Booze can knock you out, but it can distort the quality of your sleep. Why is this?
First, let’s quickly review your sleep cycle, in order:
- Awake Time-Time in bed before and after falling asleep-Includes brief awakenings during sleep.
- Light Sleep-responsible for guiding you into the other stages of sleep-muscles relax and may jerk-heart rate and breathing rate begin to drop
- Deep Sleep-focuses on restoring your body-muscle growth and repair-waste is flushed from the brain-bone, organ, and other body tissue is repaired-Skin cell repair and regeneration
- REM-Re-energizes your mind-vivid dreams may occur-benefits memory, learning, and problem solving
Okay, what stages are most effected by alcohol?
REM and deep sleep. The restorative parts of sleep.
It’s unlikely we’ll spend much time at all in deep and REM sleep stages.
Final Thoughts
Obviously if we want a phenomenal night of sleep abstaining from alcohol is a great way to start.
No need to kick the bottle entirely, but I do recommend keeping drinking to a moderate level (one drink per hour max) to give you body time to metabolize the alcohol before bed.