Earlier in this article we talked about positive habits that promote better sleep. There are other fairly common habits that will wield a powerful leverage over your sleep quality too, and that is coffee and alcohol consumption.

Coffee.

Black coffee is healthy for us. Just do not consume too much, or too late in the day.

Even those who swear they can fall asleep right after a big cup of black coffee will decrease their sleep quality. So make it a permanent habit to have all of your black coffee ( 2 to 4 normal-sized cups ) early in the day.

That means no coffee after 1400 to 1500 at the latest. Personally, I have all 4 cups pre-gym right in the morning. But why?

Science to the rescue.

Consuming caffeine too late in the day will reduce total sleep time by upwards of 45 minutes, sleep efficiency by roughly 7%, and the precious amount of deep sleep with 11 minutes or so.

To avoid this, if we say that you need to fall asleep by 22.00 that gives us a situation where you can not have coffee after 1300, and PWO no later than 0900 in the morning.

Boom. Is there anything else to say in regards to sleep, and coffee?

Sure, let me wrap things up with this.

The quick and short numbers above simply mean that if we still have caffeine in our system when we are supposed to fall asleep it will impact our sleep quality in a negative way by slowing the onset of that sleep, blocking our adenosine receptors, lowering deep sleep levels and shortening that crucial cycle of our sleep, and disrupt our established sleep patterns.

Hence, no coffee after 1400. But if your naptime is 22.00, that means that you should cut yourself off at 1300.

Why is our circadian system so important?

Our circadian system regulates our internal biological clock, affects our sleep cycles, hormone production, and many other physiological processes that are needed to keep our brain, performance, cognitive capacity, health, and fitness levels operating as they should.

Its importance can in other words not be overstated, and consuming coffee or caffeinated PWOs too late in the day will disrupt this important system.

On the other hand, black coffee consumption has clearly been demonstrated to provide a substantial decrease in chronic diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and different forms of cancer. This is why no one should avoid coffee, you just need to understand when to drink it.

Alcohol.

As for alcohol, not only is the complete health impact of alcohol a big negative.

But it also wrecks your sleep quality. Plenty of people will claim they sleep better after some alcohol. And yes, you can certainly sleep, but it hurts the quality of your sleep, and deregulate your body’s hormones and processes in a big way. Alcohol might feel as if it destresses you, but it actually does the opposite.

So, have your black coffee early in the day, and learn to say no to alcohol to further boost health outcomes and boost sleep quality even more.