Keep it dry this January – New Thought, Right Action

Welcome to 2021. Did you make a commitment to live healthier this year? Perhaps, you decided to try a dry January, to reset after 2020’s stress drinking and eating. Here we are, ½ way through the month and you may be tempted to water down dry January, especially with the stress of living under COVID restrictions and some of the other national events we have faced. But maintaining limits in your alcohol use is one of the best steps you can take to enhance your health to fight off COVID should you be so unfortunate as to contract the virus.

Many people use alcohol as part of an evening wind-down ritual after work. Others see it as a tool to reduce social anxiety. And many people are turning to alcohol and other drugs to medicate the stress that COVID has placed on society.

However, overindulgence can affect your work performance and other relationships in ways which can cause irreparable damage. Most importantly, especially for COVID concerns, alcohol abuse can create severe health problems, including

heart-related and cardiovascular problems,
many cancers, such as breast, colon, liver, mouth, and esophagus,
mental health concerns, such as depression and anxiety
decreased social functioning and work performance.

Before you experiment with “hangover cures,” I invite you, to assess your drinking habits to learn if you are in the social drinking range or if you are developing an alcohol abuse disorder. Low risk drinking is considered no more than four drinks on any day for men and no more than three drinks on any day for women, according to the National Institutes of Health. Drinking limits for the week are no more than 14 drinks per week for men and no more than seven drinks per week for women. To stay within the low-risk range you need to keep both the single-day and weekly limits.

After an honest appraisal, if you realize you are in the high risk or heavy drinking range and are curious about how you might make healthier choices or are ready to make healthier choices, then I invite you to click here and confidentially reach out to New Thought, Right Action Consulting Services. We can help you get connected to the best resources to address this medical issue.

If you are in the low-risk drinking range, and want to commit to a dry January, then keep reading on as these tips make alcohol abstinence more comfortable:

Drink more water. This will help eliminate the toxins from your body. You know if you are drinking enough water if your pee is clear. If you are peeing yellow then you are not drinking enough water. Also, it’s important to drink ACTUAL water, not coffee, tea or soda made with water. The sodium content in soda will dehydrate you making it more difficult to flush out your system.
Get plenty of rest. As much as possible, go to bed at the same time every night and if you can make yourself do it, see if you can go to bed 30 minutes earlier than you normally do.
Make yourself put up your electronics at least an hour before your bedtime. It’s important to do this so your brain doesn’t get its circadian rhythms disrupted by confusing it with artificial lights.
At mealtimes do the best you can to eat as healthy as you can to compensate for the sugars in alcohol. When you eat too much sugar you really do a number on your blood sugar which can spike and dip, causing you to feel jittery and shaky and develop severe mood swings, including anger and sadness.
Deal with your emotions in healthier ways, such as writing in a journal, talking to a friend or visiting a counselor. If you’re hungover, well, so is the other guy and that gets annoying dealing with cranky, hungover people everyday. So, acknowledge that other people may be getting on your nerves because their nerves are shot, too. Make a decision to not take anything personally during this time because the person flipping you off in traffic may just be having a pre-diabetic mood swing from all of the sugar he’s been eating and alcohol he’s been drinking. It really has nothing to do with you.

Remember to Breathe!

Our work families and our home families can be challenging, especially during these times. So, give yourself a little breathing room by breathing in a diaphragmatic way. This will deliver more oxygen to your cells and organs and help them perk up. You can do that now by breathing in through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. Go ahead and try it now.

When you play as hard as you work, you want to have a New Thought and a Right Action on how to recover fast.

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