Man, I’m so tired.
Should I drink some coffee, or take a nap?
Why not both?
Hi guys, Catie Wayne here for DNews and there are few things in life that I appreciate more,
than a good nap.
Research shows that a short 20 to 30 minute nap can improve alertness, memory, boost productivity
and all kinds of good stuff.
But, research also shows that if you drink a cup of coffee before your snooze, the quality
of your nap will improve drastically.
I know, this feels like a trick, but hang in there.
We’re taught not to consume caffeine before sleep and with good reason.
Caffeine is disruptive for long periods of sleep and makes the quality of that sleep
less than stellar.
But a nap is a whole other situation!
It works like this: when you’re awake a chemical compound called adenosine (uh-den-uh-seen)
is produced to make you sleepy.
Throughout the day, your adenosine levels rise higher and higher and reach a peak in
the evening, when most people fall asleep.
While asleep, your body will break down adenosine and then when you wake up in the morning feeling
refreshed and then wash rinse repeat.
Meanwhile, the effects of caffeine reach their peak at around 30 minutes.
So the idea is that if you, very quickly drink a good amount of coffee and immediately take
a 20 minute nap, you will wake up just when the caffeine is kicking in and the drug will
have much less adenosine to compete with because some of it dissipated during your power nap.
You should try to drink the coffee as quickly as you can so you can sleep while it’s going
through your gastrointestinal tract and into your bloodstream. 20 minutes or so is the
perfect amount of time because longer naps lead to deeper stages of sleep that can be
difficult for your brain to recover from.
Short naps don’t do that, but still naturally clears away some of that pesky adenosine.
Tea drinkers like myself might be wondering about other forms of caffeine.
You could technically consume some other form of caffeine but because there is significantly
less caffeine in tea or soda than there is in coffee, you’d have to drink a lot more
of it to feel the same effects.
Damn.
Caffeine pills are an option, but because the capsule has to be broken down before the
caffeine can even begin to be absorbed into the bloodstream it takes about an hour for
the effects to be felt.
So be sure to take that into account when planning for a coffee nap.
Of course, nothing is quite as effective for combating tiredness than a good nights sleep.
How do you feel about naps?
Do you take them, or do you prefer to just power through your sleepiness?
Lemme know in them comments.
Thanks for joining me on DNews, and I’ll see you next time.