A new study has found a positive relationship between fitness and alcohol consumption which is good news if you’re into that.

Here’s the deal…

People who work out regularly drink more alcohol, but are less likely to be problem drinkers acoording to new research from a study at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas.

A recent study entitled Medicine & Science in Sports Exercise looked at data from 38,000 healthy patients ranging in age from 20 to 86 found a strong link between exercise and alcohol consumption habits.

The findings also showed that “women within the moderate and high fitness categories had greater odds of moderate/heavy alcohol consumption in comparison to their low fitness counterparts. Similarly, moderate and high fit men had greater odds of moderate-to-heavy alcohol consumption in comparison to the low fitness group.”

“In addition, among men who were heavy drinkers” all displayed “higher fitness levels that were related to lower rates of alcohol dependence.”

The subjects’ fitness was evaluated through exhaustive treadmill tests and that data was then correlated with the amount of alcohol participants reported using on a regular basis, “ultimately revealing how higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are related to increased alcohol consumption management among adults.

And in July 2021, two researchers at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia published a paper which shed additional light on the relationship between beer in particular and exercise.

Patrick B. Wilson, an associate professor in exercise science at Old Dominion, and Jaison Wynne, a PhD student in the Department of Human Movement Sciences at the university, conducted a systematic review of beer’s effects on exercise performance, recovery, and adaptation.

The researchers scoured relevant sports studies in noted health databases (PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science) and came up with three specific findings which correlated somewhat with the more-broad-based and less beer-specific Cooper Clinic paper.

• Athletes are more likely to drink beer than non-athletes
• Moderate drinking the night before a competition won’t impair athletic performance
• Regular beer consumption doesn’t hinder athletes over weeks of exercise