Cannabis, Alcohol, and Sleep
The connection between alcohol, drugs and sleep is not so simple. But we do know that when our sleep suffers, our headache symptoms tend to increase.
Sometimes our body will respond to something differently in the short term than in the long term. Or we might trade quicker sleep for deeper sleep.
For example – why is it that alcohol seems to relax us and put us to sleep – and yet we feel so “unrested” the next day?
Dr. Nicole Moshfegh, a sleep specialist from Los Angeles, points out some of the issues with the traditional “night cap” in her book The Book of Sleep: 75 Strategies to Relieve Insomnia.
Many people believe having a drink or two after dinner or before bedtime will help them sleep. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Alcohol is a sedative. In early stages of consumption, alcohol sedates your prefrontal cortex — the part of our brain that controls our impulses and helps us think and plan. With time, alcohol starts to sedate other parts of our brain, effectively sedating you out of wakefulness. However, the brainwaves produced during sedation are not what we experience in natural sleep. In fact, when we are “sleeping” under the influence of alcohol, we experience frequent awakenings, which impairs our ability to receive restorative sleep. Because your brain is still sedated, however, you do not remember them, causing you to believe you slept well, which is why many people have trouble realizing the “hangover” they experience the next day is in part due to their poor sleep…
Dr. Nicole Moshfegh
Dr. Moshfegh goes on to explain how alcohol can interrupt the deep “REM” sleep that we need.
What about cannabis? Dr. Moshfegh addresses this as well, which acknowledging that we still have a lot to learn about the relationship between cannabis and insomnia:
Here’s what current research has provided evidence so far: Sleep disturbance is a known withdrawal symptom of marijuana use (even when exposed to low doses); THC is associated with daytime sleepiness, delayed sleep onset, and a decrease in slow-wave (or restorative) sleep; and any short-term benefit marijuana users may initially experience (typically decreased sleep onset) vanishes after long-term/chronic use, due to a buildup of tolerance…
Dr. Nicole Moshfegh
So even low doses of cannabis may lead to withdrawal on certain days. And as with alcohol, you may “get to sleep” quicker (at least in the early stage of cannabis use), but that sleep will not be quality sleep.
Because sleep is so important for migraineurs, we should certainly think twice about anything that will take away from quality sleep time. And a key way to test the sleep you’re getting is to ask the question, “When you woke up this morning, did you feel refreshed?“
If not, you may have good reason to look into ways to improve your sleep. You may need to consult a sleep specialist. Of course, there are also more tips in Dr. Moshfegh’s new book, which was published in October.