@Cinders - if, rather than Google, you go straight to the British Liver Trust, you will see that alcohol is the single biggest cause of liver disease in the UK. Word.

Intermanaut wrote (see)"...just half a bottle of wine..." Brilliant. Going on your figure of a half a bottle five times a week, you're pretty much smack on, or just over, the weekly recommending safe limit and you reckon that's "just".Was watching the news in my lunch break and there is a Panorama programme on tonight...  basically alcoholic liver disease has increased by 50% in the last decade and admissions are through the roof.  Many are not "alcoholics" in the sense of being addicted, but have simply zapped their liver through excessive  and way too frequent binge drinking.  A lot of people these days seem to think that half a bottle of wine most nights is normal consumption...

Why not? It depends on what i'm doing to how much i drink. At the moment i havent touched alcohol for 6 weeks but next week i know that i'll have a couple of glasses.Take into consideration that when i was training with a club in Germany it was common to have a beer at the end of a race as "refuel". There's a scientific study that says a beer is a great refuel after a run.

I drink about 5 nights a week, not loads just half a bottle of wine and am currently cutting down to about 3. I eat well, train hard but you have to have some treats in life. Sure giving up alcohol may increase my pb's by a couple of minutes but you only live once and I love wine.

Like lots of others I have found that I prefer running to drinking. I went for a run new years day with a bad hangover and it made me realise that I would have preferred the run without a hangover to the drink the night before !I still have the a glass or two of wine at the weekend but that is it..... Also the less you drink the greater the effect of the alcohol on you... One glass of wine goes straight to my head !

I've got a theory on the benefits of binge drinking. Consider this...You get through half a bottle of wine a night. That's not much liquid, so you don't need to pee, so your liver deals with the alcohol as it wanders around your blood stream. Your liver is quite busy, killing itself, with that.On the other hand, you knock back two bottles of wine in an evening. That's a lot of liquid, so you piss most of it out...I haven't submitted anything to The Lancet or PubMed yet.

I gave up drinking for lent (not that I'm religious more keen for the challenge) it wasn't that hard and I'm quite fond of a pint or two. I think total abstinence isn't a good idea though. There is lots of studies that relate moderated alcohol consumption to be beneficial to health (not that I can name them) but I think it's better to drink moderately and regularly than heavily and infrequent because the liver can't cope with sudden increase. In fact I've heard that sudden binges are more damaging than regular heavy drinking as the liver learns to process the alcohol within reason. RW ran an article about beer being the perfect post exercise drink. It replaces lost carbs and re-hydrates quicker than most sports drinks. The alcohol thins the blood out and there are antioxidant properties as well. I think I've read that darker beers have more antioxidants than light but a cooled Speckled Hen just hits the spot for me after a run in the sun.JBiT (very much in the pro camp, possibly even in the beer tent of the pro camp)'Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy' Benjamin Franklin 1779

MuddyPaws wrote (see)Also the less you drink the greater the effect of the alcohol on you... One glass of wine goes straight to my head !The people I work with laugth at me when I say I'm on my arse after 1 pint these days, but I personally don't see this as a bad thing.  For 1 thing I'm probably fitter than the vast majority of colleagues, another I've probably got a lot more awards for my racing than they have for drinking, and last of all I'll always go home with change of a £5 note.

There is no reason you can't do both, but it does depend on what your end goals are - are you just running for a bit of fun or do you want to improve yourself and get better/faster/go further?  I used to drink quite a lot; binging 3-4 days a week really more than constant every day drinking but because I'd never not drunk  and run I only thought I knew how much it was affecting my running.  I've stopped now, not had a drink in 10 weeks which is the longest I've been sober since I was 14, and now I know exactly how much drinking was affecting my running.  And my recovery from running afterwards.  I was a big fan of the post race drink - champers and wine in my case - and I used to enjoy it, but I now enjoy a glass of something sparking and non-alcoholic a lot more.  Since I stopped drinking my running is better, my stamina has improved and so has my actual ability to run properly without feeling like I wanted to die at the end of 10k because I'd had a skin-full the night before.You're kidding yourself if you think drinking doesn't damage your liver, and if it is truly beneficial why is it only humans and the odd monkey that get drunk?  When was the last time you saw someone who takes there sport seriously drinking?  They don't call it being intoxicated for nothing ...........