More Water, Less Wine

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in drawing up a list of things I was going to do to transform my life at the beginning of January. Now we are half-way through the month, how are we doing? I’ve only weakened a couple of times on my resolution to have a dry January—although you’d be surprised how many people ask me if Dry January is a new cocktail.

I have a neighbour who is also having a dry month and it’s helpful to chat over the hedge from time to time and see how we are getting on and to encourage each other to keep the pedal to the metal. My son, resuming crossfit after a long break, has a more determined buddy who gets him out there sweating more often than not.

One thing that helped me a lot is an article New Scientist ran in 2014. The magazine, which probes the frontiers of science in terms even I can understand, found that there was a widely held assumption that taking a break from booze will help your liver recover from the seasonal onslaught of rich food and alcohol—but little research to back this up.

A group of its journalists volunteered to take part in a ground-breaking study organised by medical researchers at the University College London. The preliminary results are striking, suggesting that abstinence significantly reduces levels of liver fat, cholesterol and blood glucose. Giving up also has significant benefits, as their chart reproduced her shows. And if a bunch of journalists can give up booze, it can’t be that hard.

The World Health Organization ranks alcohol as the third largest risk factor for premature death: it kills 2.5 million people each year. And in our country where the drink/driving laws are not enforced, the toll of alcohol-fuelled accidents is horrendous.

And it’s expensive. If you habitually pour yourself a glass or two of wine when you finally reach home after a tough day, you’ll save $3.63 a day, $15.75 a month and a whopping $189 a year if you resist the temptation. This comes from an interesting website that enables you to work out what the cost of your wine or beer consumption is.

Do stretch your budget to buy bottled water, though: WHO also says that our water, with no rain and therefore no run-off to refresh Harare’s water supply, is the most polluted in the world right now. If you want to be purer than pure, Schweppes water is the one to choose—it’s produced to American standards, so I’m told.

#alcohol #wine #water #health #January