Caffeine is a powerful nervous system stimulant. If your nervous system is lit up like a Christmas tree, you can forget about getting high quality sleep.

The reality is, people like coffee. It is what it is. We just have to learn how to navigate our consumption of coffee and other caffeinated goodies to make sure that we’re still getting the best sleep possible.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shared some critical insights about the effect of caffeine on sleep that you need to know about. The lead author of the study, Christopher Drake, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University says, “Drinking a big cup of coffee on the way home from work can lead to negative effects on sleep, just as if someone were to consume caffeine closer to bedtime.”

What the study discovered was that participants given caffeine at different times (immediately before bed, three hours before bed, and six hours before bed) all showed significant measurable disruptions in their sleep. What this means is that not only is it not a good idea to have caffeine right before bed time, but having a cup of coffee or caffeinated tea even as much as six hours before bed can cause sleep troubles.

What’s fascinating about this study is that sleep disturbance was measured in two ways: objectively, by means of a sleep monitor used at home, and subjectively, from diaries kept by the participants. When the participants consumed caffeine six hours before bedtime, they had a measurable objective loss of one hour of sleep shown via sleep monitor. The crazy part is that the participants didn’t note any subjective difference with their sleep in their sleep journal. Even though they physiologically lost sleep because of the caffeine, they didn’t consciously know it at first!

This is how the viscous cycle of sleep deprivation gets started. Not getting enough deep sleep due to caffeine consumption inevitably makes us more tired. Being tired makes us want more caffeine. And, extra consumption of caffeine will, in-turn, make our sleep problems worse. We’ve got to have a strategy to break this viscous cycle to ensure that we’re getting the sleep our bodies deserve.

Living the Half-Life

So here’s the real deal about caffeine. First of all, the places that caffeine come from are typically delicious: coffee, chocolate, tea, etc. Not only are they tasty, but caffeine also has a natural affinity with the human body. It can really get our body and mind in a positive place. This is why caffeine can be so addictive.

Caffeine doesn’t “give you energy” in the way that most people believe. All day everyday while you’re awake, neurons in your brain are firing and producing a neurotransmitter byproduct known as adenosine. Please understand, adenosine is more than a simple waste product. Your nervous system is constantly monitoring for adenosine in your body, because once those levels raise to a certain point in your brain and spinal cord, your body starts to nudge you to go to sleep (or at least to relax).

Then, in comes the caffeine...

Caffeine has the unique ability to fit into receptor sites in your body for adenosine, because it’s so structurally similar to the real thing. Normally, when your receptor sites are filled with real adenosine, your body shifts into rest mode. The issue with caffeine going into those receptors is that it simply sits there like a distant relative over-extending their stay on your couch. It doesn’t actually turn on functions, like adenosine would, to make you tired. As a result, your brain and body are still trucking along and you don’t realize that you’re actually sleepy. Pretty cool in some ways, but hopefully you can see where this could become a big problem.

Your body is still producing more and more adenosine because of all the “awake” activities you’re doing, but it never gets properly metabolized. Due to this, you’re body literally has to change the way it normally functions, stress hormone levels increase in your system, and your brain and organs get overworked because they aren’t getting the accurate cues to rest and recover.

Because of caffeine’s long-term effects, it can take several days for its aftermath to wear off. Caffeine has a half-life of around five to eight hours (depending upon your unique biochemical makeup). Half-life essentially means that after a specific amount of time (say eight hours) half of the substance is still active in your system. So, using the eight hour half-life as an example, if you consumed 200mg of caffeine, after eight hours you’d have half of it in your system (or 100mg), after another eight hours you’d have 50mg, another eight hours it would be 25mg, and so on. This is why having caffeine even six hours out from bedtime still caused sleep disturbances in the study.

The real trouble is, millions of people aren’t just having one serving of caffeine, they’re having many. We also don’t realize when we pick up the habit that our bodies become jaded to the energizing benefits of caffeine. This can happen in as little as 12 days. So, what do we do when we don’t notice a strong or consistent enough buzz? We drink more, of course!

The reality is, caffeine is a powerful stimulant, and it can be a wonderfully pleasant part of our life, if we respect it as such. We need to rewire our body to use it on a regular, yet cyclical basis so that we can really get the most bang-for-the-buck.

We know now how caffeine works, and the deleterious effects it can have on our sleep. Now here are some tips to help ensure that caffeine works for you and not against you.

Smart Caffeine Power Tip #1

Set an unbreakable caffeine curfew to make sure your body has time to remove the majority of it from your system. For most people, it’s generally going to be before 2 p.m. But, if you’re really sensitive to caffeine, then you might want to make your curfew even earlier, or possibly avoid caffeine altogether.

Smart Caffeine Power Tip #2

Caffeine can be used strategically to enhance fat loss, if used in the right way (you’ll get more information on this coming up soon). That said, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and negate the potential benefits of caffeine. To maximize your body’s use and benefit from caffeine, it has to be cycled. There are several ways of going about this. I’m just going to share with you three.

Go on two days and three days off - If a healthy, non-addicted person is using caffeine, it can be cleared from your system nicely after three days. When you have it again, you’ll notice the same benefits as you did the initial days you used it.

Go two months on, one month off - This is reasonable if you’re using a small to moderate amount of caffeine daily (less than 200mg a day) as in a cup or two of black coffee or tea, or a pre-workout supplement. Using more caffeine than this can lead to withdrawal symptoms for the first few days after discontinued use.

Go full on as needed - This is where the magical, “when we first met,” experience can happen with coffee and caffeine. On most days, ignore it; live your life normally, without caffeine, but when you need it, go full on into your love affair. Now when I say you “need it,” I’m talking about you have a performance, a big project, or something that is really important (but short in duration, so your indulgence won’t be more than a couple of days). Use caffeine as a boost, not a crutch, and you’ll be able to truly enjoy its benefits while still sleeping like a champion.