Drinking too much takes a toll on your body, but alcohol detox supplements can help you restore and deal with cravings. Do it for too long, and you can struggle to recover. The issue lies in how alcohol affects the body. How can you use supplements to stop drinking? Alcohol detox supplements come in different forms to solve a variety of withdrawal symptoms.
Is there a supplement to stop drinking?
Supplements can help in three ways with alcohol detox:
- Psychological withdrawal – apple cider vinegar, bacopa monnieri and valerian root can help with low mood, anxiety and sleep.
- Nutritional deficiencies – we can use vitamins B and C to rebuild our natural balance.
- Fatigue and lethargy – use MCT Oil and Magnesium to improve metabolism and process energy most efficiently.
GABA Levels and Alcohol Cravings
Your system gets accustomed to having alcohol in it all the time. So, when you decide to quit, you can experience mild to severe withdrawal symptoms.
GABA receptors in your brain, the parts that make you feel happy, calm and relaxed when drinking, are fooled by alcohol.
They believe you are getting too many feel-good chemicals, and the brain doesn’t need to produce so much GABA.
Low GABA levels are the core reason for hangover anxiety and alcoholic depression. The feelings of unhappiness and stress are common reasons for craving alcohol and the temporary emotional relief it provides.
Natural Alcohol Detox Supplements
Supplements can affect both your physical and mental health, as anyone who has gone without Vitamin D in winter will attest. Below are listed the most important supplements for alcohol detox for the body and mind.
Natural Antidepressants
Mental and physical health are closely related, but your brain is in control when it comes to cravings.
The brain tells you whether you should pick up a drink or not. It does this because it longs for the calming and rewarding effects alcohol provides.
Sadly, this is a temporary state, and alcohol worsens low mood. To boost your mood and reduce anxiety without taking medication, you can try these alcohol detox supplements.
Supplements are best alongside talking therapy, such as CBT or hypnotherapy. This can help you deal with longer-term issues that lead you to drink alcohol despite negative consequences.
Bacopa
A traditional remedy for treating issues with thinking, memory and mood. It also helps with inflammation, a common side effect of alcohol withdrawal.
One of the main advantages of using this natural supplement for alcohol detox is that it provides an anti-anxiety effect without the side effects of strong prescription medication.
For example, unlike benzodiazepines, a prescription treatment for anxiety and alcohol cravings, bacopa actually enhances memory and cognitive function.
Try Desistal to Stop DrinkingACV Apple Cider Vinegar
Recent studies in 2021 show that taking apple cider vinegar in tablet or capsule form can improve mood. Results were impressive, with up to 34% of test subjects reporting improved mood compared with the control groups.
Milk Thistle
When it comes to the liver, the best of the natural alcohol detox supplements is milk thistle. This won’t help with cravings but rather helps repair the damage done to the liver by drinking too much for a long time.
B Vitamins
As a group, the B vitamins are vital to your body’s functioning. Niacin B3 is one of the most important in recovering from addiction. This is why NAD+ therapy, which is given intravenously or as an injection, is often used by those in alcohol withdrawal. Not only does it improve cravings and symptoms, but it can also help restore your health, which always takes a hit due to substance misuse.
A NAD drip can help restore Niacin levels in your body to relieve some of the worst symptoms of alcohol detox. This treatment can also speed up the length of alcohol detox from weeks to several days.
Vitamin B 1, also known as thiamine, is also essential to metabolism and, therefore, energy levels, sleep and neurological issues. Studies show that between 30 and 80% of those who drink excessively have a thiamine deficiency. The effect is not only physical but psychological, with thiamine deficiency contributing to low mood and irritability.
Call Us About NAD TreatmentMagnesium
This vitamin is often used medicinally to help those with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. It improves several of the symptoms of alcohol detox, including mood swings, fatigue, stomach problems, insomnia, anxiety and headaches. Although it is difficult to become magnesium deficient normally, as it is in many foods, nutritional deficiency from alcoholism is a common cause.
Physical Effects of Natural Alcohol Detox Supplements
Using supplements to reduce alcohol cravings largely has to do with the mind. However, how we feel is also partly due to our physical health. When we feel better about ourselves, coping with a big change like stopping drinking is easier.
Sugar levels from alcohol are significant. Stopping drinking often comes with a craving for sugar as your body adjusts. There are many supplements to help you stabilize blood sugar levels. MCT Oil, magnesium and apple cider vinegar are the best options for this.
Energy levels are also lagging when we detox from alcohol. Some people use caffeine to counteract the effects, which worsens the result. You can use MCT oil to combat the cycle of being overtired but wired on caffeine.
If you want to use supplements to reduce alcohol cravings, those above can give you the boost you need. Desistal contains three main natural alcohol detox supplements in a single capsule.
Vitamin C
Deficiency in vitamin C is most common through malnutrition. It may come as a surprise, especially in countries where food is plentiful, but one common issue in alcohol detox is a lack of nourishment. When you drink too much, you often neglect to eat in favour of alcohol. Whether this is simply because you forget, spend all your money on drinking or are too full of alcohol calories, the result is a lack of vitamins, very commonly vitamin C.
Drinking too much also affects the absorption of many vital nutrients, and as a diuretic, you lose more due to more frequent urination.
Calcium
Calcium is a vitamin that is commonly found in food, but absorption is not as simple as some others. Drinking can prevent your body from absorbing calcium at all. There is the additional problem that vitamin D is needed to absorb calcium, and for diet and lifestyle problems, vitamin D deficiency is common in heavy drinkers.
Vitamin D
Linked to alcohol and general myopathy, vitamin D deficiency can be a significant problem for heavy drinkers. Myopathy causes muscular pain and aches, as well as weakness and fatigue. Vitamin D suffers from the same absorption issue as other vitamins. However, the typical lifestyle of excessive drinkers means staying inside and rising late in the day, which reduces the amount of vitamin D absorbed naturally through sunshine. This problem is made worse in areas where the sun is less plentiful, and SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and bad weather keep people inside and contribute to depression and anxiety.
Vitamins for the Liver
One of the biggest concerns for anyone recovering from alcoholism is the liver. There are some vitamins that can help, but it is important to be careful as you must take them in controlled doses. In addition to the vitamins listed below, there are studies that show bacopa monnieri aids in liver repair and protection.
Vitamin A
Vitamin A is a difficult part of alcohol detox. It can cause several uncomfortable side effects, such as itching, night blindness and infections. You must take vitamin A in moderation, though. Too high a dosage can cause more damage to someone with alcoholic liver problems.
Zinc
Low zinc levels are commonly seen in those with alcoholic liver disease. Using zinc alcohol detox supplements has shown some promise in helping to prevent liver damage from alcohol.
Try Desistal to Stop DrinkingSources
Adaptogenic effect of Bacopa monniera (Brahmi)
Anxiolytic activity of a standardized extract of Bacopa monniera: an experimental study
Zinc deficiency as a mediator of toxic effects of alcohol abuse
Zinc prevention and treatment of alcoholic liver disease