Life Without Good Sleep Is Not Great

Research shows not getting enough sleep means you’re more likely to get sick and die earlier than someone who gets adequate sleep. Not getting enough sleep is also shown to make you more likely to be depressed and anxious and to have negative impacts on your cognitive and physical performance.

Who wants that?

The Unfun Truth About Alcohol and Sleep

One of the worst things you can do for your sleep is drink alcohol. Here’s why.

• Alcohol is a sedative that reduces your ability to remain conscious and makes you sleepy, but it doesn’t act on the brain to induce natural sleep.

• Alcohol also reduces melatonin production, the hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles.

• Alcohol causes sleep fragmentation leading to frequent awakenings during the night.

• It also disrupts the wake-sleep cycle by reducing the time spent in the restorative deep sleep stage (slow-wave sleep) and decreasing the amount of REM as well.

Put Booze to Bed Earlier

Yet you may still want to enjoy a drink from time to time–and avoid the urge to have more. The Better Lab can support you to make that happen.

The alcohol practice guides you to limit your number of alcoholic drinks and stop consuming them earlier in the evening.

This helps reduce the impact alcohol has on your sleep on days that you choose to drink.

Do It

Our users tell us The Better Lab’s alcohol practice makes a big difference in helping them approach their relationship with alcohol with more conscious awareness so they can get better sleep.

If you’re already using the Better Lab, select the alcohol practice to give it a try. If you’re new to the Better Lab, you can get the app free in the Apple App Store here:

The Studies

Want to learn more? Check out these foundational studies to go deeper.

• Alcohol and the Sleeping Brain | Handbook of Clinical Neurology

• Alcohol Consumption and Incidence of Sleep Disorder: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Cohort Studies | Drug and Alcohol Dependence

• Alcohol Use and Poor Sleep Quality: a Longitudinal Twin Study across 36 Years | Sleep Advances

The Spartan Meets The Better Lab

Spartan CEO / founder Joe De Sena had The Better Lab co-founder Andrew Vontz on his podcast to talk about how to get the best sleep of your life.

You can listen to it here and you can learn more about all of The Better Lab’s science-backed practices Andrew discusses on the show here, for free.

The most important thing to know is that just consuming content about sleep and looking at sleep wearable data won’t make you sleep better.

To sleep better you have to take action.

That’s something only you can do!

We’re here to help you make it simple, fun and repeatable to do, whether it’s managing your relationship with alcohol and sleep or any of the other practices we support.