Alcohol has a direct toxic effect on bone and heart muscles: study

Alcohol directly influences the health of your muscles - both your skeletal and cardiac muscles - and causes you to lose muscle mass later in life.

A new study has found that people who drank 10 or more units of alcohol every day are at higher risk of losing muscle mass. This will lead to frailty in middle age.

Skeletal muscles are the ones that connect to bones and allow a wide range of movements and functions. You control how and when they work which means they are essential in every movement-related act including walking and carrying things. They also make up 30-40% of the body mass. Losing body mass is associated with lower bone density, osteoporotic fractures, falls, injuries, losing mobility, and physical disability.

According to the study, alcohol has a direct toxic effect on muscle cells. It will damage muscle cells of both skeletal and cardiac types. It also increases inflammatory mediators and glucocorticoids which will cause muscle breakdown. Alcohol is also guilty of harming gut microbiomes which increases ammonia in the body. This will again cause the upregulation of muscle breakdown and downregulation of muscle protein synthesis.

With higher alcohol consumption, your existing muscles will waste away.

Dr Abhinav Kumar from Fortis Escorts in Okhla told The Indian Express that in the long run, alcohol abusers will also experience tissue damage and deficiencies in B vitamins, iron, Zinc, potassium, and vitamin D. This will greatly affect muscle repairing.

The study was conducted by the University of East Anglia by examining data from 500,000 people in the UK.