Alcohol and Sleep: What You Need to Know

Adrienne Santos-Longhurst is a freelance writer and author who has written extensively on all things health and lifestyle for more than a decade. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1,878 people were killed in how long does it take to detox from alcohol timeline and more 2018 in alcohol-related crashes involving drivers with BACs of .01 to .07 g/dL. Certain medical conditions, especially those that affect kidney or liver function, can affect how quickly alcohol is metabolized and how it affects you.

Here’s Why You Get a Hangover When You Go to Bed Wasted, According to Science

1. Children, especially kids under 5, are most likely to experience confusional arousals as compared to adults.
2. The movement between NREM and REM sleep involves a complex interaction betweenREM-on and REM-off neuronal groups in the brainstem.
3. The episodes were overwhelmingly correlated to sleep disorders, which appeared to be present in 70% of the subjects studied.

From a medical perspective, sleep drunkenness is a key characteristic in several health conditions. Your circadian rhythm governs every biological process, including your sleep-wake cycle. When your sleep schedule conflicts with your internal clock, you become circadianally misaligned. As you slumber, your brain gradually purges adenosine to rebalance the sleep homeostat. Because adenosine takes a while to dissipate, traces of it still linger in your system when your alarm clock rings. Consequently, you wake up feeling groggy and have the urge to lounge in bed.

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Individuals who have this disorder[2] are most likely to display symptoms when they’ve been woken up from a deep state of rest, either during the night or while napping. Sleep and circadian rhythm disruption from alcohol also contribute to next-day tiredness, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. Even if it doesn’t present as a full-fledged hangover, alcohol-related sleep loss negatively affects mood and performance. Circadian rhythms regulate nearly all of the body’s processes, from metabolism and immunity to energy, sleep, and sexual drive, cognitive functions, and mood. Your doctor will evaluate your symptoms and your overall health history to determine if any testing is needed. Read on to learn more about sleep drunkenness and how to deal with it.

You wake up more often after a few drinks

For many people who drink moderately, falling asleep more quickly may seem like an advantage of a nightly glass of wine. But alcohol goes on to affect the entire night of sleep to come. The liver acts as a filtering system for the body, helping metabolize food and chemicals (including alcohol itself), and pulling toxins from the bloodstream.

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How alcohol affects you, how drunk you get, and how long it lasts depends on several factors. Thakkar suggests drinking slowly and responsibly, and to try not to drink heavily in the late evening. Thakkar’s study shows that alcohol inhibits the cellular uptake of adenosine, which leaves more adenosine floating around outside your cells. We get sleepy really fast, and our body is thrown off course a bit. If we start getting sleepy on hyper speed, our bodies also want us to feel awake super speedily to even things out.

Caffeine and a good night’s rest could help treat chronic pain (at least in mice)

(These may be micro-awakenings that the sleeper doesn’t even remember—but they still interrupt the flow, and quality, of sleep.) During the second half of the night, sleep architecture shifts again away from normal, with less time spent in slow wave sleep. The rebound effect may include more time in REM—a lighter sleep stage from which it is easy to be awakened. In the first half of the night, when drinking age by country 2024 the body is metabolizing alcohol, studies show people spend more time in deep, slow-wave sleep and less time in REM sleep. It may sound like a good idea to spend more time in deep sleep. Sleep architecture is biologically driven and finely calibrated to meet the body’s needs during nightly rest—changes to the natural, typical structure of sleep aren’t generally good for health or well being.

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Alcohol interferes with the brain’s ability to receive chemical messages involved in breathing, which decreases the body’s respiratory drive and increases the likelihood of pauses in breathing. Both terms refer to parasomnia, which refers to any unusual or unwanted events that disrupt one’s sleep. Common types of parasomnias include sleepwalking, teeth grinding, and even sleep-eating. The most effective time of day for the body to metabolize alcohol, according to research?

Waking up feeling groggy (aka sleep inertia) is part and parcel of life, no matter how much ads for mattresses and sleep supplements wish to dupe us into thinking it’s the opposite! For the record, the human body isn’t designed to wake up with all systems ready to go. As alcohol enhances the GABA’s function, it causes a slowing of brain activity, which can make a person feel sleepy and tired.

The substance causes sleepiness by increasing the functioning of the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurotransmitter. The GABA’s main function is to slow down body and brain activity. Even though a glass or two may help you initially drift off faster, it probably won’t benefit your sleep quality in the long run.

Use these tips to make sure your favorite cocktail never keeps you up at night. Research has found that people’s ability to remember, pay attention, and carry out cognitive functions declines with a lack of sleep. Alcohol consumption can lead to worsened snoring and induce sleep apnea, which prevents oxygen from reaching the body during sleep. Researchers believe the link between insomnia and alcohol consumption to be bidirectional, meaning that each contributes to the other. Research from 2018 corroborates this, suggesting that people experience a lower duration and quality of REM after consuming alcohol. An older study concluded that alcohol might reduce sleep in the first half of sleep and increase disruption in the second half.

You should be aware of how alcohol affects you and your sleep schedules. “Keep a sleep log to measure duration and quality and add to that log drink quantity and times to see if you notice alcohol-associated liver disease patterns related to sleep quality,” Mendelson advises. On the surface, alcohol’s sedative effects can feel like they would ease the symptoms of insomnia and help you fall asleep.

There is evidence of allostericmodification of GABA receptors (Kang, Spigelman, and Olsen1998; Follesa et al. 2006) and reducedGABAA receptor function (Valenzuela andHarris 1997; Mihic and Harris 1995) inrodent models of alcohol dependence. Thus down regulation of brainstem GABAergic systemsfollowing development of alcohol dependence would lead to diminished activity in REM-offsystems (see Figure 6) leading to an increasedpropensity for REM. This hypothesis has not been directly tested, and it should be notedthat other factors may play a role in the increased REM seen in long-term abstinentalcoholics. For example, administration of the tumor necrosis factor α(TNF-α) antagonist etanercept led to normalization of REM sleep in 18 abstinentalcoholics (Irwin et al. 2009). Getting a good night’s sleep can sometimes be a challenge when you’ve had one too many.

If you’re feeling the effects of alcohol, drink water or sports drinks to prevent dehydration. Certain OTC medications and bland foods can help with a headache or an upset stomach. The short-term detriments of poor sleep on the brain and cognition can be the result of pulling an occasional all-nighter, while those with chronic sleep problems may see a continuous negative effect on day-to-day tasks.