January feels like the perfect month to give up alcohol – and not only because ‘Dry January’ has become such a familiar ritual.
As winter rumbles on, many of us instinctively want to spend less time drinking cold pints and cocktails and more time sipping spiced lattes and mugs of tea.
But it’s also the season of long nights in the pub – and our bank balances start to hurt. Sustained drinking like this, as we all know, can also be damaging to our relationships and our health.
Yet, when it comes to health, the picture is more complex than it seems. It’s not just the liver, brain and heart that might function better in an alcohol-free life.
In fact, your entire body might benefit. That’s because alcohol speeds up how quickly you age, sending you hurtling towards decline.
Going sober could stop that process in its tracks, protecting you from cognitive decline, reducing your risk of multiple diseases, and even extending your life.
It's what's on the inside that counts
Quitting booze won’t slow down time or make you age backwards, like something out of Doctor Who.
That’s because we’re not talking about chronological time here, but biological time. In other words: it’s less about the number of trips you’ve taken around the Sun, and more about the wear and tear your body experiences with every year you’re alive.
The idea is that life – with all its stresses, parties, workouts, sodas, chips, TV, holidays and cake – takes a toll on the body. Our habits make their mark on us, and thus we age.
But while some people stay youthful and healthy for many years, others travel quickly down a path of wrinkly skin, cognitive decline, and susceptibility to age-related diseases. That’s biological ageing for you.
Dr Anya Topiwala, a senior clinical researcher at the University of Oxford’s department of psychiatry, explains: “You could be 35 in terms of birthdays, but if you’ve lived a really healthy life, you could have a younger biological age.
“And conversely, if you’ve smoked a lot and eaten rubbish, you could have a biological age of 40.”
Scientists can use all sorts of tools to estimate our biological age – and they’ve found that people who drink more alcohol seem older than their same-age peers.
Hold on by your telomeres
One of the ways scientists can measure biological age – and investigate its relationship with alcohol – is via something called telomeres.
“Telomeres are the ends of your chromosomes,” explains Topiwala. “Our DNA is organised into chromosomes, and when our cells divide, these chromosomes are copied. But the copying is incomplete at the ends of the telomeres.
“So, over time, these telomeres get progressively shorter. When they reach a critical shortening, the cell dies.”
That means scientists can measure the length of someone’s telomeres to work out how many times their cells have divided and thereby estimate how old they might be – biologically speaking.
Back in 2022, Topiwala and her team at the University of Oxford researched the link between alcohol and telomere length in more than 245,000 UK adults.
“We found that the more people drank, the shorter their telomeres,” says Topiwala. “The drinkers had accelerated their biological ageing.”
On average, participants who reported drinking about 29 units of alcohol per week (that’s about 10 glasses of wine) seemed up to two years older than those who said they drank less than six units per week (two glasses of wine).
The scientists aren’t sure exactly why alcohol affects our telomeres, but Topiwala says that we already know that alcohol damages DNA, by deleting, breaking and rearranging sections, so it’s likely to be a similar mechanism.
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Ticking clock
Telomeres aren’t the only way scientists can measure biological age. They can also use something called epigenetic clocks.
Imagine that your DNA is a recipe book. A brand-new recipe book is always pristine – but if you’re a keen cook, you might choose to make notes in the margins of the recipes you’ve made, or add sticky labels and bookmarks, to make your life easier the next time you need to rustle up dinner.
That’s a bit like what happens to your DNA over time. Your body adds tiny chemical tags called methyl groups to alter which genes your cells use – known as methylation.
As we age, the pattern of these tags gradually changes, in a process called epigenetic drift.
So, we might see a recipe book covered in scribbles and poking-out notes and assume it has been well used. Similarly, scientists can take a look at these methylation patterns to estimate how old someone is, based on which genes have been switched on or off.
There are different methods scientists can use to interpret those patterns. These are called epigenetic clocks, the most common of which are PhenoAge and GrimAge.
PhenoAge, short for Phenotypic Age, uses your methylation patterns to predict your biological age. GrimAge, meanwhile, predicts how soon you’re likely to die – hence the name.
Using these tools, scientists have been able to investigate how alcohol ages us. For instance, a study from 2021 analysed DNA methylation data from 28,000 participants in the UK using PhenoAge and GrimAge.
They found that the more alcohol a participant drank, the more likely they were to have a biological age that was higher than their real age.
Meanwhile, a similar study in 2023 found that US adults aged 44 or older who had drunk more alcohol in their lifetimes showed more signs of accelerated ageing than younger adults or those who had drunk less.
In fact, for each alcoholic drink that a middle-aged or older participant drank per day, an additional seven to nine months were added to their biological age, on average.
This ageing effect was stronger if participants drank spirits, rather than beer or wine.
Alcohol and your brain
Scientists don’t always need fancy epigenetic clocks to see how alcohol speeds up the ageing process. That’s particularly true for the brain, with studies showing that drinking more alcohol is linked to a higher risk of age-related cognitive diseases.
As we get older, many of us experience cognitive decline: that slowing of the brain that can lead to neurodegenerative diseases like dementia.
And in Topiwala’s most recent study, on more than half a million adults in the US and UK, her team found that those who reported drinking more alcohol over the course of several years had a higher risk of developing dementia.
This follows on from research that the same group published in 2017, which found a link between alcohol consumption and dementia risk among 550 adults. In this study, none of the participants drank more than moderate amounts of booze.
Prof David Nutt – director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit at Imperial College London, who was not involved in Topiwala’s research – describes this 2017 study as “the best evidence of accelerated ageing” related to alcohol that scientists have.
“It shows that there’s a linear relationship in alcohol consumption and brain shrinkage over the course of about 40 years,” he says. “These people are not alcoholics. They’re functioning and working as civil servants. But alcohol has this negative effect.”
Nutt explains that, in his own research, he has compared the brains of people with different drug addictions, including alcohol, heroin, cocaine and cannabis.
“Alcohol is the drug most closely linked to brain shrinkage,” he says. “People at the extreme ends of alcoholism are the only ones that have visually apparent brain damage.”
Indeed, Nutt adds that brain scans of people with severe alcohol use disorders look identical to those of people with Alzheimer’s, “because their brains are dying.”
There are a variety of reasons for this. Nutt explains that alcohol is toxic, so can directly kill cells as well as damage the DNA inside them – in turn, shortening telomeres and increasing the risk of cancer.
Alcohol is also inflammatory, which means it causes extra wear and tear in the body. Higher levels of inflammation in the brain are believed to be a major risk factor for dementia.
Not only that, but the body turns alcohol into a chemical byproduct called acetaldehyde, which, Nutt says, “pickles your brain – and also pickles your liver and your heart.”
Acetaldehyde is one carbon atom away from formaldehyde, which is a chemical used to preserve dead bodies.
“So, acetaldehyde is preserving you before you’re dead,” says Nutt, adding, “which is not something you want,” because the chemical sticks proteins together in the brain. Good if you’re an Egyptian mummy, but if you still want to use those proteins for a while longer, it’ll make things slower.
“Mummies have been around for a few thousand years, but they’re not very reactive,” he says.
Finally, drinking alcohol can lead to high blood pressure, otherwise known as hypertension, which itself increases the risk of heart attacks, heart disease and vascular dementia.
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Knock-on effects
Alcohol, then, can speed up the biological age of our bodies and accelerate the age-related decline of our brains – but that’s not all.
It can also influence other factors that can, themselves, affect our biological age and how long we live.
Dr Jeevan Fernando, medical doctor and associate at charity Alcohol Change UK, says: “Cutting down on alcohol improves our sleep quality, energy levels, mental acuity and mood,” which can help “provide strong foundations on which we can build healthy habits, such as exercise and nutrition, that improve our longevity.”
All of these factors are important to our lifespans – and this is key to why alcohol intake is directly linked to life expectancy. In 2024, a study of 2.4 million European adults found that those who drank more alcohol lived shorter lives – even after the scientists adjusted their analysis for other factors, such as smoking.
No amount of alcohol is safe
So, how much alcohol can we safely drink without risking these grim side effects? The short answer is none. At least, that’s what Topiwala thinks.
“It’s very hard to prove, but I’m coming to the conclusion that there’s no safe level of alcohol,” she says. “That means it’s a question of how much risk you are prepared to tolerate for the enjoyment that you get from drinking. If you want zero risk from alcohol, then don’t drink.”
Nutt agrees, adding: “The less you drink, the longer you live.” But, he says, the more alcohol you drink, the even greater it harms you – so, just having a little bit is “relatively safe.”
Quantitatively, that means drinking within recommended weekly amounts. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) advises drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol per week. That’s equivalent to six pints of beer or eight glasses of wine.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend drinking no more than two alcoholic beverages per day if you’re a man, and no more than one per day if you’re a woman.
Nutt has further advice. He says that, if you’re drinking the full 14 units of alcohol per week, it’s best to spread it out over at least three days – and ensure you have a day or two per week without any alcohol whatsoever.
“Bingeing is bad for the brain,” Nutt explains, “and abstinence is good for the liver to recover.”
If you’re drinking wine with a partner or friend over a meal, he recommends sticking to one bottle. If you open a second, you’re likely to drink too much. Nutt suggests never to drink so much that you end up with a hangover.
And, he adds: “Never drink a drink that doesn’t give you value. That means: never drink alone.”
Booze damages the brain, but socialising with friends is protective, so Nutt recommends going out with friends, but sticking to non-alcoholic beverages, to get the maximum benefits.
That way, you’ll stay young and full of life for as long as you can, without alcohol dragging you down.
It’s true: Dry January won’t literally turn back time, but it might help slow your biological clock, improve your chances of healthy longevity, and postpone your date with the Grim Reaper – all with a warming cuppa in hand.
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