A Quarter Of Brits Are Boozing To Help Them Sleep. This Is A Terrible Idea NEWS
Alcohol might make you nod off quicker, but your sleep will be dreadful
by NICK HARRIS-FRY | on 24 FEB 2017 | CoachMag.co.uk
A sizeable 25% of adults in the UK are hitting the bottle to help them fall asleep, according to the latest Great British Bedtime Report produced by the Sleep Council.
That’s a hefty rise on the 16% who turned to booze to help them snooze in the last report, which came out in 2013.
The 2017 survey of more than 5,000 adults found that the biggest bedtime boozers were people aged between 45 and 54, with 30% turning to alcohol to help them sleep.
It also showed that books are not as popular for inducing sleep as they were in 2013, with 26% of people in 2017 saying reading was the last thing they did at night, compared with 41% four years ago.
Moving from books to booze is an unwelcome trend because, while alcohol might help you drop off quickly – or black out, if you’ve really had a big one – the overall effect it has on sleep has repeatedly been shown to be negative.
Alcohol disrupts sleep patterns, especially in the second part of the night. Normally you cycle through REM sleep (the part where you dream) and deep sleep, but alcohol sends you straight into the deep zone. Then, as it wears off, you come up into a lighter sleep where you can wake up more easily.
This is one reason why you often wake up early after a night on the sauce, even if you’ve got to bed later than usual, leaving you exhausted on top of the likely hangover.
Another reason why you might wake up is the burning need to go to the toilet, due to alcohol’s diuretic effect, which means it dehydrates you.
On top of all that, booze also disrupts your breathing, which can lead normally quiet sleepers to impersonate a buzzsaw during the night.
So while it might be a shortcut to dropping off quickly, drinking to help you sleep is a tactic that will backfire quickly, since the damage alcohol does to your night’s snooze will result in you waking up under-rested and feeling groggy. Our advice: swap the booze for a good book. Perhaps one of the best sports books of 2016?
