Impact of alcohol on sleep
Alcohol can disturb your sleep if you drink too much, magnifying the negative effects of over drinking the next day! The figure below illustrates how alcohol affects sleep (red line). Alcohol may help you get to sleep, but it disrupts the ideal pattern of restorative sleep (blue dotted line), and increases your risk of feeling drowsy during your next waking period. Alcohol will cause an initial extended period of deep sleep (this is why some blokes say that a few beers helps me get to sleep each night), but this can then be followed by regular waking periods due to dehydration, the need to urinate or because of the effects of a hangover. Alcohol starts affecting your sleep after 1 standard drink for females and 2 standard drinks for males.
