Why does alcohol make you tired, but also make you sleep poorly?
In: Biology
So alcohol helps you fall asleep because it’s a depressant, but it blocks REM sleep (the most restorative stage of sleep).
Alcohol inhibits your Glutamine receptors (makes you sleepy). Eventually, when your brain tries to chemically balance itself out you undergo what is called “glutamine rebound” and your brain is flooded with glutamine.
This causes you to wake up early, shakey, and strung out feeling.
ELI5: Sleep is like a jigsaw puzzle in your brain. All different shapes and sizes of pieces (neurotransmitters, brain chemical messengers) have to fit together in the exact right way. Even though alcohol gives us some extra sleepy pieces, it also ruins other pieces we need so the puzzle doesn’t fit well together anymore.
(Alcohol has both excitatory/awakening and inhibatory/sleepy reactions in our brain, which possibly vary over time as it is metabolized)
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