Permanent link for Caffeine is Keeping You Up on March 1, 2023

March is here, and at GVSU, March is all about sleep! Winter semester is Recreation & Wellness’s Press Pause campaign, and in March we focus on good sleep health and getting adequate rest. I am going to talk all about the relationship between caffeine and sleep so you can start off your March getting the best sleep you can! 

You may have read the title of this blog post and thought, “Well yeah, that is why I drink it.” Lots of Americans drink caffeine daily to help them feel alert and awake in the morning. The FDA states that around 80% of US adults drink caffeine daily. It is common to hear tired voices lament that they have not had their coffee yet, especially on a university campus. But drinking caffeine daily can actually be the reason you don't feel alert and rested without your coffee. 

Let's start by explaining how caffeine works. 

In the brain, you have a chemical called adenosine. This chemical builds up during the hours of the day you are awake and sends a signal that you are tired by binding to special adenosine receptors. So the longer you are awake, the more adenosine builds up and the more tired you feel. When you drink caffeine it makes its way through the bloodstream and into your brain. Caffeine will then bind to the adenosine receptors and block them. This means that although adenosine is still building up in the brain, your body doesn't know that it is tired yet. This is why you sometimes crash mid-day, the caffeine has left your system and isn't blocking those adenosine receptors anymore, leading to a sudden feeling of tiredness. This is also why drinking caffeine later in the day will keep you up, that caffeine is still blocking your adenosine from making you feel tired and getting the rest you need.

So now that you know how caffeine works to make you feel awake, let's talk about how caffeine use affects sleep quality.

Once your caffeine has worn off and you go to sleep, the effects of caffeine consumption still continue. Even if that cup of coffee was early in the day, drinking caffeine still affects your sleep. Caffeine can make it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, and can overall reduce the quality of sleep you get. Especially if you drink caffeine regularly. Caffeine reduces short-wave sleep; This is the deep restful sleep that makes you feel recharged and alert the next morning. 

So what happens for many of us is we don't get good quality sleep so we are tired in the morning and turn to coffee, soda, or other caffeinated drinks. Then that caffeine makes our sleep worse, so we are tired in the morning and drink more caffeine. This creates a vicious cycle of needing caffeine to feel awake because of getting poor sleep. Don't worry coffee lovers, I am not saying you need to give up your favorite part of your morning entirely, but cutting back can improve sleep and stop this cycle.

The safe amount of caffeine in a day is 400 milligrams, which is about 4 cups of coffee. You may not be drinking that much coffee but soda and energy drinks during the day can easily put you over that safe limit. This is also true if you take pre-workout and drink caffeine. Drinking too much caffeine can lead to symptoms I am sure most of us know well, like jitters, nausea, headaches, and a pounding heart rate. It also increases your blood pressure, makes you more dehydrated, and can even cause health issues like problems with digestion.

You can stop this cycle and feel awake without caffeine in lots of different ways. One big one is cutting back on caffeine. If you drink a lot of caffeine or drink caffeine daily this can be hard. One way to do it is to cut back slowly. So if you drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning and an energy drink at lunch, start by just cutting out one of those 3 drinks. Then cut one more, and maybe then you switch to a lower caffeine option like tea. This is going to look different for everyone. Some people may be able to stop drinking caffeine entirely, but for others, caffeine is part of some of their favorite drinks. Just know that cutting back on caffeine (even if you don’t cut it out entirely) will still have benefits.

So now you have cut back on caffeine, but you may still feel a bit tired in the morning. Are there other caffeine-free ways to feel awake? 

You bet there are! There are actually a lot. Here is a list of proven ways to boost alertness without that cup of coffee:

• Hydrate throughout your day by drinking lots of water
• Exercise
• Eat some fresh fruit
• Eat a balanced diet
• Nap throughout the day (check out our nap map here!)

If you still can’t shake the sleep off and feel well-rested, there may be some underlying reason for being tired day in and day out. That is when you should talk to your doctor about your symptoms. Conditions like sleep apnea are fairly common, 1 in 15 people in the US has a type of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea can reduce sleep quality and cause other serious health concerns.

Now that you know the ins-and-outs of caffeine and sleep, you are ready to go and tackle your fatigue and get lots of restful sleep. If you want to dig deeper into the topic of sleep, Check out Emilio’s blog post on how sleep impacts fitness, Annie’s blog post on the racial sleep gap, and Stella’s blog post on the importance of sleep.

By: Eva VanWyck, WIT Peer Educator

 

Categories: Press Pause Rest Sleep
Posted on Permanent link for Caffeine is Keeping You Up on March 1, 2023.