Does Dry January Really Make People Healthier?

Friday USA Chief Surgeon Vivek Murthy proposed a major change in the way America labels alcoholic beverages: booze must come with cigarette warnings, given that alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, similar to labeling Ireland will be released later this year. That’s heightened the focus on alcohol ahead of a planned update to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans later this year, but it’s unclear whether new labels should be expected – adding them would require action from Congress.

However, drinkers are already taking action of their own. If bars are looking a little emptier this month, it might be because more people are counting on Dry January happy hour. The tradition of people abstaining from alcohol for an entire month is becoming increasingly popular.

According to polling organization CivicScience, one of four U.S. adults ended a dry January in 2024, down from 16 percent a year earlier. And approximately 15.5 million People in Britain, where the movement began 12 years ago, have said they plan to take part 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 research show that going bottle-free for a month brings immediate health benefits. But whether the health benefits will last or reach those who need them most remains unclear.

“This concept that a month’s detox or spring cleaning 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 be becoming more aware of their relationship with alcohol and what they want to do with their relationship with alcohol for the rest of the year.”

2018 study Mehta worked on following a group of moderate drinkers who went sober for a month and compared them with a control group who maintained their old habits. The most notable benefits for non-drinkers were improved sleep and weight loss. They also experienced more subtle effects; their blood pressure dropped and biomarkers of insulin resistance improved, indicating a reduced risk of developing diabetes.

And some people say that a month of sobriety actually helps them cut down on expenses overall. In 2019, researchers from the University of Sussex analyzed survey Several thousand people filled in. They found that 59 percent of respondents reported drinking less six months after Dry January, and 32 percent said their physical health had improved. However, only about 38 percent of people who started the survey continued after six months.

However, taking a short break does not necessarily give the body time to fully recover from the effects of alcohol. This is what two British doctors, who are also identical twins, revealed when they conducted their own research. experiment in 2015. (Mehta contributed his expertise to the experiment, which was broadcast on an episode of the BBC program Horizon.) They each spent one month sober, and tests showed that they had equally healthy livers. They then drank 21 units of alcohol per week for a month – the recommended limit for men in the UK at the time (it has since been lowered to 14 units). There was a difference in how they went about their work: one drank three drinks (about one large glass of wine) every day for a month, while the other only drank once a week but drank all 21 drinks. At the end of the month, both of them experienced increased liver inflammation. For the overeating twin, it was clear that even a six-day break between binges was not enough for the organ to fully heal.