Sober-Curious: Benefits of an Alcohol-Free Lifestyle DuPage Medical Group

Your mood and concentration will be more stable, and the frequency of headaches is likely to decrease. It’s important to remember that not everyone will experience the same things at the same time, or even in the same way. Sugar boosts levels of the “reward” chemical dopamine, which fuels feelings of pleasure, Dr. Raskin says. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, alcohol is one of the biggest drivers of overeating.

• “Not only do have alcohol in them,” she says, “but they also have a lot of empty calories and sugars in them.
• “ is, protect the heart with low amount of alcohol, but increase the risk of cardiovascular disease with high amount of alcohol,” Dasgupta said.
• Kimball created Eat Fit in 2013 to take the guesswork out of healthy eating.
• That sad, tired and overly emotional state you find yourself in after a few too many?

For college students, being dry is the best thing to do,” he said. Depending on the patient, she said she sometimes suggests cutting back on alcohol to lose weight. “ is, protect the heart with low amount of alcohol, but increase the risk of cardiovascular disease with high amount of alcohol,” Dasgupta said. Likewise, over time, the body becomes dependent on alcohol to function normally, because long-term alcohol use actually has the power to alter the body’s chemistry, as mentioned above. “Excessive alcohol use can cause blood sugar fluctuations and dehydration that might leave you feeling shaky or lightheaded,” explains Mehta.

Giving up alcohol lowers blood pressure and reduces your risk of heart disease

That’s because alcohol is a diuretic, causing you to urinate more, Dr. Raskin says. That said, if you want to cut back, there are definitely benefits. Andy believes the greatest discovery you’ll ever make is your authentic self and that by removing alcohol you allow yourself the chance to be you again. And when it comes to addiction, alcoholism is deadlier in women.

For dependent drinkers, between hours is when withdrawal symptoms subside or become more manageable. Unless your diet is unhealthy, your blood sugar may normalize by the end of the next day, if the carbs in alcoholic beverages were messing with your blood glucose levels. Andy is co-founder of the habit-changing program One Year No Beer that invites people to try 28, 90 or 365 days alcohol free. He believes it’s possible to become the most productive, present and healthiest version of yourself just by making this one change. Informal campaigns such as “dry January,” in which people choose not to drink for a month, might be especially beneficial for women. If you have been a frequent user of alcohol, you may need to have a physical and consult with a physician about the possibility of experiencing withdrawal symptoms while abstaining from alcohol.

How to Take a Break From Drinking

Then, college, university, your twenties, and thirties all drenched in booze. You wish you could have the energy to be more productive at work or start your own business but you just don’t have the motivation. Find a friend you can hang out with who doesn’t feel the need to drink to have fun.

Now, a study by researchers from the University of Sussex in Falmer, UK, shows just how much skipping alcohol for 1 month can improve your life and concludes that these benefits are long-lasting. It has an impact on just about every facet of our wellbeing, and has a major influence on mental and physical performance. Alcohol can disrupt sleep patterns, sending you into deep sleep and less restorative REM sleep. You might feel like you didn’t get enough rest even if you were horizontal for your usual interlude. Drinking ultimately interferes with the neurotransmitters that are responsible for our mental health. And has even been found to lower the levels of serotonin in our brain that help regulate our mood. Bowel cancer, liver cancer, mouth cancer and three different types of throat cancer.

Benefits of Taking A Break from Alcohol

These individuals may also come to your assistance in social drinking settings or when you’re getting the third degree from others. Taking up a hobby such as sport or painting can be a healthy replacement for your 6pm drink and planning ahead for social occasions will mean you’re better prepared for temptations.

So maybe it’s time to see for yourself what happens when you stop drinking. If heavier drinkers remove alcohol for a longer period of time, they might see weight loss, improvement in body composition, less stomach fat, improvement in triglycerides ,” she said. If you go for three weeks without alcohol, you’ll taking a break from drinking alcohol be saving money! This isn’t a direct health benefit, but it can indirectly help to reduce stress and anxiety around money. Let’s say you drink seven drinks a week, that can add up to be a weekly savings of anywhere from about $15 to $100 depending on whether you drink at home or out and your drink of choice.

Ditching alcohol can lead to a better sex life

However, he notes that people of Chinese and Indian descent do not get the benefit of drinking alcohol due to a genetic reason that isn’t clearly known. Improved Sleep– While drinking may help you fall asleep, it suppresses REM sleep, the restorative part of your sleep cycle. Alcohol is also a diuretic https://ecosoberhouse.com/ so both of these working together means that you will wake up more often at night and feel less rested. One has been drinking alcohol for the last twenty years, the other hasn’t. Over time, you come to realise that the benefits of being without alcohol are so much greater than drinking it.

Ruddiness in your cheeks and around your nose may also start to fade, and other skin conditions—such as dandruff, eczema, or rosacea—may also improve, Dr. Raskin says. You might toss and turn at first, but give up alcohol and the sleep you get will likely leave you feeling more refreshed and sharp the next day. As you no doubt know—and maybe your liquor cabinet even bears this out—there has been no drinking like pandemic drinking.

Feel Better Live More Ad-Free

Although we often turn to a glass of wine or a stiff martini to feel better, the irony is that drinking can have both short- and long-term negative effects on mood. Since alcohol floods the brain with dopamine, which influences how we feel pleasure, the “rush” of this feel-good chemical can cause anxiety to flare up as soon the levels begin to drop. Over time, this can turn into a detrimental cycle of drinking, feeling anxious, and then drinking more to reinstate a feeling of calm.

• And having a sober pal comes in handy if you need someone to go with you to a party and not drink.
• For most people, participating in month-long challenges will provide a range of benefits and little downside, even over the longer term.
• Dry January can have benefits for those who drink more than the recommended two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women.
• When you’re not drinking alcohol, Podesta notes, you’re also not drinking all the other things that are in alcoholic beverages.
• How­ev­er, your sero­tonin lev­els quick­ly return to nor­mal lev­els, which could lead to feel­ings of depres­sion.

Research shows that as few as two standard alcoholic drinks can slow down your body’s fat-burning process and can lead to your body making new fat in the liver . Your liver sees the byproducts of alcohol as toxins, so your body stops processing nutrients from food you’ve eaten so it can take care of the bad guy toxins first. Once these processes are reversed from abstaining from alcohol, you may start to see the number on the scale inching down. Hangovers, or alcohol withdrawal, cause hormonal changes, too, which explains why we might feel so crummy after drinking. Alcohol has quite deleterious effects, as ethanol, an organic compound in alcohol, is a toxin to our body, Scheller explains. When you stop drinking, your liver is able to devote more time to its other 500 vital functions. After 1 month of not drinking, your liver fat may be reduced up to 20%, significantly reducing your risk of cirrhosis of the liver or fatty liver disease.

Explore a future without alcohol.

Unless you’ve replaced the empty calories of alcoholic drinks with another indulgent food, you’ve probably cut 2000 calories by the second week’s end. You may find your scale reading a pound or two lighter than before. At 2 weeks, most drinkers should no longer experience acid reflux. The lining in your stomach has had time to heal from constant inflammation and returns to normal.

• She has previously been awarded funding by Australian and state governments, NHMRC and other bodies for evaluation and research into drug prevention and treatment.
• This is often the result of long-term liver damage though, with the first stage of liver disease being a buildup of fat from breaking down the alcohol.
• Abstaining from alcohol for even a short time can have incredible benefits.
• Sober-curi­ous” is used to describe the deci­sion to decrease the amount of alco­hol you con­sume.

Researchers found that when people received an alcohol “infusion” equal to about two drinks, they ate 30 percent more food than those who received a saline solution. When you stop drinking, your skin hydration improves, especially after 7+ days.