Dry January - The Alcohol Facts

Now I am by no means anti-alcohol, in fact, I write this today in anticipation of tomorrow - a birthday of mine with a zero at the end, and of course I’m going to have some champagne! I merely wanted to get across the point that it can often be incredibly hard to disassociate from the societal norm of including alcohol into our daily routines - but as with everything, it’s good to test yourself and your relationship to food, alcohol, exercise etc so that you can see how your body functions with or without it (for better or for worse). If a month of being strict is what you need to kick a serious lockdown Quarantini habit and fully tune in to how your body feels without alcohol, then I’m all for it. Thereafter, cultivating a relationship with alcohol that’s not based on dependence or need is certainly the way forward. 

 

So why might you try Dry January then, from a health perspective? Let’s look at what alcohol does to the body. 

  

What does alcohol do to your body? 

Like I said, there’s no two ways about it - alcohol is a toxin. It can get confusing when the media gets a hold of the idea that because resveratrol is high in red wine, it’s  therefore good for us - but you can get resveratrol from fresh grapes too. As part of a healthy diet and lifestyle, and providing you have no other underlying health concerns, then I’m not worried about a moderate intake - but what I would say is this: know your limits.

We all have the ability to process alcohol in varying degrees of success. Some people process it very quickly and can have a bottle of wine and not be hungover the next day, whereas others can have a glass of wine and be hungover for three days - you’ll know which end of the spectrum you lean towards. For those on the faster end of the spectrum, their detoxing capabilities are a bit like a revolving door, toxins go in, toxins go out and the net result of that is zero. For the rest of us, alcohol hangs around in our system for much longer making us feel a bit crap!