Alcohol and Sleep

A Conversation with Dr. Brooke Scheller, Founder of Functional Sobriety

Guest: Dr. Brooke Scheller — Doctor of Clinical Nutrition, CNS

Host: Natalie — BetterSleep

Topic: How alcohol affects sleep, and how to repair it

Introduction

Natalie: Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr. Brooke Scheller — Doctor of Clinical Nutrition, Certified Nutrition Specialist, and founder of the Functional Sobriety approach. Hi, Dr. Brooke — I'm so glad to have you. How are you today?

Dr. Scheller: I'm doing well, Natalie. Thank you so much for having me. As I mentioned in our getting-started moment, I'm really excited you're covering this topic — I think it's so important for your listeners and viewers to dive deeper into it. It's a little bit taboo for some, but a really important topic to discuss.

Natalie: We're so excited to learn more about the relationship between alcohol and sleep. Let's jump right in. What motivated you to start educating people about alcohol's impact on wellness, including sleep?

Dr. Scheller: Thank you for asking. I often share my story, and I talk a lot about it in my book. I used to be a big drinker, and I was one of those people who became really interested in the ways alcohol potentially had a positive effect on health. But it wasn't until my own experience cutting back and going alcohol-free that I saw this opportunity for us to talk more about the influence alcohol has on health.

Dr. Scheller: One of the challenges for so long is that we've believed there are health benefits to drinking — and I think that's especially true when it comes to sleep. So many people believe alcohol helps with their sleep, but they aren't aware of the ways alcohol may be having a negative impact on it over time. It's become a huge passion of mine to talk about alcohol in a way that makes it a topic we can all discuss openly, without judgment or criticism around people's choices — but really to help them decide how to drink, how much to drink, and whether cutting back or quitting might be best for them.

Do People Underestimate Alcohol's Impact on Sleep?

Natalie: It sounds like many people might just underestimate the impact of alcohol on their sleep. Is that accurate?

Dr. Scheller: I would agree. Many of us can relate to waking up and feeling sluggish — especially after excessive amounts of alcohol. We can all relate to that next-day hangover feeling, or just feeling more fatigued than normal. But in the long term, we really underestimate what it's doing to our sleep. This isn't just about the night we drink; the more we drink on a consistent basis, the more it can influence our sleep over the long term.

Natalie: What are some of the most common sleep complaints you hear from people who drink regularly?

Dr. Scheller: A lot of folks experience broken sleep. They might feel like they wake up a lot in the middle of the night, or that they fall asleep quickly but don't feel rested the next day. Because of the way alcohol influences cortisol and melatonin, many people find that over the long term — even if alcohol initially helped them sleep — they have more difficulty staying asleep or feeling rested the next day.

The Nightcap Myth

Natalie: A lot of people reach for a nightcap thinking it'll help them unwind before bed. Why do you think this belief has stuck around?

Dr. Scheller: It really gets into what's happening to our sleep cycles, our brain's neurotransmitters, and our stress and sleep hormones after drinking. One of the big things is that alcohol does have an initial sedative effect — most of us can relate to having a couple of drinks and more easily falling asleep. Many of us hinge on that as a tool to help us sleep, while not being aware of how much it influences sleep after the fact.

Dr. Scheller: There's less conversation about what happens after you initially fall asleep. Alcohol influences neurotransmitters like GABA — one of our body's relaxing neurotransmitters — which can give us that flood and feeling of relaxation and relief that we associate with naturally falling asleep.

What Happens Inside the Body When You Drink Before Bed

Natalie: Can you explain on a deeper level what happens inside the body when we drink at night, and how it specifically interacts with and changes our sleep cycles?

Dr. Scheller: Initially, alcohol has that sedative effect. But as it's being metabolized by the body during sleep, it influences neurotransmitters in a way that makes our sleep lighter, choppy, and less restorative. We're technically asleep, but we're not necessarily getting into the deeper sleep patterns where a lot of the restoration and healing happens.

Dr. Scheller: Even though it initially makes us feel like we can fall asleep, during the metabolic process of alcohol being processed out of the body, many people notice they wake up a few times in the middle of the night feeling anxious or wired. That's not uncommon, and it has to do with changes to cortisol — our body's stress hormone — and the way that influences melatonin production and our sleep-wake cycles.

REM Sleep and the Hidden Effects

Natalie: Are there subtle or sneaky ways alcohol disrupts sleep that people might not realize?

Dr. Scheller: I want to touch on REM sleep, because REM is one of the most important parts of sleep. When we get less REM sleep, we can find ourselves feeling more irritable, more anxious, with poor focus the next day, and more emotional swings or instability. REM sleep is really fragmented and suppressed when we're drinking. It doesn't allow us to get into that deeper state of healing or restorative sleep.

Dr. Scheller: This creates what I look at as the vicious cycle of why we drink. We drink because we often have difficulty relaxing or managing our emotions throughout the day — but if we're not getting enough REM sleep, that can be a contributor to why we feel that way and why we turn to a drink in the first place.

Dr. Scheller: Because of the ways alcohol influences cortisol, many people think alcohol helps with stress. One of the first things I always tell people is that alcohol increases cortisol — it actually makes our stress worse. That's one of the big misnomers. It has an initial positive-seeming influence on stress or sleep, followed by a more exaggerated intolerance to them.

Dr. Scheller: Even if the next day you don't feel a "hangover" — you haven't had enough to feel an intense detox symptom — you may still feel more sluggish, foggy, or groggy. You might have cravings for sugar or carbohydrates, difficulty focusing, or more fluctuations in mood. A lot of these things we think of as "normal," and we don't look at how alcohol may be playing a role. By changing our relationship to alcohol — how much or how often we drink — it can have a really big impact on how we feel.

Realistic First Steps to Improve Sleep

Natalie: For someone who wants to improve their sleep but still enjoys social drinking, what are some realistic first steps?

Dr. Scheller: It's very unrealistic that you hear one discussion about alcohol and quickly flip all your habits. What's amazing in today's day and age — with how much more we're bringing alcohol into the wellness conversation — is that you can start just by learning more about how it influences you.

Dr. Scheller: If you're interested in this topic, look into books, podcasts, or other resources on alcohol reduction. Just by educating yourself, you're going to be really useful to yourself in starting to make those changes. I know it can feel like an overwhelming topic, but just by listening to another podcast or reading a book like mine, you can start moving in the right direction.

Using the BetterSleep App to Support the Journey

Natalie: Are there any tools or features in the BetterSleep app that you think might be useful for people to improve their sleep while cutting back on alcohol?

Dr. Scheller: Absolutely — all of the tools in the app are fabulous for this. There are two pieces. One is looking at the influences on your own sleep: your history, your sleep tracker, the data. Are you getting into REM sleep? Are you having more broken sleep? That helps you understand your sleep, and you can do little research experiments on yourself — what happens on a night I don't drink versus a night I do, or a week I don't drink versus my normal pattern with a few drinks a week. Looking at those metrics and that data can be really useful in seeing how alcohol is actually influencing your body. For me, seeing my heart rate stay up all night long caused real concern and made me want to make changes.

Dr. Scheller: The other piece is the resistance many of us get: well, I struggle with falling asleep — if I don't drink, how am I going to get to sleep? That's where tools like guided meditations become really beneficial, because they can tune the brain into more relaxing brain states so we can fall asleep more easily.

Dr. Scheller: I always tell people that sleep repairs itself fairly quickly. If you're someone who's used alcohol for sedation and falling asleep, I find that with clients, within two to three weeks, sleep regulation starts to happen and things normalize. There are also other tools — certain nutrients like magnesium, or herbs like valerian root — that can be really useful.

How Quickly Sleep Improves After Cutting Back

Natalie: So when people cut back on alcohol, how soon can they start seeing the impact? It sounds fairly soon.

Dr. Scheller: Yes — within a few weeks, you can really start to see things and feel that normalization in your sleep patterns, especially if you've been using alcohol to kick you into sleep. The tracking features can be useful here because you can see over what period of time the difference shows up. There might be a few weeks where things are a little broken or irregular, but usually within a few weeks, it starts to normalize.

Natalie: That is great to hear. That's what everyone needs to hear — there's hope.

Dr. Scheller: There is hope, for sure.

Sustaining Progress Long-Term

Natalie: If someone has already improved their sleep by reducing alcohol, what can they do to sustain that progress long-term?

Dr. Scheller: Really look at your goals around not only sleep but your brain. Sleep has a huge impact on mood and emotions. If you struggle with mental health challenges — anxiety, depression, irritability, even cravings — all of that relates to brain health and how our brain is functioning, and sleep is a really important part of that.

Dr. Scheller: Also, look deeper into your nutrition. I'm a doctor of nutrition, so I'd be remiss if I didn't point out how important nutrients and proteins are for our sleep, our serotonin, our dopamine, and all of our brain's neurotransmitters. To sustain that long-term practice, aside from getting good sleep, make sure you're giving your body and brain more of what they need — like those nutrients.

Philosophy on Balancing Enjoyment and Sleep Health

Natalie: I'd love it if you could summarize your philosophy on balancing enjoyment and sleep health in one sentence.

Dr. Scheller: One sentence is always challenging for me! But I'd say: just because we've done something for a long time doesn't mean it's something we need to continue doing or that it's doing us any service. When it comes to drinking and sleep, it often becomes a habit we don't even think we can or should change. But when it comes to our health — and how we want to feel, who we want to be — making sure that plays into our enjoyment matters. It's not just about drinking and having fun; you can still cultivate positive relationships and experiences without necessarily having alcohol as part of that.

Closing

Natalie: This has been so immensely helpful and insightful — thank you so much, Dr. Brooke. You can learn more about Dr. Brooke Scheller and her work at brookescheller.com. Explore her programs, such as the Alcohol-Free Nutrition Edge, the Mood Makeover program, and 30 Days Alcohol-Free. You can also download her 3-day meal plan for free. And don't forget to follow BetterSleep for more tips, insights, and conversations to help you rest easier. Thank you so much, Dr. Brooke.

Dr. Scheller: Thank you for having me.

Natalie: Until the next episode — please be gentle with yourself, and remember: better sleep is always possible.

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