Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with your entire body and bed drenched in sweat? It can look and feel like someone has thrown a jug of water over you, but all that moisture has come from your body.
There are many causes of night sweats including various health conditions, hormonal imbalances, and so on. However, night sweats have also been heavily linked to alcohol consumption. Many alcoholics suffer from this problem regularly, and it’s touted as one of the key signs of alcohol addiction.
But what exactly are night sweats, why do they come about, and what can you do to prevent them? All of this information can be found below:
Alcohol and Night Sweats
The broadest definition of night sweats is that it’s a condition where your body secretes an unusual amount of sweat during the night.
The key thing to differentiate night sweats from someone that feels overly hot is that they don’t come about due to other conditions in your bedroom or around you. For example, if you’ve wearing lots of layers or leave your heating on and wake up sweaty, then that’s not night sweats.
So, where’s the link between night sweats and alcohol?
In truth, there are actually two reasons you may experience this issue due to drinking. Firstly, there’s a strong connection between alcohol consumption and perspiration.
When you drink alcohol, it interacts with your nervous system. This means that it has an impact on your brain, which will ultimately have a knock-on effect throughout your body. As many of you are aware, alcohol can change your behaviour and get you to do things you’d otherwise not do.
However, it causes physiological changes as well. Primarily, this is down to something called the hypothalamus. This is a specific part of your brain that has lots of different functions, but one of the main ones is regulating your body temperature.
When you drink alcohol, it triggers the release of chemicals that stimulate the hypothalamus and basically makes you produce more sweat than usual. Thus, you get night sweats after drinking if you’ve been drinking before bed.
So, the condensed version of this is simply that alcohol makes you sweat more because of how it interacts with your brain.
Alcohol Withdrawal
As mentioned previously, there is a second way that night sweats and alcohol go hand in hand. Those of you that have read our article on withdrawal symptoms will know that excessive sweating is one of the initial signs of alcohol withdrawal.
Why does this happen? Well, it’s all to do with your nervous system yet again! When you drink alcohol all the time, your nervous system slows down. Naturally, your body adjusts to this way of life.
So, when alcohol is no longer present, the opposite happens, and your nervous system goes into hyperdrive and becomes really overactive. This can lead to an increased heart rate, which will ultimately cause lots of sweating.
When you’re asleep, you can go for hours without drinking any alcohol, and this is why you may regularly experience night sweats even when you stop drinking. Of course, be sure to look for other telltale signs of alcohol withdrawal symptoms to know if this is what’s causing your sweats.
Are Alcohol Night Sweats Serious? How Do You Treat Them
Generally speaking, alcohol night sweats aren’t a serious health condition. Granted, you will lose a lot of extra water from your body, which can lead to dehydration. The solution to this is to make sure you drink lots of water after a bout of night sweats to replenish all that you lost.
Having said that, you should be worried if you experience night sweats. It shows that you are either drinking too much or that you have severe alcohol addiction that causes you to experience withdrawal symptoms after going a few hours without a drink.
To treat this problem, you need to do the following:
- Avoid drinking before bed
- Get professional help with alcohol addiction to ensure you manage your withdrawal symptoms
Get Help for Alcohol Addiction
If you’re struggling with alcohol addiction – or know of someone close to you that is – then you need professional guidance as soon as possible.
Night sweats are a key sign that there’s an underlying alcohol problem present. So, we offer the leading home detox programme in the UK for you to try out. It provides you with all the assistance and encouragement you need to detox from alcohol in the comfort of your home.
It’s affordable, effective, and can make your night sweats a thing of the past. Contact us today is you want to take the first step on the path to recovery.
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