Study shows a drink before bed can cause reductions in REM sleep

medicalxpress.com

1 point·PaulHoule··3 comments

It is well-understood already that alcohol makes it easier to fall asleep but worsens sleep quality and reduces REM sleep. (Google “alcohol and REM sleep” to see what I mean)

Medical Xpress has misunderstood that the novel element here is the study of the impact on regular, consecutive consumption of alcohol, I think?

The linked paper is open access and explains the novel part very well but the watermark on the PDF makes my eyes bleed. Probably I should have linked it instead of the ScienceX recap, which I do fairly often.

On the other hand there are many papers that come to a strong conclusion but you wouldn't get that from reading the title and popular articles sometimes do do a better job of explaining the importance of the work. (e.g. some really technical thing about Metal Organic Frameworks might have big technological consequences) I find the HN community is likely to complain about a ScienceX post having obnoxious ads but that on Mastodon or Tildes I am likely to get comments like "I wish I could understand that" when I post journal articles, even when they are relatively easy to read.

One of those "obvious, common sense" truths getting proven by experiment.

I've known a couple of alcoholics who mainly kept drinking to keep away nightmares.

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