Is a Glass of Wine Before Bed Relaxing? Expert Says Alcohol Disrupts Natural Sleep Cycle

Many incorporate a glass of wine in their evening routine to have a good night's sleep. However, experts have a different opinion when it comes to alcohol consumption before bedtime.

Alcohol Before Bedtime Is Not Good

In a new study, Katie McCullar, a post-doctoral fellow in neurology at Harvard Medical School who recently completed her Ph.D. at Brown University, Jared Saletin, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, and their colleagues at Brown explored the effects of alcohol on the structure of our sleep, and how this effect can accumulate over time.

The researchers enlisted 30 adult volunteers to spend three nights in a row with their brain activity monitored as they slept to investigate these impacts. Each person participated in the experiment twice but received a different pre-bed beverage each time. One experiment involved giving them a mixer; the other involved giving them alcohol and the same mixer one hour before the lights out.

"Our study was novel in its repeated night design," Saletin said. "We found it interesting that the changes to sleep persisted across multiple nights when each was preceded by a drinking episode. Sleep did not seem to 'adapt.'"

Consistent with other research, drinking alcohol before bed was linked to a cumulative, significant reduction in REM sleep.

In fact, even small amounts of alcohol-less than two drinks for men and less than one drink for women -can reduce the quality of sleep by as much as 9.3%, according to the Sleep Foundation.

McCullar said the study only involved low levels of alcohol. However, they still noticed an effect in the samples.

Saletin added that they need to find out if there is a safe amount for alcohol consumption without disrupting the natural cycle of sleep. He knew the answer to this query was crucial, so future research should consider how different consumption rates- including those that fall "under the legal limit"-affect these impacts.

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Alcohol Impacts on REM

It has been demonstrated that alcohol disturbs our innate sleep pattern, causing REM sleep to be suppressed in the first half of the night and increased light sleep and awake in the second.

Saletin stated that dreams typically occur during REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, which makes up around 20% of a typical night's sleep and grows throughout the night.

Although its precise roles are uncertain, REM sleep has been connected to mental health, emotional control, memory processing, and creativity. Reduced or modified REM sleep may negatively affect these facets of our lives.

A number of conditions, including mood disorders and difficulties with memory and learning, have been linked to REM deficiency. McCullar added that the entire spectrum of impacts that REM sleep deficiency may have is still being investigated.

Meanwhile, another study found that both true and false memory recall may benefit from sleep. People often form false memories of absent terms but would have fit the category when given a list of similar words to memorize.

It was found that those who slept had not only remembered more keywords from the list than those who had not, but they were also more likely to have provided similar words but not on the list. Words like "sick," "hospital," and "nurse" might be included in a list to entice false recollections, such as "doctor." These connected incorrect terms are called "lure words," whereas completely unconnected incorrect terms are called "intrusions."