Quitting alcohol might be good for your liver and mental health. Still, a surprising new study from Japan suggests that it could temporarily throw your cholesterol levels in the wrong direction—raising the “bad” kind while lowering the “good.”
“These results suggest that monitoring lipid profiles after changing alcohol habit is essential for optimizing cholesterol management,” the authors wrote.
Alcohol’s Effect on Blood Fats
The decade-long research, published in JAMA Network Open, tracked nearly 58,000 participants and found that the more alcohol that someone drank before quitting, the more significant the cholesterol shifts became.
George Citroner
Author
George Citroner reports on health and medicine, covering topics that include cancer, infectious diseases, and neurodegenerative conditions. He was awarded the Media Orthopaedic Reporting Excellence (MORE) award in 2020 for a story on osteoporosis risk in men.
