In this article, we will answer the question “Why does coffee help me sleep?”. In addition, we will discuss the relationship of caffeine with sleep, how this relationship is given according to the amount of caffeine consumed and what is the relationship between caffeine and the coffee plant.
Why does coffee help me sleep?
The main cause of coffee helps you sleep is the amount of coffee ingested and the frequency of use of this drug – after all, coffee is also a drug and can addict some users. To understand all the concepts behind coffee making you sleepy, we have to understand why the body suffers from so-called “sleep pressure”.
Short-term caffeine helps with attention and alertness, but the cumulative effect—or the long-term impact—has the opposite effect. Once dopamine builds up in the brain, the rebound effect occurs, meaning you feel more tired than you were when caffeine is excreted from the body.
What is the relationship of caffeine with sleep?
The person’s biological clock already tells them how much time on average they have, when they wake up, until they need to go to sleep. After that, the body will begin to emit signs of tiredness and the need for the ATP molecule, responsible for providing energy to the body. Once ATP is used, the body produces adenosine, which binds in the brain and induces the sensation of sleep.
Caffeine, because it is chemically similar to adenosine, binds to receptors in the brain, causing adenosine to accumulate in the brain and consequently your body does not have adenosine attached to the brain, that is, you stop the feeling of “tiredness”. . But all that accumulated adenosine remains in your body and eventually it will attach itself to your brain.
When the effects of caffeine wear off and it turns off the receptors, adenosine does its job and binds to the brain, making you feel sleepy. Once this substance is accumulated, it will bind at once, making you feel extremely tired after the effects of coffee.
How do different amounts of caffeine affect our sleep?
It is necessary to be aware that the more caffeine ingested, the more the body’s tolerance for this substance increases. In addition, the liver begins to produce more proteins that break down caffeine and the number of adenosine receptors in the brain multiplies.
Therefore, the more caffeine you ingest, the more adenosine receptors you have in your body and the greater the tolerance to this substance you will have. In other words, it’s no use taking a lot of caffeine to try to reverse the sleep situation, because the effect is accumulative.
Therefore, you should gradually reduce the amount of caffeine consumed during the day or start drinking decaffeinated coffee alternately with caffeinated coffee. You can also increase your nights of sleep to rest more and more, in order to decrease the feeling of fatigue and not need caffeine as much.
What other compounds are good for plants?
In addition to genetics, the amount of coffee we drink in our daily lives also affects our response. Even if someone is a fast caffeine metabolizer, they can feel the effects more strongly if they don’t drink regularly. Whenever we drink coffee for a long time, we develop a certain tolerance, decreasing the effect of caffeine.
Finally, the food, drink, medicine, and drugs we take also affect how other substances are metabolized. Some enzymes metabolize several substances, so each one of them must “take its turn”, which slows down the process and keeps the substance in the system longer.
On the other hand, smoking cigarettes speeds up the rate of caffeine metabolism, which explains why smokers drink a lot of coffee.
In the liver, there is a set of enzymes to deal with different substances. CYP1A2 enzymes are the ones that metabolize caffeine, and some people produce less of these enzymes and thus take longer to process.
Other FAQs about Coffee that you may be interested in.
Which has more acid: coffee or tea?
What to do if I spill coffee on the keyboard?
Why do I have chest pain after drinking coffee?
Conclusion
In this article, we answered the question “Why does coffee help me sleep?”. Furthermore, we discussed the relationship between caffeine and sleep, how this relationship is given according to the amount of caffeine consumed and what is the relationship between caffeine and the coffee plant.
Citations
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/coffee-makes-me-tired
