Data are reported from a baseline night; the first and ninth alcoholnights and a recovery night. Feige et al. (2006)studied five young men and five young women over three nights of drinking. Alcohol acts as a sedative, inducing sleep and in some promoting a tranquilizing effect. It interacts with several neurotransmitter systems which play an important part in the regulation of sleep. Alcohol just before sleep can therefore lead to decreased sleep onset latency – that is, it can make you fall asleep faster.

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Depending on how much alcohol is consumed, however, what seems like falling asleep may be something closer to passing out. And we quickly build a tolerance for the sedative effects of alcohol, which means you may need to drink more to have alcohol and sleep the same initial sleep-inducing effects. During a later phase of the same study (Roehrs et al. 1999), the participants also had an opportunity to choose between beverages presented in color-coded cups that contained various alcohol concentrations or a placebo. The participants had previously experienced all of those beverages (i.e., they had taken them one at a time before bedtime on different nights) and were asked to choose the beverage that would best help them sleep. With this approach, the insomniacs generally chose an alcohol-containing beverage, whereas the healthy people chose the placebo-containing beverage.

• “Keeping a fixed wake-up time and using your prescribed OSA therapy, even on weekends, and going to bed when you feel sleepy will help ensure you frequently get enough restorative sleep which can help combat the weekend spike in OSA,” he added.
• Data are reported from a baseline night; the first and ninth alcoholnights and a recovery night.
• Each sleep stage plays an essential function, but deep sleep and REM sleep are considered the most important stages for physical and mental restoration.
• Long-established research shows the body metabolizes alcohol differently at different times of day.

Night Sweats

Sleep is also controlled by nerve centers in the brain, containing nerve stems that produce serotonin (a chemical linked to the onset of sleep) and also norepinephrine (which regulates slow-wave sleep). Alcohol consumption changes the function of these chemical messengers resulting in changes to your sleep patterns. Along with prescription medications and folk remedies, many have incorporated a glass or two of alcohol into their nightly routine to try to catch a few more hours of shuteye. Whatever you want to call it, it’s hard to deny the exhausting epidemic affecting millions of people all over the world. People, as a whole, are getting less rest and are desperately turning to pills or other aids as a result. Studies have found conflicting information about how alcohol affects REM sleep.

• This attention to sleep disorders also has sensitized investigators and clinicians to the impact that disrupted and shortened sleep has on daytime alertness.
• Third, the same alcohol dose may have different effects in healthy people and insomniacs.
• REM (rapid eye movement) is the part of your sleep cycle that is essential for memory consolidation, emotional processing and creativity.
• And sometimes, they say they’re drinking to cope with a challenging symptom like insomnia.
• These studies found that particularly at higher alcohol doses, increased wake periods or light stage 1 sleep periods occurred during the second half of the sleep period (Williams et al. 1983; Roehrs et al. 1991).

It increases wakefulness during the night

While that may make it sound like alcohol is a good sleep aid, that is only half of the story. That’s because alcohol has different impacts on falling asleep and staying asleep, bringing us to our next point. The simplest way to keep alcohol from interfering with your sleep is to just not drink. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that no amount of alcohol is safe to consume. So, even if you nod off quickly after drinking and manage to sleep for eight hours (or more), losing REM sleep means you won’t wake up feeling fully recharged.

The following paragraphs describe how these measurements are used to distinguish different sleep states and sleep stages. Becky is a Sleep Staff Writer at Tom’s Guide covering all things sleep-related including product reviews, research studies, news and explainers. She works on specialist bedding content and is responsible for buyer’s guides like the best pillows for all sleepers and best mattress protectors focusing on popular brands such as Tempur-Pedic, Avocado, Coop Home Goods and more. Becky is a PPA accredited journalist who is keen to explore the intricacies of sleep, its effects on skincare, mental wellbeing and work performance. While not thinking of sleep, she can be seen reading in cosy bookshops or learning about global food culture.

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Nighttime sleep studies that demonstrated alcohol’s sedative effects (i.e., reduced sleep latencies) in healthy people typically used alcohol doses that resulted in BrACs above 0.05 percent (Williams and Salamy 1972). Furthermore, the alcohol generally was administered 30 to 60 minutes before sleep, thus allowing for alcohol concentrations to peak before bedtime. In other studies that also were conducted during the descending BAC phase, alcohol reduced sleep latency, as measured by a standard MSLT, and impaired both attention and reaction-time performance in a dose-dependent manner. These impairing effects persisted for at least 2 hours after the alcohol had been completely metabolized as evidenced by BrACs of 0 (Roehrs and Roth 1998). As mentioned earlier, the identification and recognition of sleep disorders have sensitized clinical researchers to the importance of sleep quantity and continuity for optimal daytime alertness and performance.

Topographicdifferences in EEG spectral power during sleep evaluated in alcoholics compared withcontrols revealed that slow frequency activity was maximal over frontal scalp regions inboth alcoholics and control subjects (Colrain, Turlington,and Baker 2009b). Differences in slow frequency between alcoholics andcontrols were also more marked over the frontal scalp with alcoholics showing lower deltaEEG power (Figure 3). This topographic pattern isconsistent with the known frontal susceptibility to alcoholism-related alterations inbrain structure and function (Zahr et al. 2013;Oscar-Berman et al. 2013). Alcohol initially acts as a sedative, increasing the proportion of deep sleep at the beginning of the night.

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Stanford Medicine-led research also tells us that when it comes to mental health, it’s not just sleep quantity but also timing that matters. Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences in sleep medicine, led a recent study of nearly 75,000 people in the U.K. Showing that going to bed early and waking early is better for a person’s mental health, even if they’re a night owl. While heatwaves exacerbate sleep struggles, alcohol’s role is often underestimated. “While hot weather can make your bedroom feel like an oven, alcohol is often the real culprit behind waking up restless at 3am,” Alshamari concludes.

Brain Chemistry Shifts

This finding does not imply, however, that alcohol should be considered a potential sleep therapy in elderly people, because tolerance to the SWS enhancement develops rapidly (Prinz et al. 1980). Some studies also found an alcohol-related increase in the amount of SWS (i.e., stages 3 and 4 NREM sleep) in the first half of the sleep period (Williams and Salamy 1972). In addition to the alcohol dose consumed, the basal (i.e., normal) level of SWS in the study population appeared to be the most likely factor determining whether SWS was increased.

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In a study interviewing abstinent alcohol dependent people, a substantial proportion described having been aware that alcohol disturbed their sleep, but that they needed to drink to get to sleep. So alcohol use may create sleep disruption, but the sleep disturbance in turn, elicits greater alcohol use. In the short term, these alterations to our sleep pattern can lead to a restless second half of the night. In the long term, frequent disruptions to our natural sleep cycle may alter the homeostatic drive in a more permanent way. People who abuse alcohol long-term don’t seem to display the deep recovery sleep that most people show after sleep deprivation, suggesting that the homeostatic drive is no longer functioning as it should. After a few drinks, these increased adenosine levels send us into a deep sleep.