This is what happens to your body when you stop drinking alcohol

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“Let’s be honest: nobody wants to live in a non-alcohol world,” says Georgia Foster, a London-based psychologist and alcohol control specialist. “But it’s about managing your alcohol, as opposed to letting it manage you. It’s about not using drink as escapism from day-to-day problems. For the past decade, Georgia has lived and worked in London helping upwardly mobile women cut down on their drinking.

“About 80% of my clients are women in their late thirties and older, mainly professional women how have very little time to relax and use alcohol as their down time and working mums for whom -me time’ means uncorking the wine as soon as the kids have gone to bed or once they’ve finished work,” says Georgia.

But when you wake up in the morning your inner critic starts saying, ‘Why did you drink that much?’ And to silence it, you drink more the next night and then your body develops a tolerance and you start using alcohol as a sleeping pill.

Here are some of the amazing things that can happen to your body when you stop drinking alcohol or cut down on your alcohol consumption after a few months.

1. Your Liver Stops Working Over Time

Just an hour after quitting alcohol, your body goes into detox mode to try and clear the alcohol out of your bloodstream. Doing so causes your liver to work overtime so that you do not have to suffer from alcohol poisoining.

2. You Stop Craving For Carbs Right After Drinking

A round of late night binge drinking and supper go hand in hand but there’s actually a really scary reason for this. After drinking, your pancreas starts to produce extra insulin, making your body crave carbs more than ever to help regulate and balance insulin levels. This means, you tend to over eat more after drinking, causing you to gain more weight than you would have liked.

3. You're More Hydrated

It’s a known fact that alcohol has a diuretic effect on the body and can cause mouth dryness.When the body is dehydrated, water retention and bloating can come into play and result in an overall uncomfortable feeling. 

4. You Get Headaches And Migraines Less Often

Alcohol contains ethanol, a chemical that is known to cause headaches and have other effects on the body. Plus, when consumed in excess, ethanol can induce the hangover effect that we all know too well.

5. You Sleep Better

While alcohol might allow you to fall asleep faster, it reduces rapid eye movement (REM) sleep that’s known to measure your quality of sleep. Drinking alcohol close to bedtime can greatly reduce the stage of REM sleep that’s important in allowing your body to relax and get quality rest.

6. Your Skin Conditions Improve

According to nutritionist Jairo Rodriguez, alcohol is one of the worst and most aggressive compounds to destroy your skin. As mentioned prior, alcohol affects the pancreas and can cause dehydration to occur. Dehydration can affect the skin and allow for all sorts of skincare problems to happen such as wrinkles, acne and pigmentation to form.

7. Your Liver Fat Reduces Greatly

Numerous research has found that alcohol increases fat levels in your liver. While some fat in the liver is considered normal, fat levels of more than 5 to 10 percent can lead to serious complications and damage the organ completely. To counter this, experts advice on abstaining from alcohol and minimise drinking.

The original version of this story was published on November 15, 2016

For more healthy lifestyle tips that you may not know you need, check out www.herworldplus.com/lifestyle/health-fitness