4 ms·

I've been wondering about this lately. Honestly, and it kind of pains me to say this, I'm coming to the conclusion that alcohol is Bad. Hey, quit laughing - I

I've been wondering about this lately. Honestly, and it kind of pains me to say this, I'm coming to the conclusion that alcohol is Bad. Hey, quit laughing - I don't think that it is necessarily unhealthy to try and smooth out some of the bumps along life's road, but there have got to be better ways. And don't say, 'exercise.' The cognitive hits of alcohol are just looking like they're too long term. Not even over a lifetime, but over a week. With all the information coming in about how it messes with our REM cycles and potentially inhibits learning that took place over the past day or two from sticking to your brain...I dunno. What is the point of dropping your day's problems on the floor in the evening if doing so prevents you from learning or benefiting from the experience? Edit: By which I mean, alcohol seems to cause a lot of issues around what your brain does while it sleeps, which seems to be what this article is calling out as a problem that can be exacerbated with age. Sorry, I guess I kind of jumped between topics there...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jghn 9y ago
I recently got an apple watch and along the way installed a sleep tracking app. I was skeptical of its accuracy until I realized that I could identify the nights I'd been drinking with 100% accuracy as those nights the tracker didn't seem to think I slept hardly at all. I always knew I'd be tired the next day but this was eye opening.
- 36bydesign 9y ago
  What app did you use? I want to try this also.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    Not OP but I use Autosleep. Works well.
    - jghn 9y ago
      Also autosleep
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  Anecdotal, but my fitbit gave me the same result. Every single time I had drunk - even 1-2 - there was a spike of restlessness that night, 10-20 restless periods vs the 3-4 I would have normally.
- ProAm 9y ago
  This is because alcohol is an anesthetic. And the human body will tend to wake up after an anesthetic wears off. I believe the anesthetic properties of alcohol lasts roughly 4 hours, so if you sleep you'll probably begin to stir and wake up 4 hours after your last drink. Very similar to surgery patients who naturally wake up after the anesthetic used for surgery wears off.
  - damontal 9y ago
    4 hours for me like clockwork after a few drinks before bed.
    - wasx 9y ago
      This is crazy but I'm pretty similar, is this a documented effect that I could read more about? Almost always after a night of heavy drinking I wake from anywhere between 5am - 8am and have a rough time getting back to sleep for at least a few hours. Knowing my drinking patterns, those times would tend to correlate to about 4 hours earlier passing out.
      - Tiksi 9y ago
        This happens to many people in around the same timeframe, I'm pretty sure it's due to GABA rebound https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/alcohol_sleep_and_why_you https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/alcohol_sleep... From what I recall, alcohol binds to GABA receptors, GABA builds up in the body, eventually metabolizes to glutamate which takes a few hours depending on how much you drink, but seems to be around half a night's sleep. The glutamate wakes you up and gives you energy, hence the strange "feeling great after a night of drinking on no sleep" thing.
  - rando444 9y ago
    That's just how sleep works. Everyone's REM sleep cycles last 90-120 minutes. https://www.howsleepworks.com/types_rem.html https://www.howsleepworks.com/types_rem.html
- alonmower 9y ago
  Ya, I just got an apple watch a couple of weeks ago and noticed this as well. It's crazy - ~4 hours of deep sleep on a normal night and 1.5-2 on a night where I've had even just a single drink
satysin 9y ago
I stopped drinking alcohol when I was 18 (I am 33 now) as I could see it was effecting how well I could study. Poor sleep, hang overs, etc. made me want to take a break for a few months to concentrate on other things in my life. 6 months later I realised life was way better without alcohol. I was more motivated, I slept much better, I felt better, I could study and retain things much better than before. I wasn't a super heavy drinker, I am from the UK so started to drink with friends at around 16. Over the past 15 years binge drinking has become a big problem IMHO. I feel I am lucky to have avoided that! So here I am 15 years later and still not drinking at all. I would recommend taking a year off alcohol and see how it changes your life. Maybe it won't make as big a difference as it did for me but I would be shocked if it didn't make some noticeable differences to your brain.
- cjsuk 9y ago
  Couldn't agree more. UK here as well and there is a rather idiotic culture of social and binge drinking which I got into in the mid 1990s driven by "the pub" and "the club". I quit alcohol entirely in 2002 (15 years ago as well!) after getting married and decided to replace it with the magical elixir that cures all ills: water. The revelation of water came from having a saline drip after an accident. I felt fantastic afterwards. Full of energy, drive and able to actually process things in my brain. Turned out I'd spent the few years before this point entirely shrivelled up with dehydration caused by drinking only tea and alcohol. Trying to shake the caffeine monkey of my back now. That's just as bad. Drinking lots of water does help however.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Currently taking a break from caffeine now too. Just had lunch at my favorite place, the usual staff knows to serve me a huge mason jar of sweet tea (its a barbeque joint). I was bracing myself to refuse and ask for water - but a different guy was on duty. So no problem. But I feel the gravitational pull of caffeine every time I see the road sign for one of my regular places. It almost a physical rush.
- navidfarhadi 9y ago
  I would love to completely put alcohol aside as you did. However, I don't know how I would put beer and wine aside permanently. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a cocktail or distilled alcoholic beverage, but I love to drink craft beers and occasionally a glass of wine, solely for the taste. I cannot stand the feeling of being buzzed or drunk, I just enjoy drinking a few beers on Friday and Saturday night. I've noticed that it does affect my sleep though as I am often tired on Saturday and Sunday, even if I got 8-9 hours of sleep. I have a similar issue with other foods, like cheesecake. I love eating cheesecake on occasion but every time I eat it the very high fat and sugar content upsets my stomach.
sprintf 9y ago
"Glib advice aside, what is the recommendation when it comes to sleep and alcohol? It is hard not to sound puritanical, but the evidence is so strong regarding alcohol's harmful effects on sleep that to do otherwise would be doing you, and the science, a disservice. Many people enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, even an aperitif thereafter. But it takes your liver and kidneys many hours to degrade and excrete that alcohol, even if you are an individual with fast-acting enzymes for ethanol decomposition. Nightly alcohol will disrupt your sleep, and the annoying advice of abstinence is the best, and most honest, I can offer." - page 246, Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker Walker is one of the authors of the paper discussed in the article.
keldaris 9y ago
As a completely anecdotal and medically irrelevant personal counterpoint, I actually frequently find myself having much better sleep after having had two glasses of good cognac before sleep. I've certainly not made a daily habit of it, nor do I recommend it to anyone else, but the observation is rather consistent for me. I do have a host of sleep quality issues in general, and I'm a very pronounced "night owl". Perhaps that has something to do with it, I don't know.
seasonalgrit 9y ago
Agreed that alcohol is Bad. Not related to sleep, but there is also lots of science stacking up now on the connection between alcohol and cancer.
vowelless 9y ago
I don't understand the relevance of this comment. The article makes no reference to alcohol.
- make3 9y ago
  They have similar/almost identical preoccupations, ie, the preservation of one's mental capacities when aging
- alexchantavy 9y ago
  Agreed, but I'm super interested in learning more if there's evidence.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  The whole sleep rhythm thing; sorry, I've just read a handful of articles in the past few weeks talking about how alcohol disrupts our normal sleep cycles which prevents a lot of the brain's...I dunno, whatever hygiene it has to do when we sleep. And that is what the article is about.
  - md224 9y ago
    I'm 33 and I've definitely lost interest in drinking. I'll do it on occasion at social things, but I usually partake in very limited amounts. (My girlfriend is actually a little sad that she's never had a chance to see me wasted.) It might just be that my body can't handle it anymore, but sometime over the last few years it just lost its appeal. The thing is: alcohol is a very crude intoxicant, and we seem to have arbitrarily standardized on it as the Socially Acceptable Drug. I know this is obvious, but it really is stupid and it's worth reminding people how stupid it is. I mean, take khat, for instance. Khat is a stimulant chewed by people in Yemen; it's their socially acceptable drug-of-choice. (It's so popular in Yemen that its cultivation consumes a significant portion of the country's agricultural resources.) But here? It's a controlled substance. Why? I don't know. Our drug laws are just crazy stupid. I feel like we could do so much better in terms of recreational substances. People are finally getting smart about cannabis, but there are still so many possibilities we're not exploring. The fact that we're stuck with alcohol is ridiculous. Hell, even opioids are less harmful to the body than alcohol is (if taken at a steady, stable dose, which I guess is the hard part). We should definitely be spending most of our scientific brainpower on curing diseases, but I feel like we could spare a few brilliant minds to work on better intoxicants. The masses deserve a safer opiate.
trashcan 9y ago
Alcohol isn't mentioned once in the linked article - what is the context here?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Alcohol consumption ruins your chance at good sleep. https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-2/101-109.htm https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-2/101-109.htm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23347102 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23347102 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21323679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21323679
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
liveoneggs 9y ago
are you saying alcohol is the cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems?
trcullen 9y ago
I stopped drinking 20 months ago. Australia has a big drinking culture so not drinking is confusing to friends and family. I've found that it's had a huge positive impact on my life - much improved mental function, motivation and stress/emotion management. I'll likely never drink again.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jghn 9y ago

I recently got an apple watch and along the way installed a sleep tracking app. I was skeptical of its accuracy until I realized that I could identify the nights I'd been drinking with 100% accuracy as those nights the tracker didn't seem to think I slept hardly at all. I always knew I'd be tired the next day but this was eye opening.

36bydesign 9y ago
What app did you use? I want to try this also.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  Not OP but I use Autosleep. Works well.
  - jghn 9y ago
    Also autosleep
JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
Anecdotal, but my fitbit gave me the same result. Every single time I had drunk - even 1-2 - there was a spike of restlessness that night, 10-20 restless periods vs the 3-4 I would have normally.
ProAm 9y ago
This is because alcohol is an anesthetic. And the human body will tend to wake up after an anesthetic wears off. I believe the anesthetic properties of alcohol lasts roughly 4 hours, so if you sleep you'll probably begin to stir and wake up 4 hours after your last drink. Very similar to surgery patients who naturally wake up after the anesthetic used for surgery wears off.
- damontal 9y ago
  4 hours for me like clockwork after a few drinks before bed.
  - wasx 9y ago
    This is crazy but I'm pretty similar, is this a documented effect that I could read more about? Almost always after a night of heavy drinking I wake from anywhere between 5am - 8am and have a rough time getting back to sleep for at least a few hours. Knowing my drinking patterns, those times would tend to correlate to about 4 hours earlier passing out.
    - Tiksi 9y ago
      This happens to many people in around the same timeframe, I'm pretty sure it's due to GABA rebound https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/alcohol_sleep_and_why_you https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/alcohol_sleep... From what I recall, alcohol binds to GABA receptors, GABA builds up in the body, eventually metabolizes to glutamate which takes a few hours depending on how much you drink, but seems to be around half a night's sleep. The glutamate wakes you up and gives you energy, hence the strange "feeling great after a night of drinking on no sleep" thing.
- rando444 9y ago
  That's just how sleep works. Everyone's REM sleep cycles last 90-120 minutes. https://www.howsleepworks.com/types_rem.html https://www.howsleepworks.com/types_rem.html
alonmower 9y ago
Ya, I just got an apple watch a couple of weeks ago and noticed this as well. It's crazy - ~4 hours of deep sleep on a normal night and 1.5-2 on a night where I've had even just a single drink

satysin 9y ago

I stopped drinking alcohol when I was 18 (I am 33 now) as I could see it was effecting how well I could study. Poor sleep, hang overs, etc. made me want to take a break for a few months to concentrate on other things in my life. 6 months later I realised life was way better without alcohol. I was more motivated, I slept much better, I felt better, I could study and retain things much better than before. I wasn't a super heavy drinker, I am from the UK so started to drink with friends at around 16. Over the past 15 years binge drinking has become a big problem IMHO. I feel I am lucky to have avoided that! So here I am 15 years later and still not drinking at all. I would recommend taking a year off alcohol and see how it changes your life. Maybe it won't make as big a difference as it did for me but I would be shocked if it didn't make some noticeable differences to your brain.

cjsuk 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. UK here as well and there is a rather idiotic culture of social and binge drinking which I got into in the mid 1990s driven by "the pub" and "the club". I quit alcohol entirely in 2002 (15 years ago as well!) after getting married and decided to replace it with the magical elixir that cures all ills: water. The revelation of water came from having a saline drip after an accident. I felt fantastic afterwards. Full of energy, drive and able to actually process things in my brain. Turned out I'd spent the few years before this point entirely shrivelled up with dehydration caused by drinking only tea and alcohol. Trying to shake the caffeine monkey of my back now. That's just as bad. Drinking lots of water does help however.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Currently taking a break from caffeine now too. Just had lunch at my favorite place, the usual staff knows to serve me a huge mason jar of sweet tea (its a barbeque joint). I was bracing myself to refuse and ask for water - but a different guy was on duty. So no problem. But I feel the gravitational pull of caffeine every time I see the road sign for one of my regular places. It almost a physical rush.
navidfarhadi 9y ago
I would love to completely put alcohol aside as you did. However, I don't know how I would put beer and wine aside permanently. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a cocktail or distilled alcoholic beverage, but I love to drink craft beers and occasionally a glass of wine, solely for the taste. I cannot stand the feeling of being buzzed or drunk, I just enjoy drinking a few beers on Friday and Saturday night. I've noticed that it does affect my sleep though as I am often tired on Saturday and Sunday, even if I got 8-9 hours of sleep. I have a similar issue with other foods, like cheesecake. I love eating cheesecake on occasion but every time I eat it the very high fat and sugar content upsets my stomach.

sprintf 9y ago

"Glib advice aside, what is the recommendation when it comes to sleep and alcohol? It is hard not to sound puritanical, but the evidence is so strong regarding alcohol's harmful effects on sleep that to do otherwise would be doing you, and the science, a disservice. Many people enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, even an aperitif thereafter. But it takes your liver and kidneys many hours to degrade and excrete that alcohol, even if you are an individual with fast-acting enzymes for ethanol decomposition. Nightly alcohol will disrupt your sleep, and the annoying advice of abstinence is the best, and most honest, I can offer." - page 246, Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker Walker is one of the authors of the paper discussed in the article.

keldaris 9y ago

As a completely anecdotal and medically irrelevant personal counterpoint, I actually frequently find myself having much better sleep after having had two glasses of good cognac before sleep. I've certainly not made a daily habit of it, nor do I recommend it to anyone else, but the observation is rather consistent for me. I do have a host of sleep quality issues in general, and I'm a very pronounced "night owl". Perhaps that has something to do with it, I don't know.

seasonalgrit 9y ago

Agreed that alcohol is Bad. Not related to sleep, but there is also lots of science stacking up now on the connection between alcohol and cancer.

vowelless 9y ago

I don't understand the relevance of this comment. The article makes no reference to alcohol.

make3 9y ago
They have similar/almost identical preoccupations, ie, the preservation of one's mental capacities when aging
alexchantavy 9y ago
Agreed, but I'm super interested in learning more if there's evidence.
leggomylibro 9y ago
The whole sleep rhythm thing; sorry, I've just read a handful of articles in the past few weeks talking about how alcohol disrupts our normal sleep cycles which prevents a lot of the brain's...I dunno, whatever hygiene it has to do when we sleep. And that is what the article is about.
- md224 9y ago
  I'm 33 and I've definitely lost interest in drinking. I'll do it on occasion at social things, but I usually partake in very limited amounts. (My girlfriend is actually a little sad that she's never had a chance to see me wasted.) It might just be that my body can't handle it anymore, but sometime over the last few years it just lost its appeal. The thing is: alcohol is a very crude intoxicant, and we seem to have arbitrarily standardized on it as the Socially Acceptable Drug. I know this is obvious, but it really is stupid and it's worth reminding people how stupid it is. I mean, take khat, for instance. Khat is a stimulant chewed by people in Yemen; it's their socially acceptable drug-of-choice. (It's so popular in Yemen that its cultivation consumes a significant portion of the country's agricultural resources.) But here? It's a controlled substance. Why? I don't know. Our drug laws are just crazy stupid. I feel like we could do so much better in terms of recreational substances. People are finally getting smart about cannabis, but there are still so many possibilities we're not exploring. The fact that we're stuck with alcohol is ridiculous. Hell, even opioids are less harmful to the body than alcohol is (if taken at a steady, stable dose, which I guess is the hard part). We should definitely be spending most of our scientific brainpower on curing diseases, but I feel like we could spare a few brilliant minds to work on better intoxicants. The masses deserve a safer opiate.

trashcan 9y ago

Alcohol isn't mentioned once in the linked article - what is the context here?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Alcohol consumption ruins your chance at good sleep. https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-2/101-109.htm https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-2/101-109.htm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23347102 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23347102 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21323679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21323679

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

liveoneggs 9y ago

are you saying alcohol is the cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems?

trcullen 9y ago

I stopped drinking 20 months ago. Australia has a big drinking culture so not drinking is confusing to friends and family. I've found that it's had a huge positive impact on my life - much improved mental function, motivation and stress/emotion management. I'll likely never drink again.