Your body on quitting alcohol - expect THIS

Well , you will not believe the changes that your body will go through . There's going to be unexpected improvements , surprising health benefits . Listen , your body will transform in ways that you would never expect . So stick around to find out the eight main things that are going to happen to you when you stop drinking alcohol . You do not want to miss this video .

This could be the video that changes everything for you , because I promise you one thing you've got nothing to lose and so much to gain from getting that shit out of your life . So let's first look at how the cardiovascular system rebounds quickly Now .

If you've ever tracked your heart vitals , notably blood pressure or resting heart rate , you know very well how harmful booze is to your heart . See , heavy drinkers almost universally suffer from hypertension , which in turn , predisposes them to premature death from things like stroke , heart attack and heart disease .

Now , fortunately , your cardiovascular system will start to improve within a matter of days from your last drink . Only two weeks after your last drink , your hypertension will have fallen dramatically , typically within the normal range . Your resting heart rate will also drop another sign that your heart is rebounding .

Now let's look at blood sugar and the cholesterolesterol Drop . So heavy drinking can raise total cholesterol and blood sugars , but only one month after your last drink , both of these will have dropped considerably . One study found that social drinkers who stopped drinking for 40 days had an average blood sugar drop of 23% , bringing their levels down to normal .

The same study found that cholesterol also dropped by 5% . These are improvements that most people would be very happy to achieve through something like prescription medication , and you will get them for free , without a single side effect , alongside a range of other health improvements Pretty good deal , if you ask me . Now let's have a look at sleep .

Depending on how much you are drinking , you might be in for a few rough nights of sleep after the first few weeks of abstinence . This is obviously something that you won't particularly enjoy , but it is , after all , an inevitable part of the recovery process .

You see , alcohol has seriously compromised the balance of various neurotransmitters that regulate sleep and wakefulness , notably GABA and glutamate , and the first few nights after your last drink , this imbalance will be exposed , as there is no alcohol anymore to prop the system up .

But depending on how much you are drinking and for how long , a few weeks is all that it will take for your sleep patterns to normalise . Now here's the cool thing for the first time in years , you might find yourself consistently getting enough deep sleep .

That's the part of the nightly sleep cycle that is so important to physical health , cognitive function , emotional wellbeing and just overall vitality . It's not a coincidence that around the one month mark , you might notice that your energy levels are higher than you can remember in a long time . Now let's look at the gastrointestinal flora rebalancing .

See , most of the alcohol that you consume is absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract , and particularly the small intestine and the stomach . Unsurprisingly , this is also one of the body sites that takes the heaviest damage from drinking . The mucus lining of the gut is heavily affected , compromising the barrier with the rest of your body .

As a result , pathogenic molecules enter circulation from the gut , leading to problems like inflammation and even autoimmunity . Another casualty of drinking is your so-called gut microbiota . This refers to the countless microorganisms that reside within your gut and are essential to proper digestion and nutrient absorption .

Even moderate , sustained drinking can severely disrupt and imbalance your microbiota , leading to the proliferation of so-called bad bacteria at the expense of good ones . We know the multi-billion dollar probiotic industry that's constantly trying to sell us stuff like yogurts , drinks and supplements .

Well , that's all to support your microbiome , and many of the same people who consume these products in the morning then go to the bar in the evening and start dropping literal nuclear bombs on their microbiota . It's Alice in Wonderland stuff . Now here's the good news your gut will start to recover remarkably fast with abstinence .

Only three weeks after your last drink , your gut barrier will have made a near-complete recovery . By that point , your gut microbiota will have also dramatically improved , though a few more weeks or months will be necessary for a complete recovery . So next let's look at fatty liver and how it reverses .

See , after alcohol is absorbed by the gut , it eventually makes its way to our liver , which is basically our body's detox factory . Our liver is then tasked with breaking down alcohol into less toxic chemicals that will eventually be expelled through urine and sweat .

Now the problem is that the first chemical the liver will break down alcohol into is acetaldehyde , and acetaldehyde itself is far more toxic than alcohol , according to some estimates , up to 30 times .

So , though acetaldehyde will only stick around in the liver for a very short amount of time before being metabolized into less toxic molecules , that is still enough to cause severe damage , see . Liver disease progresses through various stages , and the first one , fatty liver , is almost universal among all heavy drinkers .

Over 90% of drinkers will suffer from this , see . The liver cells accumulate fat and the whole liver literally swells in size , something which is actually visible on an ultrasound or an MRI . Due to the damage , liver enzymes like ALT and AST will also start leaking into the bloodstream , leading to elevated levels that can be detected in a blood test .

Now , though , fatty liver on its own doesn't usually have any symptoms , if the person keeps on drinking , it can progress to an inflammatory condition called hepatitis , and eventually this can lead into full-blown cirrhosis .

In cirrhosis , the healthy liver tissue has been damaged so extensively by the acetaldehyde that it starts to convert into scar tissue , so-called fibrosis . This is an irreversible and usually terminal condition .

Now the majority of people are probably still in the fatty liver stage and , remarkably , if you stop drinking alcohol now , your fatty liver will reverse in as little as 3 weeks , and I do mean completely . You'd be able to see on a scan that the liver will have shrunk back to its healthy size and your liver enzymes will have reverted to baseline .

See , no other lifestyle measures are necessary to achieve this . No changes to diet , exercise , nothing just stopping drinking will do the trick . Now let's look at how bones restore their mass . See , one toxic effect of alcohol that drinkers are almost universally unaware of relates to their bones .

You see , though they appear static and unchanging on the outside , our bones are actually in a never-ending state of flux . What this means is old bone is constantly being broken down and replaced with new bone through a dynamic and carefully balanced process . Heavy drinking disrupts this process and decreases bone density .

It does this by both directly promoting bone loss as well as inhibiting the regeneration process . As a result , heavy drinkers are prone to fractures , and severe . Heavy drinkers are often walking around with multiple undiagnosed fractures , and often these fractures will be in the ribs and will come to light when these people have an x-ray for an unrelated reason .

Other times , these fractures will be more severe , especially in older drinkers . Fractures of the hip can be severe , even life-threatening events , and recovery is often incomplete . The good news is that after you stop drinking , your bones will make a dramatically quick recovery .

One study found that only three weeks of abstinence in a group of heavy drinkers were enough to raise levels of osteocalcin in the blood . Osteocalcin is a marker of bone formation , and the increase was so substantial that the osteocalcin levels of the former drinkers were at the same levels as those of a control group .

Now let's look at cognitive functioning rebounding , see . Alcohol is a neurotoxin that damages the brain in various ways . Eventually , this alcohol-related toxicity leads to noticeable brain shrinkage , particularly in regions crucial for memory , as well as learning and executive functions . See .

This massive brain cell death and related shrinkage inevitably leads to a decline in cognitive abilities . These include problems with memory , attention , learning , social cognition and decision making . Now , these declines are very similar in many respects to those observed in normal or even abnormal aging , for example in Alzheimer's disease .

Indeed , at the extreme , the cognitive decline can transition to full-blown alcohol-related dementia . Here the person decline can transition to full-blown alcohol-related dementia . Here the person is unable to carry out even basic everyday tasks without assistance .

Full-blown dementia is an extreme and relatively rare scenario , but there is simply no escaping the fact that heavy drinking will compromise your cognitive functioning . To put it very crudely , it will dumb you down . After you stop drinking , your brain will start to pick up the pieces , but the recovery process will be more drawn out compared to other organs .

Now , the first few weeks of abstinence are a period of rapid improvement across multiple cognitive domains , and this happens as the brain cleans up the debris of long-term alcohol consumption . Recovery will then transition to a slower and more uneven trajectory .

At the end of the first year , your brain will have recovered a substantial part of its lost volume , coinciding with a dramatic improvement in memory , learning and processing speed . After four or five years of abstinence , former drinkers will perform as well as non-drinkers in most tasks .

Having said that , some deficits might never resolve completely , most notably spatial processing , as well as certain aspects of memory . And now let's look at cancer risks and how they fall off . So it's time to turn our attention to one of the most deadly and also most overlooked consequences of drinking , which is cancer .

Although the public is largely ignorant of this , ethanol is a well-known , proven carcinogen . The relative scientific authorities place it in the same category as other proven carcinogens like tobacco , smoke , uv radiation and asbestos . When all is said and done , approximately 4% of cancers worldwide are thought to be alcohol related .

Now , for most types of cancer , there is a threshold value of drinks that you must consume in your lifetime before your risk starts to creep up , but for other cancers this does not appear to be the case . For example , the risk of breast cancer in women starts to go up from the very first drink , albeit by a tiny amount .

In other words , if you're a woman who is concerned about developing breast cancer , say because it maybe runs in the family , there is no safe level of drinking . Your risk starts to creep up with the first drink and complete abstinence is your only option . With more serious boozing , your cancer risks start to spike across the board

. Compared to non-drinkers , heavy drinkers are around five times more likely to develop cancers of the mouth and the esophagus . They are also two to two and a half times more likely to get cancer of the larynx and liver and roughly 50% more likely to get breast or colorectal cancer . For the stomach and pancreas , their risk increases by roughly 20% .

These figures reflect the interplay of various cancer-inducing mechanisms , including the effects of acetaldehyde , oxidative stress , inflammation and hormonal disruptions . Fortunately , as your body starts to repair after you stop drinking , your risk of cancer will start to decline . But there is one caveat .

Unlike most of the other health improvements that we've covered here , this will be a long , drawn-out process . Depending on the body size , it will take several years or even decades for your risks to fall to the levels of somebody who never drank . For example , a study that looked at liver cancer risk estimated that the risk drops off by 6-7% a year .

Based on this figure , it would take an average of around 23 years of abstinence for the risk to decline to that of somebody who never drank . That's pretty scary . Another study that looked at esophageal and head and neck cancers found very similar results , concluding that the risk for these cancers will fall to the levels of a never drinker after around 20 years .

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 .