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Bye!

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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. And how are you feeling this Monday? Did you enjoy a few beers or wines or catch ups with your mates and now sort of are waking up on a Monday morning feeling a little bit dustier than you would otherwise? And not because you went wild or went on a bender or anything like that, but just because.

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One of the known impacts of alcohol is how it can negatively impair our sleep cycle. And I want to chat about this today briefly, not because I think that this is news to you, but more as a reminder or an awareness raising exercise, largely because I had maybe three or four clients last week where this was a conversation that we had. Now,

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These are people who are coming to me because they've got issues with energy, they wake up in the morning feeling exhausted, they might have a few extra kilos that they would like to shift, yet they're not prepared to give up that unwind drink at the end of the night. Be it before or after dinner, it is one of their small pleasures, they tell me, that that's almost a non-negotiable for them, but at some point, as I said to them,

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You just have to draw a line in the sand. Like, there is no way that you can out supplement the negative impact that alcohol can have on your sleep. And having a good night's sleep, unfortunately, and I have tried asking so many experts on the show for them to give me a contrary opinion, but I mean, it's pretty universal. A good night's sleep is essential to health. It is essential to you meeting your goals.

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Yes, I know that there will be times where you aren't able to get the sleep you need. Parents, shift work, pets, other reasons that sort of get you up and about at night, which means that you can't get to sleep. And then to that I'll just say, you know, do what you can, optimise other areas of your health, and then sleep will sort of have its turn once you're in a position for it to be able to. But for people who are willingly impairing their sleep and unwitting to give it up,

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are trying to meet other health goals, I think it's just worth banging this drum a little bit. The thing with sleep is that it's not a passive state. Even though we think that alcohol helps unwind and relax me, and then I go and get a good night's sleep, it is a complex, active process that's crucial for our recovery, our memory consolidation, and our emotional regulation. So if you're not doing what you can to optimize it, and willingly,

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in fact impairing it, then you can't possibly expect to meet your health goals. I know, and I wish it was different, believe me, but unfortunately it is not. Let me briefly tell you about these sleep stages, right? So we've got non-rapid eye movement REM sleep, and we've got rapid eye movement sleep. And in a typical sleep cycle, it includes roughly four stages, starting from light sleep, stage one, to deep sleep.

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stages three and sometimes referred to as stage four in an older model of sleep architecture. And then finally you have the REM sleep where dreaming occurs and these stages repeat psychically through the night with a complete cycle lasting about 90 to 110 minutes. And the typical sleep architecture goes that we sort of fall into this light sleep and then gradually move through the

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we spend a lot more time in that sort of last cycle of sleep, the REM sleep, than what we do at the start. So the time in each sleep cycle changes as well. So non-REM sleep makes up about 75 to 80% of a night's sleep. And in non-REM sleep, it goes from light sleep to deep sleep. And we do, it's in that deep sleep where we have that physical renewal, the healing, and we get growth hormone release, which,

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is like a state whereby we get a lot of that recovery that we need. And we spend about 20 to 25 percent of time in the REM sleep and that's associated with dreaming, memory consolidation, learning and emotional processing. And as I mentioned, that REM sleep period gets longer towards the morning. And so sleep is set up in this evolutionary way.

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because it's important. And in fact, I believe that there are no species, not even jellyfish, I may remember reading a study about that, that don't experience the requirement for sleep. But it isn't just actually that emotional repair and recovery that occurs during sleep, it's really important for physical health and wellbeing too. So it helps with repairing the heart and the blood vessels, it supports growth and stress regulation.

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It allows us to maintain a healthy balance of hormones that control appetite and blood sugar regulation. And sleep is essential for immune function as well. And there are critical changes to our immune system even after one night's poor sleep. So you know, that's an important thing to consider. Lack of sleep affects mood, it affects our cognitive function and our mental health. So we can be irritable, we have impaired memory. And

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it impacts on our daily performance and safety as well. So a sleep deficiency can lead to problems with decision-making, problem-solving, and increased accidents or errors. But again, this is probably not new to you, and it's just reminding you of how important it is for us to get a good night's sleep. And if you do have body composition goals, or you have energy issues, and you're not doing everything you can to support your sleep, including minimizing your alcohol intake,

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then that is like the elephant in the room that really does need to be addressed. So yes, alcohol may in some ways benefit people with an overly anxious mind, but the dose is always in the poison. And a third to half a standard drink of red wine, for example, may help disengage your sympathetic nervous system drive, promote that parasympathetic nervous system, shift, changing.

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your breathing pattern and allow for you to unwind and relax. But very seldom do we have just a third to a half a glass wine. And consuming alcohol can of course lead to feelings of sleepiness and drowsiness, I know it certainly does for me, and that initially may seem beneficial for falling asleep faster because it does have those sedative effects. And in fact, studies have shown that alcohol reduces the time it takes to fall asleep, which is known as that sleep onset latency.

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And so therefore, it has that appeal of people who struggle to fall asleep, you know, have just a shot of whiskey and I'll be fine. But it does impact on that sleep architecture, which means that it significantly disrupts the distribution and duration of those sleep stages. So it can particularly reduce the REM sleep in the first half of the night, which is crucial for that memory learning and emotional processing.

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So the reduction in REM sleep can lead to mood disturbances and cognitive deficits. And a lot of our ability to cope with the emotional demands of the day before is largely sort of taken care of. Well, we can look at things with fresh pair of eyes and with a different perspective the next day when we do get a good night's sleep. And so you're largely letting go of that ability when you have this disruption in that REM sleep.

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And of course, we probably have all experienced this. That alcohol can lead to more frequent awakenings and to a more fragmented sleep pattern in the second half of the night. And who hasn't had that? And this was me this week. You know, we came home from the race on Sunday, and I had like a couple of glasses of wine, and we had them a bit later because we got home a little bit later.

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And I noticed that after about three o'clock in the morning, I was just shifting and restless and constantly waking. And this is often when the sedative effect does wear off and the body experiences that rebound effect and that leads to a lighter, more disturbed sleep. So we don't get the good night's sleep that we would like. And indeed,

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You know, chronic alcohol use can lead to long-term changes in sleep architecture, including that prolonged sleep onset latency and decreased sleep efficiency. So it can change how it impacts you on that sort of daily basis. And there is definitely an increase in risk of developing sleep disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia with regular alcohol consumption, relaxing the muscles in the throat.

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making it more likely for the airway to collapse and cause breathing interruptions during sleep. Essentially, that's what sleep apnea is. And we do have a shift in our tolerance as well. So if you rely on alcohol to help you to relax and unwind, it does end up, we require more of it to achieve its same sedative effects. But this does lead to that vicious cycle of sleep disturbances. So you might use it to help you unwind, but you might notice that we're

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you know, less than half, less than a glass was allowing you to do that earlier on. Nowadays you need one and a half to two glasses to have that same impact. A lot of these negative impacts that alcohol has on sleep is largely down to the timing as well. So, you know, if you, you may notice that if you happen to enjoy a glass of wine at lunch or sort of have a beer as you're watching some afternoon sort of footy show, but yet you pull the pin on that.

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in that sort of afternoon time slot, then it does make a difference to your sleep and that will largely sort of negate any of these negative impacts. But I am by no means suggesting that, you know, shift to day drinking out of night drinking because of this. I'll link to the study that looked at alcohol and the effects on normal sleep. And, you know, it did show that sort of low to moderate doses had no clear trend

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rapid eye movement sleep in the first half of the night, whereas when we got to those high doses, more than 3 or 4 drinks a night, the REM sleep reduction in the first part of the sleep was significant, and total night REM sleep percentage was decreased in the majority of studies at those moderate and high doses, with no clear trend apparent at low doses. And you might know this yourself, you know, one glass…

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of alcohol before dinner may not make an appreciable difference on your sleep architecture and you may wake up feeling really rested and therefore the negative impact on sleep isn't really present in that state but it's when you get to these moderate and high doses which a lot of people are doing that's when you notice that real shift in your sleep architecture.

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And look, the reason I'm mentioning this isn't because I think no one should drink alcohol. And in fact, I, you know, just wrapped up a podcast with both Cliff Harvey and Darren Ellis and, and the discussion about alcohol came up because there's been this trope over social media over the last few months that there is no safe dose for alcohol and that we should, that ideally for optimal health, we would all be abstaining. And that's not what I'm suggesting here. What I'm really just talking about is just that.

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The elephant in the room for a lot of people that I talk to is their alcohol consumption. And for them, it's negatively impacting on their sleep cycle. They are waking up feeling exhausted. They are then irritable. They're moving to sugar and coffee to get through the day. And then they are unwinding at the end of the night when the kids have gone to bed with a glass of wine or three. These are the people that I think really need to

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be honest with themselves about their alcohol consumption. It doesn't matter that I'm saying it to them on a consult. That's actually not gonna move the needle for them because they sort of already know it themselves. And I don't know what it takes for someone to really sort of be honest about how it's impacting them. But at some point, the penny will drop and they'll realize that in order to make appreciable improvements on their energy and their sleep patterns,

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the alcohol consumption has to be addressed. No magnesium supplement is going to help in this regard. A sleeping pill will knock you out, but it's certainly not going to improve the quality of your sleep. And no amount of caffeine is necessarily going to get you feeling great the next day either. So I really just wanted to highlight this as food for thought. I like that glass of wine might seem like a shortcut to a faster sleep.

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but it does significantly compromise the quality and restorative value of sleep. So just consider that long-term implication on sleep health and wellbeing. And that's my little thought for Mini-Mikkipedia on a Monday. If you've got any concerns, if you want to raise anything with me about it, absolutely head to Instagram, threads or Twitter @mikkiwilliden. Send me a DM. Go to

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Facebook, MikkiWillidenNutrition or head to my website miikkiwilliden.com Alright team, have a great week!