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Aug. 15, 2003 -- Think again before you have a nightcap at bedtime. A new study shows that though alcohol may help you fall asleep faster, it can also cause you to wake up more often later in the night.
It's an odd paradox: Alcohol is a depressant, but it also can wake you later in your sleep cycle. And researchers say this is particularly true in alcoholics. The study, appearing in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, also shows that alcoholics can continue to have sleep problems for many months after they quit drinking.
So what is the problem with having a few drinks after a hard day?
Researchers say there is more impending harm than good. "Three or four drinks will cause the average person to fall asleep sooner than usual," Shawn Currie, adjunct assistant professor in psychiatry and psychology at the University of Calgary, says in a news release. "However, falling asleep faster is about the only real benefit of alcohol for sleep. The more prevalent, disruptive effects include more frequent awakenings, worse sleep quality; reduction of deep sleep, and earlier-than-usual waking times, leading people to feel they did not get enough sleep," he says.
It's important to keep in mind that medical studies generally consider one alcoholic drink to be the equivalent of about 4 ounces (half of a cup) of wine, one beer, or one ounce of liquor.
He says an alcoholic who actively drinks suffers similar but more severe types of sleep disruptions. An alcoholic can have sleep disruptions up to six months after calling it quits, the researchers say. So Currie's team sought out to find the root of the problem.
For this study, researchers examined 63 alcoholics in recovery -- 44 men and 19 women -- who were experiencing insomnia. They did a sleep assessment of the volunteers through interviews, daily sleep diaries, questionnaires, and sleep monitoring. Researchers also studied a comparison group of people living with chronic pain. There is also a high rate of insomnia among chronic pain sufferers, the study says.
Results showed a pattern of insomnia both in initiating and maintaining sleep in both alcoholics and people with chronic pain. The severity of sleep problems in people with short- and long-term abstinence from alcohol was comparable -- meaning both groups can experience lingering effects of alcohol long after the direct effects of alcohol are gone.
Researchers also found that most of the recovering alcoholics had a harder time getting to sleep while the chronic pain sufferers had a harder time maintaining sleep.
Currie and colleagues also noted that more than half of the alcoholics reported having problems sleeping before they became addicted.
Although it's too early to suggest that insomnia may be one factor that potentially leads to alcoholism, Currie points out that it's difficult to ignore that possibility.
"The rate of chronic insomnia in the general population is about 10% to 15%," he says. "In our study, more than 50% of alcoholics reported having sleep problems for many years before their drinking reached dependence levels."
Currie is wrapping up another study that involves behavior therapy instead of drugs to treat sleep problems in recovering alcoholics.
SOURCES: Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, August 2003. News release, Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
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