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Biofeedback Fails to Curb Drinking in Young Adults
Providing individualized data linking alcohol intake to poor sleep didn’t move the needle more than sleep education alone.
You may not have realized it yet, but we are full-on in the era of biofeedback. I remember a few years ago when my smartwatch started reporting on my heart rate variability during sleep.
To be honest, I didn’t even know what this metric really meant. But I did notice something pretty early on. On nights when I drank alcohol, my heart rate variability went down.
Human brains are really good at linking pieces of data like that, and I kept an eye on it, with additional nights of drinking or not drinking and more reports of heart rate variability only strengthening the association. This is not unique to me, of course — multiple studies have demonstrated the link between alcohol and decreased parasympathetic tone, which is the thing that causes the decrease in heart rate variability.
But for me, it was the first time I really saw a physiologic consequence of alcohol intake — like right before my eyes. Sure, everyone has…
