How Alcohol Affects Your Sleep (And Why!)

Woman strugging to sleep after drinking alcohol.
Woman struggling to sleep after drinking alcohol

Ever woken up after a night out knowing you’re desperately in need of more sleep, but unable to nod back off? You’re not alone. While we often look at alcohol as a route to a good night’s sleep, it can actually have the opposite effect.

Drinking alcohol has a direct impact on our sleep, a fact many people still don’t realise. Just one or two drinks can take a massive toll on your sleep health and subsequently your overall physical and mental health too. With help from the experts at Sealy, Belle About Town brings you the key reasons why reducing your alcohol intake could be the best thing you do for your sleep health in 2019:

It messes up your body clock

Alcohol can negatively affect your body’s natural circadian rhythm, the internal body clock which dictates your body’s functioning day-to-day. Alcohol consumption can reduce your biological clock’s ability to synchronise your daily activities to light and can disrupt your natural activity patterns, which can have a knock-on your metabolism, cognitive function and mood for days afterwards. Reducing your alcohol consumption will make it much more likely that your natural circadian rhythms will work as they should.

Getting a good night's sleep during the heatwave
Restless nights often follow a night on the town

You won’t sleep as deeply

It’s commonly thought that drinking alcohol can help you get to sleep, and whilst it’s true that alcohol can help reduce sleep onset latency – the time it takes you to get to sleep – it has a much more detrimental effect for the rest of the night. In the first half of the night, as your body is metabolising the alcohol in your system, you will be thrown into a deep sleep far quicker than usual meaning you miss out on your initial REM stage of sleep. Although you may think this sounds positive, REM is a vital part of your sleep structure as it helps with processing emotion and memory. As the alcohol wears off in the second half of the night, so too does its sedative effects. This leaves you in a lighter, less restful sleep stage, and ultimately will lead to an earlier waking time and make it more difficult to get back to sleep.

Winter skincare tips from Ellipse UK and Belle About Town
Alcohol dehydrates so make sure you drink enough water during and after a big night out

It dehydrates you

Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it acts on the kidneys to make you urinate much more fluid than you take in. On average, this means you will lose 100ml more fluid than you put in to your body. Going to bed even slightly dehydrated can lead to a disruptive snoring due to a drier mouth and nasal passages, and can even lead to painful nocturnal leg cramps. Alternating alcoholic drinks with water can help to balance out these effects and help limit the number of units you consume, setting you up for a much more restful night as a result.

It will wake you up in the night

The closer you consume alcohol to your bedtime, the bigger the impact it will have on your sleep. A less restful night’s sleep, combined with the diuretic effect of alcohol and its impact on your breathing, can leave you feeling tired and sluggish the morning after. Leaving at least 2-3 hours between your last drink and your bedtime will give your body time to process the alcohol you’ve already consumed and result in a much more peaceful night. 

  • Emily Cleary

    After almost a decade chasing ambulances, and celebrities, for Fleet Street's finest, Emily has taken it down a gear and settled for a (slightly!) slower pace of life in the suburbs. With a love of cheese and fine wine, Emily is more likely to be found chasing her toddlers round Kew Gardens than sipping champagne at a showbiz launch nowadays, or grabbing an hour out of her hectic freelancer's life to chill out in a spa while hubby holds the babies. If only!

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