Alcohol has some health benefits, but too much of the stuff can interfere with your health. Even if your drinking doesn’t rise to the level of a true addiction, quitting temporarily appears to benefit your body.
Photo by Angelo Amboldi.
The staff at New Scientist put that idea to the test by abstaining from alcohol for a month, while undergoing evaluations from a liver expert. Over that time, liver fat decreased by 15 per cent (fat in the liver is a precursor to liver damage). The participants’ blood glucose, measured while fasting, fell by 16 per cent. Staffers who kept drinking as normal during the month showed no changes in either measure.
The study is small and informal, but it fits with what we know about how alcohol works on our bodies. Rather than quitting for a month and then going back on your usual schedule, it’s probably better to use this as a lesson in how easy it is to reverse some of the effects of alcohol. If you’re careful to budget your intake, you can even lose weight while you continue drinking socially. Read more at the link below for what the staff of New Scientist learned from their experiment.
Our Liver Vacation: Is a Dry January Really Worth It? [New Scientist]
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