Science / Medicine : Exercise and Effect of Alcohol

Exercise does not lessen the detrimental effect of alcohol on the immune system, Washington State University researchers said last week.

It is well known that alcohol suppresses some aspects of the immune system, which protects the body against infectious diseases and cancer. Researchers had speculated that this suppression might be reversed by exercise.

But when pharmacist Sally E. Blank and her colleagues studied the immune function of 40 mice who jogged on a special track in their laboratory, they found no difference between those mice who exercised and those who didn’t. “We would like to think that jogging would produce some beneficial adaptations in the immune system, but that’s not what we’ve found,” she said.

But Blank cautioned that this should not give couch potatoes another excuse to avoid exercise because the benefits of exercise on the cardiovascular and muscular systems are well documented “and because we’re just beginning to understand the effects of exercise on the immune system.”