Insomnia is a natural cause, but not being able to sleep because of something a person causes, is not. Alcohol is a very popular drink that many people drink, but they do not know what the side effect can be until they get ready for bed. Some believe that alcohol can help them fall asleep, but there can be people who cannot. The alcohol in their system disturbs their brain and body. The circadian system is one of the most powerful systems in the body, affecting it, can make a big change that the person will not like at the end. Taking in alcohol at a certain time can determine if the person will be receiving a sufficient amount of sleep.
Known as sleep, circadian rhythms act, as the internal clock in the human body that helps it fall asleep and wake up, it is a 24-hour timekeeper. In order to maintain a healthy sleeping pattern, the body will need to be in a good and healthy stage. With alcohol in the system, this healthy stage won’t be achieved. The brain helps the circadian rhythm stay on track and get enough energy it needs in order to use. A certain part of the brain signifies what helps the body during the circadian rhythm, this further concludes that in the event that the brain does not become stable from the use of alcohol, the body will not get back on its regular schedule, and this will further conclude that it will get negative effects.
Circadian rhythms also help the body with another function such as maintaining a healthy body temperature. This internal clock is very crucial to the body and ingesting alcohol won’t help it at all. Like humans, experiments can be tested on animals in order to show the effects of alcohol on their circadian rhythm. In an experiment, a mouse got put to the test to see what would happen when it consumed alcohol in a binge pattern. Before giving the mouse any alcohol, scientists observed how the mouse would react when it fell asleep as well as when it woke up.
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The room where the experiment took place had a sufficient amount of light and then they changed the setting and made the room dark, yet the mouse still appeared to show no effects based on its environment. When the mouse ingested the given amount of alcohol in a binge pattern, they put it in another room in order to observe it as it slept. Now in this state of mind, the mouse’s non-rapid eye movement or NREM increased the number of times it woke up in a certain amount of time (Sharma, Sahota, Thakkar, 2018).
This test kept on going as scientists’ recorded all the data to see if there was a difference in each observation. As seen, the alcohol effects on sleep can influence one’s circadian rhythm in a negative way, but health effects increase as well. Performing this scientific experiment showed how binge drinking could cause sleep disturbances that can keep a person awake and jumble up their internal sleeping clock, sleep. On the occasion of alcohol entering the system, two important and crucial things that scientists do is, observe and research.
The first includes researching and observing the effects the body gets during a certain period of the day when the alcohol inhabits in the system, and how the alcohol affects the body in general. By the time the substance reaches the bloodstream and is distributed throughout the whole body, the alcohol can start to make an effect. The majority of people can feel effects as soon as the alcohol becomes ingested or in the early hours after being drunk. According to experts, Yaya, Wang, Shangfeng, and Ghose (2018) noted, “The pathophysiology of sleep disorder is multifactorial, and the risk factors vary among people across different cultures, demographics, environment, socioeconomic situation”.
In adolescents, alcohol can get used and can lead to alcohol use disorder (AUD), as time passes this can negatively impact the person’s circadian rhythm since adolescents prefer to sleep later, and with this malfunction, the brain sends the body signals that it’s still not bedtime (Hasler, Soehner, Clark, 2015, p.377). The brain will always be one of the most important organs in the body, especially with its relation to the internal clock in the human body. If a big amount of alcohol is taken in, the brain will become affected, along with the rest of the body.
Once infected by the substance, the brain becomes sensitive and send out signals that affect the person’s circadian rhythm (Wasielewski & Holloway, 2001, p.97). As Earnest, Chen, and West (2001) recorded, “Studies in rats found that alcohol exposure during the early postnatal period, particularly during the brain-growth-spurt period, can result in cell loss in various brain regions and persistent behavioral impairments. Some investigators speculate that the body’s internal clock, which is located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) in the brain, may also be affected by developmental alcohol exposure” (p. 136). This part of the brain is important to the circadian rhythm if this part is inflicted the person’s sleeping schedule would also be affected.
“The complex interaction between alcohol and the body’s circadian rhythm has become a rapidly expanding area in chronopharmacology”, this area of study researches the body’s internal clock or the circadian rhythm. These scientists try to figure out the effects of alcohol on the body as well as how it can influence the internal clock, they also do further investigating to treat it and fix it, if it is possible. (Wasielewski, Holloway, 2001, p. 94). Another way alcohol disturbs the circadian rhythm is its potential to change the body’s temperature and cause medical damage like hypothermia.
In order for the body to fall asleep and stay asleep, there must be “perfect” body temperature, but if the temperature isn’t right, then there is no way that the person’s circadian rhythm will get back to normal. Alcohol tends to make the body dehydrated and cause the person to wake up due to the fact of dreams they may be having. The reason for this occurrence is that the body is withdrawing the alcohol from its bloodstream, but as this makes some changes, so does the sleeping pattern (Crompton, 2010).
Another experiment that took place included a mouse, who took a dosage of alcohol and in the room, it got put in, had a warmer temperature. After getting the data for the warmer setting, scientists lowered the temperature to a much colder environment. Surprisingly the mouse took off towards the colder area; alcohol tends to increase body temperature (Wasielewski, Holloway, 2001). Each circadian rhythms changes on its own, as the person gets older, their sleeping schedule evolves as well. Changes caused by the means of outside sources such as alcohol, typically cause damage, in this case, the damage will be done to the circadian rhythm.
Everyone has a different sleep schedule and that’s normal due to the fact that everyone has a unique as well as a different body. With reference to different people, alcohol can either cause the person to go to sleep earlier or disturb it by decreasing the amount of sleep each person receives get each night. As alcohol changes the body temperature and causes other effects, the person’s circadian rhythm continues onto the pattern of staying awake until it naturally tells the body to go to sleep.
