2 ms·

Interesting enough, I always wondered why it seemed like I slept better with alcohol, and getting a sleep tracker helped me understand: alcohol lowers REM sleep

Interesting enough, I always wondered why it seemed like I slept better with alcohol, and getting a sleep tracker helped me understand: alcohol lowers REM sleep, but increases deep sleep. In my case, without alcohol I’m abundant in REM but lacking in deep sleep. So in my case, one drink improves my sleep quality! However I don’t think alcohol is healthy, so I don’t regularly imbibe, but it would be nice to find something healthy that would make that trade off for me.

joveian 4y ago
Alcohol is a GABA receptor agonist, similar to many sleep drugs. It isn't necessarly REM vs deep sleep; it sounds like alcohol is metabolized quickly enough that there can be a REM rebound effect later in the night when most REM sleep happens anyway[1]. I doubt REM and deep sleep cover much of of the important aspects of how medication affects sleep, it is just the available measurement not necessarily a particularly good one (not that it is unimporatant, it is just an extremely high level overview of what is going on). [1] Roehrs and Roth. Sleep, Sleepiness, and Alcohol Use. Alcohol Res Health. 2001; 25(2): 101–109. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707127/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707127/