Is Dry January good for your health?

Michelle Strong, FNP

Addiction Medicine

If you splurged over the holidays, as many of us do, you might be ready for a reset as you head into the new year. One way to do this is by giving up alcohol for a month. Michelle Strong, FNP, who specializes in addiction medicine, explained why “Dry January” has become popular and how it can help improve your health any month of the year.

How is Dry January beneficial?

Strong said Dry January is an opportunity to understand your relationship with alcohol.

“I’m always an advocate for taking breaks from behaviors in our lives to determine whether they’re healthy for us to continue,” she said. “Dry January may have some short-term health benefits, like improved sleep, increased motivation, weight loss and financial savings, but it can also help you take a step back and identify some longer-term drinking patterns that may be problematic or unhealthy.”

If stepping away from alcohol doesn’t feel like the right option for you, another option is “Damp January,” which allows you to scale back without giving up alcohol completely. This might mean you drink only on the weekends or on special occasions.

“It’s important to note that Dry January is not a safe option for people who are alcohol dependent or who have experienced withdrawal symptoms when they change their alcohol consumption patterns,” Strong said. “If this is something you or a loved one has ever experienced, removing alcohol completely could be life threatening. You need to work closely with a medical provider to taper your drinking safely.”

How much alcohol can you safely drink?

According to the World Health Organization, when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect your health.

“That may be surprising to a lot of people,” Strong said, “but alcohol was classified as a group one carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago. Group one is the highest risk group of cancer-causing agents, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco.”

Alcohol is known to cause at least seven types of cancer, including breast, bladder and bowel cancer, and the risk of developing cancer increases substantially the more alcohol is consumed. However, there’s no guarantee that avoiding alcohol will prevent these diseases.

“It might be easier to look at it this way,” Strong said. “Choosing to not drink might not make you a healthier person, but it will remove the additional risks that come with drinking alcohol consistently.”

The first step is understanding how much you drink, which may be more than you expect. A standard alcoholic drink is defined as a 12-ounce beer, 5 ounces of wine or an ounce-and-a-half of liquor.

“This is important to understand, because what we think is a standard drink is likely significantly more,” Strong said. “Glassware has changed in size and shape, more alcohol forward cocktails have become the norm and tallboy beer cans are a crowd favorite. So, while you may only have one glass in front of you, what’s actually in that glass may be considered more than one standard drink.”

Alcohol consumption can be defined this way:

• Moderate drinking is no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men.
• Excessive drinking includes binge drinking, heavy drinking and any drinking while pregnant or under the age of 21. Binge drinking is the most common form of excessive drinking and is defined as consuming four or more drinks during a single occasion for women, and five or more for men.
• Heavy drinking is defined as consuming eight or more drinks per week for women or 15 or more drinks per week for men.

“Moderate drinking is seven per week for women and 14 for men, so it only takes one extra drink to be shifted from the moderate category to the heavy drinking category,” Strong said.

However, heavy drinkers are not considered alcoholics or alcohol dependent.

“Not all heavy drinkers will experience withdrawal or be at risk of seizures if they stopped drinking, and they might not even crave alcohol when they don’t have it,” Strong said. “But it doesn’t mean their drinking hasn’t become a problematic pattern for them.”

How does alcohol affect your body?

Alcohol has both stimulating and sedating effects at different levels, acting as both an upper and a downer. It’s clinically categorized as a central nervous system depressant, which typically means it slows down everything in your body. But the amount of alcohol you drink, and your body’s individual response, will determine the type of effect it has on you.

Many people like to drink for the initial stimulant effect of alcohol – to loosen up and be more comfortable in social situations. During the early phases of drinking, most people experience a period of increased energy, excitement, relief of their anxiety, increased talkativeness, feelings of confidence and enhanced assertiveness in social situations.

“Some people stop drinking at that point and may never experience different or other intoxicating effects of alcohol,” Strong said. “But if you do continue to drink, and as your blood levels continue to rise further, that’s where we begin to see more of the depressant effects of alcohol, including signs of impaired judgment, slower reaction time, slurred speech and unsteady movements.”

Alcohol is quickly absorbed into your bloodstream from your stomach, small intestine and colon, and from there it’s distributed throughout the body, gaining access to all of your tissues. That includes a developing fetus in pregnant women.

Some of the other changes in your body that can occur after consuming alcohol include the following:

• Dehydration, resulting in headache, dry mouth and increased heart rate.
• Increased blood flow to your skin, causing a warm or flushed feeling. With prolonged drinking, alcohol actually allows heat to escape from your body so that your temperature drops over time.
• Drowsiness, however, alcohol does not help you get better sleep. Instead, it causes you to toss and turn throughout the night leaving you feeling unrested the next morning.

Alcohol is broken down and removed from the body by the liver. So over time, continued heavy alcohol use can cause the liver to become fattier, full of thick and fibrous tissue. These changes limit blood flow to the healthy liver cells so they don’t get what they need to survive.

“I encourage people to take time to understand how your body reacts to alcohol when you drink it and how it makes you feel, so if you do make a choice to drink, you know that you can do it in a way that feels safe and healthy for you,” Strong said.

What should you do if you’re struggling to give up alcohol?

If you don’t like the way you feel after you drink, or your relationship with alcohol doesn’t feel healthy to you anymore, then you’re not alone! It doesn’t mean you have an alcohol use disorder.

“If you have questions about your alcohol consumption, your health care provider is the best place to start,” Strong said. “Even if you are looking to change your drinking habits to include something like Dry or Damp January, or if you want to remove alcohol from your life completely, your doctor can provide you with a plan to be more successful.”