Did you start your day off with a cup of coffee to get out of the drowsy zone?

Well, that’s what I used to do for years. I’d love to have my first cup of coffee far before breakfast and stopped to drink coffee at the night. I’m not sensitive to caffeine when it comes to my sleep but there were a couple of things that got me to rethink this topic seriously.

Today I will share these facts that you should know about caffeine before we are going to walk through the best used when it comes to protecting your sleep and to boosting your energy!

Energy

Caffeine will give us a stimulus to our central nervous system. This will let us feel more awake and alert and this is exactly what we want to use it for! And – many of us simply love the taste of coffee and energy drinks.

Tiredness

Caffeine can prevent us from getting tired, as it looks similar to a hormone called Adenosine. Also, there are special receptors in our brains that will let Adenosine trigger tiredness. Caffeine can block Adenosine from working together with these receptors. As a consequence we can experience a hard time when it comes to falling asleep.

Half-life

The half lifetime defines how long it takes for a substance to get taken out of our bodies to 50%. For caffeine this half life time is 6 hours! This means that a cup of coffee at 3 pm will leave us with half of the amount of caffeine at 9 pm. Yes – true!

Caffeine Tolerance

Our bodies are smart. As they are, they adapt to nearly anything we throw at them. In regards to caffeine this simply means that we first get used to the effect and over longer periods of time our bodies take the caffeine level as the new normal. In other words – to experience normal energy levels we need to have caffeine in our bodies now.

Our Brains

In the book Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker points out that a study has examined spiders on caffeine, cocaine, LSD, and other substances. Surprise: The spiders on caffeine built the worst webs. This is just a side note if you are thinking of allowing your kids to drink caffeine before their brains are completely assembled.

The Power-up Caffeine Recipe

So if the consumption of too much caffeine will let us get used to the effect and the half lifetime is 6 hours – Does it make sense to use coffee at all in regards to pushing our energy levels?

That conclusion is completely up to you. For me this is a yes though. What I did was to drastically reduce my coffee consumption to max 2 small cups/day and to spread these wisely. Here is a little side note I am quite proud of – typically I get along with only one cup of coffee.

Know your biorhythm

To find out when it’s best to have your caffeine dosage it is important to understand your biorhythm. Typically we experience one significant energy drop in the morning and one after lunch in the early afternoon.

The best usage of caffeine is to drink a cup of coffee before or when you experience this energy drop – especially if you feel the need to get something important done or to show up to an important meeting during this low energy phase.

Here’s the plan!

Get used to giving your bodies a bit more time to wake up in the morning – this is completely natural. Avoid drinking e.g. coffee first thing in the morning. Instead drink a glass of water to rehydrate, have some relaxing movement in the form of a walk or something similar and you will be well set for the day. Drink your coffee right before your natural energy dips. Doing so will not only serve your energy levels but let you celebrate your first daily coffee 🙂

Btw. an even more effective natural solution to wake up in the morning is to have a cold shower. This is a thing I have been doing as an experiment for other reasons AND I can tell you that it wakes me up far more than a coffee could possibly do.

Also avoid drinking coffee too late as this might harm your ability to fall asleep or your overall sleep quality.

And if you harmed your sleep – no cup of coffee will ever recover you completely from that.

So, now it’s up to you to use caffeine in the smartest possible way and to let your energy levels rise again.

Implement these simple tips to feel better, raise productivity, let creativity blossom, love and even improve your health.

Have an energized day!

Michael Hildebrandt