There\u2019s been a lot of online chatter about \u201cDry January\u201d\u2014the\nidea of giving up alcohol just for the month to reap health benefits. A new\nstudy from the University of Sussex confirms that it\u2019s not only beneficial in\nthe short term, but also the long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers looked at data from three online survey from\npeople who took part in Dry January in 2018. They found that those who gave up\nalcohol for the month report that they had:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 higher energy levels<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 healthier body weight<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 a decreased feeling of \u201cneeding\u201d to drink alcohol, even\nseveral months after Dry January<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 a greater ability to reduce the number of \u201cdrinking days\u201d\nlater in the year<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(The average number of drinks per week decreased from 4.3\ndays to 3.3 days.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 fewer number of times they got drunk later in the year<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(The average number of times per month they got drunk fell\nfrom 3.4 to 2.1.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 that they consumed less alcohol per day<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(The average number of drinks per day decreased from 8.6\nunites to 7.1 units)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe simple act of taking a month off alcohol helps people\ndrink less in the long term,\u201d explains researcher Dr. Richard de Visser. \u201cBy\nAugust, people are reporting one extra dry day per week. There are also\nconsiderable immediate benefits: nine in 10 people save money, seven in 10\nsleep better and three in five lose weight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers also found that people who didn\u2019t manage to\nstay dry for the entire month of January also had boosts to their health,\nthough they were smaller than those who completed Dry January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They also saved a little money, gained a bit more confidence\nand realized they didn\u2019t need alcohol to have fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dry January is an initiative of Alcohol Change United\nKingdom, though people all around the world have taken the challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What happens if you give up alcohol for a month? We’ve got the lowdown on new research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[762,917,724,796,719],"class_list":["post-13233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-alcohol","tag-drinking","tag-health","tag-weight","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}