In terms of insomnia, I hear the same refrain over and over: How could one cup of coffee in the morning affect my sleep at night? We all underestimate how long caffeine lingers in the body. Caffeine has a half life of five to seven hours2 for most people. If you don’t remember this concept from high school chemistry, this means it takes about six hours for your body to metabolize half the caffeine, and another six hours to metabolize half of that. So a cup of coffee at 9 a.m. is still lingering in your body at bedtime, and having a cup of coffee at 3 p.m. is effectively like drinking half a cup of coffee at 9 p.m. We wouldn’t do that, but unwittingly, many of us are doing this all the time. Even a little bit of caffeine lingering in the body can disrupt the quality of your sleep. The caffeine-insomnia connection is a pretty vicious cycle of getting bad sleep → being tired during the day → drinking coffee because you’re tired → having crappy sleep at night because of so much coffee → being tired during the day because of poor sleep quality → and then feeling tempted to get another latte… What does this mean, exactly? It means that drinking caffeine makes your nervous system eager for a fight at all times. If you introduce a stressor, like public speaking or a troubling email from your boss, before you know it, your heart is pounding, your hands are trembling, your throat is dry, and your whole body feels shaky and faint. Your body might even feel OK, but your mind gets tripped into a ruminative spiral as a result of caffeine and its power to sabotage your ability to cope with stressors and control your fight-or-flight response. When you remove the caffeine, your stress response loses the wind from its sails. As a result, the anxiety response is less likely to happen, and it’s less intense if and when it does happen. After a week completely off caffeine, check in with yourself. How’s your anxiety? Any recent panic attacks? How’s your mood? Your sleep? Keep taking stock of your symptoms, and get intimately acquainted with the relationship between your symptoms and caffeine. Open your eyes to the role this powerful substance plays in symptoms you thought were just who you are. If anxiety or insomnia, depression, OCD, or any other issue has plagued you for years, I hope caffeine sobriety helps you achieve a lasting state of better well-being. It may not be a complete “cure,” but it will likely be a step in the right direction.
