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You’ve likely heard it all before… Drinking is bad for you. Perhaps you have even felt the repercussions after being on a bender… But sometimes it helps to approach the situation from a different angle. Ever consider the health and beauty benefits of healthy sober living?
Here are some of the ways that sobriety can make you both feel and look better.
A Healthier Liver
The liver is an organ in the belly with the job of filtering blood that comes from the digestive system before the blood goes to the rest of the body. It is the body’s filtering system to keep the body absorbing nutrients and good things from food, while absorbing and processing out the bad.
However, too much alcohol consumption can cause damage to your liver, as your liver can only process a certain amount of alcohol at one time. Your liver is a vital organ the body needs to function properly. Sobriety is one of the best things you can do for a healthier liver.
Better Sleep at Night
Are you tempted to protest that your night cap helps you fall to sleep? While it is true that alcohol can make you feel drowsy, it adversely affects the quality and quantity of your sleep. The National Sleep Foundation states that alcohol interrupts your circadian rhythm. Which throws your sleep schedule off, the timing of when your body feels drowsy. When you stop drinking, however, these problems subside.
Having good sleep at night increases your mental focus, your feelings of well-being, and can prevent the onset of depression.
Fewer Headaches
Headaches come hand in hand with drinking. This happens because alcohol is a diuretic, which means that it causes one to urinate more frequently. Your liver requires water to function, so when one drinks alcohol, your liver must find water from other sources to do its job. This results in that dehydrated feeling the next morning, accompanied by the infamous hangover headache.
Sobriety means that you will not have to deal with the hangover blues. Sure, you might still experience a couple headaches from time to time. But at least they will not be so knowingly self-imposed.
Clearer Skin
Water plays a key role in giving your skin its elasticity and plumping it out to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. What happens when you are dehydrated all the time? Guess what? It will show on your face. Some beauty experts claim that it takes as long as 30 days for your skin to recover from one drinking binge.
Dehydration is not the only reason that alcohol ages your skin. Alcohol has a high concentration of sugar. Sugar breaks down collagen, which is what gives your skin its plump and youthful appearance.
Want to look as much as 10 years younger? Go sober and cut down on sugar.
Control of Weight Gain
Alcohol is filled with nutritionally empty calories. This means that they provide little nutritional benefit, are loaded with calories, yet do nothing to help your body take care of itself. We may have spectacular dieting plans that we are committed to following. But as soon as we begin to drink, those best laid plans are the first to get tossed aside. It should not come as a surprise that sobriety is one of the best ways to cut 1,000 calories or more from your diet.
It’s not only the calories involved in drinking that causes weight gain. It’s everything that you also munch on as you drink. Perhaps you are personally familiar with the “I don’t care” attitude that comes with drinking? Drinking increases your feelings of hunger all while decreasing the mindfulness needed to stop when you are full. If you are looking for a fail-proof way to drop a couple of pounds, saying no to alcohol is the way.
