Dr. Michael Breus

Did you know alcohol is the number one sleep aid in the world?

more people drink themselves to sleep than any other single substance right so let's talk about it for a second because there's a universe where an itty bitty teeny tiny amount of alcohol is not the worst thing in the world um but let's talk about it for half a second so when we talk about alcohol there's a couple different things that we want to think about right so

Number one, everybody should know alcohol basically destroys stage three, four sleep, which is our deep sleep.

All right.

So what is it doing to our stage three, four sleep?

And why is stage three, four sleep important?

First of all, so stage three, four sleep is where our physical rejuvenation occurs.

Okay.

This is where it's kind of like bringing the car into the body shop and getting the scratches and the dents and the dinks pulled out.

There's a,

growth hormone, which is emitted during stage three, four sleep.

Physical restoration occurs during this particular stage.

There's a second thing that happens during this stage, which is equally as important, which is something called the glymphatic system.

So without getting too technical, when you fall asleep, this is pretty interesting, your brain shrinks.

No joke, your brain shrinks by a good two to three millimeters.

Cerebral spinal fluid comes in and washes your brain

and then pulls all these proteins out, okay?

This is called the glymphatic system.

So this is very, very important because the proteins that it pulls out are called beta amyloid and tau.

When beta amyloid and tau accumulate in your brain because the washing system isn't working, they have a tendency to wrap around the nerves.