Although you strive to get high-quality sleep every night, sometimes it doesn’t quite pan out. We’ve learned this to be the case with Special warfare officers consistently switching time zones or conducting night missions, college athletes balancing academic and sport demands, and lifelong athletes balancing the responsibilities of family, work, and training demands. When sleep quality just is not there and you are looking for a science-backed trick to beat afternoon fatigue, give a coffee nap for energy a try.
☕️What is a coffee nap?
A 20-30 minute nap using a non-deep sleep wave relaxation technique (examples here) right after you slug down your coffee or other caffeinated beverage.
🔬What is the science behind a coffee nap?
Caffeine doesn’t truly give you more energy. Instead, it blocks the neurotransmitter that makes you feel fatigued: adenosine. When you achieve quality sleep, the adenosine in the brain is cleared out, and you wake up feeling rested. On the other hand, when sleep is interrupted, adenosine is not cleared, and then it accumulates more as you expend energy the next day.
Caffeine’s chemical structure allows it to fit into the same receptors that adenosine would fit into. As caffeine blocks those adenosine receptors, your brain doesn’t get the “I’m tired” signal as strongly, and you feel more alert, focused, and energized, at least temporarily. Once the caffeine wears off, the adenosine is still present and ready to take back its receptors, creating the “caffeine crash” that you may feel.
💤So why the nap part?
Caffeine generally takes 20-30 minutes to circulate throughout your system and get in place, bind to the receptors, and block adenosine. As you learned earlier, caffeine doesn’t clear adenosine out of your system; it just blocks it. The rest portion of a coffee nap using non-deep sleep relaxation allows at least some of the adenosine to be minimized. Meaning after the coffee nap, you get a double effect: the caffeine working and less adenosine.
✅Summary and how to execute the coffee nap for energy:
Simple steps:
- Drink down your coffee or caffeinated beverage.
- After finishing your beverage, take 20-30 minutes to use a non-deep sleep relaxation technique.
- Get up, energized, and get after it!
Important note:
This is a short-term strategy to use when the previous night’s sleep quality was low. It should not become a habit. Focus on attempting to the best of your ability to get high-quality sleep each night.
Wondering what you can do to achieve high-quality sleep? [Click here to download our free sleep performance guide.]
Author:
Dr. Dillon Caswell, PT, DPT, SCS
Hope Evangelist | Top-Selling Author & Speaker | Human Performance Expert