After a long night of drinking and "raisin' the roof", you are probably ready to hit the sack. Whether you actually make to your bed or land somewhere between the living room and the bathroom floor, you may not get the restful sleep you are hoping for. Drinking and sleeping restfully, unfortunately, do not mix. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant that slows down bodily functions. On the surface, it would seem that alcohol is the perfect potion that would ensure a good night's rest. In fact, many people who suffer from insomnia and other sleep disorders use alcohol as sleep aids. While alcohol can certainly help you fall asleep, getting good quality rest is a different matter altogether. To understand how sleeping drunk is actually harmful to your health, you must first understand how sleep works. The average person needs between seven and nine hours of sleep to function properly. After we put on our Forever Lazy pajamas and tuck ourselves in to bed, we drift off into two phases of sleep: slow wave sleep (SES) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Slow wave sleep describes a phase when brain waves are very slow. It is the deepest, most restful sleep we will have during the night, and we spend quite a bit of time in this phase. Rapid eye movement sleep, on the other hand, is the stage of sleep when we dream. It is not as restful as SWS, but it is required if we don't want to go insane or die. During the night, people enter REM sleep approximately every 90 minutes. So why does alcohol and sleep make such poor bedfellows, especially when it has such a sedating effect on the body? Alcohol consumed before bedtime appears to disrupt the second half of your sleep period. You may wake up during dreams and have a hard time falling back asleep. This is similar to a condition known as sleep apnea. A person stops breathing multiple times during the night and the body wakes him or her up each time to start breathing again. In the case of drinking and sleep, the alcohol in your system appears to make it difficult for the body to regulate the sleep cycle effectively. Speaking of sleep apnea, alcohol can acerbate the condition and even cause a person to develop it if he or she consumes excessive amounts of alcohol over a long period of time. Not only does the alcohol make it difficult to fully rest, but the sleep apnea keeps poking you in the side and asking you to find a sleep position that won't cause you to suffocate. Sleeping when you binge drink, ironically, is one of the main reasons why you feel so tired in the morning. You don't actually get the healing rest you need to not fall asleep at your desk. When it comes to drinking and sleep, it is best to combine them only when you can spend the next day fully recovering.
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