Whether or not you know it or not, alcohol is not great for your overall health. Alcohol can affect your health not only in the short term but also in the long term. Giving up alcohol can be tough, but the benefits are worth it. Whether you stop drinking for 30 days or for a lifetime, you will be able to see health benefits from cutting out alcohol.
How-to See Health Benefits From Cutting Out Alcohol: Healthy Life Choices
Liver
Your liver will see many health benefits from cutting out alcohol. The liver breaks down most of the alcohol so that it can be removed from the body. Heavy alcohol consumption puts a lot of pressure on the liver and causes various problems. There are many liver diseases that are caused from drinking too much. These includealcoholic hepatitis, cirrhosis and fatty liver. Alcoholic hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver. Cirrhosis involves permeant damage to the liver. Fatty liver is the earliest stage of alcoholic liver disease. If you stop drinking at this point, the liver can heal itself.
Decreased Risk of Cancer
Another one of the health benefits from cutting out alcohol is the reduced risk of cancer. There are research studies that have linked drinking alcohol with different types of cancer. These include head and neck, esophageal, liver, breast, and colorectal cancers. The more you drink, the higher your cancer risk. One of the reasons that alcohol can cause cancer is because alcohol can act as an irritant. When cells are damaged, they try and repaid themselves. This can actually lead to changes within the cell that can lead to cancer. In the same way, this process can also cause cancer in the liver too.
When you combine alcohol and tobacco, this can lead to an increase of oral cancer. The alcohol mixes with the smoke and makes the toxins enter the GI tract more easily. The combination of smoking and drinking is much more likely to cause oral cancer than smoking or drinking alone.
Weight
Alcohol contains a lot of calories. Loosing weight is one of the possible health benefits from cutting out alcohol. While you will have to also pair it with a healthy lifestyle, exercising and watching what else you consume, cutting out the sugars in alcohol can contribute to a healthier body composition.