For men who have trouble falling asleep, reaching for a glass of alcohol might seem like a good way to relax. But a new study that’s come out from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering at Tampere University of Technology in Finland found that alcohol may have a negative impact on sleep quality.
How the sleep study was done
Researchers looked at data from 4,098 men and women between the ages of 18 and 65 who used a special device to record their heart rate variability (HRV) in noncontrolled real-world conditions. HRV measures the time between heartbeats. The variations are regulated by the autonomic nervous system and give researchers insight into the quality of the participants’ rest during the first three hours of the night.
The HRV recordings from a minimum of two nights were evaluated. For each of the participants, at least two nights were studied; one where they drank alcohol and one where they hadn’t consumed any alcohol. The alcohol consumption was rated as low, medium or high, based on the person’s weight.
The results of alcohol on sleep
The results of the study found that any consumption of alcohol affected the quality of rest.
Low alcohol consumption decreased the physiological recovery provided by sleep by 9.3%.
Moderate alcohol consumption decreased it by 24% and high alcohol consumption decreased it by as much as 39.2%.
Both men and women were similarly affected and whether a person was sedentary or active had made no difference.
Age, however, played a role. Young people who consumed alcohol were more affected in terms of sleep quality than seniors.
The moral of the study is that turning to alcohol to help you relax and get more Z’s probably isn’t going to work. As the study’s co-author, Tero Myllymaki, put it, “While we may not always be able to add hours to our sleep time, with insight into how our behaviors influence the restorative quality of our sleep we can learn to sleep more efficiently. A small change, as long as it’s the right one, can have a big impact.”
