Question about being tired and waking up

[stoymigo]

Please let me know your personal experience or scientific evidence, does
drinking lots of caffeinated drinks make you more tired when trying to wake up?

When I say lots, you could say drinking more than usual, or drinking more than is recommended ( say 6 caffeine drinks like coffee/tea/coke & drinking one right before going to sleep)

Thanks

 

[Nick333]

Please let me know your personal experience or scientific evidence, does
drinking lots of caffeinated drinks make you more tired when trying to wake up?

When I say lots, you could say drinking more than usual, or drinking more than is recommended ( say 6 caffeine drinks like coffee/tea/coke & drinking one right before going to sleep)

Thanks

Anecdotally, yes. But then, I don't sleep much more than five hours a night so, I might just be tired.

 

[OMB]

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1182710-overview

Caffeine and sleep

Every single exposure to caffeine can produce cerebral stimulant effects. This is especially true in the areas that control locomotor activity (eg, caudate nucleus) and structures involved in the sleep-wake cycle (eg, locus ceruleus, raphe nuclei, reticular formation). In humans, sleep seems to be the physiological function most sensitive to the effects of caffeine. Generally, more than 200 mg of caffeine is required to affect sleep significantly. Caffeine has been shown to prolong sleep latency and shorten total sleep duration with preservation of the dream phases of sleep. Whether the difference in the sensitivity to the effects of coffee on sleep can be attributable to tolerance is not clearly established.

According to some studies, this difference could reflect the individual sensitivity to caffeine, possibly related to differences in the rate of caffeine metabolism. Indeed, poor sleepers are reported to metabolize caffeine at a lower rate. Four of the 10 subjects of the study had elimination half-lives exceeding 4.8 hours. The variability in response from one night to the next also should be taken into account. Nevertheless, some evidence exists of tolerance to caffeine-related sleep disturbance, since heavy coffee drinkers appear to be less sensitive to caffeine-induced sleep disturbances than light coffee drinkers. Likewise, tolerance to sleep latency and quality of caffeine has been shown to develop over 2 days of testing in one study and over 7 days in another. However, the tolerance is not complete and the sleep efficiency remains below 90% of the baseline value after 7 days of caffeine treatment.

Thus, tolerance to some of the effects linked to regular consumption of coffee seems to occur, especially in animals. In humans, the data are less conclusive. This may be the result of individual differences in the susceptibility and tolerance to caffeine-induced effects. Moreover, mechanisms of tolerance may be overwhelmed by the nonlinear accumulation of caffeine and its primary metabolites in the human body when caffeine metabolism is saturated under multiple-dosing conditions.

 

[Picard]

I understand people's compulsion with drinking coffee each day. Many of my colleagues drink coffee first thing when they open their eyes, then when they get at work another one, at break another 2, second break another 2, after work some more ... .

I only drink coffee if I'm at a coffee shop and the quality is decent. Most people I know would swill any old instant muck.

 

[stoymigo]

I understand people's compulsion with drinking coffee each day. Many of my colleagues drink coffee first thing when they open their eyes, then when they get at work another one, at break another 2, second break another 2, after work some more ... .

I only drink coffee if I'm at a coffee shop and the quality is decent. Most people I know would swill any old instant muck.

Good point, that powdery coffee right?
I must get me some of that, and make it at home, try something other than ricoffee :erm:

 

[JonnStar]

A hot beverage is nice and has a sort of routine relaxing effect for me. I try steer away from coffee though and go with tea or even rooibos if I don't want the caffeine. Especially since I think that my high coffee consumption has lead to me being rather dependent on it. As in I get a pretty bad headache if I don't have one cup every now and then. I can't say for sure but I have noticed it a good few times when I haven't had a chance to get coffee and start developing a bad headache

Other than that though I hardly notice any difference in energy, sleepiness or how I feel the next morning no matter how much or little I had.

 

[DJ...]

You'll wake up tired if you haven't had enough sleep or if the quality of sleep you're getting is poor. No amount of caffeine will really help this fatigued feeling. Caffeine a few hours before you sleep is often the real killer here - it will disturb your sleep patterns and prevent you from reaching REM sleep and no matter how much sleep you get, this will be the result, unless you're one of the few people on this planet immune to the stuff. People will claim that coffee before bed has no impact on them, but their anecdotal evidence is always trumped by science, which shows time and time again that caffeine before bed affects your level of alertness the following day.

Now go through this process for months or even years, and you find yourself in a self-induced, chronic, sleep deprived state.

One of the best tools to wake you up is to write. It engages nearly every critical part of your brain that in turn will help you to mentally wake up. It doesn't matter what you write - write some hate-mail to your favourite service provider; write a novel day by early day; write a blog; write a joke etc. The physical bit is all about blood-flow, so a shower immediately after you wake up is your best bet here too. Going back to the quality sleep bit, you should also bear in mind that having a set routine will help tremendously. So going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every day is optimal.

As is understanding your sleep cycles - there is a myth that we sleep in 90 minute cycles and should therefore wake up in these intervals to ensure that we don't interrupt a cycle. You'll notice that some days you wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day and others, under similar circumstances and times, result in you waking up already pissed off with the world and not ready to move from under the blanket. Well this is the problem with interrupting a deep sleep cycle. The myth is that we sleep in 90 minute patterns but the reality is that this is an average number. Because we go through a number of stages of sleep, just a few minutes off from 90 minutes will result in inconsistent results. In fact no more successful than random. What you can however do is buy something that monitors your sleep cycles and wakes you up properly based on this data. I'm considering buying a Wakemate to help with this.

Just remember that:

Caffeine takes hours to metabolise out of your system correctly and you shouldn't go near the stuff in the hours before bed. If you're taking caffeine to wake up, you're probably doing so because of the caffeine in the first place. It is a vicious cycle.

Engage your brain and your body first thing in the morning.

Get into patterns that your body can use to "programme" itself. While it is a myth that it takes 21 days to form a habit (a myth started by a plastic surgeon from the 60s named Dr Maxwell Maltz) it will eventually form a habit, and your body will additionally programme your sleep cycles for you. You have to ask yourself, is one month or even two months of habitual investment in yourself worth it? It should be.

Personally, I pop a sleeping tablet (that happens to be my bi-polar medication as well) at night. I try to do so at the same time every night. The stuff zonks me to sleep in a half an hour flat. I (very reluctantly) do not hit the snooze button any longer, as it only aids in feeling worse as the body never reaches REM sleep in the time it takes the alarm to go off again. I jump straight in the pool, then straight in the shower (the temperature differential helps with bloodflow). I then write a piece in a book I'm working on (I steer clear of work and forums at this time as they're both addictive) or I write a recipe for dinner that night. At this point sleep is a long-forgotten memory and I'm wide awake.

I've been doing this now for 3 months (on-and-off which isn't great) but it absolutely has a positive impact on my productivity and I have less of a proclensity towards tiredness through the day. I'm also far, far happier a person (yes, this is me happy). My piss-poor sleeping habits were contributing towards my depressive episodes and my own anecdotal evidence ties up with science in this respect.

All in all, sleep has become a fundamental part of my life. Where I used to view it as an unproductive nuisance and interruption, I now see it as a tool to keeping me sane, happy and productive, and the majority of that doesn't come in how I fall asleep, but rather how I wake up. The waking up activities have their own positive benefits too.

Meds are now kicking in...

 

[DJ...]

Or you could use alf101's method. He reckons whenever he needs to fall asleep, and fall asleep hard, he just reads one of my lengthy posts on mybroadband. Problem solved...