Does coffee really keep you awake, especially at night?

Some people don’t even dare to sip coffee in the afternoon, for fear of having trouble falling asleep at night. — dpa

Many of us are convinced that we won’t be able to sleep well if we drink coffee after 3pm or 4pm.

However, experts aren’t so sure that the timing of a coffee is entirely to blame for sleeping problems.

Caffeine has an effect on the central nervous system and can keep you alert and awake, that much is clear.

And yet, “caffeine has a relatively short effect of a few hours,” says German Association of Nutritional Medicine (BDEM) president Professor Dr Johannes Wechsler.

That means even a coffee in the evening should not automatically deprive you of sleep a few hours later.

“In the field of nutrition, there are actually never monocausal connections,” says Harald Seitz of Germany’s Centre for Nutrition (BZfE).

In other words, it’s not necessarily only due to coffee that you can’t get any rest at night.

The impact of drinking one cup of coffee can be different to another kind, and it also depends on the circumstances under which you drink it.

“If you drink the coffee in the evening at six o’clock before dinner, the effect will be gone by nine,” says Prof Wechsler.

“But if you drink it after dinner, you may not feel the effect until nighttime.”

That’s because when you have a coffee after a meal, it takes a while for the coffee to be absorbed into the small intestine.

So not being able to fall asleep usually has to do with several factors, and caffeinated coffee at an inopportune time can be one of them.

“Whether you fall asleep well in the evening or not depends very much on your entire individual biorhythm,” Seitz emphasises.

The only sensible advice is to simply try it out and see what works and what does not, he says.

If you don’t tolerate coffee well in the evening, it’s better to have your cup of espresso after lunch.

And if you still want to drink coffee later in the day, it is advisable to choose the decaffeinated version. – dpa