Alcohol intake → Sleep duration and regularity
Alcohol is a sleep toxin with a sedative costume. It sits upstream of the sleep→T and sleep→cortisol arrows.
Review · High confidence
Supported by an experiment or a tightly identified design. Still read the caveats.
Mechanism
Ethanol reduces sleep latency then fragments REM and the back half of the night. That is how a drink becomes an endocrine intervention the next day, via the sleep edges already in this atlas.
Caveats
The sleep papers in this atlas are restriction protocols, not alcohol-plus-PSG trials. The alcohol→sleep arrow is physiological consensus; the exact effect size is not pinned here.
Effect
qualitative. Alcohol fragments the second half of the night. A sleep protocol that ignores this is theatre.
Nodes
Cite this page
What Causes What. “Alcohol intake → Sleep duration and regularity.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-alcohol-sleep (atlas updated 2026-08-31).
Papers
- Alcohol and the male reproductive system
M. A. Emanuele, N. Emanuele · 2001 · Alcohol Research & Health
- Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function
K. Spiegel, R. Leproult, E. Van Cauter · 1999 · The Lancet