Decaf Coffee is perhaps the last thing you think about when you are looking for an afternoon cafein to spend you until the end of the working day.
But if you want to wake yourself up well, experts say you have to reconsider.
New research has shown that drinking only two cups of coffee could be enough after noon to move the brain to a more exciting and dynamic state at night, causing damage to your energy levels.
Canadian researchers said caffeine – one of the most consumed stimulants in the world – can change the structure and complexity of brain activity during various sleeping stages.
Main author of the study Professor Philipp Thölke said: ‘The widespread use of caffeine among the public makes this subject an important health consideration.
“Understanding how caffeine influences sleep architecture and brain dynamics can help clarify the impact on neural health,” he added.
The researchers, from the University of Montreal, analyzed the sleep health of 40 healthy adults with moderate consumption of caffeine from 20 to 58 years old.
Participants spent two nights in a sleeping clinic after having 200 mg caffeine – – two cups of coffee – and one after a placebo.
The researchers discovered that when people consumed caffeine in the afternoon, their sleep quality was considerably worse, associated with higher levels of electrical activity in the brain
The researchers used a double-blind design, so that they did not know whether participants came in the caffeine or caffeine-free clinic.
The sleep quality of the participants was followed with the help of an Elektro andcephalogram (EEG) that registers brain activity by picking up electrical signals produced by the brain.
With the help of a sleep -Eeg researchers, aimed at different markers of brain complexity that look at how random a brain signal is, how easily the signal can be compressed and how consistent a signal is over time.
They also looked at the distribution of electrical activity over different frequencies.
The results showed that caffeine usually influenced brain activity during a non-REM sleep-the stage of the cycle that is considered the silent or soothing stage.
This phase is split into three different phases: a person falls asleep and then moves from a light sleep in a deep sleep.
At this point the breathing of a person, brain activity and heart rate usually slow down, the body temperature drops and eye movement stop.
This is a very healing phase that helps the body to restore tissue and muscle and to strengthen the immune system.
Caffeine had a major impact on non-brake sleep that is usually associated with repair and restoration
Researchers, however, discovered that consuming caffeine had a negative influence on this crucial stage in the afternoon, resulting in less restorative sleep.
“Caffeine delays but does not prevent sleep, so although we can sleep under the influence of caffeine, the brain, and therefore also sleep, is struck by the medicine,” said Prof Thölke against Psypost.
“It leads to shallower sleep with increased information processing during the sleeping phase where the brain normally enters deeply recovering rest.”
The researchers also noticed that certain brain signals were flatter, which suggests that under the influence of caffeine the brain resembled a ‘critical state’ – where the brain is the most responsive and adaptable.
They also analyzed how age influenced the impact of caffeine on the brain and sleep health.
In general, younger adults from 20 to 27 were more sensitive to the stimulating effects of caffeine during sleep of fast eyes (brake) compared to adults of middle age.
Researchers theoretized that this could be because older people have fewer adenosine receptors in the brain.
Adenosine is a chemical that builds up in the brain during awake hours, so we finally make ourselves tired.
Caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors, making us feel more awake.
The researchers suggested that because older adults have fewer receptors, the blocking effect of caffeine may not be that effective, especially in REM sleep.
During non-brake sleep, however, the effects of caffeine were the same in all age groups.
Researchers therefore concluded that caffeine has the ability to restructure the brain and influence how well we sleep.
However, they acknowledged that their research only included healthy individuals, concluded that the findings could not be extrapolated to people with neurological or psychiatric disorders such as the restless Beens syndrome or Parkinson’s.
It comes as a study of the Sleep Charity last year, discovered that nine in ten people experience a sort of sleeping problem.
Poor sleep is linked to a number of health problems, including cancer, stroke and infertility.
Experts have long advised that waking up does not necessarily mean that you have insomnia at night, which suggests that figures of up to 14 million people in the UK.
Nevertheless, lack of sleep takes its own toll, of irritability and reduced focus in the short term to an increased risk of obesity, heart conditions and diabetes.
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