Sleep Panic Attacks and Alcohol

The Effects of Drinking on Nocturnal Panic Disorder

Mar 15, 2010
Marlene de Wilde

Fear of Sleep because of Sleep Panic Attacks - moon soleil

Alcohol is often used as a nightcap to aid sleep. However, it has the opposite effect on quality of sleep and can lead to sleep panic attacks.

Alcohol has long been used as a crutch in social situations, as a sleep aid or as a relaxant after a hard day at work. Unfortunately, the effects of alcohol on the brain and the body are often the opposite of why it was imbibed in the first place. This is especially true of the relationship between sleep and alcohol.

Alcohol is a depressant but it can act both as a stimulant and a sedative depending on the dosage and the person who is doing the drinking. People who are more lively and sociable after a drink or two are so because the alcohol has depressed the parts of the brain that control judgment.

People who have a drink to bring on sleep do fall asleep more quickly but this is only temporary. Sleep disturbances occur during the night as alcohol interferes with the different phases of sleep as well as the duration of sleep. There is a definite link between sleep panic attacks and alcohol consumption.

What are Sleep Panic Attacks?

Over 50% of those diagnosed with a panic disorder also suffer from sleep, or nocturnal, panic attacks. These are the panic attacks of the day transported into the deep dark night where the experience can be even more frightening. Waking up suddenly for no reason with a racing heart, belabored breathing, sweats and chills and the intense fear that death from a heart attack is imminent.

Even though the attack itself may only last minutes, the aftershock leaves the sufferer unable to get back to sleep. This happens once and maybe there is no harm done but should it happen a second time, then what would be the first thought on the third night? What if it happens again? Some sufferers of nocturnal panic attacks are so afraid of a recurring episode that they cook, clean house, read, watch television – anything to delay sleep.

Alcohol as a Cause of Sleep Panic Attacks

There are different stages one passes through during sleep which are differentiated by the function of brain waves. There is light sleep, rapid eye movement sleep or REM, which is when most dreaming occurs, and then there is a deeper level of sleep, or non-REM. There are several cycles during the night which are made up of the different stages. Alcohol disturbs the rhythms of these stages, particularly blocking the entry into REM sleep early on in the sleep cycle.

Nocturnal panic attacks usually occur during the deepest stage of sleep which is at its best in the first few hours of the night. By preventing the transition from non-REM to REM sleep, alcohol sets the stage for those vulnerable to panic attacks.

Alcohol as a Cause of Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea occurs when throat muscles relax during sleep and cause a temporary cessation of breathing. The sleeper is jerked awake, thus restarting the breathing process and so falls back to sleep only to have the same happen as the throat muscles relax again. The more alcohol that is consumed before bedtime, the more the muscles relax during sleep and so the problem is made worse.

Sufferers of sleep apnea may awaken in panic, suddenly aware that they can’t breathe and so their heart beats wildly and they feel dizzy. This is what happens during a nocturnal panic attack and so the two conditions may become mistaken for one another.

All in all, alcohol should be avoided in the six hours before sleep otherwise sleep quality will be affected.

Sources:

"The Phenomenology of Panic." Panic: Psychological Perspectives. Ed. S. Rachman and Jack D. Maser. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988. 11-34.

"Why a Little Nightcap Prevents a Good Sleep; A Survey Has Shown Six out of 10 Drinkers Are Unaware of the Link between Alcohol and Sleep Problems." Helen Rae. Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England) 31 Aug. 2009

Zal, H. Michael. Panic Disorder: The Great Pretender. New York: Insight Books, 1990.

Hudson, Emma Sugar, Caffeine and Alcohol. http://www.panicattackneedtoknow.com/sugar-caffeine-and-alcohol-their-part-in-panic-attacks/

Marlene de Wilde - Marlene has a BA in journalism and psychology. She teaches English as a Second Language in Crete.

Alcohol affects Brain Function - Ryan Somma

Comments

Jan 1, 2011 9:48 AM

Guest :

It certainly is important to get enough sleep, especially if you are MALE!

CNN had a health report that stated Insomnia is deadly but it went on even further, it was deadly for males.

Men with insomnia were more than four times as likely to die as “good sleepers” during the 14-year study, published Wednesday in the journal Sleep.

Add hypertension or diabetes, and men with insomnia were seven times as likely to die as those not suffering from sleep problems, the study found.

What was very interesting is that this report stated:

Self-reported chronic insomnia plus lack of sleep among women did not result in more deaths among women.

Insomnia like almost everything else will kill males faster than it does women.

I also see they were trying to make excuses for the fragile male by saying "Insomnia among women could be less severe, or the study did not follow women long enough." However, later it said they studied 1,000 women and 741 men, with an average age of 50. Of that group, 8 percent women and 4 percent of men complained of chronic insomnia and slept fewer than six hours when they were measured in a sleep laboratory so it seems that the most likely cause of the male deaths from lack of sleep is that males are much more fragile than women. How else do they explain a lot of male deaths and then state chronic insomnia plus lack of sleep among women did not result in more deaths among women. I know people do not like to hear it, especially males because we all know that the male ego is fragile too but this does show the superiority of women and if the males can acknowledge they are the inferior sex, maybe they can get help in the many areas they are weaker in.

Jan 5, 2011 2:27 AM

Guest :

Is it true that insomian can kill you if you are a male? Why doesn't it kill women?

Is it also true that most things kill males faster than they do women?

If this is true, I am glad I am a girl.

Jan 7, 2011 1:12 AM

Guest :

According to that report, insomnia kills men perhaps because it adds a lot of stress to them. Stress does kill but it kills males more often.

Males are 25% more likely to die in infancy than girls
Most of the miscarriages would have been male and male premature infants are much less likely to survive. In fact, a girl born 4 weeks earlier than males will survive better than a male born 4 weeks after she was. Some places, if a male is born from the 22th to the 25th week, they will just do comfort care while they wait for the male to die but girls will receive aggressive intensive care treatment born in this time because she is more likely to survive. Premature baby girls were 1.7 times more likely to survive than males. However, African-American baby girls were 2.1 times as likely to survive as white males.
Males have a life expectancy of 64.52 years, as compared to a life expectancy of 68.76 years for women

In the U.S., males have higher death rates for all of the 15 leading causes of death (with the exception of Alzheimer’s disease) and die more than five years younger than women.

The brains of adult males are about 10% larger in total size than the brains of women but women use their brains more efficiently than do males as the male tend to use only one side of their brain at a time, devoting all of their attention and concentration to the task at hand. Women, on the other hand, tend to use both sides of the brain at the same time, making them more adept at "multi-tasking

For approximately the first six weeks after conception, all human embryos develop as a default female child, at which time if something goes wrong, a male is the result.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, males are 10 times more likely to commit murder. Both female and male offenders are more likely to target male victims

75% of those killed in auto accidents are male.

So you see, males are more likely to die earlier that women from almost every cause which shows males are the weaker sex. Many other things also show that women are the superior sex in almost every area. BTW, I am not a girl, I am a male but just between us, I am glad it is you girls who are the superior gender.

Jan 9, 2011 12:22 AM

Guest :

The last two comments add two more nails in the coffin of male superiority. In reality, male superiority was never alive in the first place. It has always been c on job throughout history as males are not, never have been and never will be superior to women. In fact, we are far from being equal as women are very much superior to most males.

Even though I am a male, I knew it as a child just by looking around at the males and women around me that women are the superior gender. His book "The Natural Superiority of Women" should be taught in every junior high school in the country.

Since many males make women think they are the inferior sex, I gave my daughters this book by Ashley Montagu He made the statement: "The natural superiority of women is a biological fact, and a socially acknowledged reality." One problem is that it is not a "socially acknowledged reality" enough but it was controversial enough as it bruised too many male egos. (The only thing more fragile than our male egos are our testicles and it would not bother me if women were taught how to use this weakness to their advantage if they were being attacked)

4 Comments