Whether you are a Simpsons fan or not, Homer is one fine philosopher.

Beer, he once said, is the solution to, and the cause of all life's problems. Which is a great way of summing up the relationship between cricketers and alcohol (in the West at least).

Most cricket clubs have a tradition of drinking after games. On tour the drinking can be before, during and after!

It's the grease that oils the social wheels.

On the other hand, we have all been told how damaging drinking is to our health.

Guilty pleasure or the ruin of cricket careers? Let's find out.

• Beer makes you fat. You only have to take one look at Homer to realise that, they are called beer bellies after all. You see alcohol contains calories (100-150 calories per drink on average) so drinking it can lead to you piling on the pounds.
• Beer helps you stay fat. Alcohol messes with your body's ability to burn fat. This is because booze is a toxin. The body prioritises getting rid of it so stops metabolising fat.
• Beer makes you lose muscle. Heavy drinking can strip essential nutrients from your body, leaving you more vulnerable to muscle wasting. Even social drinking can lower testosterone levels.
• Beer reduces your skill. If you have ever played with a hangover you know what alcohol can do to your cricket performance. Add to that the dehydration that occurs while drinking and you could find yourself losing stamina too.
• Beer makes you stupid.Doing stupid things while drunk is not unusual. You can much more easily get injured after a few drinks in stupid ways: falling down, getting in fights and the like.

• Beer helps you lose fat. I know I just told you the opposite, but some research has show that beer increases insulin sensitivity and helps you burn more calories by speeding up your metabolism.
• Alcohol improves your health. When drunk in moderation beer and red wine have shown a number of health benefits. It can help reduce blood clots, reduce the risk of diabetes and improve immune response.
• Alcohol improves recovery. Amazingly, a study was recently done to see the effects of beer on recovery from sport performance. The booze did just as well as the scientifically designed post workout shake.

I have deliberately not mentioned the most serious side effects of drinking: That it can cause serious addiction and liver damage if abused long term. Let's put that aside and assume responsible drinking levels.

You will need to draw your own conclusions about your own drinking. If a cricketer came to me asking for advice on consumption I would certainly say that moderate drinking seems to do little harm and can have certain health benefits.

The conflicting issues of weight control seem to cancel each other out. Maybe it's more the doughnuts that are causing Homer the issue.

It's also very easy for moderate drinking to become excessive drinking and then the costs start to outweigh the benefits.

Perhaps I should leave the advice to nutrition consultant Alan Aragon: "If you drink so much that it interferes with your training, you need to cut back. If the amount you drink never interferes with anything important, let's get together for a beer sometime."

Homer may not agree, but he was never much of a sportsman anyway.

Photo Credit: Joits