People have varying reasons for wanting a healthy life. Most people want to have good health to prevent the possibility of acquiring a family history of the disease and enjoy life without things to worry about. Similarly, the reasons behind a person’s decision to stop alcohol intake also vary. But one thing’s for sure, this is to help them be the healthiest versions of themselves.
Tired of dealing with a hangover almost every other day in your life or having to check the interactions of every drug you take like paracetamol and alcohol? Do you now see yourself being free of the usual alcoholic drinks that you have to help yourself sleep at night or get through cold and lonely nights? No matter what your reasons could be, enjoying the benefits of not drinking probably sounds good to you now as this can primarily help you improve your health and fitness.
Aside from this, abstaining from alcohol can bring about health benefits for your heart, kidney, and liver. However, it’s important to know that the possible outcomes vary depending on the person’s condition and baseline behaviour. For instance, if your alcohol abstinence is short-lived, then there’s not much to hope for.
To have a better understanding, here are four benefits you can get from alcohol abstinence.
1. Have Better Sleep
You may notice a significant difference in your sleeping pattern after a week away from alcohol. This is because alcoholic drinks significantly affect your sleeping behaviour. For example, when you drink, you typically fall straight into a deep sleep, which often results in missing the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Similarly, you usually have one or two cycles of REM sleep at night, which is a result of drinking.
To better help you get the sleep that you need, you should abstain from alcoholic drinks. Particularly, having better periods of sleep comes with many benefits. This helps you to be more productive, logical, and help you control your emotions and behaviour better.
In terms of food and drink intake, alcohol abstinence allows you to have more opportunities to manage it. Your feeling of being hungry is also connected to your sleeping habits, which means that better sleep helps balance your hormones. There’s been a rise in your ghrelin levels (the hormones that make you feel hungry) after drinking and your leptin (the hormones that make you feel full) goes down.
2. Improves Hydration Processes
Drinking alcohol poses a substantial impact on one’s basal metabolism and hydration processes. For instance, you lose around four times as much liquid as you drank after drinking alcoholic drinks. Preventing yourself from drinking alcohol can help you keep well-hydrated and help improve your mental capacity.
Aside from this, alcohol abstinence prevents dehydration. It significantly causes headaches, as your other organs take water from the brain to cope with water loss. Consequently, there’ll be a possibility of having headaches, fatigue, and nausea. Also, this is because drinking alcohol significantly reduces salt and potassium levels in your body.
Aside from this, you can further manage your emotions better, as one of the primary benefits of not drinking alcohol includes psychological and emotional stability. Particularly, you’ll be able to manage your mood and concentration better and decrease the possibility of having headaches.
Avoiding alcoholic drinks may also help you have more energy throughout the day. You won’t suffer the other impacts of dehydration such as increased fatigue and lack of motivation.
3. Effectively Burn Calories
After weeks of being away from alcohol, you’ll realise other benefits that it can offer you, including proper hydration and better sleep. In particular, alcoholic drinks are potent irritants to the stomach lining, hence, there’s a greater possibility of acid reflux. It’s the case where the stomach acids are burning your throat.
Similarly, one of the benefits of not drinking alcohol includes weight loss. This is primarily due to the reduction of calories caused by alcohol. Apart from this, staying away from alcohol could save you thousands of calories off your body.
Excessive alcohol drinking can also cause hypertension. Similarly, drinking too much alcohol can cause your blood pressure to rise at an alarming level. After weeks of not drinking, you’ll see a significant reduction in your blood pressure. This is also crucial in lessening the occurrence of potential health problems in the future. Aside from helping you burn calories more, staying away from alcohol may also help you keep your blood pressure at a moderate level as a result of the weight that you can potentially lose.
4. Helps Bodily Functions
Removing alcohol from your diet can be of great help in maintaining radiant skin due to better levels of alcohol. As your body gets proper hydration, you’re more likely to get healthier-looking skin. Also, this helps reduce the possibility of having other health problems like eczema and dandruff.
For those people who drink excessively, the possibility of having liver cirrhosis is great. This is because drinking alcohol can result in liver malfunction due to fats stored in it. To help yourself prevent this possibility, abstaining from alcohol can be of great help to you.
Other known benefits of alcohol abstinence include better improvements for your liver and kidney. This helps your liver shed excess fat easily, which also results in more burn calories. For moderate drinkers, four to eight weeks off alcohol may help resolve mild liver diseases.
Aside from this, with the liver plating a significant part in other vital processes, staying away from alcoholic drinks gives your body the chance to effectively store minerals and vitamins, convert food nutrients, and remove harmful contaminants.
Bottom Line
Alcohol may be beneficial for some people in some ways. This can be used to make someone sleep the night away or make someone enjoy a particular celebration better. However, alcohol poses greater threats to one’s health and fitness as this often becomes the root cause of severe health problems. To better avoid other worse-case scenarios due to drinking, staying away from alcohol can be a great help to you.
Several known benefits of not drinking include having better sleep, getting proper hydration, effectively burn calories, and helps in other bodily functions which can significantly help you be the healthiest version of yourself and achieve a healthy body. It’s also important to know that alcohol can enormously ruin one’s life rather than the temporary fleeting benefits that it can offer.