why does the body always wake up so early after a night of drinking?
In: Biology
Always felt after “heavy” drinking and sleeping that you don’t really “sleep” before the alcohol goes away, so you’ll wake up super early with a big headache and dry mouth and need to go to the toilet. You then proceed difficulty to pee, take some pills and water and now you try to sleep for real.
Now I don’t always have hangover, but even if I take a couple beer and don’t feel too drunk, it still experience the 2 cycle sleep, one removing the poison from the alcohol, the other for you own body and mind.
Thanks so much for asking this question. I had a drink last night and saw the answer to why I wake at 3:30am on occasion.
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Different medications/substances will effect your sleep cycle differently.
We have 2 phases of sleep:
1. NREM stages 1-2: lighter sleep, sleeper is more easily arousable
NREM stages 3-4: deeper sleep, sleeper is more difficult to arouse
2. REM sleep: increased brain activity, loss of muscle strength
Phase 1&2 make up one sleep cycle lasting about 90-110 minutes each. Usually an adult will go thru 4-6 complete sleep cycles before waking up.
What alcohol does specifically is that it will speed the onset of sleep and disrupt REM sleep. It also causes the sleeper to awaken during the night and causes difficulty returning to sleep.
Your bodies sugar levels are too low.
Alcohol has good n bad sugar molecules and in order to process the bad sugar the body attaches a good molecule from your reserves. This decreases your over all sugar level in the body.
When your bodies blood sugar level drops bellow a certain point it triggers the eat reflex – pretty primal this one – which trumps (as in Top Trumps the card game) the sleep and triggers wake.
Ahhhh… the 8 hours sleep after a curry n chips, kebab, on the way home or a bowl of ramen when home from a night out in my teens compared with now…….. sedentary dinner parties 20 odd years later….. square of dark chocolate if I remember I’m fine otherwise 4 hours max!
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