Who knew there’s actually an ideal time to consume caffeine?
Turns out caffeine is most well received by our bodies at certain times.
If you’re the kind of person who waits until you get to work around 9am to have your first dose of caffeine, then you’re spot on. The rest of us who frantically slurp down a cup as soon as we wake up at 8am in the morning, not so much.
What coffee-drinkers really should be doing is coordinating their coffee-drinking with their ‘circadian rhythms’, which are our bodies’ natural clocks. Why? Because we’ll get a better bang for our (coffee) buck.
We break it down for you.
1. What have circadian rhythms got to do with it?
‘Circadian rhythms’ are your body’s natural internal clock, which is controlled when we’re awake by releasing cortisol, the ‘stress hormone’. Coritsol naturally spikes between 8am and 9am, 12pm and 1pm and between 5.30pm and 6.30pm.
2. What happens if you drink coffee during a cortisol spike?
Scientists have discovered that if you consume caffeine when your body is naturally spiking your cortisol levels, then the effects of the caffeine won’t be as strong and your body will start to build up a tolerance to it.
Coffee that doesn’t work? Not worth it, in our view.
3. When should you drink your coffee?
Ideally, you should attend to your coffee addiction between 9am and noon, and between 1pm and 5.30pm. You could drink a cup after 6.30pm, but that’s probably not the greatest idea if you want to get some decent sleep.
4. Can I drink a cup as soon as I wake up?
Research shows that cortisol levels bounce up by 50% as soon as we wake up, so you probably want to wait about one hour after you wake up before drinking your first coffee of the day.
Here’s the full science-y video from YouTube channel Asap SCIENCE.
Watch and learn.
