HACKENSACK MERIDIAN HEALTH – When you drink alcohol, it acts as a depressant for your central nervous system, meaning that it can cause brain activity to slow down.
Alcohol can behave like a sedative, increasing relaxed and tired feelings.This is why alcohol helps you fall asleep. However, during the night, as the amount of alcohol in your blood drops, you are likely to wake up.
As a result, when consumed in excess, alcohol can lead to shorter sleep duration and a poorer quality of sleep. Those with alcohol use disorders can experience insomnia due to this. Alcohol can also worsen your symptoms if you have sleep apnea.
How does alcohol affect my sleep?
Neurologist and sleep medicine expert, Georges Ghacibeh, M.D. says:
“Every person reacts differently to alcohol. Your sleep can largely be affected by the amount of alcohol you drink, how frequently you are drinking, your age and the composition of your body.
“When you drink alcohol, it is absorbed into your bloodstream and then metabolized by the enzymes in your liver. This process can be slow, leaving alcohol circulating in your body.”
There are multiple aspects of sleep that alcohol can have an impact on:
- Quality: quality of sleep can differ due to how much you are drinking, as well as other factors such as your age, gender, body, etc.
- Drinking alcohol reduces the amount of time in the restorative rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is crucial for healing, retaining memory and feeling rested
- Small serving of alcohol: under two drinks for men and under one for women can decrease sleep quality by 9.3%
- Moderate serving of alcohol: about two drinks for men and one for women can decrease sleep quality by 24%
- Large serving of alcohol: more than two drinks for men and more than one for women can decrease sleep quality by 39.2%
