The Effects of Alcohol on Quality of Sleep

This post was written by Kenon Thompson on March 21, 2022

This article explores how alcohol affects your quality of sleep. It also covers what symptoms you might have if you don’t wait long enough between having your last drink and going to bed. Ultimately it can make some people more vulnerable to sleep apnea or exacerbate the symptoms for those who already have it. If you fancy a glass of wine with dinner or a nightcap before bed, you might want to cap the Chiante and put the Negroni down — research shows that even low alcohol intake can stymie your sleep. CBTi reduces symptoms of insomnia among young adults who are actively drinking — even in the absence of direct alcohol intervention. Like all things alcohol-related, it’s about moderation and knowing your limits.

People with insomnia have an increased risk of developing alcohol use disorder, potentially because many individuals turn to alcohol as a sleep aid. Some people think that a “hair of the dog,” an alcoholic beverage consumed the morning after a night of heavy drinking, can help cure a hangover. Drinking can cause inflammation, gastrointestinal irritation, disrupted sleep and low blood sugar. It also exposes you to acetaldehyde, a toxic byproduct produced when your body metabolizes alcohol, that can damage your cells and tissues. Another way to improve your brain care score is to manage chronic conditions, like high blood pressure and diabetes.

How to achieve better sleep and sleep quality without alcohol

If you drink alcohol at night and have trouble falling or staying asleep, you might wonder how long you should wait between your last drink and going to bed so your sleep isn’t impacted. Below, we’ll take a closer look at how alcohol affects the different stages of sleep, as well as how the quantity and timing of alcohol can influence sleep quality. With extended use of alcohol over time, there can be long-term concerns, too. Many who abuse alcohol often do it well into the night and oversleep into the next day. In time this may lead to switching up day and night sleeping patterns. Then, as withdrawal from the drug or alcohol occurs there’s a big sleep-wake reversal which then needs to be addressed.

“If we were able to eliminate high blood pressure,” which is just one component of the score, “we could reduce dementia by orders of magnitude,” Sheth says. He says it’s also important to recognize the challenges people may face in changing their behaviors. When it comes to eating well, not everyone can afford to buy lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. When you drink alcohol, it’s absorbed through the stomach and small intestine and moves into your bloodstream.

To combat hangxiety, Harrison suggests doing activities to bring down your adrenaline levels, like mindfulness and meditation, and bring up your dopamine — like spending time with friends and getting lots of sunshine. According to research, dark liquors like bourbon and brandy contain higher levels of congeners, or the chemicals produced during the fermentation process that give an alcohol its distinctive taste, smell and color. Generally speaking, the more congeners an alcohol has, the worse the hangover is likely to be. They can last 24 hours or longer depending on how much you drank, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Unfortunately, no, says Dr. Ryan Marino, a medical Alcohol and Dopamine Does Alcohol Release Dopamine toxicologist and an emergency physician at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.

What you can do if your sleep is impacted

Research indicates that a moderate dose of alcohol up to an hour before bedtime can reduce melatonin production by nearly 20 percent. Alcohol has a direct effect on circadian rhythms, diminishing the ability of the master biological clock to respond to the light cues that keep it in sync. Those effects of alcohol on the biological clock appear to persist even without additional drinking, according to research.

Myth: All hangovers are the same.

That’s because alcohol interferes with the ability to stay asleep and to get high-quality, deep sleep. The effects both can happen right away and develop over the long-term. “If you experience insomnia, mood imbalances and other brain symptoms, it may be best to cut back alcohol intake overall,” Dr. Scheller adds. “Many people find that while it initially seems difficult to break the habit of using alcohol to induce sleep, they soon adjust and experience better sleep and energy overall,” she continues. REM sleep behavior disorder, also known as rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a condition in which individuals experience realistic, often frightening dreams during the REM sleep stage. This may result in the person verbally or physically acting out their dreams, which may cause abnormal behaviors such as kicking, flailing, jumping or yelling during sleep.

Alcohol can trigger parasomnias, involuntary sleep behaviors that contribute to poor sleep quality, such as sleep talking and sleepwalking. By interfering with your body’s normal circadian rhythm and sleep cycles, alcohol increases the likelihood of disruptive sleep behaviors that pose a safety risk. Alcohol is highly effective at suppressing melatonin, a key facilitator of sleep and regulator of sleep-wake cycles.

1. Information provided on Forbes Health is for educational purposes only.
2. In a 2011 study published in the journal Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, men and women consumed the same amount of alcohol before going to bed.
3. If you’re struggling to get enough quality rest, talk to a health care professional about ways to improve your sleep.
4. Yale’s Kevin Sheth says the brain score research has had an impact on his own habits.

But this can create a negative pattern that leads to more serious, long-term effects of alcohol on sleep. It’s a sedative, so it can send you into a deep sleep quickly—but that’s not what’s supposed to happen. In other words, it throws off the first two stages of light sleep, and it can be difficult for your body to readjust during the remainder of the night. Sleep apnea is a common disorder that causes breathing to repeatedly stop and restart during sleep, affecting the amount of oxygen your body gets. Individuals with sleep apnea often snore, gasp for air while asleep and wake frequently throughout the night. You may wake feeling tired, groggy and not well rested—even if you seemingly slept the entire night.

However, while alcohol may hasten the sandman, it can negatively impact sleep quality. For example, people who’ve had alcohol may experience more frequent periods of lighter sleep or being awake, especially during the second half of the night. So after a few drinks, you’re likely to have increased wakefulness and more light sleep.

While alcohol may initially make you feel drowsy, it can interfere with your sleep cycle, cause frequent night awakenings, and lead to poor sleep quality. Chronic or heavy alcohol consumption can worsen these effects and contribute to long-term health problems. Alcohol disrupts the natural cycle of sleep stages, which typically alternates between non-REM and REM sleep every 80 to 100 minutes, between four and six times a night. After a night of drinking, you may enter a deeper sleep than usual as soon as you fall asleep and spend less time in REM sleep. As the night wears on, you experience less deep sleep and more light sleep, leading to sleep disturbances and poor-quality sleep.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2022 at 6:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.