Does Dry January really make people healthier?

Friday in the United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy He suggested a big change On how America labels alcoholic beverages: Booze should come with warnings similar to cigarette warnings, since alcohol is a major preventable cause of cancer, similar to labeling Ireland It launches later this year. This has intensified the focus on alcohol ahead of a scheduled update to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans later this year, but it’s not clear whether new labels should be expected — adding them would require congressional action.

However, drinkers are already taking their own action. If the bars seem a little empty this month, it may be because more people are trading in for Dry January happy hour. The tradition, in which people abstain from alcohol for the entire month, is growing in popularity.

According to data from polling organization CivicScience. One in four U.S. adults completed Dry January in 2024, up from 16 percent the previous year. And he can 15.5 million People in the United Kingdom, where the movement originated 12 years ago, said they planned to participate this year, according to Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind the movement. In 2013, this number was only 4,000. Temporary sobriety is contagious, and studies Show that pushing the bottle away for a month has immediate health benefits. But whether the health benefits will last — or reach those who need them most — remains unclear.

“This concept, that a one-month detox or spring cleaning sets you up for the rest of the year, I don’t think there’s any evidence for that,” says Gautam Mehta, associate professor of hepatology at University College London. Who studied the effects of sobriety for a month. “But people seem to be more understanding of their relationship with alcohol and what they want to do with their relationship with drinking for the rest of the year.”

2018 He studies Mehta followed a group of moderate drinkers who became sober for a month and compared them to a control group that maintained their old habits. The most obvious benefits for those who don’t drink included better sleep and weight loss. They also experienced more subtle effects. Their blood pressure dropped and their biomarkers of insulin resistance improved, an indicator of a lower risk of diabetes.

Some people say that a sober month helps them slim down overall. In 2019, researchers from the University of Sussex analyzed A reconnaissance It was filled by several thousand people. They found that 59% of participants reported drinking less than six months after Dry January, and 32% said they enjoyed better physical health. However, only about 38% of people who started the survey followed up six months later.

However, taking only a short break does not necessarily give the body time to fully recover from the effects of drinking. This is what two British doctors, who are also identical twins, showed when they performed their own surgery an experience in 2015. (Mehta provided his expertise on the trial, which was broadcast as an episode of the BBC Horizon.) They each spent a full month, and tests showed that they had identical, healthy livers. They then spent a month drinking 21 units of alcohol per week, the recommended limit for men in the UK at the time (it has since been revised to 14 units). There was a difference in how they accomplished the task: one drank three units (about one large glass of wine) daily for a month, while the other drank only once a week, but binged all 21 units. At the end of the month, they both developed increasing hepatitis. For the twin with binges, it was clear that even taking six days off between binge episodes was not enough time for the member to fully recover.