July 15, 2025 • 15 mins
We're halfway through Dry July; whether you're participating or not, we're taking a closer look at what actually happens to your body when you stop drinking - from day one to a year later.
Plus, we explore the growing evidence linking alcohol to cancer and why experts say even small amounts increase your risk, despite what we've been told about that daily glass of red wine.
And in headlines today childcare record-keeping practices are under scrutiny after police identified more facilities linked to an educator accused of sex offences; A workmate of accused murderer Lachlan Young, has told the court that Young planned to drug his ex-girlfriend and crash her in a car so he could scare her out of taking their house; The two men who cut down the iconic Sycamore Gap tree that stood alongside Hadrian’s wall in the UK for almost 200 years, have been sentenced to more than 4 years in jail; Apple TV’s psychological thriller Severance and HBO’s DC Universe drama The Penguin have stacked up the most nominations for television's Emmy Awards
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CREDITS
Hosts: Taylah Strano & Claire Murphy
Guest: Nicole Lee, Adjunct Professor, National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University
Audio Producer: Lu Hill
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma mea acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mamma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie. How's your relationship with alcohol? Were
you one of those people who signed up for a
booze free month during dry July? Well, congrats, my friends,
we're at the halfway mark even if you're not participating.
Let's take a closer look at what actually happens to
your body when you stop drinking. Before we get there,
(00:44):
Here's Clare Murphy with the latest from the QUICKI newsroom
for Wednesday, July sixteenth.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thanks Taylor. Childcare record keeping practices are under scrutiny after
police identified more facilities linked to an educator accused of
sex offenses. More than eight hundred children are being urged
to get tested for infectious diseases after four extra childcare
centers were revealed as locations where Joshua Dale Brown had worked,
bringing the total number to twenty three. Brown is charged
(01:12):
with more than seventy sex offenses against eight children younger
than the age of two at a center at Point
Cook in Melbourne Southwest between April twenty twenty two and
January twenty twenty three. A police spokesperson says the investigation
has been extremely complex due to childcare approved providers not
having centralized records, requiring detectives to execute search warrants to
(01:34):
obtain handwritten records, shift rosters and other critical information. They've
also had to interview witnesses to verify details and assess
more than two hundred and seventy Crimestoppers reports. A workmate
of accused murderer Lachlan Young has told the court that
Young planned to drug his ex girlfriend and crash her
car so he could scare her out of taking their house.
(01:55):
Giving evidence at Young's murder trial yesterday, Benjamin O'Keefe told
the Victorian Supreme Court that Lachlan Young shared his plan
to harm his former partner Hannah Maguire on April two,
twenty twenty four, saying he started talking to him about
wanting to rufie Hannah and take her out bush and
scare her so she wouldn't take the house and other
things from him. O'Keeffe then explained how Young had turned
(02:17):
up at his house after he'd initially turned down Young's
request for him to be his getaway driver, requesting he
follow him to an area of remote Bushland, where Young
set the orange ut he was driving on fire. O'Keeffe
claims Young gave him forty five dollars after the incident,
but never explained why. Young is accused of murdering miss
McGuire in the early hours of April five, before driving
(02:38):
her body in the ute to remote Bushland and setting
the car alight. The twenty three year old has admitted
to killing Miss MacGuire, but denies the charge of murder,
claiming her death was a spontaneous and unplanned incident. The
two men who cut down the iconic Sycamore Gap tree
that stood alongside Hadrian's Wall in the UK for almost
two hundred years have been sentenced to more than four
(02:59):
years in jail. In what one of the men's lawyers
described as a knight of drunken stupidity. Daniel Graham and
Adam Carruthers traveled from their homes in the middle of
the night in September twenty twenty five three to cut
down the tree with a chainsaw, which fell over the
UNESCO World Heritage listed Hadrian's Wall. Damaging part of the structure.
Both initially denied any involvement in the felling of the tree,
(03:20):
which featured in the nineteen ninety one Kevin Costner movie
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, but the pair had filmed
the incident and bragged about it to others before their
friendship became strained. After the widespread anger at their actions
became clear, the pair later admitted responsibility, the judge sentencing
them to four years and three months behind bars. The
National Trust, which looks after the site, said last year
(03:43):
there were signs of life at the base of the tree,
giving hope it might live on. Last week, it was
announced that the largest part of the tree that was
cut down will go on display in an installation located
not far from where it once stood. Apple TV's psychological
thriller Severance and HBO's DC Universe drama The Penguin have
stacked up the most nominations for television's Emmy Awards. Severance
(04:05):
received a leading twenty seven nominations and was nominated for
the top of Best Drama, alongside and Or The Pit,
The White Lotus and others. The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell,
earned twenty four nominations and will compete for Best Limited
Series against others including the Netflix Hit Adolescents, Hollywood Satire,
The Studio, and the Iconic. The White Lotus received twenty
(04:26):
three each. Comedy nominees included defending Champion Hacks, previous winner
The Bear, Nobody Wants This, and Abbott Elementary. Noah Wiley
has received his first Emmy nomination since nineteen ninety nine
for his role as an emergency room doctor on The Pit.
He was nominated five times for his role on Er
but never won. At age eighty three, Harrison Ford has
(04:47):
earned his first Emmy not ever, for playing a grumpy
therapist on Shrinking. Other actors nominated in their categories include
The Penguin himself, Colin Farrell, The Bear, actors Jeremy Allen
White and Ao Edbury, hackstar Gene Smart, Kathy Bates for
Mattlocke and Pedro Pascal, and Bella Ramsay for the Last
of Us. The Emmy winners will be announced at a
red carpet ceremony on September fourteen. That's your latest news headlines,
(05:11):
and if you're often more celebrity news, head to the
link in our show notes for the spills daily entertainment headlines.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Thanks Claire. Next, what really happens when you stop drinking?
We're sixteen days into Dry July, that month where folks
hit pause on the booze button to support and fundraise
for people affected by cancer, giving their own health a
bit of a reset in the process too. Today we'll
(05:37):
look at just what happens when you put down the
tinnies or forego your nightly glass of wine. But first,
this year, the message of Dry July is even clearer.
Links between alcohol and cancer have never been stronger. Major
health bodies have confirmed that alcohol is a proven cause
of several cancers, including breast, bowl and liver. Even small
(06:00):
amounts of alcohol increase your risk, and a quarter of
a million new cancer cases in Australia are expected to
be linked to drinking over the coming decades.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
The good news is that younger people are starting to
drink less and starting to be much more aware of
the risks set both the immediate risk and the long
term risk like cancer. So there may be a peak
in the next ten years and then hopefully a drop
off after that.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
That's Nicole Lee. She's an adjunct professor at the National
Drug Research Institute at Curtain University. She's been looking into
the changes our body goes through when we stop drinking alcohol.
Despite this warning, only about half of us know about
the alcohol cancer connection, and most bottles and cans still
don't carry a warning label, something Nicole says needs to change,
(06:49):
amongst other things.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
The cigarette packaging and the warning labels on cigarette packages.
That's been shown to raise awareness about links between tobacco,
youth and a whole range of diseases, but it also
changes people's behavior. It's not going to change people's behavior
on its own, so the government needs to put a
(07:13):
whole range of other policy measures in place to restrict access,
to probably make it more expensive, especially the very very
cheapest alcohol that you can buy in like cardboard boxes.
It needs to be a whole range of public health measures,
and cancer warnings on labels will result in at least
people being more knowledgeable and many people changing their behavior.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Okay, but what about other health advice. We've always been
told the Mediterranean diet, which suggests a glass of red
wine a day is good for us, is the beal
to end all of healthy living. Apparently, that glass of
veno idea has also been debunked.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
We're pretty clear that any alcohol for most people is
a risk, So every time you have a drink, you're
increasing your risk of some kind of issue. This idea
that having a drink a day it's not really a thing.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Moving on from the between cancer and alcohol, Nicole has
been looking into our relationship with alcohol in a different light,
specifically what happens when we stop consuming it, which feels
timely for drive July, So it actually happens if you
take a break from booze. Here's what you can expect
day by day, week by week, and beyond. But to preface,
(08:29):
Nicole's research is based on moderate to light drinkers. Heavy
drinkers probably won't see the same changes, and in their
first week they may even feel a bit worse for
wear as their body withdrawals. According to Nicole's research, your
body will start to bounce back after just one day
off the grog.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The way alcohol works, it makes you feel really great
for an hour or two, but it takes actually twenty
four hours for a drink to leave your body completely,
and so after about twenty four hours, people start to
feel really immediate effects, like they feel it much more
hydrated because alcohol is really dehydrating, and your liver will
(09:09):
start to regulate blood sugar better and your blood sugar
level will normalize.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
By the end of the week, you might notice your
sleep is getting better. Even though alcohol can make you
feel sleepy at first, it actually disrupts your sleep cycle.
So after a week off you may feel more energetic
in the mornings. But what about the other changes.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
The liver is where alcohol is processed mostly, and if
your regular long term drinker, even a moderate drinker, there'll
be a little bit of liver damage. But your liver
will be improved after just a week, so digestion will
be much better, and you may feel the effects of
not having indigestion and that kind of thing as well.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
After a month, changes kick into overdrive. Nicole's research found
in amongst better sleep and mood, energy levels also.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Pick up within the first month. If you have kind
of mild symptoms of anxiety or depression, that should start
right itself again. You'll start to feel much better, much
easier to manage your mood and move up years up
and down. Even like really heavy drinkers report that I
have better mood after a month or two again, as
your sleep start to improve even more. You probably feel
(10:22):
the better in yourself and better well being, and you
will probably if you can make the month, you will
start to see weight loss as long as you haven't
replaced the alcohol with other calories. There's a lot of
calories intelligials in alcohol itself, but it also triggers off
our hunger reward systems. Most people tend to eat less
(10:44):
healthily when they're drinking, so you will see a probably
a loss of weight. Lots of that body fat can
all be looking a lot better because of dehydration reversing. Again,
that stomach function is going to be keeps better if
you experience floating or indigestion, your heartburn, which a lot
of people have and they don't associate it with alcohol,
(11:05):
but when they stop drinking, they notice those things to
go away.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Fast. Forwarding to a year or more, long term benefits
really add up risks of chronic health issues like heart
disease and type two diabetes reduce, amongst other things.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Even after six months, is you're a vally moderate drinker,
any liver damage will be almost fully reversed, and after
a year you're really reducing your risk of a whole
range of chronic diseases as cancer, liver disease, heart disease, stroke,
all of those kinds of things, because your body is
really starting to get back into high functioning by them.
(11:43):
And one of the things a lot of heavy drinkers
notice is that their blood pressure is elevated. Sometimes it's
not in the high blood pressure range, but it's elevated
for their age. And when they cut back on alcohol
at all, starts to even itself out as well, and
that means also a whole range of internal organs function better,
(12:05):
like kidneys and even your eyes. Eye problems start to
start to right themselves as well.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So is it worth it? Nicole says any reduction in
alcohol brings immediate and lasting health benefits, but there are
some things you do need to consider first.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
So if you're a daily drinker, you probably don't feel
worse then before you feel better. That withdrawal might be
just mirred. Withdrawal you feel a little bit out of
thoughts than really craving alcohols that should be over in
about seven to ten days. Many people fund it quite
difficult to take a long period of alcohol, and I
think if you do find it difficult, that's probably a
(12:45):
good sign that you should reduce to drinking. But for
most people, any break from alcohol and the longer you
go between drinks, they're healthier you'll be. I'm not suggesting
that we should ban alcohol and everyone should be abstinent
from alcohol, but just going into it knowing that when
you're drinking, these health effects are very likely, and when
(13:07):
you stop drinking, they're very like pledg to go away
because they're directly related to alcohol.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And for women specifically, Nicole has this advice from mid
and pery friends.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Alcohol tends to have a much bigger effect. So all
of those negative things that we're talking about, mood, joint
pain and inflammation and all of those kinds of things
can be directly related to alcohol and their common symptoms
that women experiences they go through perimenopause. Unfortunately, the data
(13:41):
shows us that it's the time where people are drinking
more so right now, middle aged women are increasing their
drinking rather than decreasing it. I think if you're going
particularly in that perimenopause menopause period, it would be where
idea just have a look at your drinking and see
whether it is making those symptoms work. I think the
(14:03):
other thing at the other end, young women have been
decreasing their drinking for a very long time over the
last ten fifteen years now, but they're starting to be
a little bit of an increase compared to men in
that age group for women, So.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Whether you're soldiering on with the rest of Dry July
or rethinking your relationship with alcohol, it's worth knowing what
actually changes when you stop and how quickly your body
and brain start to reset. If you're struggling to cut back,
try setting clear goals, tracking your progress and getting support,
whether that's from friends, an app or a professional. Speaking
(14:40):
of if this episode has brought up anything you'd like
to talk about with a professional, you can contact the
National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on one eight hundred
two five zero zero one five. I'll also pop a
link to a previous episode of The Quikie where women
share their experiences of going sober with us. In the
show notes, thanks for taking some time to feed your
(15:01):
mind with us today. The Quiki is produced by me
Taylor Strano and Clare Murphy, with audio production by Lou Hill.
Mamma Mia Studios are styled with furniture from Fenton and Fenton.
Visit Fenton and Fenton Dot com dot au,
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma mea acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mamma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie. How's your relationship with alcohol? Were
you one of those people who signed up for a
booze free month during dry July? Well, congrats, my friends,
we're at the halfway mark even if you're not participating.
Let's take a closer look at what actually happens to
your body when you stop drinking. Before we get there,
(00:44):
Here's Clare Murphy with the latest from the QUICKI newsroom
for Wednesday, July sixteenth.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thanks Taylor. Childcare record keeping practices are under scrutiny after
police identified more facilities linked to an educator accused of
sex offenses. More than eight hundred children are being urged
to get tested for infectious diseases after four extra childcare
centers were revealed as locations where Joshua Dale Brown had worked,
bringing the total number to twenty three. Brown is charged
(01:12):
with more than seventy sex offenses against eight children younger
than the age of two at a center at Point
Cook in Melbourne Southwest between April twenty twenty two and
January twenty twenty three. A police spokesperson says the investigation
has been extremely complex due to childcare approved providers not
having centralized records, requiring detectives to execute search warrants to
(01:34):
obtain handwritten records, shift rosters and other critical information. They've
also had to interview witnesses to verify details and assess
more than two hundred and seventy Crimestoppers reports. A workmate
of accused murderer Lachlan Young has told the court that
Young planned to drug his ex girlfriend and crash her
car so he could scare her out of taking their house.
(01:55):
Giving evidence at Young's murder trial yesterday, Benjamin O'Keefe told
the Victorian Supreme Court that Lachlan Young shared his plan
to harm his former partner Hannah Maguire on April two,
twenty twenty four, saying he started talking to him about
wanting to rufie Hannah and take her out bush and
scare her so she wouldn't take the house and other
things from him. O'Keeffe then explained how Young had turned
(02:17):
up at his house after he'd initially turned down Young's
request for him to be his getaway driver, requesting he
follow him to an area of remote Bushland, where Young
set the orange ut he was driving on fire. O'Keeffe
claims Young gave him forty five dollars after the incident,
but never explained why. Young is accused of murdering miss
McGuire in the early hours of April five, before driving
(02:38):
her body in the ute to remote Bushland and setting
the car alight. The twenty three year old has admitted
to killing Miss MacGuire, but denies the charge of murder,
claiming her death was a spontaneous and unplanned incident. The
two men who cut down the iconic Sycamore Gap tree
that stood alongside Hadrian's Wall in the UK for almost
two hundred years have been sentenced to more than four
(02:59):
years in jail. In what one of the men's lawyers
described as a knight of drunken stupidity. Daniel Graham and
Adam Carruthers traveled from their homes in the middle of
the night in September twenty twenty five three to cut
down the tree with a chainsaw, which fell over the
UNESCO World Heritage listed Hadrian's Wall. Damaging part of the structure.
Both initially denied any involvement in the felling of the tree,
(03:20):
which featured in the nineteen ninety one Kevin Costner movie
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, but the pair had filmed
the incident and bragged about it to others before their
friendship became strained. After the widespread anger at their actions
became clear, the pair later admitted responsibility, the judge sentencing
them to four years and three months behind bars. The
National Trust, which looks after the site, said last year
(03:43):
there were signs of life at the base of the tree,
giving hope it might live on. Last week, it was
announced that the largest part of the tree that was
cut down will go on display in an installation located
not far from where it once stood. Apple TV's psychological
thriller Severance and HBO's DC Universe drama The Penguin have
stacked up the most nominations for television's Emmy Awards. Severance
(04:05):
received a leading twenty seven nominations and was nominated for
the top of Best Drama, alongside and Or The Pit,
The White Lotus and others. The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell,
earned twenty four nominations and will compete for Best Limited
Series against others including the Netflix Hit Adolescents, Hollywood Satire,
The Studio, and the Iconic. The White Lotus received twenty
(04:26):
three each. Comedy nominees included defending Champion Hacks, previous winner
The Bear, Nobody Wants This, and Abbott Elementary. Noah Wiley
has received his first Emmy nomination since nineteen ninety nine
for his role as an emergency room doctor on The Pit.
He was nominated five times for his role on Er
but never won. At age eighty three, Harrison Ford has
(04:47):
earned his first Emmy not ever, for playing a grumpy
therapist on Shrinking. Other actors nominated in their categories include
The Penguin himself, Colin Farrell, The Bear, actors Jeremy Allen
White and Ao Edbury, hackstar Gene Smart, Kathy Bates for
Mattlocke and Pedro Pascal, and Bella Ramsay for the Last
of Us. The Emmy winners will be announced at a
red carpet ceremony on September fourteen. That's your latest news headlines,
(05:11):
and if you're often more celebrity news, head to the
link in our show notes for the spills daily entertainment headlines.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Thanks Claire. Next, what really happens when you stop drinking?
We're sixteen days into Dry July, that month where folks
hit pause on the booze button to support and fundraise
for people affected by cancer, giving their own health a
bit of a reset in the process too. Today we'll
(05:37):
look at just what happens when you put down the
tinnies or forego your nightly glass of wine. But first,
this year, the message of Dry July is even clearer.
Links between alcohol and cancer have never been stronger. Major
health bodies have confirmed that alcohol is a proven cause
of several cancers, including breast, bowl and liver. Even small
(06:00):
amounts of alcohol increase your risk, and a quarter of
a million new cancer cases in Australia are expected to
be linked to drinking over the coming decades.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
The good news is that younger people are starting to
drink less and starting to be much more aware of
the risks set both the immediate risk and the long
term risk like cancer. So there may be a peak
in the next ten years and then hopefully a drop
off after that.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
That's Nicole Lee. She's an adjunct professor at the National
Drug Research Institute at Curtain University. She's been looking into
the changes our body goes through when we stop drinking alcohol.
Despite this warning, only about half of us know about
the alcohol cancer connection, and most bottles and cans still
don't carry a warning label, something Nicole says needs to change,
(06:49):
amongst other things.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
The cigarette packaging and the warning labels on cigarette packages.
That's been shown to raise awareness about links between tobacco,
youth and a whole range of diseases, but it also
changes people's behavior. It's not going to change people's behavior
on its own, so the government needs to put a
(07:13):
whole range of other policy measures in place to restrict access,
to probably make it more expensive, especially the very very
cheapest alcohol that you can buy in like cardboard boxes.
It needs to be a whole range of public health measures,
and cancer warnings on labels will result in at least
people being more knowledgeable and many people changing their behavior.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Okay, but what about other health advice. We've always been
told the Mediterranean diet, which suggests a glass of red
wine a day is good for us, is the beal
to end all of healthy living. Apparently, that glass of
veno idea has also been debunked.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
We're pretty clear that any alcohol for most people is
a risk, So every time you have a drink, you're
increasing your risk of some kind of issue. This idea
that having a drink a day it's not really a thing.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Moving on from the between cancer and alcohol, Nicole has
been looking into our relationship with alcohol in a different light,
specifically what happens when we stop consuming it, which feels
timely for drive July, So it actually happens if you
take a break from booze. Here's what you can expect
day by day, week by week, and beyond. But to preface,
(08:29):
Nicole's research is based on moderate to light drinkers. Heavy
drinkers probably won't see the same changes, and in their
first week they may even feel a bit worse for
wear as their body withdrawals. According to Nicole's research, your
body will start to bounce back after just one day
off the grog.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The way alcohol works, it makes you feel really great
for an hour or two, but it takes actually twenty
four hours for a drink to leave your body completely,
and so after about twenty four hours, people start to
feel really immediate effects, like they feel it much more
hydrated because alcohol is really dehydrating, and your liver will
(09:09):
start to regulate blood sugar better and your blood sugar
level will normalize.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
By the end of the week, you might notice your
sleep is getting better. Even though alcohol can make you
feel sleepy at first, it actually disrupts your sleep cycle.
So after a week off you may feel more energetic
in the mornings. But what about the other changes.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
The liver is where alcohol is processed mostly, and if
your regular long term drinker, even a moderate drinker, there'll
be a little bit of liver damage. But your liver
will be improved after just a week, so digestion will
be much better, and you may feel the effects of
not having indigestion and that kind of thing as well.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
After a month, changes kick into overdrive. Nicole's research found
in amongst better sleep and mood, energy levels also.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Pick up within the first month. If you have kind
of mild symptoms of anxiety or depression, that should start
right itself again. You'll start to feel much better, much
easier to manage your mood and move up years up
and down. Even like really heavy drinkers report that I
have better mood after a month or two again, as
your sleep start to improve even more. You probably feel
(10:22):
the better in yourself and better well being, and you
will probably if you can make the month, you will
start to see weight loss as long as you haven't
replaced the alcohol with other calories. There's a lot of
calories intelligials in alcohol itself, but it also triggers off
our hunger reward systems. Most people tend to eat less
(10:44):
healthily when they're drinking, so you will see a probably
a loss of weight. Lots of that body fat can
all be looking a lot better because of dehydration reversing. Again,
that stomach function is going to be keeps better if
you experience floating or indigestion, your heartburn, which a lot
of people have and they don't associate it with alcohol,
(11:05):
but when they stop drinking, they notice those things to
go away.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Fast. Forwarding to a year or more, long term benefits
really add up risks of chronic health issues like heart
disease and type two diabetes reduce, amongst other things.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Even after six months, is you're a vally moderate drinker,
any liver damage will be almost fully reversed, and after
a year you're really reducing your risk of a whole
range of chronic diseases as cancer, liver disease, heart disease, stroke,
all of those kinds of things, because your body is
really starting to get back into high functioning by them.
(11:43):
And one of the things a lot of heavy drinkers
notice is that their blood pressure is elevated. Sometimes it's
not in the high blood pressure range, but it's elevated
for their age. And when they cut back on alcohol
at all, starts to even itself out as well, and
that means also a whole range of internal organs function better,
(12:05):
like kidneys and even your eyes. Eye problems start to
start to right themselves as well.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So is it worth it? Nicole says any reduction in
alcohol brings immediate and lasting health benefits, but there are
some things you do need to consider first.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
So if you're a daily drinker, you probably don't feel
worse then before you feel better. That withdrawal might be
just mirred. Withdrawal you feel a little bit out of
thoughts than really craving alcohols that should be over in
about seven to ten days. Many people fund it quite
difficult to take a long period of alcohol, and I
think if you do find it difficult, that's probably a
(12:45):
good sign that you should reduce to drinking. But for
most people, any break from alcohol and the longer you
go between drinks, they're healthier you'll be. I'm not suggesting
that we should ban alcohol and everyone should be abstinent
from alcohol, but just going into it knowing that when
you're drinking, these health effects are very likely, and when
(13:07):
you stop drinking, they're very like pledg to go away
because they're directly related to alcohol.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And for women specifically, Nicole has this advice from mid
and pery friends.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Alcohol tends to have a much bigger effect. So all
of those negative things that we're talking about, mood, joint
pain and inflammation and all of those kinds of things
can be directly related to alcohol and their common symptoms
that women experiences they go through perimenopause. Unfortunately, the data
(13:41):
shows us that it's the time where people are drinking
more so right now, middle aged women are increasing their
drinking rather than decreasing it. I think if you're going
particularly in that perimenopause menopause period, it would be where
idea just have a look at your drinking and see
whether it is making those symptoms work. I think the
(14:03):
other thing at the other end, young women have been
decreasing their drinking for a very long time over the
last ten fifteen years now, but they're starting to be
a little bit of an increase compared to men in
that age group for women, So.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Whether you're soldiering on with the rest of Dry July
or rethinking your relationship with alcohol, it's worth knowing what
actually changes when you stop and how quickly your body
and brain start to reset. If you're struggling to cut back,
try setting clear goals, tracking your progress and getting support,
whether that's from friends, an app or a professional. Speaking
(14:40):
of if this episode has brought up anything you'd like
to talk about with a professional, you can contact the
National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on one eight hundred
two five zero zero one five. I'll also pop a
link to a previous episode of The Quikie where women
share their experiences of going sober with us. In the
show notes, thanks for taking some time to feed your
(15:01):
mind with us today. The Quiki is produced by me
Taylor Strano and Clare Murphy, with audio production by Lou Hill.
Mamma Mia Studios are styled with furniture from Fenton and Fenton.
Visit Fenton and Fenton Dot com dot au,
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