Moment 141: What Coffee Is REALLY Doing To Your Sleep!: Matthew Walker

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this moment, sleep expert and author of ‘Why We Sleep’, Matthew Walker discusses the 3 main reasons why caffeine is so terrible for sleep. Firstly, is that the impact of caffeine lasts long after drinking a cup of coffee. Caffeine has a quarter life of between 10 to 12 hours, which means if you have a cup of coffee at midday, a quarter of that caffeine is still in your brain at midnight. Secondly, as a stimulant, caffeine mutes the chemical, adenosine, which is in charge of sleepiness. However, the adenosine is still there and builds, so when caffeine leaves your system you get a caffeine crash, which is all the sleepiness that has been built up hitting at once. Finally, caffeine blocks deep sleep by between 15 to 30%. So even if you are able to fall asleep after drinking coffee, it will be poor quality sleep, and you lose out the amazing benefits of deep sleep, such as: regulating your cardiovascular system, replenishing the immune system, and securing new memories into your brain. However, Matthew doesn’t say that people should completely give up coffee, but instead the main thing to look out for is how much you drink and the timing of when you drink it. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/FlNqF0boIFb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Matthew: https://www.sleepdiplomat.com https://www.instagram.com/drmattwalker/?hl=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Spark your creativity with the Sims. Sometimes you might feel like you're not creative
0:07.0	and you have to go in search of your creative spark again.
0:10.0	Maybe this is catching up with creative friends, experimenting with a new look or trying out a new recipe.
0:16.0	And thanks to The Sims, inspiration is just one game and one spark away.
0:21.3	Ready to spark something. Download The Sims 4 and play for free.
0:27.0	Caffeine will hurt your sleep in probably at least three ways, some of which you most
0:37.9	people are not aware of. The first issue is the duration of its action.
0:43.6	So caffeine has what we call a half life of about five to six hours.
0:48.8	In other words, after about five to six hours, half of that caffeine is still in your system.
0:54.4	What that means is that caffeine has a quarter life of somewhere between 10 to 12 hours.
1:00.1	So if you have a cup of coffee at noon at midday,
1:04.3	a quarter of that caffeine is still in your brain at midnight.
1:08.8	So having a cup of coffee at noon,
1:11.0	and it's hyperbole in truth, or it's a little bit hyperbolic
1:15.6	but it's almost the equivalent of a coffee at noon is the equivalent of you
1:20.0	know taking yourself into bed and just before you turn the light out you swig a quarter of a cup of coffee and you hope for a good night of sleep
1:26.8	and it's probably not going to happen. So that's the first thing to keep in mind is
1:31.2	the timing of caffeine.
1:34.6	The second is that caffeine is a stimulant.
1:37.8	Now everyone knows this, everyone knows that caffeine can make you more alert and more awake.
1:42.1	By the way, how does it do that? It comes back to
1:45.2	Adenosine, which is the chemical that we spoke about, the sleepiness chemical. It's no
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from FlightStory, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of FlightStory and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.