Uh oh. As a morning person who newly discovered coffee after the last of my babies was weaned, this is disturbing news. A new study published a couple of weeks ago in an online medical journal called Sleep Medicine found that the sleep of morning people is more affected by caffeine than the sleep of night owls.
The study took college students and monitored their restlessness while they were sleeping, through the use of wrist devices. The students also had to record their caffeine use and their sleeping and waking times.
The results found that those who were morning people, the amount of caffeine they had in their bodies affected the amount of good sleep that they got. The night owls didn’t seem similarly affected.
This explains a lot. I know for my own self, a morning person, having coffee after three pm or so will keep me up. In contrast, my mother- and father-in-law can down coffee or caffeinated soda throughout the day, even at bedtime, and have no trouble falling or staying asleep. They are confirmed night people.
One thing that might explain the disparity is the fact that caffeine stays in the system for different lengths of time for different people. So while one person may “burn” though their cup of coffee in an hour or so, others may find that the caffeine they had in a soda at lunch is still with them at bedtime.
The other thing to note about this study is that it used only college students as the research subjects. College students tend to be young, and they also tend to be sleep deprived. Many could probably “fall asleep standing up” as the saying goes, with or without the caffeine.
Sleep is such an important aspect of our lives. Lack of it has been linked with disease and injury.
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