 If you want better sleep, you need to avoid alcohol. Just like caffeine, alcohol is a problem that is masked as a solution. This may seem like a great way to unwind before bed, but it comes at way too high of a price. Alcohol actually doesn't help you fall asleep. It helps render you unconscious because it's a sedative. Sleep is actually an inhibition of the conscious part of your brain, the neocortex. Sedatives don't work like that. They actually sever the connections. Your brain is still real active in different ways. These are not the same thing. Being sedated, being rendered unconscious, and sleep are not the same thing by a long shot. We think that our brains are shut off while we sleep, but nothing could be further from the truth. Your brain is active all night long just in different ways. During REM sleep, your brain wave activity is actually 30% more than when you're awake. This is why sedatives like alcohol do more harm than good. They're getting in the way of the brain wave activity you need while you sleep. People who consume alcohol before bed don't wake up as often during the first few hours of sleep. If they do, it's for shorter periods because they have been rendered unconscious. Once that effect wears off, alcohol starts having the opposite effect. This is where the long list of problems occur or begin. There's tons of them, but the first and really the only really, really important one. They're all important, but I could stop after the first one. Alcohol fractures your sleep by waking you up over and over even though you don't remember it. If they're studying you in a sleep laboratory, you're waking up continuously, but you don't remember it happening. Just assume that if you drank alcohol that you're going to wake up eight or 10 times in the middle of the night and just not remember that you did. That's reason enough not to consume alcohol if you're trying to get really good sleep. Number one, alcohol fractures your sleep. Number two, alcohol blocks REM sleep. Remember, REM sleep is very important for humans. It's important for our emotional health, how we feel, disease risk, all sorts of things. Alcohol fractures the sleep you do have and also blocks the REM sleep. Number three, alcohol spikes cortisol. Remember, cortisol is your stress hormone. A stress response during sleep triggers the fight or flight system. We want to stay in that rest and relaxation system. Number four, alcohol increases your core temperature. Your core temperature needs to drop two to three degrees Fahrenheit in order for you to fall asleep well. Alcohol is pushing it in the wrong direction. Number five, alcohol disrupts your circadian rhythm so it actually impacts your sleep quality for multiple nights, which we'll see in just a moment from a study. Where are we at? Six, alcohol is a powerful diuretic, so you'll get up extra to pee. And then number seven, alcohol can actually make your sleep worse by leading to really vivid dreams. That's because you missed out on a bunch of REM sleep early in the night, so now your brain is playing REM sleep, dream sleep, catch up late in the night or early in the morning and you start having really weird vivid dreams, or at least you can. So lots of things there. Are you starting to see a pattern? Alcohol does all these negative things. It is not helping your sleep. So what's the science actually say? Alcohol disrupts sleep homeostasis. Alcohol may help you fall asleep faster. That's the positive, but that's it. Alcohol shows that alcohol has a very disruptive effect on your sleep the rest of the night and messes up both your sleep quality and sleep quantity. We talked about how alcohol fragments your sleep, so it leads to fragmented sleep and frequent waking. Another study, alcohol increases sleep apnea and oxygen desaturation in asymptomatic men. So that means you're not getting enough oxygen because of sleep apnea, but I'm going to quote the study here, clinical trial. These results show that in asymptomatic men, alcohol ingestion increases the incidence of arterial oxygen desaturation and disordered breathing during sleep. So it makes sleep apnea worse. But the reason that I wanted to talk about this study is this next quote, the increase in arterial oxygen desaturation persists for an additional night even when no alcohol is consumed. So alcohol is going to ruin your sleep tonight and it's also going to play a big role in your sleep not being as good tomorrow night as well, similar to light exposure. So what's our key takeaway here? The only safe, I don't want to be a buzzkill, but the only safe amount of alcohol if sleep is a priority is zero drinks. And marijuana would fall in the same category. But the jury is actually still out on CBD, the cannabinoid that doesn't have THC in it, but it's trending in a positive direction. So I think in the future I might do a video about CBD and say that it's good for sleep. We'll see. But we're not there yet. All right, action steps. If you still want a drink, have it as early as possible without it being weird. It's what I mean by that. I mean, I wouldn't be drinking at night in the morning, but a drink four, five, six hours before bed will not have the same impact as a drink right before bed. Okay. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.