If you’re concerned about your own or a loved one’s drinking habits, talk to your primary care provider. Whenever you decide to take a break from alcohol, whether it be during a designated sober month or any other time of the year, the NIAAA website, Rethinking Drinking, has strategies that can help you stop drinking. These include tips for cutting down or quitting, reminder strategies to help you remember why and how you decided to do it, and ways your family and friends can support you. All these strategies can help you stay motivated in your efforts to take a break from alcohol. Rethinking Drinking is also a tool for helping you examine your relationship with alcohol.
Chris Marshall of Austin, Texas, has been sober for the past 12 years. He started drinking in high school, he says, and got his first DUI at 16. Chris Marshall is a certified substance abuse counselor and the founder https://ecosoberhouse.com/ of Sans Bar, a venue for “the nightlife experience” without the alcohol, in Austin, Texas. On a Saturday night, people are starting to pack into a popular bar called Harvard & Stone in a hip Los Angeles neighborhood.
Health
Drinking alcohol has been shown to increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. Women who consume three alcoholic drinks per week have a 15 percent higher chance of getting breast cancer compared with women who don’t drink. Thousands of research studies around the world have confirmed that alcohol increases the risk of oral, esophageal, uterine, breast, and colon cancer. First, when alcohol is metabolized by the liver, it results in a toxic, carcinogenic substance called acetaldehyde.
Another study published last year by researchers in Britain compared the health outcomes among a group of men and women who agreed to stop drinking for one month, with the health of a group that continued to consume alcohol. Cutting out alcohol for 30 days can have benefits for those who drink more than the recommended limit of two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women. However, if you’re banking on a month-long break from alcohol to help you lose weight, Kumar said it’s not your best bet. “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 (one of the fat particles in the blood),” she said.
Notice changes in how you feel
Still, it’s good to know that the protective effects can be both fast-acting and long-lasting. “Some conditions might improve right away after the drinking stops—if they’re triggered by alcohol,” Dr. Genebriera says. If you weren’t drinking much before you cut it out entirely, it’s unlikely that you’ll see a difference, but it’s still worth mentioning here. Drinking heavily could make it tough for your liver and pancreas to work well—both of which are essential for your metabolism, Dr. Galligan says.
“There’s an antioxidant made by the liver called glutathione. You can get an indirect measure of how much oxidative stress the liver is under by measuring an enzyme called GGT that helps replenish glutathione stores,” White explains. The proliferation of craft mocktails made with nonalcoholic distilled spirits is making it easier and more fun for people who abstain from alcohol taking a break from alcohol to feel like they are still part of the party. In addition to the health benefits, when you stop drinking for any amount of time it automatically saves you money. Depending on the person, Kumar said she sometimes suggests cutting back on alcohol to lose weight. For instance, Dasgupta cited research he conducted on the relationship between genetics and alcohol misuse.
How to safely taper off alcohol
If you want a really effective break, resist the temptation to drink the house dry the night before. A quiet day before your break will ease you into it with the minimum of recovery to do, so you’ll feel the benefits much more quickly. As you contemplate a weekend without drinking, you might feel like you would be missing out. It suggests that you’ve hardwired an association in your brain that alcohol is a reward for hard work or an essential part of relaxing. In fact, taking a break for the weekend gives you even more weekend to enjoy. You can still reward yourself by relaxing, and you can do it alcohol-free.
One thing that many listeners who’ve tried a dry January — or any break from alcohol — told us is that their friends didn’t really “get it.” “Why, why, why,” people told us they were asked. On the other hand, binge drinking is generally defined as four drinks for women and five drinks for men within a two-hour period. And even occasional binge drinking episodes can have profound effects on your liver’s health over time. “Nutrition optimization is actually the most evidence-based and most important intervention aside from stopping drinking,” points out Dr. Lindenmeyer. This is because, for a lot of people who experience some kind of liver dysfunction, it makes them at risk of not getting enough proteins, calories or vitamins.
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