Overall physiological processes in the body, including hydration, cardiovascular health, and muscle health/recovery can be greatly affected by your habits. Alcohol use and smoking are just some examples that affect your body and health. We all have heard that alcohol use and smoking have negative effects on our bodies, but how much do they really affect you? Continue reading to gain a greater understanding of how alcohol use and smoking affect our body on the cellular level.
To begin, ethanol, more commonly known as alcohol, is one of the most commonly used drugs in the world. Alcohol reduces thinking ability, skews judgement, and is actually a depressant on the body, not a stimulant. Some mistake it as a stimulant since alcohol releases dopamine in the brain, making us feel relaxed and happy, not necessarily depressed. When you inhale tobacco smoke, carbon monoxide, along with many other chemicals, binds to red blood cells. Oxygen is then not able to bind to the red blood cell, reducing delivery of oxygen to the muscles along with other tissues.
The next day after drinking alcohol, we always feel slow and groggy. These “hangover” symptoms are scientifically backed with decreased reaction time, hand-eye coordination, judgement, strength, and many more negatives for up to 72 hours. We often don’t feel rested, since alcohol can interfere with our sleep patterns, more specifically reducing the time spent in deep sleep. For those looking to increase muscle strength and size or recover from an injury, alcohol use can result in decreased protein synthesis leading to a decrease of lean muscle mass. When we drink alcohol, ethanol gets processed in the body and gets stored as fat, which can lead to an increase in body fat and ultimately weight. Dehydration is also a risk when consuming alcohol, especially before and after exercise. Less water is absorbed in the kidneys when drinking alcohol, causing urine levels to increase leading to more frequent urination. Since we sweat during exercise, more water exits the body, meaning becoming dehydrated is more likely. Lastly, the heart and blood pressure can become affected by drinking alcohol. Blood pressure increases due to an increase in blood and plasma volume. The heart's ability to contract becomes affected when drinking alcohol which means that blood will not be pumped as well throughout the body, especially during exercise.
While alcohol has a more instantaneous effect on the way our bodies function, the effects of smoking tend to show up after some longer use. Studies do show that smoking right before exercise can result in less oxygen being available to the tissues due to carbon monoxide displacing oxygen in red blood cells. Over time, due to the buildup of mucus, tar, and damage to the lung tissue, VO2max (the maximum amount of oxygen the body can absorb) decreases, causing more difficulty in doing day to day activities like climbing the stairs or exercising. Bone density as well as muscle fiber also decrease over time. Those who smoke do not absorb calcium as well as those who do not, which leads to decreased bone mineral density and increases the risk of fractures when exercising. Also, when compared to those who do not smoke, those who smoke were found to have an increase in type 1 muscle tissue deterioration, which affects muscular endurance. This can ultimately affect the muscles which help with breathing, leading to the increase in issues with day to day activities or exercise which involve an increase in breathing.
In the end, this information is not here to scare you, but more so for you to have a better understanding of what is really happening in the body when we drink or smoke. Slowly cutting out these habits can start to reverse some of these changes in the body along with adequate exercising and diet.
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