Alcohol As A Natural Sleep Aid

Alcohol, like coffee, affects sleep in a negative way. Unfortunately, some people use alcohol as a sleep aid, believing that it helps them fall asleep. Alcohol will help you get to sleep faster but this perceived benefit is clearly outweighed by all the adverse effects of alcohol on sleep architecture, the five natural stages of sleep.

Advances in brain polysomnography in the 1950s lead to our current understanding of what happens in the brain as we sleep. When we go to sleep our brain progresses through five stages of sleep:

 Stages 1 and 2 light sleep begins the process of slowing brain waves;
 Stages 3 and 4 known as slow wave sleep [SWS] or deep sleep follows;
 Stage 5 or rapid eye movement [REM] predominates in the last third of the night.

The preservation of this natural brain rhythm of sleep or sleep architecture is every bit as important as the overall sleep time. We need to experience all 5 stages of sleep in order to wake rested.

These stages are not necessarily experienced in chronological order but cycle throughout the night. In stages 1& 2 sleep the mind is in a light sleep, easily roused. Stages 3 & 4 are a deeper level of sleep where rousing is more difficult and people report feeling disoriented if awakened. In Stage 5, or REM sleep, the brain activity is similar to that when awake but the body remains in full muscle paralysis except for respiratory and cardiac function. This allows the mind to experience a full dream without consequent bodily movement.

To obtain a good night’s sleep it is very important to avoid factors that disrupt sleep architecture. Alcohol suppresses stages 3, 4 and REM sleep. The result is frequent awakenings during the night and a sense of not feeling refreshed the next morning. This is not to say that a drink or two will have a negative effect on sleep but just that excessive ingestion of alcohol is not an effective strategy.

Eating foods rich in tryptophan such as Zenbev® , thought by many to explain the benefit of a warm glass of milk at bedtime, is no guarantee that brain tryptophan levels will increase. In fact, numerous studies indicate just the opposite: if you eat a food rich in tryptophan, the levels in your blood go up but in your brain they go down. This paradox is explained by two events: natural tryptophan is always accompanied by other more plentiful amino acids; and, these other amino acids are more effective at competing for the limited transport sites that shunt tryptophan into the brain.

The solution is combining a high source of tryptophan with a blend of natural ingredients that allows natural tryptophan into the brain. Zenbev is a unique blend of organic pumpkin seed (the highest source of tryptophan) in combination with other ingredients. More information about the benefits of Zenbev as well as a review of other Natural Sleep Aid is available