Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

49 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by Blaze854

17 Comments

aliljet

an hour ago

Does this work to assess each individual'd actual caffeine half life? Every individual is metabolizing caffeine at a different rate...

danielbarla

26 minutes ago

Indeed, and the variance on this number is surprisingly large. From [1]:

> The mean half-life of caffeine in plasma of healthy individuals is about 5 hours. However, caffeine's elimination half-life may range between 1.5 and 9.5 hours, while the total plasma clearance rate for caffeine is estimated to be 0.078 L/h/kg (Brachtel and Richter, 1992; Busto et al., 1989). This wide range in the plasma mean half-life of caffeine is due to both innate individual variation, and a variety of physiological and environmental characteristics that influence caffeine metabolism (e.g., pregnancy, obesity, use of oral contraceptives, smoking, altitude).

On the one end of the scale, it'd be nigh-undetectable within a few hours, and on the other end, significantly present for 24 hours+. I suspect estimating this number is also fairly difficult. I mean, I have some idea of the _outcome_ of what happens if I drink coffee at say 6PM, but I have little way of reversing this into a half-life number.

[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/

err4nt

an hour ago

As long as you're consistent enough, if you use this tool for a while could you learn how to tune the value it gives you? E.g. if you know you need extra time, or less time you can take that into account when reading this.

4gotunameagain

an hour ago

Line 6:

   Assumptions  
   The script works on some generalized assumptions that would be difficult to take into account.

JoeAltmaier

9 hours ago

Here's the thing: never mind getting to bed, that will happen when you are tired enough.

How about sleeping through the night? A different function with different math.

My model is caffeine is well-known for having a half-life, from three to six hours depending. That means a geometric fall in effective caffeine in your system after you go to sleep (you don't continue ingesting caffeine in your sleep do you? Sleep-brewing?)

What is the function for 'tired enough'? That is, how does 'sleepiness' decline over the sleep period? Because, when the functions cross (sleepiness drops below the caffeine line) then Awake! That's often about 3AM for me.

If the sleepiness function is a different time-constant, or is more nearly linear (as I suspect, as long as you get enough cobbled-together hours of sleep you are functional which sounds like a simple unweighted sum) then inevitably sleepiness will fall faster (cross the caffeine-left-in-system curve).

At that point you can get up, knock around doing whatever, getting sleepier again. Once caffeine drops below your remaining sleepiness you can get a few more winks.

And wake up shortly after, another hour or half-hour, whatever. Repeat the rest of the night in ever-shorter cycles as your curves both approach the x-axis.

Anyway it describes my sleep behavior nearly perfectly.

jaggederest

3 hours ago

And there are at least 3 different metabolic rates for caffeine, rapid, standard, and slow. As a holder of the slow gene, none of these calculators work for me since for me caffeine has a ~9 hour half life. Caffeine after about 11 am is a bad plan.

bigiain

2 hours ago

Pretty sure there's some age related effects too. Over the last ~20 years I've gone from being happily able to drink coffee after dinner, through not being able to drink it after 5pm or so, and now to having the espresso machine automatically shut off at 2:30pm - otherwise my sleep quality plummets.

I'm 57 now, I started noticing poor sleep related to late night coffee in my mid 30s. I do got fairly hard earlier in the day though, I've usually had 4 double espressos (somewhere between 17-21g of beans) by mid morning, and usually another one or two before my current self imposed 2:30pm cut off.

ec109685

6 minutes ago

Given caffeine has a half life in the body, couldn’t you have less coffee but drink it for longer in the day and have the same result?

err4nt

an hour ago

It's so funny but encouraging to read this. I started drinking coffee in college and could easily finish a whole pot, or have 3 Starbucks venti drip coffees in a day, but I was not sensitive to caffeine at all and could sleep right after. It also didn't seem to have that wake-up alertness effect either

Then something changed, and now I am sensitive to it like a normal person. It does wake me up after a sip or two I can feel it, and I can easily have 'too much' if I have 2-3 cups in too short of a timespan, so I've had to learn to slow down.

Having said all of this, my personal 'last call' is 6pm, with the idea that I will be able to sleep at 12-1am. But if I drink coffee after 6pm I might be delaying that bedtime a little.

It will be interesting to learn more about the effects of how much, and how long. Should I be tapering off hours before 'last call'? What is the best 'last call' time in the day and should it be earlier? I'll have to track some of this and figure this out!

jaggederest

an hour ago

Yeah it's well known that liver enzyme efficiency declines slightly with age. Also you may unknowingly run into medications that inhibit it, which gets more likely as you age and accumulate chronic issues requiring medication.

I'm envious of your 100 grams of beans a day consumption - if I have more than about 10g / one single espresso I'm a wreck for the entire day! The area-under-curve for slow metabolizers is 9 times larger - 3x the duration, 3x the concentration.

mindslight

4 hours ago

This is such a foreign way of looking at caffeine to me. I've got no problems falling asleep. My constraint is that the more caffeine I have today, the more I will need tomorrow morning to even get started feeling like a person.

coffeebeqn

2 hours ago

Tolerance was my only issue for the longest time too. But in the last few years I started to get mild insomnia in the beginning of the night if I had coffee late in the day. It wasn’t making me feel active or awake but just unable to fall asleep even if I was tired. So I’d spend about 2-3 hours unable to fall asleep while tired. Now my cutoff is actually 11:00 and I try not to have any after that

carabiner

2 hours ago

This is called tolerance. You require more caffeine just to reach baseline and it no longer confers any stimulation.

j45

3 hours ago

Well said. I find starting the day with hydration helps me understand where I actually am in terms of rest before caffiene.

The advice going around to try and delay coffee for the first 90 minutes after waking seems to make a difference for me too, any unprocessed adenosine can be handled by my brain, and then caffeine is ready.

One explanation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maximizing-your-morning-coffe...

senectus1

2 hours ago

same here.. i can consume a caffiene ladened drink and go to sleep no issues.

corobo

2 hours ago

idk what other quirks you've got but this one turned out to be an adhd symptom for me lol

Coffee actually works on me now I'm on stimulant medication haha

bigiain

2 hours ago

Question, how old are you? I lost the ability to be able to drink coffee late at night and still sleep well in my mid/late 30s.

Also, coffee power naps are totally a thing, I get a real boost if I drink a coffee and immediately lie down to sleep, then get woken up 25-30 mins later when the caffeine is doing it's thing. Definitely end up feeling better and able to concentrate deeper into the afternoon when I do that round lunchtime, compared to taking a nap without first having coffee.