Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to the second of this two-part series on sleep and caffeine in the last episode. We described what caffeine is and the different
impacts that caffeine can
have up on your sleep. Today. We're going to answer the question of why a cup of
coffee seems to have these paradoxical health benefits despite the damage.
Jing impact that caffeine has up on your sleep at night.
But before we speak about that, there is one additional sleep consequence
of caffeine that we've not really discussed yet. We touched upon it in the last episode, but I want to go deeper here and it's applicable. No matter, whether you are a sensitive or insensitive person to the effects of
caffeine based on your genetics because even if you can have a cup of coffee or several with dinner,
And you can fall asleep and stay asleep. You can still suffer empowerment in both the quantity as well as the electrical quality of your deep non-rapid eye movement, sleep. And from our first episode, you'll remember that stages 3 and 4 of non-rem, sleep, 30 deep sleep. And the problem there is that you will not be consciously, aware of the loss of that electrical. Deep Sleep Quality, not unless you
have as I do as think.
Pretoria where you can hook yourself up every night and observe
these impact, but that's exactly what we've done with a number of different research studies in healthy, participants, and we found that a cup of coffee in the evening, can decrease the amount of that deep non-rapid eye movement, sleep by somewhere between twenty to forty percent at night and for a spot of context. I'd have to age a healthy adult by probably about 10 to 15 years to produce.
That kind of a reduction in deep sleep
or you could just choose to do it every night by having a couple of cups of coffee after dinner or with dinner.
And that's the amount of deep sleep that you're getting. But let's go even further into the electrical quality of that deep sleep because what we've learned is that even modest doses of caffeine in the evening. Let's say around
about 100 mg
of caffeine in the evening, which would be probably a rebuff.
Just single cup of drip coffee that will blunt the electrical generation of your deep sleep. And in fact, it will strip away more than 30% of that deep electrical brain wave activity in the first cycle of your sleep at night. So, what's the upshot of this? Well, even if you don't remember necessarily struggling to
fall asleep and you don't remember having a hard
time staying asleep, you can still find yourself.
Of waking up the next morning and feeling unrefreshed by your sleep and unrestored by your sleep, and that can be down to the deficit in the electrical quality of that, deep sleep at night. And as a consequence, you can then find yourself reaching for two or three or even four cups of coffee. The next morning because you don't feel refreshed and restored by your sleep. And it, then creates this dependency cycle. That the more caffeine that you
Have to have to wake up in the morning, the lower quality of your deep sleep at night and the less of that deep quality of sleep that you have at night, the more unrefreshed you'll feel the next morning and therefore, the greater the need you will feel for more caffeine to get you through the following day. However, even with all of that knowledge, let me still repeat what I said at the
start of the first episode, which is drink coffee.
The folks supporting today's episode our athletic greens. Now, I know this is an ad but before you hit the fast-forward button, can I at least tell you why I selected them. As a sponsor, athletic greens is a nutrition
drink and it provides a really
quite exhaustive array of different vitamins and minerals. Biotics antioxidants. It's a long list, but you get the picture. Now, I do want to be clear that I
To get all of my nutritional needs from real meals, but I also know however, that hard as I try. I am not going to hit all of my targets on any given day.
So there are really
two main reasons why I've been using athletic greens for a couple of years and I buy it myself, by the way, I don't get it for free and I've been using it at long before this show. The first is this when it comes to my health, I like insurance policies and I'd
prefer to have a full
coverage plan. And that's one reason I
I like athletic greens. Second. I did my diligence on the science behind the ingredients,
and I'm a big fan of empirical data as ground truth. So, if
any of this sounds interesting to you, head on over to athletic greens.com forward slash Matt Walker and you will get some money off your first order.
Also if they have kindly
offered a free one-year supply of vitamin D and 5 travel packs with your first purchase.
Just so as I said head on over to athletic greens.com forward slash Matt Walker and now let's get back to the podcast.
Over the years, many people have written to me asking about exactly
why coffee could be linked with so many health benefits. And in fact, many of the same benefits that a good night of sleep will provide, despite the disrupting impact that caffeine can have on your sleep at night.
Well, I have an answer for you. Anti-oxidants
what people may not realize is that a cup of coffee will contain many
More ingredients than just caffeine itself. And these include things such as catho-style, potassium soluble, fiber, as well as a healthy dose of antioxidants. And by appreciating the subtle difference between coffee and simply caffeine. We can start to understand the mystifying Health virtues of a cup of coffee against the backdrop of caffeine's harmful impact on your sleep.
Pat. Knight. What I mean by this is because of the non optimal what we call the standard Western diet or the standard American diet, coffee ends up being the single biggest source of antioxidants, for many people, in developed Nations and not by a small margin either and because of these shifts in dietary eating away from
things such as Whole Foods and more towards processed foods in the past, several decades.
The Humble Coffee Bean has been left with a large and largely single-handed task of covering all of the antioxidant needs that a person has its these antioxidants that we believe are the principal explanation for why coffee is associated with so many health benefits. It's not the caffeine itself. It's the antioxidants, associated with the Coffee Bean indeed.
Case in point, we see many of the same health benefits from drinking the equivalent number of cups of decaffeinated coffee. In other words, even with the caffeine, having been Stripped Away from the decaffeinated coffee, that coffee will still contain a nice blast of
antioxidants.
So, as I
mentioned, drink coffee, if you like, but here's the caveat that I would offer you as with many drugs, the dose
and when it comes to caffeine the timing makes the poison. So let's just assume typical
bedtime recommendations, typically suggest limiting yourself to somewhere between one to three cups of coffee each day, and ideally try to cut your caffeine consumption off.
At least 12 hours before you wish to go to bed at night. So there you have it. The interaction between these things called caffeine coffee, and this beautiful
thing that we call sleep at night. I hope these episodes on caffeine have been
useful to you and interesting as with the episode on alcohol. Honestly, I am not here to tell anyone how to live their lives. I simply want to share with you the knowledge regarding the interplay between
between sleep and caffeine and some of the Sleep communities recommendations on how best you may want to decide to live your life in relationship with caffeine. So with that, I will thank firstly, the sponsors of today's episode. And most importantly, once again, I will thank you. The Listener. Thank you so much for tuning in for being part of this community.
I never expected it to have an audience as it does, and I'm so grateful.
For that, please keep telling me how I can be doing this better. What am I doing wrong? How can I
improve as a podcaster? And
also tell me more about the topics that you want to hear from me on regarding sleep? That would be fantastic in the best way to do. Both of those things is to go and visit me over on Instagram. I am there at dr. Matt Walker. That's DRM ATT. Wal keer. Thank you so much again for listening and
I will see you in the
next episode. Take care for now and goodbye from me.
