7 benefits of quitting alcohol for 1 month

So , starting off with our first benefit on today's top seven the improvements that you can expect in your cardiovascular health Now . Alcohol has proven cardiotoxic effects , and prolonged heavy drinking can eventually destroy the heart muscles in a condition that doctors call alcohol-related cardiomyopathy .

When this happens , the muscles literally stretch out of shape and the heart can no longer pump blood through the body effectively . This is generally a terminal condition , but this is really late-stage heart disease , and even if you're a chronic problem drinker , chances are that things haven't gotten to that stage .

If you're like most drinkers , your early warning signs will be your blood pressure . For reasons that scientists don't yet fully understand , there is a strong link between boozing and hypertension .

Heavy drinkers average about 5-10ml of mercury-higher blood pressure compared to non-drinkers , and although this has no symptoms , hypertension in and of itself increases the risk of all sorts of complications further down the line . These include stroke , aneurysms , heart attack and heart disease . Another effect of drinking is to raise your resting heart rate .

This is the number of beats per minute that your heart will make when you are not exerting any effort . For most people , it will range from 60 to 90 beats per minute . Generally speaking , the lower your resting heart rate is , the more efficient that your heart is pumping blood and the healthier that you actually are .

Just like , blood pressure is a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality . In other words , the lower that it is , the less likely you are to develop heart problems down the line and the longer that you will then live . Now , blood pressure is easy to measure .

All you need to do is sit down a couple of minutes with a blood pressure monitor and you're done . But with technology nowadays , resting heart is even simpler to track .

More or less all fitness trackers that you wear around your wrist will automatically give you a daily estimate without you having to do anything Something like this woot band that I'm wearing right now .

So if you're still drinking and thinking about stopping , even if it's temporarily , I wholeheartedly encourage you to purchase these two pretty inexpensive pieces of kit and then track your progress At the end of the month . You are so likely to find your blood pressure has dropped by up to 10 milliliters of mercury .

When it comes to resting heart rate , you won't even have to wait that long . Literally a few days after your last drink , you will likely notice your resting heart rate falling , and it will keep on falling until it plateaus to your natural baseline . So our second benefit is about getting better sleep .

See , when it comes to your sleep , alcohol is a double-edged sword , because it acts as a central nervous system depressant . At higher doses , it will sedate you . This means that it reduces the time that you take to fall asleep , so-called sleep latency .

Your first two or three hours of sleep will also be heavier , as booze will artificially boost deeper sleep at the expense of lighter sleep . I mean , it does sound pretty awesome , but the problem is that you start to metabolise the ethanol out of your system around the middle of the night , and then you'll start getting the opposite effects .

Your sleep will become abnormally light and restless . You will wake up easier and find it more difficult to fall asleep again . Another problem is that alcohol has a diuretic effect , increasing your trips to the bathroom , and with each of these trips it becomes increasingly unlikely that you'll be able to get back to sleep .

It's no mystery that sleeping problems are one of the most common complaints of heavy drinkers , and eventually even their sleep latency will begin to suffer and it will take longer for them to fall asleep , even when intoxicated . Now , the degree to which your sleep will rebound after your last drink will vary from person to person .

If you're like most , you're probably looking at up to a week or less where you'll be more aroused than normal and your sleep suffers . You'll probably sleep in short and shallow spurts and your dreams might be more vivid than normal . This is because your REM sleep was artificially suppressed by booze and it now rebounds .

By the end of the first week , however , and certainly by the end of the second one , you will experience a reduction in your sleep latency and increase in total sleep time . By the time you hit the one month mark , you're very likely to notice that you can't remember the last time in your life when you were sleeping this well , like with your heart health .

We're now lucky to live in an age where you can easily track and quantify these changes through relatively inexpensive devices like an Oura Ring or a Whoopman . So our third benefit is about how fatty liver reverses so before they go on to develop hepatitis and cirrhosis and all the nasty complications from advanced liver diseases .

Well , the vast majority of heavy drinkers will spend a good part of their life with so-called fatty liver . Well , this is exactly what it says on the tin . It's an accumulation of excess fat in your liver as the cells there start to fill up with triglycerides , and it actually affects over 90% of heavy drinkers . You don't even have to be a chronic drinker .

Just two weeks of heavy boozing can sometimes be enough for you to get this . Like hypertension . Fatty liver typically has no symptoms , but just like hypertension , it can lead to potentially very serious conditions further down the line , as it sets the stage for alcoholic hepatitis and , eventually , cirrhosis .

Various liver enzymes , like ALT and AST , will also show up at elevated levels in your blood work as your damaged liver leaks them into the bloodstream . The good news is that your fatty liver will generally resolve very quickly after you stop drinking , and I do mean astonishingly fast .

Three weeks into your one month of sobriety will generally be enough for your fatty liver to heal , and at the end of the month , levels of ALT and AST will have dropped significantly , which is pretty good stuff . Now our fourth benefit is about how our metabolism starts improving .

See , the levels of glucose , or blood sugar , in your system are regulated by a hormone that your pancreas secretes , called insulin . The insulin facilitates the uptake of glucose by the body's cells where it's used as energy , and by removing the sugar from circulation , it keeps its levels in the blood under control .

Now , the problem with our modern diets is that they cause our blood sugar levels to spike all the time . Think of things like processed carbs , candy , fizzy drinks , fast food the standard American diet , basically . In response , our pancreas keeps on pumping out ever increasing amounts of insulin .

Eventually , however , our cells can develop resistance to the effects of insulin . When this happens , they reduce their absorption of glucose , which is now stuck in the bloodstream . This can then lead to permanently elevated levels of blood sugar , a condition that doctors call hyperglycemia . If things get really bad , this condition can eventually lead to type 2 diabetes .

Now , for most people with these issues , the problem can be traced back to their diet and lack of physical activity . But at this point , researchers have conclusively shown that heavy drinking is an independent risk factor . In other words , by drinking , you are exacerbating your metabolic problems above and beyond the effects of your diet .

So a very interesting recent study out of the UK looked at what happens to your metabolism after only 30 days of abstinence . They found a whopping 26% drop in a measure of insulin resistance after just one month . What's particularly interesting is that the participants weren't even particularly heavy drinkers .

To enter the study , men had to consume on average a minimum of 8 drinks a week and women 6 . Had the researchers recruited heavier drinkers , it's very likely that the improvements would have been even more significant . And now let's dive into benefit number 5 .

Now , from what we've discussed so far , you're probably starting to put all the dots together , namely that well before the end of your first month of abstinence , your general health will have begun to take a dramatic turn for the better , and almost inevitably this will reflect onto your most basic metric of all your weight .

The same UK study that we've been discussing earlier also measured the participants' weight at the start and end of the 30-day abstinence period . They found an average weight loss of 1.6 kilos per participant , from an average of 81.1 down to 79.5 kilos .

And again , these were relatively mild drinkers , which the researchers recruited explicitly because they didn't fit the criteria of problem drinking . And it was just from the first 30 days . Now let's dive into benefit number six .

One of the effects that participants of one-month abstinence programs report is increased energy , and when you consider the improvements in sleep , in cardiovascular health , the metabolism , weight , plus all the other changes that we don't even have time to discuss here , then you can't expect anything else really .

Participants in these programs also report that as the drinking leaves , it makes space for healthy habits to then return . A study out of the University of Sussex in the UK compared over 1,000 dry January participants to a control group of drinkers who continued to drink throughout that month .

In case you're not familiar with it , dry January is a program out of the UK that encourages people to abstain for the entire month of January . It's been going on for over a decade now and it's aimed at so-called social drinkers . Around 49% of dry January participants reported that they had attempted to engage in more physical activity during that month .

This compared to 24% in the control group . Similarly , 52% of dry January participants reported trying to improve their diet , compared to 29% in the control group . In line with all of this , those who took part reported significant increases in their self-perceived overall health and psychological well-being . There were no such changes in the control group .

And finally , benefit number seven . So this is our last , but particularly pleasant benefit At the end of one month abstinence period , you will have earned yourself a nice cash bonus . Not only that , but this bonus will recur indefinitely for every month that you stay sober , until the end of your life .

And I'm talking , of course , about the money that you save from not drinking alcohol . Obviously , the figure will depend on your particular circumstances , location and so on , but let's not just forget about the cost of alcohol . If you go to bars and restaurants , then the sky's the limit .

But what about all the other things that people do while they're drinking the Amazon , ordering the taxis , all that other

stuff ? Now , because our brain evolved many thousands of years ago in environments where there was no such thing as cash and credit cards and bars and supermarkets , it exhibits certain irrational biases , biases that , from a purely logical and economic perspective , make no sense .

Let's say , for example , you do a quick calculation and see that you personally are spending around $300 a month on alcohol . If I told you that you save $300 from not drinking , then you'd be very pleased . There's no doubt about it .

But if I told you that I will send you a check for $300 , you would be over the moon , even though financially it's the exact same thing . In both cases , you will have the exact same amount of balance at your bank at the end of the month , so it's a good reframe to think of you getting sent money in the post . Rather than saving money .

Why not write yourself a physical check and then leave it lying around your desk as a reminder that money is real and you will have earned it ? Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear . If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly , then make sure to visit wwwsoberclearcom .