SO YOU’RE A hopelessly addicted coffee lover. We hear you. Its all about the taste, its smell, its looks–how it makes us feel warm and happy. Basically, coffee is the best.
But is your relationship with coffee a love/hate kinda thing? You love what it does to you but find yourself too attached? You may be drinking it at the wrong time.
Steven Miller, a Ph.D student at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland has devoted his time to studying the best time of day to pour that sweet caffeine into your body.
When considering the perfect time to sup your espresso, we must take into account the release of the hormone that keeps us alert, cortisol. When this is at its lowest, you shouldn’t be trying to enhance it. Your cortisol levels are usually at their highest around at 8am, and drinking your morning latte around this time can contribute to building up a tolerance.
Drug tolerance is an important subject, especially in the case of caffeine since most of us overuse this drug. Therefore, if we are drinking caffeine at a time when your cortisol concentration in the blood is at its peak, you probably should not be drinking it. This is because cortisol production is strongly related to your level of alertness and it just so happens that cortisol peaks for your 24 hour rhythm between 8 and 9 AM on average.
Therefore, Miller says that the best time to drink your cup of Joe is 9.30am and 11.30am, just before your next natural peak at noon, contradicting previous reports that it’s 2.16pm based on worker’s slump. They didn’t pull the elevenses out of nowhere.
Although your cortisol levels peak between 8 and 9 AM, there are a few other times where–on average–blood levels peak again and are between noon to 1 PM, and between 5:30 to 6:30 PM. In the morning then, your coffee will probably be the most effective if you enjoy it between 9:30 AM and 11:30 AM, when your cortisol levels are dropping before the next spike.
So now we know.
Mmmm, coffee.
Via Neatorama
