Alcohol Explained

by William Porter

Generally speaking, depressants will slow the heart rate down, while stimulants will increase it. So during the drinking session the heart rate may increase a bit but won’t be greatly accelerated, but when you wake up at four in the morning your heart will be going at such a rate that it will feel like it is about to burst out of your chest, and that increased heart rate will follow you around for the following 24–48 hours until the stimulants are finally dispersed. This is a physical manifestation of the stimulants remaining after the alcohol has largely dissipated. In this way drinking regularly actually erodes our fitness, and this is to say nothing of the general lethargy drinking causes which is, in itself, a bar to exercise. And of course if you are actually hung-over you are not going to manage that training session, and if you do force yourself to do it, it is going to be that much more difficult and that much less intense. And if one of the goals of your fitness routine is weight loss then you also need to then factor in the very clear link between drinking and obesity, which I deal with in more detail later on.

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