Sleep and Alcohol

For our last installment of our sleep series, I wanted to touch briefly on sleep and alcohol. Alcohol is the one of the most common sleep aids and many individuals have turned its evening consumption into something of a ritual. Settling down for the evening with a nightcap or a glass of wine with a TV show or book has become commonplace. Many swear that it helps them get more sound and better sleep. 

The first important point with alcohol and sleep pertains to the drug class that alcohol falls under. By nature it is a sedative. It slowly inhibits your brain and makes it easier to let go of consciousness. This is different from natural sleep. When we look at the brain wave state of the brain on alcohol, it looks very similar to light anesthesia, not sleep. 

So, now that we know that alcohol doesn’t produce natural sleep, the next question is does it have any effects on sleep. Alcohol has two distinct effects on sleep. The first is it creates sleep fragmentation. This means that it cuts up sleep into smaller portions and creates multiple awakenings during the night. These awakenings often go unrecognized by the individual, however they disturb how restorative the sleep is. This leads the individual to waking up in the morning feeling tired but not correlating it to the alcohol the night before. Alcohol will also suppress REM sleep, particularly during the first half to two thirds of the night. This happens because when the alcohol is metabolized in the body it produces aldehydes and ketones. Aldehydes block the generation of REM sleep in the brain. In the brain, REM sleep is responsible for memory integration and association. This has been shown to even alter our ability to learn information when drinking 3 days after learning something, with a 40% reduction in our retention. 

So in practical advice what should an individual do. A drink earlier in the day would always be better than a drink later so the alcohol can clear your system before you sleep. If that is not possible, understand that any information you are trying to learn will be disrupted by alcohol, even three days later. How many days after learning is it safe to drink? We are not sure. In a more practical sense, outside of morning drinking, abstinence from alcohol around times you are trying to learn information or be analytical at work. Just understand what is going to happen when you consume it.