Is drinking moderately excellent or bad for your health? Well, this is a debate that is ongoing to date. Moderates mean 14 drinks per week for men and seven drinks for women. Society has programmed alcohol as a stress buster. On the other hand, heavy drinking can cause serious health consequences such as liver and heart disease. Recent research has shown that quitting that moderate drink will give health benefits you missing out on.
Your Heart Gets Healthier
Alcohol raises fat amounts in your blood called triglycerides. Excessive drinking will enlarge your heart and weaken the heart muscle. You will be at risk of heart failure, which occurs when the heart fails to pump enough blood for your body's needs. Good news is that if the damage to your heart is not severe, and you stop drinking. Your heart size will normalize and may pump better worse; you quit alcohol altogether. But resuming to moderate drinking will worsen heart disease.
Your Liver May Heal
Alcohol is a toxin to your liver, which is tasked with filtering out toxins in the body. As it processes alcohol, it damages its enzymes and leads to the death of its cells. And scar tissue develops, and if it is excessive, the liver may fail to function correctly. This is liver cirrhosis. Incredibly, the liver is self-healing, just like the skin. Or like how fluconazole clears up an infection. Healing can start as early as a few weeks, once you quit your “moderate” uptake of alcohol.
A Drop on the Scale without Any Other Effort
When you count the calories, your favorite beer contains a whopping 200 calories, a margarita 300 calories! And they are empty calories. Besides, alcohol affects your ability to make inhibitions. So you will beige eat and pound on weight. Quitting will help you cut the excess weight and curb cravings.
Better Sleep
Two weeks after you quit alcohol, you will sleep better. And wake up energized to tackle your days' activities. This is because consuming alcohol increases your brain activity when you sleep. While you are awake, brain activity happens in alpha waves and delta waves while in a deep sleep. But consuming alcohol makes your brain activity to happen in alpha waves. This reduces the quality of your sleep. It is why most drinkers wake up feeling tired.
You must be quitting your moderate alcohol uptake after reading the benefits. The alcohol you think is moderate will affect your liver which filters a toxin and in turn, kill your liver cells, similar to how fluconazole works. And it can get to irreversible levels causing liver cirrhosis. But it will self-heal if you quit today! Plus, your goal of dropping a few pounds can be reached without the exercise you dread. Forget the happy hours, and you just shed off 200 calories.
Remember, alcohol is addictive, and the key to rid of the detrimental effect in the body is by quitting it! It will be hard, but worth all the pounds you lose, scars healed, and quality sleep gained.