What’s up guys !
I have been hearing conflicting info on Alcohol consumption while on TRT, so I want to ask this group, who undoubtedly has a trusted experience. What is or was your experience, results, gains, losses of drinking alcohol while on TRT ? Will alcohol hinder the liver from doing its job with testosterone etc. ?
Thanks for the positive feedback !
There is no relation assuming you are using injectable Test. Not sure as it related to newer oral Test such as Jazento. If you took oral steroids it’s ill advised to have two stressors on the liver.
1 Like
Thanks for your feedback. Test C IM 120mg 1X a week
Alcohol is poison, and as such will impact your health on or off TRT.
When I first started I drank and did rec drugs several nights a week. Still hit the gym, still gained muscle, still had epic hangovers and often looked like I had been run over by a semi truck. Never got as lean as I wanted. Never did blood work so no idea the damage I was doing, or what lasting impact that may have.
I think with alcohol (like most things) your mileage may vary and won’t match someone else’s. Some ppl can tolerate it and do just fine, some can’t.
Good luck
3 Likes
It makes it harder to be lean. It is worse than candy as far as nutrition goes.
How much are you talking about? 2 drinks a week? 10? 20? 50?
1 Like
1-2 glasses of red wine 3x-5x a week
I am okay with that level personally. I try not to go over 10 total drinks a week. I get drinks that have low calories. Light beers, seltzers, hard alcohol with no calorie mixers. At 10 sensible drinks a week, it’s about 5 percent of my total calories.
The trade-offs at that level for me are worth it to me. Can still go out with friends, or have a night out with my wife. I don’t think there is a big impact to physique at this level for me.
2 Likes
" in a study on 66 alcoholic and 30 non-alcoholic men, found that chronic alcohol consumption significantly increased FSH, LH, and estrogen levels, whereas testosterone and progesterone were significantly decreased and prolactin (PRL) unchanged. Semen volume, sperm count, motility, and number of morphologically normal sperm were also significantly lower in alcoholic group[68]"
2 Likes
How did they define alcoholic? The US government has it at 14 standard drinks a week (IIRC). OP seems to be at around 6-10 a week.
I don’t think drinking is a health benefit. I was more trying to say that I personally don’t find the costs associated with 10 drinks a week to be terrible. A competitive BBer / athlete may disagree.
For someone on TRT, FSH and LH will be near 0 (in most cases). Testosterone and Free Testosterone levels could be impacted as drinking can impact SHBG (goes up). SHBG going up could raise or lower FT levels as it has multiple actions. It will likely raise TT if on endogenous T. Sperm will likely be quite low on TRT.
1 Like
When looking around, I read (part of) a study showing positive effects on T. I’ll link it.
No I also agree Alcohol has little health benefit, if any.
In the UK the recommendation of maximum intake is 14 units a week. But that’s not to say alcoholism is defined at anything above. I’m not sure.
I’ll look at the aforementioned study and see what the alcoholic group were defined by.
The link as promised:
2 Likes
Regarding the question of what defined an alcoholic… In the citation of the study that was being referred to, there was no mention of the consumption amount/frequency. It would be in the study but I’m calling it quits before I start rummaging through references to digest the primary sources of literature!
2 Likes
I am going to guess that the mean number of standard drinks for the alcoholic group is quite high (at least compared to 10 a week).
I am not pretending there isn’t a cost to it. It’s empty calories, and probably does have some minor health impacts long term.
Just my opinion, at that level (10 a week), I think it’s fair to say it’s up to the individual if it is worth it. I think if it stays there, that risk of a substance abuse disorder is low.
If OP was drinking a lot more, I’d have different advice. There it would be objective that choosing to continue would be a poor decision not just for the physique goals, but also health.
2 Likes
Thanks for all the feedback ! I am glad I found an awesome community which is knowledgeable and professional.
My underlying question is, will drinking alcohol inhibit my body (kidneys, liver etc) from absorbing and processing my trt ?
I am currently on 120mg Cy 1X week IM injection
I drink red wine / 1 - 2 glasses / 3X - 5X a week
I know this post is old but I can share my experience anyway. Finally deciding to cut out alcohol but as far as how it affected my labs while on TRT, I ran a much higher E2, at one point as high as 75, cholesterol total and LDL too high every time (no problems with any of these markers in the past), lower HDL. Cutting back or cutting out alcohol helped all these markers with no other diet changes or supplementation. Also made fat loss non existent or halted. Alcohol affects sleep which hurts fat loss, also does affect liver regardless of what others say about it being injectable, liver still must process all of the things you are putting in and decide to aromatize or not aromatize
1 Like
Track your sleeping heart rate and HRV. The results will probably surprise you.
It will also affect glucose metabolism as well.
Great post.