10 Benefits of Stopping Drinking and How You Can Improve Your Health

Soon after a person stops drinking, their body can quickly begin to increase the number of white blood cells produced. This enables the body to fight off all sorts eco sober house rating of illnesses, including infections, colds and the flu. “Alcoholics have some specific disorders of the brain which are due to excessive alcohol drinking.

• These are just a few tips to help someone who is trying to stop drinking, there are a number of other ways that someone can go about this process.
• This is why many people who consume large amounts of alcohol over extended periods of time tend to struggle with bouts of pneumonia and tuberculosis.
• Those who wonder how alcohol affects the brain and the physical effects of alcohol will be interested in knowing that quitting alcohol has significant physical, mental, emotional, and financial benefits.
• In the midst of AUD, it might seem as though the whole world has become so narrow that alcohol is the only path, but the truth is, there is a whole world out there waiting to be discovered.

Surrounding yourself with people who have a similar goal as you, to quit drinking, can give you the strength and guidance you need to turn your goal into an achievement. Luckily, quitting alcohol can have lead to almost immediate benefits in your sleep cycle. While alcohol can help users fall asleep quicker, it actually has a negative effect on sleep quality. Drinking alcohol before bed is linked with less restorative sleep patterns and an interruption in the circadian rhythm. REM, or rapid-eye movement sleep, is considered the most restorative sleep.

Not drinking alcohol can reduce the amount of fat in your liver

Whether you’re sober curious, worried about alcohol withdrawal, or looking into Dry January, this is the right place for you to learn what happens to you (including health benefits) when you stop drinking. In this article, we will talk about what happens when you stop drinking alcohol — for heavy drinkers, binge drinkers, and those who struggle with alcohol abuse — separated into easy-to-understand sections. Most alcoholic beverages have a high calorie count because of ingredients such as processed sugars.

However, when you drink in excess, the enzyme gets saturated and is metabolized by a different enzyme. Many people turn to Dry January as a motivator to start off the new year alcohol-free. This is because alcohol interferes with the sleep-wake cycle, making it more difficult to fall and stay asleep. It also relaxes the muscles in the throat, making you more prone to sleep apnea and snoring. John C. Umhau, MD, MPH, CPE is board-certified in addiction medicine and preventative medicine. For over 20 years Dr. Umhau was a senior clinical investigator at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Choose Recovery Over Addiction

Those who stop drinking report how amazed they are at how much money they were spending on alcohol daily, weekly and yearly. They have more funds to save—or to put toward better causes, whether that’s home improvements, education or a vacation. Alcohol can cause a person to withdrawal from friends and loved ones, and to stop finding enjoyment in activities he or she previously enjoyed. Alcoholics tend to distance themselves from others who might be trying to help them stop drinking.

Quitting drinking, or any substance, is often best accomplished through professional treatment programs. Learning more about addiction, relapse prevention techniques, and other lessons such as healthy stress management, all work to provide a structured system of support. These additional tools, alongside medical supervision, often yield better long-term results than going it alone.

Reparation of the Liver

Anyone who is considering limiting their alcohol intake—or removing it from their lives completely—should run this past their primary care provider first. „For many, there is a chronic pattern of negative consequences which drags on, worsens over time, and often does not get addressed until something devastating happens,” Bhatt added. Helena is a sex-positive South African writer who loves swimming in the ocean under the full moon and cheesy 90’s pop. She’s currently living her best life in Porto, Portugal after scouring different continents to find her happy place. Drinking in excess can lead to disruption of the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep.

When the amygdala is overactive, someone is stuck in the fight or flight reflex, even when there is no danger. This is the familiar ever-present anxiety that accompanies most alcoholics. The brain can begin to heal when relieved of the need for alcohol. For example, in three separate randomized trials, reduced drinking did not lead to changes in anxiety or life satisfaction. Also if the study included individuals that received an intervention (i.e., intended to help people reduce or quit drinking), the intervention had to be psychosocial, meaning patients did not receive medication. They could also follow a group of drinkers over time, called a prospective cohort study, or even simply assess them at one single point, called a cross-sectional study.

Hormone Balance After Quitting Alcohol: How Long Should It Take?

With alcohol marketed as an accepted part of society, it can be difficult to determine whether your social drinking has crossed over to the realm of addiction. Likewise, when does a beer or two after a tough day become dangerous? Luckily, there are some clear-cut criteria that can help you determine if your drinking habits have become symptomatic of fully-fledged addiction.

Factors that determine the severity of an alcohol use disorder include the level of dependency on the substance and the number of symptoms experienced by a person. The greater the dependency and the more numerous the symptoms, the greater the severity. According to NIAAA’s spending calculator, through its Rethink Drinking campaign,  https://sober-house.net/ a person who consumes three drinks every day at an average $5/drink cost can spend $455 a month, and $5,460 per year on alcohol. NIAAA’s calculators will also show you how many calories you can save—so not only does quitting alcohol leave more money in the pocket, it stops extra pounds from hanging on to the waistline.

What Is Alcoholism?

Even if you drink a couple of drinks on the weekend it can still cost a couple of thousand dollars each year. Dry January is an initiative of the charity organization Alcohol Change United Kingdom, which encourages people to try giving up alcohol for 1 month at the start of the year. Alcohol disrupts the normal sleep cycle, causing us to wake in the middle of the night. Relaxed muscles in the throat can lead to snoring and sleep apnea, which also disrupts deep sleep. Take the alcohol away, and the body returns to a normal sleep pattern.

Chronic and excessive alcohol consumption can destroy liver cells, which are necessary for filtering out harmful substances in our body (the liver is our built-in detoxifier). „Fatty liver is a common phenomenon in individuals who drink heavily and regularly, leading to cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease,” says Mary Wirtz, MS, RDN, CSSD. Steering clear of alcohol, however, gives the liver a chance to regenerate. „Cutting out and abstaining from alcohol can recover a substantial portion of liver function,” Wirtz says. „When we stop drinking, we can begin to repair some of the long-term effects of alcohol use.”

If the person is still addicted to alcohol, treatment for the addiction is the first step. This is just the start of the countdown for the benefits of not drinking alcohol. He sees patients with what he calls “hangxiety”, where their depression and anxiety is worse in the morning after a night out.

Try skipping alcohol, especially in the late afternoon and evening, for more restful shut-eye. A glass of regular beer has about 150 calories, and a serving of wine has about 120. On top of those mostly empty calories, alcohol ramps up your appetite. It also makes you more impulsive, and less able to resist the fries and other temptations on the menu.