How to fall asleep after drinking coffee? How can coffee affect our sleep? Is caffeine harmful to our health? We are all concerned about these questions. This article will show the impacts of caffeine, how it works, and solutions for this problem!
How Does Caffeine Affect Our Body?
Coffee is a popular beverage that many of us consume every day to keep our minds awake. Due to the rush of workload, we often take a large amount of caffeine to stay alert for the whole day, even late-night working. Sometimes, overconsumption is accompanied by a sleepless night.
Caffeine is a substance that can boost our mood, metabolism, and work performance. However, high doses of caffeine can lead to dangerous side effects.
We all know that sleep deprivation comes along with several side effects. We can easily get angry, stressed, and nervous. Our productivity suffers, too.
Anxiety
Caffeine has no nutritional value on its own. We just use it to increase our energy and alertness. Simultaneously, it causes anxiety as it keeps our brain constantly active.
Besides the increase of anxiety, modest doses of caffeine raise stress levels and lead to shortness of breath. Although moderate doses of caffeine can improve alertness, large amounts may cause nervousness and tension.
Digestive Issues
Undoubtedly, caffeine increases the amount of acid in our stomach and other digestive diseases, such as heartburn or upset stomach. We usually drink coffee in the morning, with or without breakfast. However, consuming caffeine on an empty stomach is not a good idea.
If you have any stomach problems, like acid reflux, consult your doctors about whether you need to cut down or give up on coffee.
Rapid Heart Rate
Caffeine is an addictive substance. When drinking coffee becomes our habit, we will find it hard to break it. We will depend on caffeine to feel energetic, stay active, and be productive.
The thing is, high caffeine intake can make our heart beat faster. It changes our heartbeat rhythm and causes high blood pressure.
Nevertheless, there is no clear evidence that caffeine increases the risk of heart disease or stroke. It just stimulates our inner systems to operate more rapidly.
Insomnia
The most prized capability of caffeine is to help us stay awake. On the other hand, too much of it can lead to sleep disorders. Sometimes, we do not realize the effect of caffeine on our sleep as it is a daily habit.
For a long period, caffeine interferes with our sleep schedule, so we find it very difficult to fall asleep. The decreased sleep quality will cause tiredness, exhaustion, and other negative mental and physical conditions.
Caffeine: How Much Is Too Much?
Most experts say that you can reap the benefits of coffee without its drawbacks as long as you don’t pass the threshold of 400 milligrams of caffeine a day. The side effects of caffeine appear when we drink more than 600 milligrams per day.
It also relies on the form of caffeine. Caffeine in powder or liquid form is likely to cause toxic levels of caffeine. Consuming constantly high levels of caffeine can lead to dangerous health problems, including high blood pressure, acid reflux, allergy, or even death.
While caffeine may be safe for adults, it is not advisable for children. This stimulant has a huge impact on the growth of teenagers, such as puberty, hormone, and acne. Pregnant and breastfeeding women also need to limit caffeine consumption and consult doctors before drinking coffee.
When we start to feel weary from lack of sleep, we need to decrease the amount of caffeine that we consume throughout the day. It is an early sign of excessive caffeine content in our bodies. Several helpful methods below will show you how to sleep after drinking too much caffeine?
How To Fall Asleep After Drinking Coffee?
So, how to sleep after drinking coffee? Of course, drinking coffee before going to bed is not recommended as we will certainly have difficulties sleeping. The ultimate advice is to avoid consuming coffee in the afternoon. Our body needs up to 6 hours to eliminate caffeine.
However, if coffee is your pick-me-up drink in the afternoon, here are some solutions to help you easily fall asleep with caffeine still in your body.
Exercise
Regular exercise increases our sleep quality and improves the metabolism process. When we drink too much coffee, we extremely need to burn energy to flush out caffeine.
An exercise that experts suggest is the corpse pose. This yoga position helps to entirely relax our body and produce serotonin, which eases stress and nervousness.
Executing this pose is very easy. Lie your back on the floor, breathe deeply, and slowly feel our bodies relaxed. One warning is that we should not exercise before bedtime. It makes our heart beat faster, our mind awake, thus, keeps us from sleeping.
Hydration
Caffeine is a diuretic substance, which can dehydrate us. When our body digests too much coffee, it is advisable to drink more water to keep ourselves fully hydrated. Our sleep will be affected if we feel too thirsty.
Staying dehydrated also brings some unpleasant symptoms, such as leg cramps, snoring, and dry mouth. Thus, they can negatively affect our sleep quality and overall health.
No More Snacks Before Bedtime
Forget midnight snacks! Eating food at night can disrupt our sleep cycle. Sleep-disrupting digestive issues are more likely to occur because we do not have enough time to process food. It leads to acid reflux and other diseases in the digestive system.
Another tip is getting a smaller and lighter dinner. If we eat too late, a full stomach can cause disrupted sleep. In case of being hungry, we can eat a salad dish with fish or chicken, which are very easy to digest.
Sleep Schedule
If you are a coffeeholic, you can arrange your daily schedule like: What time should you drink coffee? When do you stop taking in caffeine? What time do you need to go to bed?
This arrangement is much more important than we think. It helps us determine our curfew, our meal and maintain the same sleep schedule every day, even on weekends.
Once we try to break this sleep schedule by drinking coffee at the wrong time, our bodies will react. We may feel tired, uncomfortable and soon realize that we need to come back with our healthy sleep schedule.
Coffee Naps
Is it pretty funny that to have a good sleep, we can use coffee naps? How does this make sense? Well, even when this method seems counterproductive in the first place, scientists have proven that it works.
‘Coffee’ and ‘Naps’ may seem conflicting to each other, but we can consider it after knowing how it works.
To apply coffee naps, we drink a cup of coffee for a 20-minute rest. Our body takes 20 minutes to absorb caffeine into our bloodstream. So, we can take advantage of this 20-minute process to take a nap.
Waking up from a nap will make you feel more bouncing and ready for afternoon activities. It is an ideal time to activate the effect of caffeine.
Light & Temperature
Light levels help our body determine when we need to sleep. Try to avoid strong white light. Instead, we should use a warm-light lamp. It eases our eyes, hence relieves our brain and mind.
Another light that we do not recommend is the blue light. This light usually displays on electronic devices, such as cell phones and laptops. Do not look at a bright screen an hour before bed! We’re sure that you don’t want any sleep disturbance.
Temperature also plays a key role in helping you easily fall asleep and maintaining good sleep. Cool temperature is associated with sleepiness, while warm temperature decreases our sleep quality.
Relaxation
Tidy your room. Decorate it minimally to recharge your feelings. Do not make it messy with your stuff! When we clean our bedroom, it will create a comfortable atmosphere. It is a good factor to have a blissful, undisturbed night’s sleep.
We’d better leave our homework or project in other places. Instead, try something that can relax us, such as reading our favorite books, listening to music, meditation, or just thinking about what we’ve done today.
When it’s finally time to close our eyes, unwind and let our brain slowly wander.
Conclusion
For many of us, a cup of coffee is an effective way to start a day. Unfortunately, if you consume it too much throughout your day, you might struggle to fall asleep at night.
How to fall asleep after drinking coffee? We hope you find the answer with several handy solutions provided above. Hopefully, these tips and tricks will help you have a high-quality night’s rest, even after drinking coffee.
Related articles: