what happens to your body when you stop drinking for a year?
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High blood pressure increases your risk of stroke, aneurysm, or heart failure, while tachycardia can cause a heart attack. All of these effects can be deadly, which is why receiving treatment is critical when ending your alcohol use. When you stop drinking, your body is working to develop a healthy balance once again.
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Withdrawal. If you're a heavy drinker, your body may rebel at first if you cut off all alcohol. You could break out in cold sweats or have a racing pulse, nausea, vomiting, shaky hands, and intense anxiety. Some people even have seizures or see things that aren't there (hallucinations).
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Alcohol use disorder can cause serious and lasting damage to your liver. Your liver is responsible for removing toxins from your blood. When you drink too much, your liver has a harder time filtering the alcohol and other toxins from your bloodstream. This can lead to liver disease and other complications.
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Alcohol can change the way your body burns fat. When you drink, your body is more focused on breaking down alcohol rather than burning fat. Also, instead of burning fat, your body is burning the calories from the alcohol, so it can take you longer to lose weight.
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Drinking too much alcohol on a single occasion or over time can cause health problems, including: Liver disease. Heavy drinking can cause increased fat in the liver (hepatic steatosis), inflammation of the liver (alcoholic hepatitis), and over time, irreversible destruction and scarring of liver tissue (cirrhosis).
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Alcohol has a lot of empty calories and it's easy for a heavy drinker to drink an extra 1000 calories a day. Alcohol also changes your hormones, making it harder to lose weight. Once you stop drinking, it's easy to lose a few pounds pretty quickly. However, some people actually gain weight once they quit drinking.
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After you quit smoking, your body burns calories more slowly. Even if you eat no more than when you smoked, you may put on some weight. But being more active can help. Regular exercise may prevent about half the weight gain expected after a year of quitting smoking.
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More research shows that even a single episode of binge drinking can have serious effects on all parts of your body, not just your brain. Long-term damage from heavy alcohol use isn't limited to people with alcohol use disorder. Frequent binge drinkers can also develop health problems.
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After 15-20 years of being alcohol-free, your risk of developing esophageal or head and neck cancer does decrease, though it does not ever reach that of a never drinker.
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If you stop drinking completely, one of the first things you notice should be improved energy levels. Regular drinking can affect the quality of your sleep making you feel tired and sluggish. This is because drinking disrupts your sleep cycle. When you drink alcohol before bed you may fall into deep sleep quicker.
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Drinking alcohol in excess has long lasting effects that will prevent you from performing normal functions effectively, in particular, your concentration and memory. After a heavy drinking session, drink plenty of water (and fluids) throughout the day to flush out toxins and restore your hydration levels.
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The liver. The liver breaks down most of the alcohol you drink so that it can be removed from the body. This creates substances that are even more harmful than alcohol. These substances can damage liver cells and cause serious liver disease.
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Removing alcohol from your diet for four weeks can also help to improve your liver function as your liver will start to shed excess fat. If your liver function is not too badly affected by alcohol, it can recover within 4-8 weeks.
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Even without binge drinking, regularly drinking too much too often can also damage the kidneys. The damage occurs more slowly. Regular heavy drinking has been found to double the risk chronic kidney disease, which does not go away over time.
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After two weeks off alcohol, you will continue to reap the benefits of better sleep and hydration. As alcohol is an irritant to the stomach lining, after a fortnight you will also see a reduction in symptoms such as reflux where the stomach acid burns your throat.
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The time it takes to detox depends on a few factors, including how much you drink, how long you've been drinking, and whether you've gone through detox before. Most people stop having detox symptoms four to five days after their last drink.
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You'll likely begin to feel better around five days to a week after you stop drinking. It may be helpful to learn about alcohol withdrawal symptoms day by day.