Personal training blog

The benefits of a dry jauary

Every year, many of us decide to go dry for the month of January, not drinking alcohol to make up for the debauchery of the festive season. Some reports are sceptical about the benefits of this one month “fad”, so a ten of staff at the New Scientist magazine decided to go dry and study the results properly.

On October the 5th of last year, 14 members of the magazine’s staff (all of whom regarded themselves as “normal” drinkers) were given various tests and questionnaires to asses the state of their livers and overall health. For the next 5 weeks, 10 drank no alcohol, while the remaining four carried on as normal. They then returned to the laboratory to repeat the tests. For the four drinkers, there were no notable changes.

But for those who had gone dry, the effects were significant. Their levels of liver fat (an indicator of possible future liver damage) had fallen by an average of 15%. Their blood glucose levels (connected to the onset of diabetes) had taken a huge plunge by 23%, from 5.1 to 4.3 mmols per litre. The normal range is 3.9-5.6.

They also lost weight. This is without a specific effort to do so, and they lost an average of 1.5kg. Their blood cholesterol (an early indicator for heart disease) had also dropped by 5% from 4.6 to 4.4mmol. 5.2 or below is considered healthy.

The dry group also reported have better concentration levels as well as sleeping more soundly, rating their sleep as improved by 10%.

Kevin Moore, a consultant in liver sciences for University College London declared that he was amazed by the results.

“What you have is a pretty average group of people who would not consider themselves heavy drinkers, yet stopping drinking for a month alters liver fat, cholesterol and blood sugar, and helped them to lose weight”. “If someone had a product that did that they would be raking it in”.