Alcohol boosts sleep intensity in young women

A tipple before bedtime may affect the quality of sleep for young women, US researchers have found.

Following numerous studies on sleep disruption linked to alcohol abuse, most commonly among men, there has been little research into alcohol’s affect on sleep in females.
 
New research has observed that a moderate amount of alcohol, taken before bed, can impact the quality of sleep for young women.
 
"We found that a moderate dose of alcohol consumed by a young woman an hour before bed is associated with increased sleep intensity in the first couple hours of the sleep episode," says author Mary Carskadon from the Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory and Brown Medical School.

Studying alcohol’s effect on women

Trials were conducted on well-slept women using an alcohol dose of 0.49 grams per kilogram – the equivalent of two to three standard drinks, in this case vodka tonics, in the hour before falling to sleep.
 
The dosage was 0.5 per cent below the legal limit for driving in the United States.
 
The course of alcohol before bedtime was tested on women between 20 to 25 years of age.
 
Researchers monitored the women's sleep and sleep electroencephalograms (EEGs), a graphic record of the electrical activity of the brain – a technique that can analyse the ‘microarchitecture’ of sleep.
 
The team found few but significant differences between sleep and sleep EEG between alcohol-intake versus placebo.
 
When alcohol had been taken, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep decreased, while stage-four sleep (the deep sleep early in the night) was slightly increased.
 
In addition, spectral analysis of the EEG showed signs of increased sleep intensity during non-REM (NREM) sleep after alcohol compared with placebo.
 
"Whether this sleep pattern is beneficial or harmful is unknown at this point," said author Eliza Van Reen, a psychology graduate student at Brown University.
 
“Although it may signal an initial consolidation of sleep, it might also be associated with difficulty waking in the event of an emergent problem, such as a fire or medical emergency.”
 
The team plan to further examine other alcohol doses, sex differences and vulnerabilities that may occur with a positive family history of alcoholism, the authors finished.
 
The study was published in the June 2006 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
 

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