Does dry January really make people healthier?

On Friday, the United States surgeon general Vivek Murthy I suggest a major change how America labels alcoholic beverages: Alcohol should come with cigarette-style warnings, since alcohol is a preventable cause of cancer, similar to labeling. Ireland rolling out later this year. This has intensified the focus on alcohol ahead of the scheduled update of the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans later this year, but it is unclear whether new labels should be expected – adding the need for action from Congress.

Drinkers, however, are already taking their own action. If the bars seem a little emptier this month, it may be because more people are exchanging happy hour for Dry January. The tradition, in which people abstain from alcohol for the whole month, is growing in popularity.

According to data from the polling organization CivicScience, one in four US adults ended January dry in 2024, up from 16 percent the year before. It’s an estimate 15.5 million people in the United Kingdom, where the movement originated 12 years ago, said they plan to participate this year, according to Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind the movement. In 2013, that number was just 4,000. Temporal sobriety is contagious, and studies showing that putting away the bottle for a month has immediate health benefits. But whether the health benefits will last — or reach those most in need — remains unclear.

“This concept, that it’s a one-month detox or a spring clean that prepares you 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 one month of sobriety. “But people seem to understand more about their own relationship with alcohol and what they want to do with their relationship with alcohol for the rest of the year.”

In 2018 to study Mehta worked by following a group of moderate drinkers who went sober for a month and compared them to a control group who maintained their old habits. The most notable benefits for nondrinkers include better sleep and weight loss. They also experienced more subtle effects; their blood pressure dropped and their biomarkers for insulin resistance improved, an indicator of decreased risk for developing diabetes.

And some people say that a month sober helps them reduce overall. In 2019, researchers from the University of Sussex analyzed a survey completed by many thousands of people. They found that 59 percent of respondents said they drank less than six months after Dry January, and 32 percent said they were in better physical health. However, only about 38 percent of people who started the survey followed through at the six-month mark.

However, taking only a short break does not necessarily give the body time to fully recover from the effects of water. This is what two British doctors, who are also identical twins, showed when they performed their own experiment in 2015. (Mehta provided expertise in the experiment, which aired as a BBC episode). Horizon.) They each spent a month sober, and tests showed 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 the way they did the work: one drank three units (about a large glass of wine) every day for a month, and the other only drank once a week, but binged all 21 units. At the end of the month, both had increased inflammation of the liver. For the binging twin, it was clear that even taking six days off between binges was not enough time for the organ to fully heal.