein synthesis, hence it will impair workout recovery and muscle growth and has also more hazardous effects on body as it interferes with blood sugar metabolism causing an elevation in sugar levels.”
Dr Chirag Those said that consuming a glass of beer every night adds 1,036 calories per week to your body giving you a beer belly and making you vulnerable to lifestyle diseases.
Experts believe that it is the peer pressure and the hyped myth of being ‘cool’ if one drinks has
resulted in youngsters hitting the bottle. They also said that those who drink as a diversion from stress are also going down the wrong lane.
Dr Hemant K. Kalyan, HOD & Consultant in Orthopedics and Sports Medicine at Manipal Hospital, also stressed that alcohol and body building do not mix and beer has no role in training.
“Rather, due to the sitting in front of laptops for long hours and frequent drinking beer belly fat has become a common sight these days among young people, who should actually be fit and healthy at their age.”
