Reduce alcohol before you optimise anything else
It fragments sleep architecture even at doses that do not feel like much.
Do this
If you are working on sleep, mood or training, cut alcohol first and give it two weeks before assessing anything else. Note that it will still help you fall asleep faster, which is why the effect is easy to miss.
Why it works
Alcohol suppresses REM sleep in the first half of the night and produces rebound and fragmentation in the second. A meta-analysis found dose-dependent disruption of sleep architecture. Sedation and sleep quality are different things, and alcohol reliably delivers the first while degrading the second.
Where it fails
Population-level guidance on moderate drinking and health remains genuinely contested, and much of that literature is confounded by sick-quitter effects. The sleep architecture finding is on much firmer ground than the mortality debate.
How you’ll know
Compare resting heart rate overnight on drinking and non-drinking nights. Almost any tracker will show you the difference plainly.