Who doesn’t love a nice hot coffee on a cold night when you are forced to pull an all-nighter to finish that project you had 2 weeks to do, but only started on 2 hours ago? Well, some people, believe it or not, don’t drink coffee when cramming and it has nothing to do with dietary restrictions or the taste of coffee. I know you might be thinking of a myriad of other reasons as to why someone wouldn’t want coffee while cramming, but the reason that we are going to focus on in this article is: it makes them sleepy.
But how? It seems contradictory to conventional wisdom that someone would get tired after a coffee, when coffee is a known energizer that acts by bonding to chemical pathways, and chemical pathways are primarily fixed in function across the entire human population.
So then are all of these people lying to start a new coffee conspiracy? Or are we just missing something that they are not? I can confidently say that the answer to the first question is the unexpected: No. I can personally attest to experiencing drowsiness after drinking coffee on multiple occasions.
So why does this happen?
Well, the obvious reason would be that if you regularly consume coffee, you would build up a tolerance to it, effectively mitigating its ability to make you alert. Further, drinking coffee regularly can lead your brain into form new receptors for adenosine, which is a chemical that helps bring on sleepiness. This happens as coffee blocks the effects of adenosine, leading your brain to compensate by making more receptors, resulting in an increased need to sleep in general. Especially when paired with an already existing tolerance, this will double up to effectively turn coffee into sleep medication once the caffeine wears off.
While this might be the case for an avid procrastinator or a med school student, most of us don’t drink coffee every single day.
The other answers to why lie in the complexity of the numerous procedures going on in your body at any given time. For instance, one reason scientists found has nothing to do with the chemical pathways in your brain. Instead, it is the sugar in your coffee that could be causing a spike in your blood glucose levels, leading you to feel tired.
Well then, case closed! Stop drinking coffee with sugar and it will save you from diabetes and drowsiness in one stroke (pun intended).
Not quite. Your blood sugar isn’t the only thing that can cause this unbelievable phenomenon. Another reason that is often cited is dehydration, which can be caused by the laxative and diuretic properties of coffee. This is a whole bunch of scientific jargon to say: coffee makes you want to poo poo and pee pee, and when you do your body loses water.
Yet another reason is that you might have ADHD. Most people with ADHD have altered brain chemistry that could cause coffee to produce a calming effect, leading to the feeling of tiredness. It actually works so well that many people diagnosed with ADHD self-medicate with caffeine to help them relax or sleep.
So there you go. You either have an unhealthy addiction to coffee, unstable blood glucose levels, ADHD, or you just need to drink more water. In any case, the only immediate downside to wanting to go to bed after a coffee is the looks of astonishment your friends will give you when you try to tell them that coffee makes you sleepy. Though a great way to combat this is to stay up and answer every single question your friends will hit you with and try every drink from their combined book of energy potions that would make even Voldemort jealous.