Holiday hangover season is upon us, and murmurs of Dry January are back. The popular month of alcohol abstinence has become tradition for people hoping to hit “reset” with the clean slate of the new year.
Founded by the charity Alcohol Change UK, the month-long challenge started in 2013 with 4,000 registrants. By 2025, that number had swelled to 200,000. And those are just the official registrants. Many people worldwide participate unofficially. In 13 years, Dry January has become a recognizable shorthand for avoiding booze at the turn of the year. And while there are numerous reasons to take a hiatus from alcohol, none seem to be more pressing than health.
A recent review paper published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism describes the positive health effects of participating in Dry January and the benefits of taking short-term breaks from drinking.
“Even with a one month pause on drinking, there were noticeable changes in several biomarkers that are associated with alcohol use,” Megan Strowger, Postdoctoral Research Associate and lead author of the paper, tells Popular Science.
Strowger and her team at Brown University analyzed 16 studies, comprising more than 150,000 participants. They found that participants who sobered up for one month reported better sleep, elevated mood, and weight loss. Positive biological changes included lower blood pressure, less liver fat, better blood glucose, improved insulin resistance, and decreases in concentrations of cancer-related growth factors.
“Alcohol affects all aspects of the body,” Strowger says.
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