Improve Your Sleep - Part 2
Welcome to the second installment of our sleep series. This week it is all about CAFFEINE and how to use it appropriately so that it is less likely to affect your sleep. We love our caffeine, but there seems to be so much conflicting information floating around out there. We want to help set the record straight and show you how to use caffeine to your advantage and still get good sleep. In this email we break down the Huberman Lab podcasts on caffeine and sleep into a "cliffs notes" version that is easily digestible!
Thanks for reading!
Kira & Matt
How to drink coffee and still get optimal sleep:
Wait 90-120 minutes after you wake up to drink caffeine.
If you exercise hard shortly after waking, it is OK to drink caffeine right away.
Stop drinking caffeine within 8-10 hours before your bedtime.
Wait 90-120 minutes after you wake up to drink caffeine.
This one is going to be tough for most coffee drinkers, but it will pay off dividends for your sleep if done consistently. Waiting 90-120 minutes after you wake up to drink your coffee (or caffeinated beverage of choice) will help boost your mood and energy throughout the day.
Waiting to drink caffeine in the morning, can also prevent that “afternoon crash”. You know that time of day in the middle of the afternoon when you feel tired, hangry, and feel like you need that extra cup of coffee to keep you chugging along till it’s time to clock out.
If you have trouble functioning without your caffeine as soon as you get up, try pushing it out by 15 minute increments each day (or every few days) until you reach the 90-120 minute threshold. Or drink half of your caffeine upon waking and the other half about 1 hour later.
If you want to take a deep dive into how this works, keep reading. Otherwise, go ahead, skip to the next bullet point.
What is the scientific theory behind caffeine affecting our sleep?
It all has to do with a molecule called adenosine that is floating around in each of our bodies. The longer we are awake, the more adenosine builds up in our system. When you sleep, the adenosine levels come back down. A good nights sleep will clear out most of the adenosine in your body, but there is still a little bit that remains. On the flip side, if you didn’t sleep well, your morning adenosine levels will be much higher.
Caffeine is know as an adenosine antagonist. This means that it will block adenosine from entering your cells. Because adenosine can’t get into your cells you will feel more energetic. However, once you stop drinking caffeine, the caffeine molecule will dislodge from the cell receptor and you will have a massive build up of adenosine molecules just waiting to get to work. That’s when you get sleepy or experience the afternoon crash.
If you delay drinking caffeine for the first 90-120 minutes of being awake, you can nearly zero out your adenosine levels in the morning, just by being awake and moving around. This will offset the afternoon crash due to much less adenosine floating around waiting to work on your cells in the afternoon.
This tip is the exception to the previous recommendation! If you exercise hard shortly after waking, it is OK to drink caffeine right away.
For those of you that just can't fathom waiting to drink your coffee, there is an alternative solution for you. Drink your coffee, then move, doing whatever mode of exercise you prefer. Exercising will essentially clear out any remaining adenosine you may have in your body after waking. As an added bonus, the research shows that caffeine will enhance your exercise performance.
How does this work?
Exercise will spike your cortisol levels and in turn these elevated cortisol levels will clear out your adenosine. Cortisol doesn't deserve the bad rep it often gets. Cortisol is what helps us get up in the morning because the levels start to rise. You want that peak in cortisol early in the morning. Cortisol is a good hormone if its release is timed correctly. It can stimulate the immune system, enhance our metabolism and make you feel energetic and alert.
What exactly does exercising HARD mean for me?
Let’s break this down a little. The best way to rate your exercise intensity is by using the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. Perceived exertion is how hard you feel your body is working. It is based on physical sensations that you feel during any given activity, including increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, difficulty holding a conversation, and muscle fatigue. These sensations are then categorized on a scale of 1-10. To be working hard, you will want to exercise at a 7-10 out of 10 effort. This effort is very individual to you. Familiarizing yourself with the RPE scale can help you gauge your effort and dial in your workouts. Check out below for more specifics!
Stop drinking caffeine within 8-10 hours before your bedtime.
Having caffeine during this time disrupts the quality and depth of sleep. Caffeine has a quarter life action in our bodies of about 12 hours. That means that if you ingest 100mg of caffeine at 10am about 25% of that caffeine will still be acting on your system at 10pm. With that being said, the research shows us that every individual metabolizes and processes caffeine differently, so this may take some experimenting on yourself to figure out when the appropriate caffeine cut off time is for you. If you have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or falling back to sleep after waking at night, you may want to consider moving back that last cup of coffee to earlier in the day.
