One glass of red wine at night enhances your body's melatonin release. As a result, red wine helps promote a restful night of sleep.
Melatonin for Sleep
It has to do with how the wine is made. With red wine, the grape skins are left intact; with white wine, they're removed prior to fermentation. Since the melatonin is located in the actual grape skins, only red wine ends up with a nice little dose of the sleepytime hormone.
A study from the University of Milan found that drinking a glass of wine before bed can help you fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. The study participants who drank wine before bed reported better quality of sleep than those who did not drink wine.
Drinking only in moderation can help curb such nutritionless calories, but drinking in excess can easily derail your weight loss or weight management goals. "If someone enjoys a glass of wine daily — and assuming he or she is in otherwise good health — there's no reason to stop," adds Dr. Septimus.
"Wine makes you sleepy, so it will reduce time to fall asleep. However, it does not allow one to go into deep sleep and REM sleep,” Kothare says. He adds that the half life of alcohol is about four hours. Once alcohol is out of the bloodstream, REM sleep rebounds and can disrupt restful sleep.
But red wine is also most likely to make you feel lethargic. Red wine was voted the most likely type of alcohol to make a person tired or lethargic, with 60% of respondents reporting sleepiness after a few glasses.
As per a recent study published in the journal of The Drinks Business conducted by the Washington State University, it was established that drinking around 2 glasses of wine before bed helps in a healthy weight management.
You'll Sleep Better
According to scientific studies, those who drank 5 oz. of red wine every night reported better sleep quality than those who drank water.
Nocturia can disrupt the sleep cycle, and as a result it has been linked to reduced productivity, falls and accidents, and depression. Drinking too much water before bed contributes to nocturia, especially for people with certain conditions such as kidney disease or diabetes, or those who are taking diuretic medicines.
It's often recommended that you should stop drinking water two hours before going to bed. This way, you're not flooding your body with extra fluids that may cause an unwanted trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
After your body has metabolized some of the alcohol it will release excitatory glutamate, which is an excitatory neurotransmitter of your nervous system. When it enters the reticular activating system, it disrupts your sleep.
The best stress-relieving drinks include ginger, chamomile tea, valerian, black tea, coconut water, milk, green tea, coffee, lemon balm tea, water, and vegetable and fruit juice. Aromatherapy is another self-soothing practice shown to have benefits for mental health. You can read more about it here.
New research shows resveratrol, a compound found in red wine and berries, could protect against depression and fight stress.
With white wine, grape skins are usually removed before the fermentation process occurs. Certain red wines such as barolo, cabernet sauvignon, and merlot have higher levels of melatonin.
While many drink wine in the evenings to let go after a busy day, drinking it in the morning can help you start things off with less stress. Another thing you can try if you meditate is adding a glass of wine to your morning meditation routine to further enhance its calming effects.
' For non-professional wine tasters, however, he says five to six o'clock in the evening is a great time to drink wine 'because you're hungry before dinner, thus building up your appetite for a glass'.
When You're Drinking Too Much Water. In most people, with normal kidney function, drinking too much water can irritate your bladder increasing the risk of urine leakage. As fluid intake increases, the amount of urine made will increase along with it.