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Should you ride out the exhaustion (and possibly face plant at your desk)?
kiszon pascal
Its a real tradeoff, and its hard to know if its one worth making.
Heres what to know about how late you might drink coffee without sacrificing sleep.
Coffee contains thecentral nervous systemstimulant known as caffeine.
Adenosine is like a sleep-inducing molecule that your brain makes while youre awake.
The longer youre awake, the more adenosine you have in your system, Dr. Sampat explains.
At this point, you may still be feeling some stimulant effects of the caffeine, Dr. Sampat says.
Then, another four to six hours later, half ofthatamount is gone.
But caffeine can also reduce your total sleep time byinterrupting your sleepthroughout the night.
This makes your sleep less efficient and can make you feel less refreshed in the morning.
Why caffeine affects everyone differently
So thats the basic science on how caffeine can harm our sleep.
There are so many different elements with this.
Every person reacts differently to [caffeine].
We can chock a lot of this variability up to genetics, Dr. Sampat says.
So while thetypicalhalf-life of caffeine may be four to six hours, thats far from being true for everyone.
Then there are medical variables and lifestyle factors.
We can shape our caffeine sensitivity with our caffeine-drinking habits.
There are also certain medications that can interact with and affect how quickly we metabolize caffeine.
Its also possible for the way caffeine affects you to change over the years.
If so, congratulations, and dont change a thing, youre perfect.
The first thing youll want to tinker with is the time of day you stop drinking coffee.
In his experience, trial and error is often needed to find the right balance for an individual patient.
It really depends on the person.
Try having one less cup a day and see what happens.
(Or swapping in decaf, which still does have atiny bit of caffeine.)
(So, not the day of a big work presentation.)
