Time to try Dry January?

The festivities of December have drawn to a close and one of the best (worst) months of the year is finally over; you couldn’t have completed it without your best friend. She was there for you at the painfully awkward Christmas party when no one else actually wore their worst Christmas jumper, the one who held your hand on December 25th at 5am when you were awoken by the kids, the fairy godmother that allowed you to persevere when, invariably, the smoke alarm was set off for the third time making Christmas lunch. Now January brings onto the horizon the most heart wrenching breakup; Dry January.

Dry January started in 2013 as a programme where the participants gave up drinking for an entire month, it accumulated over 130,000 participants in 2022 and appears to be ever-growing. In the 10th year of Dry January, why should you take part?

Alcohol is a normalised force within our lives, like a house plant we don't remember buying, nobody ever questions its presence. But what does alcohol really do to your body?

Alcohol misuse is defined as being over 14 units a week (9 small glasses of a low strength wine or 6 pints of beer, shockingly familiar I know) which is an incognito epidemic within our society. Exceeding this limit has severe repercussions upon our health; as well as the short term hangovers and anxiety over what you did last night, alcohol causes damage to major organs such as the liver, heart, pancreas, central nervous system and increases your chance of developing some types of cancer.

The liver is one of the most important organs of the body with over 500 functions (such as regulating blood sugar and cholesterol levels); alcohol kills the cells in your liver, whilst these can regenerate, excessive and prolonged drinking reduces the body's ability to regenerate these cells. Alcohol related liver diseases, such as cirrhosis, fatty liver disease, liver hepatitis and liver cancer, account for 2% of all UK deaths. Moreover, alcohol causes inflammation of the pancreas leading to pancreatitis, and further health issues such as diabetes and internal bleeding.

Heart disease is the biggest killer in men in the UK, alarmingly alcohol fuels this deadly complication as it causes increased heart rate, high blood pressure, weakened heart muscle, irregular heartbeat, and raises the levels of fat in the blood, causing high cholesterol. High cholesterol causes both strokes and heart attacks due to blood clots when arteries become clogged with this fatty substance. High blood pressure increases the risk of haemorrhagic stroke due to the increased chance of artery walls bleeding from high pressure as your heart is working harder.

Over time, alcohol damages your central nervous system as it destroys brain cells and leads to long term affects such as nerve damage, memory loss, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, depression and many more.

Whilst alcohol may seem harmless and normalised in society, it is important to recognise the serious consequences associated with it. Dry January allows for a month of cold-turkey breakup (and tell absolutely everyone that you are in fact doing dry January). A single month of sobriety can: lower blood pressure, reduce diabetes risk, lower cholesterol and reduce levels of cancer-related proteins in the blood. So, this January, skip the gym membership and try Dry January instead.