Share

Cup of Coffee at Bedtime Disturbs Internal Clock of Body, says Study

As per a small and preliminary study, caffeine does more than serving as an eye-opener. Caffeine, which is found naturally in over 60 plants, including the coffee bean, tea leaf, kola nut and cacao pod, is considered the most popular drug in the world.

Advertisement

John O’Neill with the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England is co-led on the study.

Other field experts have received the findings well, but have also pointed at the study’s limitations. However, taking it at night may not only kick the person awake, it may also disrupt the individual’s internal body clock.

Dr. Wright also explained that every cell of our body has an internal clock.

“It also provides new and exciting insights into the effects of caffeine on human physiology”.

The study involved three female and two male respondents who were put through a double-blind, placebo-controlled test for 49 days.

Caffeine from drinking coffee negatively impacts sleep and your body clock if consumed prior to bedtime, a new study reports.

The findings likewise offer a prospect for using caffeine as treatment for jet lag since it appears capable of adjusting the body block. It was about half the effect the scientists noticed when they instead exposed the volunteers to bright light.

A mug of instant coffee contains around 100mg of the stimulant and a cup of tea has 50mg.

But people differ in their sensitivity to the effects of caffeine, as suggested by Prof Derk-Jan Djik, from the University of Surrey.

He added that there are other ways on how to control the body clock.

Caffeine which is found within most coffee drinks works through resetting the body clock by delaying an increase in the expected level of melatonin, which is the body’s chief sleep hormone responsible for making us exhausted and sleepy. But the precise mechanisms by which caffeine and bright light-partners in sleep-defying crime-disrupt circadian rhythms remained a little murky. For instance, a strategic caffeine jolt could help you reacclimatize to your normal rhythm following a disruption-from, say, jet lag.

Researchers learned that caffeine delayed the internal clocks of the participants by 40 minutes, while volunteers who were only exposed to bright light in an attempt to delay their circadian clocks had only a 20 minute delay.

“Removing coffee from your diet or just having it in the morning might help you achieve earlier bedtimes and wake times”, Wright said. The researchers say that caffeine affects adenosine receptors in the brain, which plays an important role in managing a cell’s 24-hour cycle.

Advertisement

O’Neill recommends people to think about when they are planning on consuming caffeine.

REUTERS  Gleb GaranichA coffee machine pours coffee into a paper cup in Kiev