Physical Wellness

You Can Drink Coffee An Hour After You Wake Up, Not Immediately, Study

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Nov 17, 2015 01:04 PM EST

Scientists suggest that you don't need to dunk your body with coffee the minute you wake up. You can wait for an hour in order to get a better shot, according to apa.

What makes us high when we wake up is the hormone level that helps to boost our alertness, according to TODAY.

"Shortly after waking is probably one of the high points of the day," says Dr. W. Christopher Winter, a sleep medicine expert at Charlottesville Neurology & Sleep Medicine in Virginia. "It is the time when...you would be at the lowest point at the sleepiness spectrum."

Hence, melatonin that makes you sleepy as well as adenosine that "suppresses arousal" dip are at their lowest levels when we get up first. Moreover, "the neuropeptide that promotes vigilance, hyopcretin, is at its highest level," Winter says.

Hence, you are already completely alert and awake when you get up. As it takes caffeine two hours to shoot to its peak, a cup of coffee enables the caffeine to be on its highest alert when the body requires it. Thus, there is a natural dip in alertness much later in the morning, explains Dr. Joe Ojile, founder and CEO of Clayton Sleep Institute in St. Louis. It is better to delay the coffee drinking slightly, so that you can help to fight the the sleepiness felt later in the morning.

There are some people who like to drink two coffees mid-morning. More than half the adults above the age of 18 drink a cup each day, the average being 3.1 cups, says the National Coffee Association.

However, even though you might love coffee, your body stops responding to the caffeine signal if you consume too much of it. The less you drink, the more effective is its role. It is preferable to consume just about 300 mg just once a day at the point when you want it to be working on you at its maximum, says Madelyn Fernstrom, health and nutrition editor for NBC News.

You can also drink it before a quick, 30-minute nap, which would make you feel more alert later. That really helps people to sleep for the period that it takes for the caffeine to kick in. "The caffeine is actually hitting your system when you are waking up," says Winter. "I think there is a lot of positivity to a nap and that is very wakefulness promoting and the caffeine is very wakefulness promoting." It isn't recommended to drink coffee in the early afternoon, though, as it would cause sleep disturbance.

But finally, do not drink coffee immediately after you wake up. Wait for an hour and meanwhile, why don't you work out and exercise to help you feel more alert?

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