Update: Coffee and Diabetes
We have known for several years that coffee drinkers tend to have a lower risk of developing Type II diabetes. The Mayo Clinic website notes that the risk of developing diabetes is reduced by drinking coffee but that drinking coffee does not actually cure you if you have diabetes. The protective effect of drinking coffee increases up to about five to six cups a day and it’s the same for caffeinated and non-caffeinated coffee. Adding cream and sugar may tend to raise a person’s blood sugar momentarily but do not reverse the protective effect of not getting type II diabetes.
Drinking Coffee If You Have Diabetes
Polyphenols are the molecules in coffee with antioxidant properties. They are what help prevent type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and other diseases. In addition, the magnesium and chromium present in trace amounts in coffee also reduce type II diabetes risk. The risk reduction ranges from about 11% for one cup a day up to 17% for those who consume more than a cup a day. There is some evidence that in diabetics caffeine further reduces insulin sensitivity. Thus some experts suggest drinking decaf coffee. the best choice for diabetics who drink coffee is to use skim milk instead of cream, Splenda instead of sugar, or just plain black coffee.
Coffee Can Lower or Raise Blood Sugar in Diabetics
While the research is pretty clear that coffee drinkers are less likely to develop diabetes it is not clear in regard to whether in a specific individual with diabetes if coffee will lower or raise their blood sugar. The bottom line that we can discern from looking at research on this subject is that there are two different effects of coffee. Routinely drinking coffee has a strong tendency to reduce whatever factors drive a person to get type II diabetes and very likely continue to have this protective effect in diabetics. In other words, a type II diabetic will probably not get a worse case of their disease if they continue to drink coffee. The other effect is that by drinking coffee a type II diabetic may tend to temporarily either raise or lower their sugar.
Should a Type II Diabetic Quit Drinking Coffee?
If you are a diabetic you should be checking your blood sugar. As such, you will be able to see if your morning cup of black coffee raises or lowers your blood sugar. This is probably the most practical approach. For diabetics who already have complications such as retinal or kidney disease the wise approach is to ask your doctor what to do and to strictly follow their advice. Because there is some evidence that diabetics who drink coffee experience a drop in their blood sugar this is beneficial and, as we noted, there appears to be a long-term benefit of coffee drinking even in those who are now diagnosed as having type II diabetes.
Medium Roasted Coffee for Maximum Phenol Content
Since it is the polyphenols that provide the most protection against developing type II diabetes which coffee gives you that benefit? Medium roasted coffee provides the greatest phenol levels, and the best coffees are Arabicas like Coffee from Colombia!
Update: Coffee and Diabetes – SlideShare Version
Who Invented Coffee?
The coffee plant is native to East Africa where it still grows in its original home in the forest of the Ethiopian plateau. Thus the plant was not invented but grows naturally. However, it did take a person to roast coffee beans and brew coffee. No one really knows how coffee made it from being an upland forest plant to the most popular drink on the planet but the story goes that a goat herder named Kaldi saw his goats eating the beans of the coffee plant, getting excited, seeming to enjoy them, and not sleeping at night. The story continues that Kaldi brought berries to a nearby monastery where the abbot experimented with the berries and discovered that roasting, grinding and brewing the beans resulted in coffee as we know it. Thus the person who invented coffee in its original form was someone like the abbot in the story who first brewed coffee.
Who Invented the Coffee Business?
No matter which individual or individuals came up with the idea of roasting coffee, grinding it, and brewing it to make a cup of coffee, it would have been a local beverage in the highlands of Ethiopia without commercialization of coffee on the Arabian Peninsula in 1400s in what is today the country of Yemen. A century later trade within the Ottoman Empire had taken coffee to Persia, Syria, Egypt, and the seat of the Empire in what is today the country of Turkey. It took another hundred years for coffee to be consumed in Europe. By that time Dutch traders were planting coffee throughout the East Indies and Spanish colonials were planting it in the New World.
Who Invented The French Press?
At the seat of the Ottoman Empire coffee was made using an Ibrik. Coffee grounds were boiled just like they are for making Turkish coffee today. Over time people came up with different methods for brewing coffee. The French Press came into being in the middle of the 19th century and both the French and the Italians claim credit for inventing this method for making coffee. This method remains popular today because it is cost-effective and gives a person better control over the taste of the coffee.
Who Invented the Automatic Coffeemaker?
By the twentieth century coffee makers arrived in which boiling water was poured or dripped over coffee grounds which got rid of the problem of having grounds mixed with the coffee after boiling the coffee grounds with the coffee. Electric percolators allowed for commercial quantities of coffee to be made for restaurants or large kitchens serving many people.
Who Invented Vacuum Packed Coffee?
By the turn of the 19th to 20th century it became popular to buy roasted and ground coffee instead of buying whole beans and grinding them. In order to preserve freshness of ground coffee on the shelf the Hills Brothers invented a method of vacuum packing their coffee so all of the air was sucked out of the can of coffee before it was sealed.
K-Cup Invented in 1992
The idea of single serve coffee started with Ernesto Illy who created pre-measured espresso pods in 1974. It was 18 more years before Green Mountain invented the K-cup and so the history of invention in the world of coffee continues after hundreds of years from when coffee crossed from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and then spread around the world.
Who Invented Coffee? – SlideShare Version
Does Coffee Cause Dehydration?
We drink coffee to wake up in the morning and to keep going in the afternoon. We drink coffee because we like it. The wakeup part of coffee comes from caffeine which also acts as a diuretic. That is, caffeine causes your kidneys to produce more urine. So, if you drink lots of coffee does coffee cause dehydration? The quick, short answer is that if you drink lots of coffee that has lots of caffeine you will lose more water than you take in with the coffee.
Metabolism and Effects of Coffee
When you drink coffee, it passes into the intestinal tract and is absorbed into the blood stream. The many health antioxidants in coffee serve to decrease inflammation, reduce the likelihood of Type II diabetes, cut back on your chances of getting Alzheimer’s, and even decrease the risks of various cancers. Caffeine goes to the brain where it serves to wake us up and when it passes through the kidneys it stimulates increased urine formation. The direct effect of caffeine is that it increases blood flow to the kidneys which in turn ups urine creation. This effect has the potential to cause dehydration. Does it?
How Much Coffee Does It Take to Cause Dehydration?
Coffee contains water so it should hydrate our bodies. Caffeine causes excessive urination which should cause dehydration. The key to the question of how much coffee it takes to dehydrate a person has to do with getting enough caffeine to overcome the water that one drinks with the coffee. Thus, stronger coffees are more likely to dehydrate than weaker ones and one needs to drink enough coffee to get enough caffeine to get the dehydration effect. How much is that? Studies have shown that a person of average size needs to ingest at least 500 mg of caffeine to get enough diuretic effect to overcome the amount of water they ingest with their coffee. Because an average cup of brewed coffee contains 90 mg of caffeine this means you need to drink more than five and a half cups of coffee a day to lose more water from your coffee drinking than you take in as part of the coffee.
Caffeine Content of Various Types of Coffee
Brewed coffee is the kind that most people drink. This includes using a percolator, pour over coffee, or a French press. The amount of caffeine in an eight ounce cup of brewed coffee ranges from seventy to one hundred forty milligrams with ninety milligrams being the average. Robusta coffee has a higher caffeine content than Arabica coffee from Colombia so you can drink more Colombian coffee than Death Wish coffee before you have to worry about dehydration.
Caffeine In Instant Coffee
Convenient instant coffee generally has less caffeine than brewed coffee ranging from thirty to ninety milligrams per eight ounce serving. So, if avoidance of dehydration is your only goal you can drink more instant coffee than brewed and accomplish your goal.
Caffeine In Espresso
A shot of espresso carries on average sixty-three milligrams of caffeine. Of course the volume of water is lower as well as thirty to fifty milliliters. However, the concentration of caffeine in espresso is as much as five times stronger than in brewed coffee.
Decaf coffee contains no more than seven milligrams of caffeine in an eight ounce cup so if your only goal is avoiding dehydration this is the next best step to drinking a glass of water!
You Need To Drink Lots of Strong Coffee To Achieve Dehydration
The bottom line to our question about dehydration is that you need to drink at least nine shots of espresso or about five and a half cups of brewed coffee for the amount of caffeine that you ingest to cause you to lose more water through your kidneys than you take in with the coffee. The amount of coffee goes down to around three cups a day if you are only drinking strong Robusta coffee.
Does Coffee Cause Dehydration? – SlideShare Version
American Coffee Consumption by Age Group
Americans drink a lot of coffee. Per capital consumption is not the highest in the world, however. The US lags behind Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Canada. Part of that is because they simply drink more coffee in Northern Europe nations. And part is because not all age groups in the USA are keeping up with the oldest which drinks the most coffee. American coffee consumption by age group varies from 48% to 64% with the oldest Americans drinking the most coffee.
Random American Coffee-drinking Facts
The average worker in the USA spends just over $20 a week on coffee. While more than 80% of coffee drinkers drink coffee at home, millennials are more likely to drink coffee at the coffee shop or at work. Workers in the 18 to 34 age group spend $24.74 a week for their coffee while the 45 and older group pays $14.15 a week. This makes sense in that older coffee drinkers are brewing their coffee at home and the younger set is paying Starbucks for their Java. An interesting tidbit is that nearly half of Millennials spend more on coffee than they put aside for retirement. When K-cups became popular they helped reduce overall US coffee consumption because people were not making full pots of coffee and not drinking all of their coffee to the same degree as before.
Coffee Consumption by Age Group
The lower percentage of coffee consumption is in the 18 to 24 age group at 48%. The next lowest is 53% in those aged forty to 59 years. We go back to the 25 to 39 age group for an increase to 60% coffee drinkers. The highest coffee consumption by percentage of drinkers is in the oldest group, 60 years and older. This group is the most likely to drink more coffee at home then when out and about and the youngest group is the least likely to have any coffee stocked at home!
Who Goes to the Coffee Shop the Most?
As you might have guessed, the youngest coffee drinkers who do not stock coffee at home are the ones who frequent coffee shops the most. The average age of people in the US who frequent coffee shops lies in the 20 to 30-year old range. This, by the way, is just over half of the US population.
Coffee Type Preference by Age Group
The older you are the more likely it is that you brew your coffee to a tune of 65% of older folks. Just 35% of the “senior” group prefers alternative coffee drinks like lattes, iced coffee, or cappuccino. On the other end of the spectrum the 18 to 24-year-old group opt for alternative coffees 55% of the time. The 35 to 44 crowd likes brewed coffee 60% of the time. What is interesting as that millennials report increased consumption of brewed coffee as they get older. This implies that they learn their coffee drinking in a social, coffee house, setting and then learn how to brew their coffee at home which they may not have known how to do before they got to like their coffee.
American Coffee Consumption by Age Group – SlideShare Version
Aroma of Coffee
Wake up and smell the coffee. This expression generally means to pay attention to what is going on around you. However, it also can bring to mind an early summer morning in your youth with birds singing in the trees, dew on the lawn, and the hope and promise of the day. Just what is responsible for the aroma of coffee? The scientific explanation is that roasted coffee contains more than eight hundred different chemicals of which many contribute to the aroma of coffee.
What Gives Coffee Its Aroma?
The chemicals in coffee that give it aroma include heterocyclic compounds like thiophenones, thiophens, quinolines, pyridines, pyrroles, hydrofurans, thiazoles, indoles, oxazoles, quinoxalines, pyrazines, and furans. There are more than three hundred of these in coffee beans. Other chemicals include aliphatic compounds like dimethyl sulfide, propanal, isopentanal, methanol, n-hexane, acetaldehyde, isopentane, isobutanal, and 2-methylfuran. There are as many as one hundred-fifty of these. Phenols like chlorogenic acids not only provide coffee with its aroma but also provide antioxidant properties when absorbed.
What We Smell When We Smell the Coffee
The names of all of the specific chemicals that result in coffee aroma can only be loved by a chemist. What we coffee drinkers love is when the aroma is fruity, honey-like, earthy, spicy, catty, and more. While chemicals called furans are the ones most likely to pass the “olfactory threshold” the combination of many often combines to provide a pleasant background aroma that often cannot be immediately identified. While the furans are important so is the breakdown of sugars in coffee with roasting. Pyrroles also give a caramel aroma. Walnut-like aromas come from pyrazines. A meaty aroma arises from sufficient amounts of thiophens.
Aromatic Compounds in Green Coffee and After Roasting
While there are aromatic compounds in green coffee beans, nobody smells green beans and says what a nice aroma they have. The majority of aromatic compounds come from roasting. This is also where many of the health oxidants come from. The degree of roast also affects the aroma so that a full roast is going to have more caramelization than a light roast. One of the chemicals that is created during roasting is methylpyridium. This chemical not only contributes to the great smell of coffee but also increases phase II enzymes in the body. These enzymes do things like protect the body against colon cancer.
Where To Get the Coffee With the Best Aroma
There are two factors that affect coffee aroma, the type of coffee and freshness. Arabica coffee has more flavor and better aroma than Robusta coffee. Arabica coffee from Colombia reliably has the best aroma and flavor of the Arabicas. Green coffee retains its freshness for up to three years if property stored. Roasted coffee retains its freshness for up to six months. Roasted and ground coffee starts to lose its freshness, taste, and aroma as soon as the grounds are exposed to air. For the best coffee aroma buy Coffee from Colombia, grind only enough for the day’s use and never store right above the stove!
Aroma of Coffee – SlideShare Version
Coffee Price Inflation
The United States is experiencing its worst inflation in forty years. The price of coffee is up 49.7% year on year as of June 2022. When the price went up in 2021 the increase was blamed on drought in Brazil and then on disruption of the global supply chain. However, over the years coffee beans have been a bargain as the price has not gone up as much as many other commodities. On the other hand, the price of a cup of brewed coffee has gone up significantly. Coffee price inflation is worse at the cup than on the coffee farm.
Coffee Futures Over the Years
Coffee fluctuates in price with high prices alternating with low prices year after year. Macro Trends has a chart of futures prices for the last 45 years. Although coffee futures recently peaked at $2.38 from a 2019 low of $0.91, a higher previous peak was $2.88 in 2011. Futures hit $2.57 in 1997, $2.56 in 1985 and $3.23 in 1977.
This is the world of the coffee farmer in which the weather, competition, and markets control the price. That world differs from the world of the coffee shop consumer where the price of a cup of coffee goes up with labor costs and other costs of doing business in a society with the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
Price of a Cup of Coffee Over the Years
The average price of a cup of black coffee around the world is $2.70. There are those of us who remember 1950 when a cup of coffee was a dime! However, with inflation a 1950 dollar would be worth $12.13 today so that dime would be worth $1.21. So, your cup of black coffee has inflated two and a half times. You could buy a pound of coffee beans for $0.33 in 1950 which is about a seventh of today’s price.
Don’t Blame the Coffee Farmer for the Price of a Cup of Coffee
While the price for green coffee beans fluctuates with the market there is not the steady increase in price that we see across other sectors like fuel, housing, and labor costs in the USA. In the current surge in inflation oil and natural gas are up significantly. This translates into higher transportation costs for coffee as coffee is grown in the tropics and consumed in North America, Europe, Japan, and across the globe. As the cost of living goes up workers seek jobs with better wages which drives up labor costs. That translates into a higher price for your cup of black coffee. Of course, in today’s Starbuck’s world you are probably having a mocha, latte, or something else substantially fancier than a cup of black coffee. Nevertheless, the cost of doing business is going up and those costs get tacked onto everything that we consume which includes your coffee. Sadly for the coffee farmer, the price he or she can get for coffee beans goes up and down with the weather and the market while the cost of growing coffee goes up with the prices of oil, fertilizer, and other necessities of the farming business.
Coffee Price Inflation – SlideShare Version
Many Ways to Make Coffee
For coffee lovers there are many ways to make coffee. Espresso is the basis for all coffee house coffees. Coffee made at home is brewed with a percolator or a k-cup. If you are of an age and grew up on a farm you may remember egg coffee in which coffee grounds are boiled in a large pot and two cracked-open whole eggs are added. Residents of the Colombia coffee growing region, the Cafetero, commonly make pour over coffee by grinding whole coffee beans and putting in a cloth bag and then pouring boiled water over them. Or you may prefer a French press, Ibrick, or café al la olla. Do you add cream, milk, or sugar? Which of the many ways to make coffee is the best?
Best Coffee Beans for the Best Coffee
No matter what process you use to make coffee, better coffee beans make better coffee. The two varieties of coffee are Arabica and Robusta. Robusta is a bigger plant that produces sooner, produces more, has more caffeine, and is less prone to coffee plant diseases. Arabica is better tasting, has superior aroma, is more prone to plant diseases, and has less caffeine. The best coffee beans for the best coffee flavor come from Arabica plants. Fresh coffee beans give you better flavor and aroma so, ideally, you have green coffee beans and you roast just enough each day to make coffee. That is how coffee houses operate. If you buy whole bean roasted coffee keep the beans intact and only grind what you need to make coffee. If you buy ground coffee you should purchase smaller quantities as this is the least fresh coffee. In all cases, coffee from Colombia is your safest and best choice.
Good Water for Good Coffee
For good coffee make sure to use filtered or bottled water if your tap water has a high chlorine content. A tablespoonful or two is how much ground coffee to use per six ounce cup of coffee. Making espresso takes thirty seconds while a French press system takes about two minutes before depressing the plunger. Drip coffee makers take about five minutes to make coffee. Coffee brews best at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Coffee is always best right after it is brewed no matter what method you use to make coffee. In the Colombian Cafetero in Manizales, Colombia at Buy Organic Coffee we make pour over coffee using a cotton bag. Grind the coffee very finely. Boil water and let it rest for a minute before pouring over the grounds.
Coffee from the Coffee Shop
You will need an espresso maker for coffee house coffee. This system forces water at the boiling point through very finely ground coffee. This process results in the strongest taste, higher caffeine content, and a thicker consistency in one ounce portions. By adding steamed milk, you get latter and by adding chocolate syrup you get mocha. If you want Americano, just dilute your espresso half and half with water. Americano got its name when Europeans realized that post-World War II GIs wanted coffee like their moms made on the farm in Ohio, Illinois, or Iowa, about half the strength of a good espresso.
Many Ways to Make Coffee – SlideShare Version
Why Grow Coffee in the Shade?
When you shop for coffee, you have a variety of options. You can buy mass produced ground coffee which is usually the cheapest or whole bean roasted coffee which gives you better freshness and flavor. You can even buy whole bean green coffee and just roast and grind enough for the day’s requirements. This gives you one step up in freshness providing that you store the green coffee beans in a cool and dry place and use within three years of when they were picked. But what about organic versus regular coffee or coffee specifically grown in the shade. You may ask yourself why grow coffee in the shade?
How Coffee Grows Naturally
Coffee is a “woody perennial evergreen dicotyledon” and Arabica coffee originated in the highlands of Ethiopia in East Africa. Here it still grows in the southeastern evergreen forests of Harar and Sidarno provinces in the mountains. The plant grows most prolifically among the trees of the forest in partial to full shade. In countries like Colombia, they grow coffee in the shade as well but even when grown on open mountain slopes or with just a few plantain interspersed in the field it is so cloudy and rains so much that the coffee plants are effectively shaded part of the time.
Why Plant Plantain Among the Coffee Plants?
In the Colombian coffee growing axis, the Eje Cafetero, coffee growers commonly grow two crops, plantain and coffee. The plantain provides partial shade and helps prevent erosion on the steep upper slopes where the best Arabica coffee is grown. Coffee that is shaded grows more slowly and results in better flavor. When coffees have been developed to grow in full sun they require more water, fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides. While the majority of Colombian coffees are not organic or designated as shade grown many are in reality if not in name.
Growing Coffee in the Forest
On the extreme end of the shade grown coffee spectrum are plants intentionally planted in upland forests. Living in a natural environment without the crowding too often seen in commercial coffee fields these plants are healthier. The environment and the water table are preserved. Plants do not dry out and die during dry spells because the forest canopy protects them from the sun and the accumulation of plant debris on the forest floor protects it from drying out too quickly. The spacing of coffee plants among the trees prevents the sort of insect infestations that spread rapidly in plant monocultures such as fields of commercially grown coffee.
Preserving the Ecosystem
When a forest is not clear cut to plant coffee but rather coffee growing there naturally is preserved or planted there the ecosystem of plants, birds, and small animals is not disturbed. The ground water is undisturbed and the birds and animals of the forest help protect the coffee by consuming the pests that would otherwise feast on the coffee. If you would like great coffee and coffee that is grown in such a way as to preserve the natural environment look for shade grown coffee. It is generally a bit more expensive but you will typically be buying a better tasting coffee.
Why Grow Coffee in the Shade? – SlideShare Version
Nutritional Value of Coffee
The world drinks coffee to wake up and to perk up during the day. Caffeine is the coffee ingredient that keeps you awake. Researchers have shown that the antioxidants in coffee have a wide range of health benefits from reducing the risk of Type II diabetes to reducing the risk of various cancers, enhancing athletic performance and even making sex better. But what else is in coffee? You doctor may tell you to eat a banana every day because of the potassium content. What else is there to the nutritional value of coffee?
Coffee the Diet Drink
“Lite” and “diet” drinks are commonly consumed in an attempt reduce caloric intake. A cup of black coffee does not need to be altered or modified in order to have virtually no calories. Of course, you cannot add cream or sugar if you want to avoid those calories but a cup of black coffee, by itself, has no carbohydrates, no fat, and only 2.4 calories from the 0.3 grams of protein.
Trace Minerals in Coffee
As we noted, your doctor may suggest a banana a day for potassium supplementation. A banana has about 358 milligrams of potassium. A Centrum Silver + 50 daily vitamin has 80 milligrams. Your cup of black coffee has 118 milligrams of potassium. If you want to add magnesium to your diet that Centrum vitamin has 5 milligrams. Half a cup of boiled spinach has 78 milligrams and your cup of coffee has 7.2 milligrams. Here is the breakdown of minerals and other nutrients in your 240 gram cup of black coffee.
Sodium: 4.8 milligrams
Potassium: 118 milligrams
Magnesium: 7.2 milligrams
Phosphorus: 7.1 milligrams
Manganese: 4.7 milligrams
Choline: 6.2 milligrams
Folate: 4.7 micrograms
Protein: 0.3 grams
Sugars: 0 grams
Carbohydrates: 0 grams
Fat: 0 grams
Fiber: 0 grams
Calories: 2.4
Antioxidant Content of Black Coffee
The primary source of coffee health benefits is the collection of antioxidants in your cup of Java. Chlorogenic, ferulic, caffeic, and n-coumaric acids, melanoidins, heterocyclic compounds, and phenylalanine from roasting and trigonelline all appear to contribute to the beneficial antioxidants properties of coffee. How of much of these magic ingredients are contained in a single cup of coffee? A cup of Arabica coffee contains from 200 to 550 milligrams of antioxidants. By comparison a cup of tea contains from 150 to 400 milligrams and a glass of red wine contains from 150 to 400 milligrams. Green tea contains more antioxidants than black tea and cocoa contains 200 to 250 milligrams of antioxidants per cup. (Antioxidants (Basel). 2013 Dec; 2(4): 230–245)
When researchers compared coffee from various locations for antioxidant content Arabica coffees from the Americas generally exceeded those from Africa and the East Indies in their amounts of antioxidants. Coffee from Guatemala, Brazil, and Colombia topped the list with only one coffee from Ethiopia and one from Puerto Rico exceeding the 200 milligram per cup level. A coffee from Java came in at the bottom of their list of 21 coffees at 147.7 milligrams per cup.
Nutritional Value of Coffee – SlideShare Version
How Does Coffee Keep You Awake?
Your morning cup of coffee is a great way to wake up and face the day. When you start to fade in the afternoon a cup of coffee keeps you going. And, if you need to drive though the night, repeated cups of coffee keep you going. But how does coffee keep you awake? And what do you do if you want to sleep and too much coffee is not letting you rest so that you need more and more coffee to stay awake during the day? It is the caffeine in coffee that does this.
How Does Caffeine Work?
The caffeine in your coffee absorbs into your body very quickly after you drink your coffee. And it goes everywhere in your system including your brain. In your brain is where caffeine blocks adenosine receptors. These chemical receptors are what promote sleep when we are tired at the end of a long day or any time. It turns out that caffeine is chemically configured much like the adenosine molecule, so it easily latches on to the sleep-promoting receptors and work at cross purposes with adenosine.
What Does Adenosine Do?
The adenosine molecule helps regulate your circadian cycle, the waking, sleeping cycle. When it binds to the adenosine receptors in the brain it triggers various nerve pathways that increase the feeling of sleepiness and slows neural activity. Normally, adenosine levels are low in the morning when we are waking up and increase gradually during the day. After several hours adenosine begins the process of making you feel sleepy. You go to bed and to sleep and the process begins again the next day.
How Caffeine Confuses the Adenosine Sleep Cycle
Although caffeine binds to adenosine receptors it only blocks them and does not trigger all the natural processes that adenosine does. Luckily for your ability to sleep, caffeine does not bind to adenosine receptors permanently. As the level of caffeine in your body diminishes so does its level of attachment to adenosine receptors in the brain. The half-life of caffeine after you drink it is somewhere between four and six hours. That is, every four to six hours the level of caffeine in your body drops by half. That is why when you have a strong cup of espresso with supper you may be awake after midnight. As a rule, do not drink any coffee or other drinks with caffeine after two or three in the afternoon and you will not have enough on board to interfere with adenosine attachment to brain receptors and your sleep at night.
How Much Coffee Interferes with Sleep?
The odds are that your morning cup of coffee will not interfere with your sleep at night. But, if you drink up to six cups of coffee a day, which level of consumption comes with several useful benefits like reducing your risk of type II diabetes, it might be a different matter. In addition, it is important how late in the day you drink your last cup of Java. If you don’t drink coffee after noon, you will have a fourth as much caffeine or even an eighth as much in your system by the time you want to sleep. Even though you may not be aware of it, too much coffee on board can affect how well you sleep, and the level of caffeine needed to interfere with sleep varies from person to person. So, drink coffee if you need to stay awake but be aware that consuming too much caffeine too late in the day keeps you awake at night and makes you tired the next day.