Drinking alcohol excessively can negatively impact your health, causing higher-than-normal risks of liver damage, heart disease, mood disorders, and destructive behavioral patterns. Luckily, many of the side effects related to alcohol can be alleviated by abstaining from alcohol – even if only temporarily. Although “Dry January” is over, we still wanted to discuss what can happen to your body after a month without alcohol.
Liver Damage Repairs
You don’t have to be a raging alcoholic to see liver damage. Experts say that men who consume more than two drinks a day and women who drink more than one drink a day are susceptible to fatty changes in the liver. But if you stop drinking, you can see improvement in just a couple of weeks. In the absence of alcohol, the liver can heal itself and focus on eliminating other toxins roaming the body.
Sex Life Improvement
A drink or two a day may add some friskiness to your relationship, but excessive alcohol consumption can actually diminish your sex drive – men can have trouble performing, and women can have minimal lubrication production. Once you cut down on the booze, your natural hormone and urge levels will improve.
Better Sleep Habits
Having a glass of wine before bed is like giving a baby a bottle, right? Wrong. A glass of wine may get you to drift off, but it won’t keep you in the REM cycle, which is what we desperately need nightly to keep things like memory and emotional processing working properly.
Drinking alcohol can also cause frequent bathroom trips in the middle of the night, an increase in teeth grinding, bizarre dream occurrences, and that exhausted feeling you can’t shake when you wake up. If you give up drinking for a month, you can reverse those side effects.
Improved Mood
After a long, hard day, you may want to turn to a stiff drink. And in the moment, you might feel better. But that’s only a short-term effect. The second alcohol enters the bloodstream, it travels to the brain and encourages dopamine release. But as soon as alcohol is filtered out of the body, anxiety sets in. Repeating this drink-dopamine-anxiety loop can change your mood long-term, leaving you in a constant state of stress. When you stop drinking alcohol, mental health improves. As time progresses, so does overall mindfulness.
A Stronger Immune System
Healthy immune systems thrive on a balanced diet, regular exercise, good sleeping patterns, and minimal alcohol intake. If you’re drinking too often, you can undermine your immune system, depleting the body of essential vitamins and minerals and allowing viruses and bacteria to enter the body. So, removing alcohol from your diet can substantially improve your ability to fight illnesses!