TORONTO – Are you double-fisting with a dumbbell and a pint of beer in either hand? A new study suggests that on workout days, people tend to drink more.
And the gym days and nights of booze tend to be on Thursdays to Sundays, according to new research out of Northwestern University.
It’s across the board, regardless of age or gender.
“Monday through Wednesday, people batten down the hatches and they cut back on alcohol consumption. But once that ‘social weekend’ kicks off on Thursdays, physical activity increases and so does alcohol consumption,” Dr. David Conroy, the study’s lead author, said.
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Conroy is a professor at the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine where he specializes in preventive medicine. He suggests the study is the first to use smartphone technology and a daily diary for self-reporting exercise and alcohol consumption.
The study included 150 participants, between 18 and 89 years old. For 21 days at a time, they documented their physical activity and what they were drinking over three separate periods of time in one year. In the end, the scientists had 63 days of data on hand.
(They preferred to break up the reporting so that participants weren’t vulnerable to memory problems or other biases that come into play after documenting habits over extended periods of time.)
Turns out, exercise days also tended to be days in which participants rewarded themselves with alcohol.
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It’s not the first study to consider exercise and drinking – other research had suggested that physically active people also tend to drink more. But Conroy says it may not be that black and white.
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“We zoomed in the microscope and got a very up-close and personal look at these behaviours on a day-to-day basis and see it’s not that people who exercise more drink more – it’s that on days when people are more active they tend to drink more than on days they are less active,” he explained.
“This finding was uniform across study participants of all levels of physical activity and ages,” he said.
His team hopes to look at what drives people to drink more on days that they take up exercise. Conroy’s guess is that perhaps people reward themselves for their efforts on the treadmill, or maybe they’re working out to compensate for their calorie-laden social weekend.
The study was published in the journal Health Psychology.
And as for what you reach for when you get thirsty, Pennsylvania State University researchers say that your preferences are influenced by genetics.
Our preferences for, say, sweet, fruity wine or bitter beer, all comes down to our taste receptor genes, the study says. The findings come from the same food scientists that suggested that gene variations may explain why some people crave ice cream or pizza, while others just don’t have a desire for that kind of indulgent fare.
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“People may differ in the sensations they experience from a food or beverage. Prior work shows that some people experience more bitterness and less sweetness from alcoholic beverages like beer,” Dr. John Hayes said.
It applies to other food groups, too. Consumers tend to avoid bitter vegetables, such as arugula, kale, watercress and mustard greens, the study says.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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