Many people believe that alcohol helps you fall asleep faster because of its sedative effect. While it can actually help you fall asleep, it also disrupts the quality of your sleep, making it more fragmented and less restorative. In the long term, it can even have negative effects on your health and recovery.
Why and how? We tell you everything in this article!
What are the immediate effects of alcohol on sleep?
Let's first look at what happens in the early days after a boozy night out: while it's true that alcohol makes you sleepy, it doesn't help you get a good night's restorative sleep.
Alcohol acts as a sedative on the central nervous system, slowing down brain activity and inducing short-term drowsiness. This explains why some people prone to anxiety are tempted by the fact that their sleep will be facilitated by drinking alcohol: the anxiety can be muted, but not for long.
But not only is this effect misleading, it is short-lived : once it has entered your bloodstream, the real effects of alcohol on sleep appear.
- A "rebound effect" after a few hours : while you were knocked out by the alcohol you drank at dinner, brain activity increases again after 3 to 4 hours. This can manifest itself in nightmares and agitation, among other things.
- Increased nighttime awakenings : alcohol causes an increase in the number of awakenings or micro nighttime awakenings, with difficulty falling back to sleep afterwards. Your night will be punctuated by awakenings and insomnia, we have known better as a sleep aid.
- Impact on sleep quality , poor sequence of sleep cycles, reduction of REM sleep and deep sleep: not only do you wake up often, but your sleep is not restorative. And you find yourself very tired, hungover in the morning.
- Nocturia and dehydration : Alcohol has a diuretic effect, which can make you get up at night to go to the bathroom. In addition to that, it can also make you thirsty, dehydration affecting the quality of your night and that's not great.
- Snoring, sleep apnea : excessive alcohol consumption will cause the airways to relax and amplify existing obstructions. The throat muscles are abnormally relaxed, the pharynx is less open. All this causes snoring and increases the risk of sleep apnea.
As you will have understood, if alcohol seems tempting at first glance to help you fall asleep more quickly, it tends to impact the different phases of sleep and its overall quality.
Sleep disorders, addiction: the risks of excessive alcohol consumption
As we saw just above, we don't sleep better after consuming alcohol: it's even the opposite! And in the long term, regular consumption (two glasses of alcohol per day for women, three glasses for men) can have disastrous effects on your sleep and your health:
- Sleep disorders : the consequences on sleep become recurrent, which increases existing sleep disorders or creates new ones.
- Chronic fatigue, disruption of the circadian rhythm : alcohol consumption can disrupt your internal clock and increase the difficulty falling asleep. You sleep poorly, you fall asleep with difficulty, you wake up often: as a result, you are exhausted during the day and you have difficulty functioning.
- Digestive disorders : inflammation of the stomach (ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux), liver damage (cirrhosis, hepatitis)
- Cardiovascular diseases : hypertension, heart disease, heart rhythm disorders, increased risk of stroke
- Increased risk of cancer : Excessive alcohol consumption is a recognized risk factor for certain cancers, particularly those of the digestive system and breast.
- Weakening of immune defenses
- Nervous and psychological disorders : alteration of cells in the nervous system, increased risk of depression and anxiety disorders.
- Impaired judgment, confusion, increased risk of accidents.
- Addiction : we couldn't ignore this major risk! Alcohol dependence, habituation phenomenon (we need stronger doses, we consume more and more alcoholic beverages), it's a spiral that affects a large number of people. According to a 2020 report from Public Health France , " 23.6% of people aged 18-75 exceeded the consumption benchmarks in 2017".
➡️ If you or someone close to you is concerned, there are solutions to help with withdrawal: france assos santé , the addict'aide forum (addiction village) to name a few, but also your doctor.
Avoiding alcohol-related sleep disturbances (and more!)
In practice, you are not told to stop drinking alcohol completely if you have exceptional and reasonable consumption. At low doses, it is entirely possible to avoid the devastating effects of alcohol on your sleep and your body.
Obviously, we will recommend that you drink water instead (to sleep better , we will not advise you to drink alcohol, energy drinks or coffee !) throughout the day, reducing the quantity in the evening. But if you must drink a glass of alcohol in the evening, avoid doing so 3 hours before bedtime!
💡 Bonus tip: if you want to take a break without alcohol, we invite you to join the dry January movement (whatever the month of the year, not just in January!). This January challenge consists of going the entire month without drinking a drop of alcohol, in particular to raise awareness of its effects.
The final word: drink or sleep, you have to choose!
We don't need to repeat it, but we'll do it anyway: alcohol disrupts sleep and poses a significant risk to your health . For a more regular sleep, avoid drinking it with dinner. And if you really want your relaxing drink before going to bed, swap those two glasses of wine for a chamomile tea: we prefer this grandma's tip to the whisky one!