Slippery
Slope:
From
occasional
social drinking
to total defeat of alcohol
dependence is
a well traveled road where millions of poor people had their lives ending
in ruins.
Incompatibility
with Fitness Training:
1)
Fitness training requires clear mind, not just for the few hours of
training but for many months of tackling the complexity of planning a
healthy life.
2)
Training involves solving ongoing problems relating to imbalanced
muscular strength, shortening ligaments due to lengthy neglect and lack of
activity, and ever reacting cardiovascular system. The numbness
of mind due to alcohol skews one's thinking ability in dealing with such
complex challenges and instead substitutes the concrete reasoning with the
escape from reality of boozing.
3)
Alcohol impairs the tiniest of the nerve fibers and negatively hinders
the coordination of muscles in performing complex
exercise. As months pass by, you find yourself favoring exercises
that are easy to execute rather than performing the ones you should
execute for progressing in fitness training.
4)
Alcohol impairs the response of the heart and the pressure sensors to
the rapid changes in circulation due to exercise. Such
hemodynamics is crucial for enduring any fitness training. Alcohol,
even consumed many weeks prior to exercise, would cause fainting, nausea,
and sudden loss of strength during vigorous exercise. A good friend
of mine collapsed in a training session two days after his birthday party
for the first time in years.
5)
The cells have good memory. The red blood cells have a half life
time of 120 days, that of platelets is about 7 days, the neutrophils
of few hours. But the brain cells have much longer life time.
So today's consumption of alcohol might last for, God knows, how
long. As far as exercise is concerned, alcohol defeats its
purpose.
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