Caffeine. Should You Be Drinking Less?

Caffeine is part of most people’s lives and often built into their daily routine, like the morning ritual of a hot cup of coffee on the way to work.

However is it good for us?

And does it negatively impact our health?

Let’s start with some positives!

Current health guidelines recommend we can have up to 400mg a day of coffee.

Thats roughly the equivalent of 3 large coffees, 4 expressos, or 8 diet cokes!

The research also shows that caffeine consumption has been shown to enhance exercise performance, cognitive performance, is an antioxidant, and is associated with lower rates of neurodegenerative disease. All good stuff!

I would say for most people, the reason they drink coffee is for the feeling of alertness that it gives us. If we have a big day of work ahead or need to work a few more hours, it’s many peoples go to pick me up!

It also increases dopamine signalling which is why you might get an extra  feel good feeling after your first cup of coffee. And as a stimulant, it stimulates our central nervous system making us feel super alert and also stopping us feeling tired.

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And it does this by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain which helps to regulate our sleep wake cycles. The more adenosine we have the more tired we should feel however with caffeine, even though we are still technically tired, the signalling is blocked until the caffeine wears off ,and we then feel the crash!

This is where caffeine can start to have a negative impact for people as instead of using sleep to allow them to wake and feel reenergised, they start to rely on caffeine.

And much like a drug, over time we build up a level of tolerance to caffeine meaning we need more and more to get that same caffeine hit!

The real kicker is that as this is going on it’s actually also reducing the quality and quantity of our sleep more and more, which is the thing that should be re energising us each day.

When sleep quality goes, our health only heads downwards as we tend to have less energy to move and exercise, we typically eat worse foods, our mental health and mood tends to drop and subsequently our alcohol consumption tends to go up! Over time this can then lead to weight gain, muscle loss and poor health markers.

This is how I see caffeine negatively impact my clients the most and it keeps them locked in a cycle of feeling tired, having busy days of work to get through so needing more caffeine and then sleeping poorly.

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As a bonus, it also gives the majority a massive side dose of anxiety which is not helpful when you already have a busy and stressful job or life.

So how do we avoid getting into this cycle?

Here are some things you can do to make sure you avoid the negative impacts of caffeine;

1. Have a limit- 400mg is the max you should have per day
2. Have a caffeine cut off point - Caffeine has a 5 hour half life meaning have its contents will still be in your system 5 hours later. If you have a strong coffee at 5pm thats going to still in your system at 10pm!
3. Delay your first cup of coffee -Start the day with natural light to wake you up using your own cortisol to feel energised before you boost it with caffeine
4. Measure your sleep quality - Look at your sleep quality and how it changes as you start to reduce caffeine and equally as your caffeine consumption goes up. This can be a great motivator to stay on top of your intake and start to reduce it.
5. Check the caffeine content of your coffee of choice (where possible). Pret A Manger coffee is 3 times as strong as Starbucks so make sure you know exactly how much you’re taking in.
6. Prioritise Sleep - If we get good sleep quantity and quality, we tend to need less caffeine. The problem comes when we don’t sleep well and start to try and bridge the energy gap with caffeine. We all need sleep!

I hope you have found this article useful and have a healthy week ahead!

Lizzie

The One Percent Club

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