Though the benefits can vary widely from person to person, taking a month-long break from alcohol can do your body good. Taking a 30-day break from drinking alcohol can provide several health benefits.
Among the biggest benefits, your risk of cancer and heart disease may decrease.
You may also experience improved sleep quality.
The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that alcohol should be consumed in moderation — up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men.
Alcohol consumption has been also linked to head, neck, esophagus, liver, breast, colon, and rectum cancers.
If you need a break from alcohol, going alcohol-free for a month or more can bring about many physical and mental health benefits.
The benefits can vary from person to person depending on how much of a change from their baseline behaviour this is.
Someone who drinks minimally but abstains from alcohol for a month might feel a sense of control over their health or feel a sense of accomplishment from achieving a set goal.
Meanwhile, others who drink heavily might notice more pronounced physiologic effects, such as more mental clarity, better sleep, weight loss, and feeling the ‘detox’ sensation, in addition to achieving a set goal.
For social and moderate drinkers, participating in a month break won’t make much difference to their bodies. However, for people who exceed recommendations, staying away from alcohol for a month can reap changes.
Studies show that even if you drink in excess once a month, it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke,” said Dasgupta. “My warning is not for the people who drink in moderation. It’s for the people who drink too much.”
What happens when you stop drinking for 30 days
For those who drink frequently or excessively, taking a month off can help your body in the following ways.
Repair liver damage
Cirrhosis of the liver (severe scarring of the liver) can occur over time in those who drink excessively. It doesn’t happen in a day, but for anyone who drinks in excess, which again is more than two drinks a day for men, and one a day for women, there are fatty changes in the liver, so when you stop drinking, those changes are reversible, and the liver can become normal again. Because the liver is a tolerant organ, he said positive changes can occur within weeks of going dry. In the absence of alcohol, the liver can focus on its other jobs, such as breaking down other toxins produced by the body, metabolizing fats and excess hormones that need to be broken down.
Decrease the risk of heart disease
Alcohol is metabolized by the liver and an enzyme called dehydrogenases. However, when you drink in excess, the enzyme gets saturated and is metabolized by a different enzyme. When it’s metabolized by this different pathway, it produces lots of free radicals which is known to oxidize bad cholesterol, and when the LDL is oxidized, it deposits on the carotid arteries forming (blockage). On the other hand, if you drink in moderation, alcohol doesn’t affect LDL and instead increase good cholesterol. Drinking one or two glasses of wine once or twice a week has some health benefits, especially for men over 40; it reduces risk of cardiovascular disease… for women you can get those benefits anytime, it’s not age-dependent.
For anyone concerned about heart health, medical experts recommend decreasing alcohol intake and increasing physical activity, which also raises good cholesterol.
Reduce the risk of cancer
Studies list alcohol as a known human carcinogen. A person’s risk of developing an alcohol-associated cancer increases with the more alcohol they drink regularly over time. Links are shown between alcohol consumption and the development of the following types of cancer:
head and neck, esophageal, liver, breast, colorectal
Facilitate weight loss
Excess alcohol consumption may cause weight gain, which means that cutting out alcohol could lead to weight loss for some people. While alcohol is high in calories, and wine, beer, and mixed drinks add sugar to one’s diet, simply cutting it out may not always help you lose weight.
Again, depends on what the baseline alcohol consumption is. 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).
Boost brain power
The best people to avoid alcohol always are those under 21 years old, and not just for legal reasons. There’s a reason why the legal age of drinking is 21 years. Teenage and college drinking is a huge problem. It can cause memory loss and interference with brain development. For college students, being dry is the best thing to do. The same goes for those with alcohol use disorder or a family history of it.
Improve sleep
While many think drinking alcohol before bed will help them nod off and stay asleep, it’s quite the opposite. Research shows that drinking large amounts of alcohol before bedtime leads to decreased sleep onset and disrupted, poor quality sleep later in the night. For those with alcohol misuse and dependence, the conditions are connected to chronic sleep disturbance, lower slow-wave sleep, and more rapid eye movement.
Alcohol withdrawal symptoms
About half of the people who have alcohol use disorder (uncontrolled drinking and preoccupation with alcohol) who suddenly stop or cut back on alcohol consumption will develop signs or symptoms of alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Theses withdrawal symptoms occur because of overactivity of the central and autonomic nervous systems.
Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal might include: headache, elevated blood pressure, palpitations, hyperreflexia (increased or overactive reflex response from muscles), gastrointestinal upset, nausea and vomiting, anxiety, agitation, insomnia, tremors, and hallucinations.
In severe cases of withdrawal when symptoms are not treated, a person may experience generalized tonic-clonic seizures, delirium tremens, and even death.
Other benefits of not drinking alcohol
In addition to the health benefits, when you stop drinking for any amount of time it automatically saves you money. In 2019, the average household spent N600,000 per year on alcohol. If you add in costs of drinking in social settings at restaurants, bars, and clubs, the amount might be more.
The bottom line
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. You get the best benefit from alcohol when you drink in moderation. Just being dry for 1 month and going back to drinking in excess is a bad idea. If you are drinking in excess, it’s better to cut your alcohol intake. And going (dry) for 90 days will get you more benefits… it will give more time for the liver to heal and heart to heal.
For those who drink in moderation, partaking in a month-long retreat from drinking alcohol won’t do harm, but it may not do much good either. There are people who have learned to practice very reasonable alcohol consumption that contributes to psychosocial well-being in a way that does not impair their health. In these people, completely cutting out healthy/moderate/social consumption might interfere with their social dynamics, cultural factors around meals, and mildly interfere with one’s routine of stress management.
-quora
