If quitting smoking is one of your New Year's resolutions, you might want to consider cutting back on your drinking too, a study has found.

The study found that heavy alcohol drinkers who are trying to stop smoking may find that reducing their alcohol intake can also help them quit their daily smoking habit. In addition, heavy drinkers' nicotine metabolite ratio -- a biomarker that indicates how quickly a person's body metabolises nicotine -- reduced as they cut back on their drinking.

Slowing a person's nicotine metabolism rate through reduced drinking could provide an edge when trying to stop smoking, which is known to be a difficult task, said lead researcher Sarah Dermody, Assistant Professor at the Oregon State University in the US. "It takes a lot of determination to quit smoking, often several attempts," Dermody said. 

For the study, the researchers considered a small group of daily smokers to study the nicotine metabolite ratio, the medical term for severe problem drinking. The findings, published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, showed that as the men in the study group reduced their drinking -- from an average of 29 drinks per week to seven -- their nicotine metabolite rate also dropped. The women, however, did not see reductions in their nicotine metabolite ratio.