Scientific research into the effect of beer on testosterone levels in men is limited. Until now, the scientific literature would have us understand that excessive drinking does not increase the testosterone level, but rather decreases it! In an American study ten healthy men drank a moderate portion of beer on a daily basis for three weeks. The testosterone level drooped by approximately 7%. A similar Dutch experiment yielded similar results. Finnish and Japanese researchers came to the same result, but noted that the testosterone level in women increased. It has to be admitted that the circumstances of such experiments were quite different from those of cyclists such as Floyd Landys, who ascribes his hormonal high to four whiskies and two beer chasers drunk the night before his victorious mountain ride. Yet the experiments give a direction, and it certainly does not support the cyclist’s thesis. Increased testosterone levels have thus far not been observed in human experiments, although they have been found in American research with rats. Landis is by no means the first athlete to claim that his high testosterone level is due to beer: American sprinter Dennis Mitchell explained his abnormally high testosterone level by four rounds of sex and six bottles of beer.

The sort of research described above is a matter of measuring the body’s own testosterone. The synthetic hormone used by some athletes is epitestosterone, which has a similar chemical composition to testosterone, but with a somewhat modified spatial structure. The body cannot transform the one product into the other. For some years now an advanced technique is able to distinguish between the two hormones. If the ratio between the body’s own and the artificial product is above 6, it is judged to be due to doping, unless the unusually high value has some physiological or pathological cause. But that should already be known.

  |terug|mail|print|top|