Neuroscience Says You’re Probably Drinking Your Coffee at the Wrong Time

When should you drink your first cup of coffee? Not first thing in the morning, according to neuroscience.  

When you wake up in the morning, what’s the very first thing you do? If you’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, the answer is: Grab a cup of coffee. 

Besides being delicious, a nice morning brew feels like the perfect way to perk yourself up and get your brain going for the day ahead. One recent study even suggested it might counteract some of the nasty health effects of sitting all day. 

There’s only one problem with this common morning ritual. Neuroscience suggests it can actually make you feel more stressed. Instead, the latest research suggests, you’d get all of the same benefits—without any of the downsides—if you just adjusted your coffee schedule by a few hours. 

Why first thing in the morning isn’t the best time for coffee 

You’re likely at your most bleary eyed and cloudy headed right after you wake up. So why isn’t that the ideal time to enjoy some coffee? Not because early morning caffeine dehydrates you or causes you to crash in the afternoon. Those are both myths (that afternoon energy dip is generally a product of your body’s natural circadian rhythms).

You might want to consider delaying your first cup of coffee because the morning is also the time when your body produces the most cortisol.

Often referred to as a stress hormone, cortisol is associated with getting the body ready for action. It might not feel like it when you’re stumbling around the kitchen at 6 a.m., but your body is actually working hard as soon as you wake up to rev you up and prepare you for the day to come. Usually, the amount of cortisol in our bodies peaks between 7 and 8 in the morning. 

And coffee nudges our body to produce even more cortisol.

Which means that when you down your morning cup of coffee first thing, you’re adding another stimulant to your body’s naturally occurring get-up-and-go chemicals. People’s biology differs around caffeine (genetic variations mean some of us break it down faster than others), but the result of an early a.m. cup of caffeine for many of us is feeling wired, stressed, or rushed. 

There can be other negative impacts too. Being overly stimulated in this way can impair creativity and worsen anxiety, some studies suggest. As family physician Kristie Leong explained on Medium recently, drinking caffeine when your cortisol levels are already high, “can make you more resistant to caffeine. That means you need more and more coffee to get the same effect.”

How to time your caffeine

Leong used to be an early morning coffee drinker. But once she learned more about the neuroscience of caffeine, she moved her first coffee to between 9 and 11 a.m., when cortisol levels naturally start to dip. It took a while—she nudged the timing for her first cup up by a half-hour a day to let her body adjust—but she soon noticed benefits, including feeling calmer and more energetic, and craving less coffee. 

Which is an important point to note. This isn’t a column urging you to take radical action or drink less coffee. There is a ton of science showing that up to four or five cups a day is probably doing you no harm (unless you’re having trouble sleeping). Coffee can boost memory and focus. Plus, it is one of life’s small pleasures. 

Certain Buddhist and meditation traditions even suggest that savoring a cup of your favorite brew can act as a form of mindfulness, centering us in the present moment. Brewing up a pot for someone else can be an everyday exercise in hospitality and empathy. 

So don’t get me wrong. I’m most certainly not knocking coffee here. This is just a friendly pointer to the neuroscience that says you’re probably drinking your coffee at the wrong time to maximize its benefits.

Wait a few hours after you wake up and your morning cup of coffee will be even more effective at helping your brain work its best. 

I feel this may be true, though I'm not a coffee person but tea, of late, I stopped drinking tea soon after getting up. My 1st cup of tea is around 9.30 am ! Drinking warm water with honey and lime juice, made me feel better, as bowel movements are better, never felt the need for my hot cuppa chai in the morning.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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