Alcohol And Sleep Problems Go Hand In Hand
Drinkers tend to believe that alcohol helps them get to sleep. But as with everything around this devious drug. The reward is short-lived when compared to the price you pay.
Alcohol is all about the carrot and stick motivation. Sure it helps you get to sleep but do you stay asleep and awake well-rested? No way!
The more you drink, and the nearer your drinking is to sleep time, the more it will adversely impact your slumber. Even small quantities of liquor in your body at bedtime alters sleep architecture, the organic flow of sleep via different stages.
It likewise leads to lighter, more restless rest as the night endures, diminished sleep quality, and next-day fatigue.
How does alcohol impact your sleep?
It’s true; drinkers might fall asleep very quickly, and not always when they intend or is appropriate. However, that is not the story for everyone. Alcohol can affect something called sleep onset remission (the amount of time it takes to fall asleep at night).
However, depending on how much liquor is consumed, what seems like going to sleep could be a little something nearer to losing consciousness.
Alcohol sleep is not natural sleep.
We quickly build a tolerance for the sedative impacts of our nightly tipple, which means you may need to drink more to have the same initial somniferous effects.
For many people who consume alcohol moderately, dropping off to sleep faster might seem like a perk of that nightly glass of vino. But alcohol goes on to affect the entire evening of sleep ahead.
If we break your time in bed into two halves, it is in the first that the physical body metabolizes alcohol. Studies reveal that people spend more time in deeper, slow-wave slumber and less time in REM sleep. That might sound like a benefit but hold your horses their buddy. Not so!
Not so fast.
Healthy sleep is biochemically steered and finely adjusted to meet the human body’s needs throughout the nightly rest period. Unnatural adjustments to the organic, typical sleeping structure aren’t generally great for overall health or well being.
Rapid Eye Movement, gets shortchanged in the first part of the evening’s rest under the influence of alcohol. REM is essential for psychological restoration, including recollection and emotional processing.
Throughout the second part of the evening, sleep becomes more actively disrupted. As alcohol is metabolized in your system and any tranquillizing effects dissipate. Your body goes through what researchers call a “rebound effect.”
This includes a motion from deeper to lighter sleep, with more frequent wakings up during the night’s second half. (These could be micro-awakenings that the individual doesn’t even recall, but they nevertheless interrupt rest flow and quality.)
No friend of the Sandman
Sleep formation changes once again from normal during the second part of the night, with less time spent in the slow stream sleep cycle. The rebound impact may feature more time in Rapid Eye Movement, a less heavy and less restful sleep phase from which the slightest noise or disburbance can wake you.
You can prove this impact of alcohol and sleep very quickly — strap on a smartwatch like a Fitbit or an AppleWatch. Have an app monitor your sleep quality, and you will soon see that on evenings when you consume alcohol, your sleep is abysmal.
Individuals who go to bed with liquor in their body may be more likely to awake early in the morning and not be able to drop back off to sleep, one more consequence of the rebound effect.
Other sleep disturbances associated with alcohol consumption include:
- – More regular need to get up and go to the toilet, particularly throughout the 2nd half of the night
- – A boosted risk for parasomnias, including sleepwalking and sleep eating
- – Higher risk for snoring and sleep-disordered respiration. Alcohol can result in excessive meditation of the muscles in the skull, nape, and oesophagus, which may interfere with normal respiration during sleep.
- – Heavy use of alcohol can set off new sleep disorders or exacerbate existing ones, including sleeplessness and obstructive sleep apnea
Alcohol and sleep also add to tiredness, exhaustion, irritation, and difficulty concentrating the next day. Even if it doesn’t present as a full-grown hangover, alcohol-related sleep loss negatively impacts frame of mind and performance.
Alcohol promises a lot and always falls way short. It destroys our life, ruins our sleep and even gives us cancer.
Ready To Sleep Well
Believe it or not, sleep without drinking is possible, but it’s so much better.
First, ask yourself: Are you using insomnia as an excuse to drink?
Your gut reaction may be to push back against that question, but just pause and consider it.
The truth is life is better without alcohol. Not just a little bit, but way beyond your wildest dreams.
If you are 100% ready to kick this attractively packaged poison out of your life for good, click here to reserve your place on our next free quit drinking webinar. This is the only way to get started on our stop drinking program… we need to make sure you are 100% committed first!
