We’ve all had one of those days before…
I don’t mean one where we survived a meeting which could’ve been summarized in a simple email. Although we’ve all likely experienced that more than once as well.
I mean one of those days where we seem to need just one more cup of coffee to see the day through.
But have you ever noticed when that extra cup just doesn’t seem to produce the same effect that the previous cup(s) provided?
If so, it isn’t necessarily because of the concept of diminishing returns or that you’re just too sleep deprived to experience all the benefits. Rather, some recent research suggests that caffeine affects our brains somewhat differently than what we expect.
What caffeine and coffee might do
Coffee and caffeine potentially provide a variety of physical effects. Besides caffeine, coffee contains some vitamins, minerals, and other phytochemicals—a fancy term for plant-based, non-vitamin or -mineral compounds—that may produce some health benefits including regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism, improving gut microbiome, and reducing some normal cellular issues.
That all seems fairly positive. (Yay coffee!) But then caffeine enters the picture and brings along some pros and cons.
Caffeine may:
- Reduce the risk of depression and Parkinson’s disease
- Slightly improve lung function (in adults)
- Reduce fetal growth & increase the risk of pregnancy loss
- Induce anxiety and insomnia
- And increase mental focus
If you drink coffee (or if you don’t drink it but have at least heard of it), you certainly already knew about that last effect. But as I mentioned above, the results of a recent experiment suggest that the effect may not be equally useful in all circumstances.
For the experiment, the researchers recruited 276 college students and randomly divided them into two groups. Both groups took two different types of cognitive tests in the evening. One of the tests required students to simply pay attention. The other test required them to perform activities such as remembering the order of tasks, following instructions, and making decisions; in other words, tasks which required a higher degree of mental functioning.
Then one (random) group of students was sent home to sleep and return in the morning. The other group was kept awake at the lab until the first group returned. At that point, all of the students consumed a capsule containing either 200 mg of caffeine (the equivalent of about two cups of home-brewed coffee) or a placebo and took both tests again.
What caffeine doesn’t seem to do
As you might expect, the sleep-deprived group who consumed the placebo performed much worse on both tests. But then comes the twist…
If you expected the sleep-deprived group who consumed the caffeine to do better on both tests, you’d be only partially correct. The results showed that this group did perform almost equally as well as the rested-student group on the test that simply required attention. However, they performed almost equally as bad as the sleep-deprived, placebo-pill group on the “decision-making” test.
In other words, caffeine helped the sleep-deprived individuals pay attention (i.e. focus) but did not seem to help them make appropriate decisions.
And that could very well be the reason that that extra cup of coffee (or tea, soda, or any other of your preferred caffeinated beverages) doesn’t always seem to boost your productivity. If you’re a bit light on sleep and simply need to employ a little extra focus to complete a fairly straight-forward task, then caffeine will probably help. But if the task requires a higher degree of decision-making abilities, then your best bet might actually be to sleep on it!
Putting it into practice
If you typically use fewer than a couple daily cups of coffee (tea, etc.) to give yourself a mental boost, you can probably continue what you’re doing and enjoy some potential health benefits. Just make sure to keep most of the chocolate, flavored syrup, whipped or fake creamer, or Bailey’s on the shelf. 😉
If you regularly consume more than four cups of coffee per day, you don’t have to do anything crazy! You would likely benefit from a bit more sleep and a bit less caffeine, but that can (and should) be done in a controlled, step-wise approach. For example, consider swapping your last cup of the day for a cup of either decaf or herbal tea. Then observe how you function, feel, and sleep over the course of a week or two before making (or not making) any further adjustments.