Health expert discusses benefits of 'dry January'

Quitting alcohol or dry January. It’s became a popular thing. A thing for the New Year. Well, especially after some people hit New Year’s Eve a little hard, they decide maybe a dry January looks pretty good. So with many deciding to drop the drinks for January, our nine health expert, Doctor Paul Cole is here with us to talk about some of the benefits, some of the warnings. I imagine it’s pretty obvious. But let’s talk about the health benefits of if you decide to sign up for a dry January. Really? Very incredible. Honestly, they did a study

in the British Medical Journal where they asked for volunteers to give up alcohol for a whole month and on average, they lost £4.5 of weight. They had more insulin sensitivity, they had lower blood pressure and within a month they had fewer cancer growth inducing markers. Now, if that’s not enough for you, Tom, it’s also good for your skin. So it makes your skin glow a little bit to give up that alcohol. And of course, it has a psychological benefit. How does it do that with your skin because it’s dehydrating? So alcohol is incredibly dehydrating. So

the minute we give it up, all of our mucus membranes, including our skin get a little bit nicer, which means our immune system is a little buff up as well. And

we just overall feel better. We sleep better too. In fact, the quality of the sleep that we get is significantly better. We all need a buff and shine every now and then. Um, psychologically, what’s the benefit? Well, you’ll notice it almost instantly. Now for people who drink a lot, when they first stop drinking, they might become more irritable, but that quickly turns around and it

actually helps you be less irritable because it changes the neuro chemicals in your brain, boost your mood. And like I said, because you’re sleeping better, you just in general are less likely be depressed or anxious as well. Does it also psychologically help you that you decided to do something for a while and you just toughed it out and did it? That’s the big piece of it. It’s not about sobriety, it’s about control. It’s about taking back something and making a choice and saying I choose not to drink. And what it does is when you realize

how good you feel, that’s kind of a positive reinforcement ends up sort of sustaining itself in the long term as well. Tough this year though. Because if you want to extend, say you like it, you want to go dry February, it’s 29 days this year. Well, you got the Super Bowl to get through. Uh is, are, is there, you know, can you do it like halfway or there’s some people that might say, hey, you benefit more for just cutting back or just taking one or two days out or anything like that. Absolutely. So the way

you decide your benefit is based on your baseline level of drinking. If you drink a lot more, you’re more likely to benefit. But also that Delta is a lot harder. In fact, some doctors even say, and I’m one of them, you shouldn’t just go cold turkey if you’re used to drinking a lot every day, for example, five drinks or so you actually wanna cut down if you’re one of those people that drinks a lot, but doing it even halfway is better than nothing. It’s not like you have to be all in or not, even if

you cut it down to a few times a week, that’s good. And I always tell people if they’re going to drink, I would rather that they drink two or three times a week. So a glass of wine, two or three days, week rather than two or three drinks on the same day because the effective dose of alcohol to your body is much higher. So a moderately dry January also has some value. It can also you talk about people who do drink more if you do a dry January or a moderately dry January can it, can

it get you to where you have changed your drinking behavior? Long term. This is where it’s really exciting. So, the studies actually followed people six months, 12 months out. And even if you cut it down just for a month and then go back, you look at them six or 12 months later, they’re drinking less amounts, they’re drinking less frequently and they overall feel better. Now, part of that is behavioral and psychological, but part of it is actually physical because you’ve gotten that sort of addiction that circuit in your brain. After you drink the alcohol, you

feel happy disconnected. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about the, why you drink is part of this equation, I imagine. And if go with a dry January, you may discover some of the reasons you drive drink. Is it habitual? Is it responsive? How, how do you get triggered? Yeah, that’s exactly right. And for many of us, our triggers are our, our work or our stress or we think it’s a way to relax. And so it’s a, it’s a manufactured trigger. It’s not actually giving you a dopamine hit. You’ve just sort of told yourself that it

is and that’s how you get it. It’s like eating ice cream when you have a break up. It’s not or something. It’s the same sort of artificial circuit. But understanding those triggers is really one key piece of quitting or going dry for a month is because then you can know what triggers you and your behaviors. It’s January 2nd. Ok? You wanna do it? You can start now. Sounds like it’s very healthy for you. I expect you to say it was very healthy. She was going to be going, everybody get on board. Uh Doctor Coley Happy

New Year. It’s great to see you. Thanks.