Does alcohol negatively affect recovery

Hello Dr. Feigenbaum and Dr. Baraki,

Obviously drinking can disrupt sleep and diet, which causes it to indirectly have a negative impact on recovery. However, does alcohol directly have a negative impact on recovery?

Is it true that alcohol can lower testosterone, or does this happen indirectly because alcohol affects sleep/diet?

I know that Jordan drinks whiskey sometimes – Jordan do you try to keep your weekly limit of alcohol consumption below the CDC recommended amount of < 15 drinks a week?

Do you have a daily limit at all?

As long as someone isn’t an alcoholic do you believe drinking more than 15 drinks would have any negative affects on cognitive and physical health?

Thanks

Yes, it has a negative impact on recovery.

Yes, it has directly toxic effects on testicular function.

Yes, neither of us drink anywhere near that much.

Neither of us drink very much outside of rare/special occasions.

Yes, it can.

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And 15 drinks per week also supposedly reduces life by six months after age 40, which isn’t that much but it goes up sharply after that:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30134-X/fulltext

This meta-analysis suggests that the safe weekly amount of consumption is about half of what was thought before. The likely reason for this is that in previous studies that compared non drinkers vs. moderate drinkers some of the non drinkers were people who abstained due to existing health problems (and medications) whether caused by alcohol or not. Then when more of this group died off than the groups that drank about 7 drink per week it was thought that 1 drink per day had a “protecting” effect.

For someone who has literally over 100 bottles of booze this is not good news but I never really drank that much anyway and especially not now with all this lifting and tracking macros.

Those negative impacts on recovery and testicular function - reversible if you get off the sauce?

Generally, yes.

15 drinks per week? You could have a pretty fun Friday night at that recommendation.

So someone who drinks 6-8 drinks daily who quits in a safe manner will notice better recovery and more energy I assume?

Yes. 6-8 drinks daily is A LOT.

Okay, well thank you for emphasizing that - I appreciate it.

As an intellectual curiosity I also was wondering your opinion about something refereed to online as ‘PAWS’ which stands for post acute alcohol withdraw. As far as I can tell this isn’t something that is actually recognized by physicians as an actual syndrome. Do you have any experience or opinion on this?

As far as I can tell there is just random websites talking about it - it does not refer to physical alcohol withdraw that people have, but after that.

Thank you again

I treat lots and lots of acute alcohol withdrawal in the hospital, but I don’t have experience with this “PAWS”, sorry.

I don’t understand why so many people choose not to taper off alcohol like stated in this guide How To Taper Off Alcohol and rather choose to receive medial treatment - I guess many people don’t have the disciple to taper or they just don’t know what is causing them to feel that way.

In your experience, do most of these people have severe drinking problems like 20+ drinks daily?

Your use of the words “choose” and “discipline” here reflect a rather naïve view of addiction.

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I imagine if someone has alcohol addiction and a compulsive disorder they would not be able to taper down with discipline. But at the same time I know a person doesn’t have to be a compulsive alcoholic to become physically addicted to alcohol.

I know cases of non-compulsive people who drank daily over a period of time, their neurotransmitters and nervous system became used to the alcohol, they realized they get withdrawal symptoms when they don’t drink, so they tapered down, and now manage it completely fine.