20 Unexpected Ways Quitting Alcohol Improves Your Health

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Quitting Alcohol Matters
• 0:46 Credentials and Evidence
• 1:25 Liver Damage and Rapid Repair
• 2:42 Gut Barrier and Microbiome Recovery
• 4:08 Pancreas Risks and Relief
• 6:03 Immunity, Blood Pressure, Heart Rhythm
• 8:20 Metabolism, Cortisol, Appetite
• 10:19 Weight Loss and Restored Sleep
• 12:02 Inflammation and Oxidative Stress
• 13:06 Skin and Bone Renewal
• 14:21 Fertility, Brain Volume, Cognition
• 16:07 Cancer Risk and Timeframes
• 17:05 Longer Life and Immediate Gains
• 18:16 Final Invitation to Next Step

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

20 Ways Quitting Alcohol Improves Your Health. Here's the harsh truth. Alcohol doesn't just damage your liver, it shrinks your brain, it weakens your bones, and it silently raises your risk of cancer. But the good news? The moment that you quit, your body starts to fight back. In today's video, I'll walk you through 20 powerful health benefits of quitting alcohol. You'll see which organs bounce back in weeks, which systems take longer to recover, and why every day that you stay sober compounds into a healthier, longer life. Stick with me because some of these will absolutely shock you. And when we get to the final benefit, you'll see the one hidden reason why quitting alcohol might actually add decades to your life. Something almost nobody talks about. So why exactly should you listen to me? Well, my name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of SoberClear.com, which is a coaching company that helps business people and professionals get control of their drinking sometimes in as little as 24 hours. We have a new scientifically validated approach, and you can find an academic paper of the work that we do on Google Scholar by searching SoberClear. I myself haven't drank alcohol for seven years after almost a decade of struggle, and I've seen firsthand how dramatically life can change on the other side. So when I tell you these 20 health benefits are real, it's not just theory, it's experience backed by evidence. Number one, liver regeneration. Out of all of our organs, the one that alcohol damages the most, along with the brain, is the liver. The liver is our body's detox center. It's where toxins, including ethanol, are sent to be broken down and eventually expelled from the body. This process is very harmful as it generates a highly toxic metabolite called acetaldehyde, as well as other reactive molecules, which we will discuss in detail later. See, most moderate drinkers and nearly all heavy drinkers develop fatty liver, a condition where the liver cells accumulate fat, leading to the entire liver swelling up. While it has no overt symptoms, fatty liver can set the stage for more serious damage, including hepatitis and cirrhosis. Thankfully, these are much more rare than fatty liver. Remarkably, if you haven't yet progressed to hepatitis or cirrhosis, only a few days of sobriety is all your liver needs to start healing. After only three weeks, your fatty liver will have basically reversed. At that point, your liver will appear essentially normal on an ultrasound and biopsy. Blood markers of liver injury, notably the enzymes ALT and AST, will also be back to baseline at the one-month mark. All this without any other lifestyle changes and free of medications. It's not a bad deal if you ask me. Two, gastrointestinal functioning restored. Another area that takes heavy damage is your gastrointestinal tract. Alcohol's primary target is the mucosa that line your GI tract, starting from the mouth all the way to your anus. This damage, particularly in the small intestine, allows pathogens to enter circulation. From there, they make their way to the liver, further inflaming it. This is what we actually call leaky gut syndrome. This syndrome can also cause systemic inflammation beyond the liver, leading to problems like brain fog, fatigue, autoimmune disorders, and food sensitivities. Alcohol also impairs the small intestine from properly absorbing nutrients. This contributes to the malnutrition that is typical of heavy drinkers and almost universal in late-stage alcoholics. It also upsets the natural balance of our so-called gut microbiota. These are the countless microorganisms that live in our intestines and are key to digestion. Fortunately, like the liver, the recovery happens remarkably fast. Studies show that three weeks of abstinence can fully restore the gut barrier, reducing the amount of harmful toxins entering the bloodstream and easing inflammation. The gut microbiota recovery will take slightly longer, at least a month following sobriety. This improvement in your gastrointestinal functioning will have a very beneficial consequence in terms of reducing inflammation, a topic that we'll return to later. 3. The pancreas recovers. Your pancreas is a small organ hidden deep in your abdomen behind the stomach, weighing about as much as an apple and stretching around 15 centimeters, most people aren't even aware of its existence until its decline demands their attention, that is. The pancreas has two critical functions. First, it makes enzymes that are critical to digestion, breaking down the various proteins, fats, and carbohydrates from food. Secondly, it regulates blood sugar levels by producing the hormone insulin. When blood sugar levels get too high, insulin signals to the cells that they need to increase its absorption, thereby lowering the circulating levels in the blood. While the liver is the primary organ responsible for processing alcohol, the pancreas also contributes. And over the years, this process can lead to a toxic accumulation of certain enzymes called fatty acid ethylester syntheses, or FAEE. Alcohol also triggers oxidative stress in the pancreas, something that we'll cover later. Now, unlike other organs, the pancreas doesn't generally give subtle warning signs. When it becomes inflamed, a condition is triggered called pancreatitis. You get abrupt and severe abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, and it usually requires hospitalization. Around 70% of pancreatitis cases are alcohol related. Once it sets in, the ball is really in your court. You can continue drinking and develop chronic pancreatitis, which means a lifetime of pain and possibly premature death, or you can stop and hope that the pancreatitis won't return. Because unfortunately, even with abstinence, pancreatitis doesn't always fully resolve. Now, if you're like most drinkers, chances are that you probably haven't developed this horrible disease yet. In which case, your pancreas will thank you for your decision to stop drinking. Over time, the harmful buildup of substances that stress your pancreas, including FAEE syntheses, will clear, allowing it to recover. Number four, the immune system strengthens. Doctors first noticed over two centuries ago that drinkers are more prone to infections. These include pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, HIV, viral hepatitis, and bacterial meningitis. Not only are drinkers more likely to get sick, but they also tend to have worse outcomes. Their hospitalizations are longer, they have more complications, recovery is often incomplete, and death is more common. This happens because alcohol devastates the immune system in various ways. As we saw, it damages the mucosal barriers lining our gut and respiratory tract, making it easier for harmful organisms to enter the bloodstream. Alcohol also impacts the white blood cells. These are our body's first line of defense against infection and impairs our immune system's ability to fight off things like cancer cells, something that we'll discuss in a moment. Within just a few weeks of quitting alcohol, your immune system will significantly improve, largely due to better gut function. You can further support it by cleaning up your diet, engaging in moderate exercise, managing your stress levels, and prioritizing your sleep. Number five, hypertension resolves. Elevated blood pressure, also called hypertension, is very common among heavy drinkers. It's actually known as the silent killer. Silent because it has no overt symptoms, and killer because it's a leading cause of premature death due to complications like heart attack, stroke, and aneurysms. Even if it doesn't kill you outright, hypertension can cause serious vision problems, sexual dysfunction, and kidney damage. It's no joke. While scientists aren't sure exactly how alcohol causes hypertension, the causal relationship is not in question. The more you drink, especially if you exceed just three drinks a day, the higher your risk of hypertension. Remarkably, just a few weeks of abstinence are enough for hypertension to resolve. This happens without medications or any other kind of intervention. By the three to four week mark, barring other contributing factors, your hypertension will have reversed and your blood pressure will return to the normal range. 6. The heart beats better. Alcohol can also affect how your heart beats. There are two aspects to this. First, it will make your heart beat faster, something you can easily verify with a fitness watch that tracks your resting heart rate. This is a sign that your cardiovascular system is working less efficiently. Your heart has to pump more to deliver the same amount of blood. Remarkably, just a few days after quitting, your resting heart rate may drop by 5 to 10 beats per minute, sometimes even more. If you don't already have a fitness tracker, I do strongly encourage you to invest in one, especially if you're planning to quit drinking. Just seeing your resting heart rate drop in real time is proof enough of alcohol's burden on your health and just how much better off you are without it. Alcohol not only speeds up your heart, but can also make it beat irregularly. These alcohol-related arrhythmias often appear in acute form after a few days of heavy drinking. They typically resolve after a few days of abstinence. But if the drinking continues, the arrhythmia can become chronic, making it much harder to reverse. It goes without saying that if you haven't already developed an irregular heartbeat, stopping drinking right now is your best option. Remember that prevention today is far easier than trying to reverse damage in the future. Number seven, blood sugar lowers. Alcohol is filled with empty calories and can cause fluctuations in blood sugar levels. When you stop drinking alcohol, your liver, no longer busy processing alcohol, can resume its normal role of regulating blood sugar levels. As a result, your body regulates blood sugar more efficiently, helping stabilize your energy levels during the day. A study with social drinkers who stopped drinking for five weeks found a remarkable 23% drop in blood glucose levels. These fell from an average of 5.1 to 4.3 millimoles per liter. The normal range is between 3.9 and 5.6. These findings suggest that the body has become more sensitive to insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels. As your blood sugar stabilizes, you might notice fewer cravings for sugary snacks and a renewed appetite for healthier foods. We'll revisit this topic later. 8. Cortisol homeostasis restored. Alcohol disrupts the balance of stress hormones, especially cortisol. Cortisol is essential for human survival. It helps mobilize energy reserves, adapt to stress, and maintain homeostasis during challenging times. It also regulates metabolism and has anti-inflammatory properties. But when cortisol levels become chronically elevated, our health begins to suffer. If you think of your body as a complex machine with millions of moving parts, excess cortisol causes unnecessary wear and tear. That is exactly what happens to heavy drinkers who tend to have chronically high cortisol levels. This leads to a range of health problems, including poor sleep, weight gain, mood changes, fatigue, and digestive issues. Unfortunately, when you stop drinking, cortisol levels spike even higher and remain elevated for several weeks. This partly explains why the first weeks of abstinence can be so challenging. If you push through, however, your cortisol levels gradually return to normal. This leads to improved sleep, mood, and overall well-being. Your energy levels stabilize and your body starts to repair and regenerate, lowering your risk of stress-related health problems. 9. Healthy appetite and eating patterns return. We touched on this earlier when discussing blood sugar, but alcohol is very calorie dense. It's basically unique among toxins in this respect. It gives you 7.1 calories per gram, which is on the high end for normal food, let alone a toxin. To give you an idea, an apple has half a calorie per gram, broccoli has 0.3 calories, and cheddar cheese has four. You have to look to extremely rich foods like butter or olive oil to match alcohol's calorie density. The problem is that while our body extracts energy from ethanol in booze, it doesn't process it like normal food. And our brain doesn't perceive it as normal food either, because it isn't. It's alcohol. The key difference is that unlike real food, we don't compensate for the calories from ethanol. In other words, we get the calories from booze and then we eat food as normal, as if we had never drank in the first place. Not only are the calories not compensated, but alcohol is actually an appetite stimulant. So when you drink before or during a meal, you get a triple whammy. A, the empty calories from the booze, B, your appetite not compensating for these calories, and C your appetite actually increasing, and it's usually for unhealthy food. Not only that, but years of drinking can condition someone to associate drinking with eating, meaning that the drink can then become a trigger for eating in and of itself. Stopping drinking alcohol will improve your eating patterns so that you consume less calories overall, and these calories will generally be healthier. You will naturally start eating smaller, healthier portions and probably cut down on binge eating and junk food. Number 10. Weight loss. A pleasant consequence of all of this is that you will lose weight. Simply quitting alcohol without any other dietary changes or additional exercise can lower your weight by 1 to 2 kilos in the first month, sometimes more. The longer that you stay sober, the more weight that will come off. Beyond looking and feeling better, the loss weight will also translate to improved metabolic markers, such as better insulin sensitivity, lower blood sugar levels, reduced blood pressure, and a healthier cholesterol profile. All this reduces your risk of chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. 11. Sleep quality restored. People have used alcohol as a sleeping aid for thousands of years. This is because alcohol shortens the time it takes to fall asleep. Normally, this takes 10 to 20 minutes, but alcohol can cut it in half or more. However, there's a pretty big catch. While this is an important part of what we call a good night's sleep, it's just one piece of the puzzle. Every night we go through a series of sleep cycles, which last around 90 minutes each. Each cycle begins with light sleep, moves into deep sleep, and ends with REM sleep, the stage where we dream. These stages always occur in the same order, but their duration shifts as the night progresses. During the first half of the night, sleep cycles favor deep sleep over light and REM sleep. But as the night progresses, light and REM sleep become longer and deep sleep shortens. This is why we typically have our longest and most vivid dreams just before we wake up. Alcohol disrupts the sleep cycle by increasing deep sleep early on at the expense of REM and light sleep. Early in the night, this works well, as the deep sleep allows us to sleep soundly. The problem begins during the second half of the night, once alcohol effects start to wear off. At that point, suppressed REM and light sleep rebound. This means the person will wake up easier and will have more trouble falling back asleep every time. Another problem is that alcohol is a diuretic. In other words, it increases the production of urine. This leads to frequent bathroom trips, further disrupting our sleep. All things considered, it's no surprise that insomnia and sleep problems in general are very common among heavy drinkers. And thankfully, here, recovery will be swift. During the first week of abstinence, you might experience restlessness and sleep disturbances, but things settle quickly after that. If you're like most, at the 4-5 week mark, your sleep should be back to your pre-drinking days. 12. Reduced inflammation. Inflammation is your body's natural response to health challenges like infections, injuries, or toxins. When your body detects a problem, it sends white blood cells and signaling molecules like cytokines and prostaglandins to the affected area. This triggers the classic symptoms of inflammation, including swelling, redness, and pain. Although unpleasant, these are signs that the body is working to repair itself. The problems begin when the inflammatory response becomes chronic. Instead of shutting down after the threat is gone, the body stays in a constant state of alert, gradually damaging healthy tissues. Where it was once the solution, inflammation now becomes the problem, leading to problems like cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune disorders. As you might have guessed, booze is highly inflammatory. It's actually one of the leading lifestyle factors linked to chronic inflammation, alongside a poor diet, lack of physical activity, smoking, and stress. The inflammation affects the entire body, as evidenced by elevated levels of inflammatory proteins in the blood. Having said that, certain organs are particularly affected, notably the brain, liver, pancreas, and heart. Long-term inflammation in any of these organs can lead to debilitating chronic illness and even death. The digestive system can become chronically inflamed, potentially causing leaky gut syndrome, autoimmunity, and cancer. To support your body's recovery from inflammation, when you stop drinking, you can cut out bad foods like refined carbohydrates, packaged snacks, and sugary beverages. You'll also want to increase your consumption of anti-inflammatory foods like berries, green vegetables, and fatty fish. You can also consider incorporating turmeric into your diet. This is a highly anti-inflammatory spice that you can add to various foods. 13. Lower oxidative stress. As part of their normal metabolic activities, our cells naturally produce harmful molecules called free radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules that can damage cells by destabilizing proteins, DNA, and other cellular components. To counteract free radicals, our body uses antioxidants. These are molecules that can stabilize free radicals without becoming unstable themselves. Most antioxidants come from food, but we also make some internally. When the levels of free radicals rise to the point where we can no longer effectively neutralize them, our body is said to be in a condition of oxidative stress. This can lead to chronic inflammation and contribute to the development of diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders. The longer you stay in oxidative stress, the more you accelerate aging and impair the body's natural repair mechanisms, and the more your health will suffer. Alcohol significantly raises oxidative stress. It does this by generating free radicals during its metabolism, as well as depleting our antioxidants. Along with smoking, a poor diet, chronic stress, exposure to pollution and chemicals, it's actually one of the most common, modifiable lifestyle factors for oxidative stress. Inflammation and oxidative stress are the twin pillars of systemic alcohol damage. They feed into each other to slowly but steadily erode your health. You can think of oxidative stress as the immediate consequence of ethanol's metabolism, the initial insult, which then gradually triggers the inflammation. The inflammation then triggers more oxidative stress, which feeds back into the inflammation and so on and so forth, creating a vicious cycle of damage. Over time, the inflammation becomes the central driving factor in tissue damage and disease progression. 14. Healthier skin. The reduction in oxidative stress after you stop drinking can noticeably improve your skin health. Researchers found that after smoking and sun exposure, alcohol consumption is one of the major lifestyle factors that drive facial aging. Through studying genetically identical twins, as well as large-scale surveys, scientists have pinpointed alcohol's effects on the face with astonishing precision. In the early stages, the cheeks lose volume and the areas under the eyes become puffier. As the person keeps on drinking, the damage spreads, leading to forehead lines, crows' feet, and visible blood vessels in the face. Alcohol also increases the risk of an inflammatory skin condition called rosacea, which primarily affects the face. By stopping drinking alcohol, you reduce the oxidative stress on your skin and slow down the aging process. Skin damage is notoriously difficult to reverse, and the results will vary widely from one person to the next. But many former drinkers report that their complexion becomes healthier looking and their skin regains some of its former glow. Having said that, I want to emphasize once again that preventing skin damage is infinitely easier than reversing it. So, stopping drinking can't come soon enough for your skin. 15. The bones strengthen. A little known secret of booze is just how severely it can weaken bones. Doctors first realized something was off when they noticed heavy drinkers turning up to emergency visits, and they were showing up with multiple fractures. These fractures often occurred in the ribs and went unnoticed by the patients for very long times. See, bones are constantly renewing themselves, breaking down old tissue in a process called resorption while forming new tissue through bone formation. This dynamic process keeps our skeletons healthy and resilient throughout life. We now know that alcohol weakens bone density by disrupting the bone's natural balance. So alcohol inhibits the cells that create new bone, called osteoblasts, while simultaneously leading to more aggressive resorption. As a result, bone mass and strength decline. Fortunately, osteoblasts recover rapidly after sobriety. After three weeks, osteocalcin levels, a key marker of bone formation, return to those of non-drinkers. A few months after your final drink, your bone mass and strength will have rebounded, even if you were a very heavy drinker. And by then, your risk of fractures will have significantly decreased. 16. Fertility improves. If you're unsuccessfully trying to have children, one of the first things that your doctor will recommend is you cut out alcohol. It's one of the easiest, quickest, and most effective ways to boost your fertility. In men, alcohol lowers testosterone and damages cells in the testicles that support sperm development. Over time, this means fewer and less mobile sperm cells. The hormonal changes can also contribute to sexual dysfunction, like loss of libido and erectile dysfunction. In women, alcohol disrupts the balance of hormones that regulate the menstrual cycle and ovulation. This can lead to irregular periods or no periods at all, as well as poor egg quality. The speed and extent of the fertility improvements will vary from person to person and obviously depend on the degree of damage. As a general rule, a minimum of two to three menstrual cycles are necessary for women to see improvements. It's a similar time scale for men, since sperm takes around three months to fully mature. 17. Brain volume recovers. One of the most terrifying effects of alcohol is how mercilessly it attacks your brain, killing off countless cells. And it also shrinks the entire brain in the process. By the time of their death, heavy drinkers' brains weigh about an ounce less compared to non-drinkers. Now this translates to countless brain cells that have died over the person's drinking career. Scientists have given this phenomenon various names, including brain atrophy, brain shrinkage, and brain aging. While the entire brain is affected, certain parts are hit particularly hard. These include the hippocampus, which is critical in the formation of new memories, as well as the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in executive functioning. Executive function is a rather complex ability that encompasses aspects of decision making and impulse control. On paper, the shrinkage should be irreversible, since brain cells are generally not replaced. This sets them apart from most other cells in our body. Remarkably, however, our brains find a way to recover its loss volume following abstinence. This is very likely a result of the remaining brain cells multiplying their connections to compensate for the dead ones. This recovery can take place remarkably fast, especially during the first few weeks of abstinence, and then slower over the following months. By the one-year mark, your brain mass will largely return to its pre-drinking days. 18. Cognitive function rebounds. As the brain shrinks, your cognitive abilities decline. Compared to the general population, heavy drinkers show significant impairments in more or less every aspect of cognitive functioning. We already saw how certain brain regions are particularly affected, especially those related to memory and executive functioning. But because the damage is spread across the entire brain, virtually all cognitive functions are affected. So the speed with which you process information, your social and verbal skills, the ability to emphasize with other people and adopt their perspective, your visual spatial abilities, these are all impaired to some degree. At the same time, your metacognition, namely your awareness and understanding of your own thought processes, is impaired as well. This actually means that you will not generally be aware of just how much alcohol is damaging your cognitive faculties. Pretty scary. The improvement in cognitive functioning following abstinence will mirror that of your brain volume recovery. Faster at first and then slower later on. At the one year mark, when your brain volume has mostly recovered, your cognitive functions will largely be back to their natural baseline, though some lingering deficits may persist for years. 19. Your cancer risk reduces. So alcohol increases your risk of at least seven types of cancer. These are in the mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, colon, rectum, liver, as well as breast in women. In the US alone, there are more than 520,000 alcohol-related cancers estimated every year, with an estimated 20,000 adults dying. The large majority of these cancers are in people over the age of 50. Cutting out alcohol will lower your risk of developing cancer, but the decrease will be gradual and the timescales will vary depending on the site. For example, the risk of liver cancer is believed to fall by 6-7% a year, which means more than 20 years of abstinence are required for the risk to resemble that of someone who never drank. Number 20 is a longer life expectancy. See, all of this leads up to the most important way quitting alcohol will improve your health. You will live longer. People don't generally understand exactly how deadly alcohol is. Sure, many of us have a heavy drinking relative or acquaintance who died from liver failure. And on the news, there are always those horrific DUI accidents and deaths and so on. But we generally give alcohol a pass when it comes to mortality. Unlike, say, tobacco. But when you look at the cold hard numbers, you start to get an idea of the carnage, and it's absolutely mind-blowing. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the US from 2011 to 2015, alcohol was responsible for an average of 93,000 deaths annually. This translates to 255 deaths daily. And shockingly, each of these people lost on average 29 years from their expected lifespan. So they went 29 years before their time on average. For comparison, those who die from tobacco lose only 10 years of their life. Just let that sink in for a moment. Cigarettes, 10 years lost. Alcohol, nearly three times that. Now, it is true that there are some types of alcohol-related deaths where even if you quit today, you're not off the hook yet. Cancer being the main one. As we just saw, depending on the body site, it can take years or even decades for the risk to resemble that of another drinker. I just want to be completely straight with you here. On the other hand, there are other causes of death where your risk drops to that of the general population from day one. For example, accidents, poisonings, and homicides. Then there are various alcohol-related diseases, which if you haven't yet developed, you can prevent with a very high degree of certainty. For example, hepatitis, pancreatitis, dementia, or alcohol cardiomyopathy. If you're still drinking and haven't developed these, then quitting today makes it very likely that you'll enjoy the rest of your life without ever having to worry about them again. And if you click the video on the screen now, I'm going to show you how to stop drinking alcohol with a totally new method.