Does Dry January Really Make People Healthier?

On Friday, the US surgeon general Vivek Murthy proposed a fundamental change On how America labels alcoholic beverages: Given that alcohol is the leading preventable cause of cancer, as the label states, alcohol should come with the same warnings as cigarettes. Ireland released later this year. That has increased the focus on alcohol ahead of a planned update to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans later this year, but it’s unclear whether new labels are forthcoming — adding them would require action from Congress.

And the drinkers are already doing their thing. If the bars seem a little emptier this month, it may be because more people are buying Happy Hours for Dry January. The tradition of people abstaining from alcohol for the entire month is becoming more and more popular.

According to the CivicScience polling organization, a quarter U.S. adults ended Dry January in 2024, up 16 percent from the previous year. And estimated 15.5 million According to Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind the movement, people in England, where the movement originated 12 years ago, said they planned to take part this year. In 2013, this number was only 4,000. Temporary sobriety is contagious and is studying show immediate health benefits of pushing the bottle for a month. But whether the health benefits are sustainable — or whether they reach those most in need — is unclear.

“The concept that a month-long detox or spring cleanse 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 has studied the effects of monthly sobriety. “But people are becoming more aware of what they want to do with their relationship with alcohol and their relationship with drinking for the rest of the year.”

A 2018 to learn Mehta followed a group of moderate drinkers who stayed sober for a month and compared them to a control group who maintained their old habits. For non-drinkers, the most noticeable benefits were better sleep and weight loss. They also experienced more subtle influences; their blood pressure dropped and their biomarkers for insulin resistance improved, indicating a reduced risk of developing diabetes.

Some people say that a month of sobriety helps them with overall reductions. In 2019, researchers at the University of Sussex a request filled by several thousand people. They found that 59 percent of respondents drank less alcohol six months after Dry January, and 32 percent said their physical health was better. However, only about 38 percent of people who started the survey followed through at the six-month mark.

Again, just taking a short break doesn’t necessarily give the body time to fully recover from the effects of the drink. Two British doctors who were identical twins showed this when they performed their operations. experience In 2015. (Mehta provided expertise in the experiment, which aired as an episode of the BBC. The horizon.) They each spent a month sober, and tests showed they had the same healthy liver. They then drank 21 units of alcohol per week for a month, which was the recommended limit for men in the UK at the time (this figure has since been reduced to 14 units). There was a difference in how they did the job: one drank three units (about a large glass of wine) every day for a month, while the other drank only once a week, but drank all 21 units. By the end of the month, both had increased inflammation of the liver. It was clear to the binging twin that even six days off between binges was not enough time for the organ to fully heal.