When we wake up the first thing we drink to stay up to is coffee. It has become a vital part of our life. We have made coffee and caffeine an essential part of our lives and we have to wonder is caffeine bad for you?
Being addicted to anything is bad and coffee is addictive. Coffee might have the benefit of making us alert in the moment but there are impacts caffeine might be having on our overall tiredness.
Understanding the connection between caffeine and sleep
The half-life (half of the drug to leave your system) of caffeine is 6 hours but the quarter-life (of coffee is 12 hours. This means that until 12 hours ¼ cup of the cup stays in our body. If you are drinking coffee at noon that means till midnight the caffeine is in your body. It is as if you drank 1/4 cup of coffee right before going to sleep.
Do you think your sleep would be great with that? With that much caffeine in your system are sleep is impacted
Some people have coffee before bed and think oh I can go to sleep. You might think you aren’t impacted by caffeine but that isn’t true. Yeah, you can go to sleep but the quality of the sleep is impacted. You might even realize. But the amount of ‘deep sleep’ you are having is decreased according to studies. Deep sleep can be decreased by 20 percent.
Then you end up waking tired and what is the remedy of being tired having a cup of coffee.
We go into this vicious cycle of drinking more and more coffee to counteract that bad sleep we having.
What is the solution?
The long-term remedy we need to apply is to try cutting out caffeine completely. We might have headaches at the beginning when we detox but it would be worth it.
But I understand that it is hard to give up coffee as it does give an instant burst and we love that feeling. The choice then is not having coffee after 12 pm. That way when we are going to sleep we do not have caffeine in our body.
If the taste of coffee is what is keeping you have a decaffeinated drink and get the taste.
Even teas that have low caffeine in them can affect your sleep. So be careful before having any caffeinated drinks. The days I have green tea late in the day I feel an impact on my sleep.
To understand the impact caffeine has on us watch the below Youtube video.
