Giving up alcohol for a month - My no beer April
Photo by Fábio Alves on Unsplash
I like beer. I like beer A LOT. Except for 2010, when I was simply working too much to drink, I have been knocking back the cold ones with great gusto every other day for 15 years. What can I say? I love beer. I think it was Churchill who said, "I have gotten more out of alcohol than alcohol has gotten out of me." This is how I felt until March this year when I realized I might be overdoing it slightly... Chugging 7 liters of beer in a night isn't sustainable.
My wife and I therefore decided to give up hooch for a whole month to see how we would react to going without alcohol for an extended period of time. The results were quite surprising.
The first thing we noticed is that our sleep quality improved considerably. This happened almost as soon as we didn't have a drink in us before going to bed. Before, I would wake up in the middle of the night and struggle to go back to sleep but now I wake up when I intend to, feeling much more rested than before.
The second thing I noticed was that my concentration and general mental abilities were better. Whether it was due to the better sleep or not having to constantly battle a hangover I can't say. It is probably a combination of the two the effect is noticeable.
I also feel more energetic - again probably a combination of better sleep and no hangover!
Finally, I got so much stuff done! I'm a procrastinator but laying off the hooch helped with that too. All that energy and clear head has to go somewhere!
It turns out that there are so many other benefits that I wasn't even considering when we stopped drinking. A recent article in the New Scientist magazine has the following to say about what happens when people give up alcohol for a month:
Most striking was the non-drinkers’ drop in insulin resistance. When insulin becomes less effective at making the body remove sugar from the bloodstream, a person risks developing type 2 diabetes. But after a month of abstaining from alcohol, participants saw their insulin resistance decrease by an average of 26 per cent.
“Our data suggest that alcohol use above recommended guidance markedly increases the risk of type 2 diabetes,” says Gautam Mehta, of University College London.
As well as improvements in liver health, the abstainers also saw an average 13 per cent decline in cholesterol levels, a 6 per cent drop in blood pressure, and a 1.5 per cent decline in weight. “Over one month, that’s as much as you could hope to lose if you were dieting,” says Mehta.
The study also showed a remarkable decrease in cancer growth factors.
These benefits aside, the increase in quality of life has been enough to convince me to cut back on a more permanent basis. I still love beer, but now we see less of each other.
If you're on the fence about trying a dry month I say go for it. It might just change your life like it did mine.
