Comment by thesz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thesz | Hacker News Reader

My personal trainer once told me that athletes that become alcoholics belong to either endurance sports of various kinds or to archer or pistol shooting. The shooting sportsmen use small amounts of alcohol to reduce tremor [1], and small amounts of alcohol became bigger with time.

[1] https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jhe1972/14/2/14_2_99/_p...

The situation in endurance sports is very different. Very elevated count of mitochondria in cells of endurances athletes make their whole body a liver, basically - these mitochondria organelles get rid of alcohol metabolites during sleep very effectively. Top level endurance athlete drinks to heart content and does not experience a hangover the next day. It is all good and well for some time, athlete can drink everything for a long time, until he has his body physiologically depend on the alcohol, now this endurance athlete is an alcoholic.

I saw an example of alcoholic former endurance athlete once in my life. It was not pretty. He drank anything he can find (or what he brought in) and sleep the work day throughout, delivering nothing.

Elite endurance athlete here. I definitely experience hangovers on the rare occasion that I drink.

That said, was just on a cycling trip where one of the riders drank two bottles of wine to himself and was flying the next day.

Might it be something about high vo2, not just "being an endurance athlete"?

I don't know.

The guy I was talking about was Master of Sports (Russian) in skiing. It requires being at least 40th at the nation level.

i have other anecdotes that supports theory that endurance training helps with alcohol metabolism.

> Russian

Say no more :)

Genes definitely play a role. I have some russian genes in me and up till the age of 30 I could drink at least twice the amount of alcohol than all of my bulgarian friends. And Bulgaria has quite the drinking culture itself, so they were no slouches for sure.

More than that, the high school we were at had (still has?) a reputation for producing alcoholic software devs, so drinking culture was big even before legally allowed drinking age.

And with all that I still had to drink at least twice the amount of alcohol just to get to the same buzz level like everyone else. And next day I would experience none of the symptoms than all my friends reported, to their endless dismay.

I think the idea was that some people from russia have a gene for more efficiently processing alcohol in the liver, but whatever it was, after 30, I just became a regular joe drinking wise, which is quite nice since I don’t have to spend so much money if I want to have a buzz. Though I do a lot less of it now, as I also have a hangover the next day.

Former elite cyclist, Russian.

Can confirm, drinking in cycling circles at elite level is normal. Heavy drinking that is, even before races. Doesn't seem to have any effect on performance the next day.

Then again, we're talking 20-25 yo males with 10-15 years of endurance training.

well, it kinda seems that drinking in any circle in Russia is more normal than other countries. Maybe it doesn't seem to have an effect because the others are drunk too every time ?

Ι wonder what would the effect be if someone got drunk just once before a race.

> Ι wonder what would the effect be if someone got drunk just once before a race.

Not sure, depends on a person I guess. My first time was ok.

Mind you, it's not like we were drinking all the time, more like occasionally, usually between big blocks of training or racing and never before anything important.

The off-season though, that was wild. It had to be for sanity's sake.

There supposedly are some health properties for endurance athletes with the non-alcohol parts of beer. I think the German team brings non-alcoholic beer to the Olympics. If the alcohol doesn't bother them, I can see many athletes drinking a lot.

The same goes to red wine: resveratrol in wine lowers testosterone excretion through kidneys, testosterone, in it's part, helps body make more red blood cells that help with the endurance.

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