Yes, as I sit here on this Friday morning nursing my 3rd coffee of the day I am watching a video from the YouTube channel ASAPscience that explains the best time of day to drink your cups of the black stuff and more annoyingly, it seems I drink mine at completely the wrong time…
So why is there a right and wrong time to drink coffee? We all know that in general drinking caffeinated drinks after say 5pm could disturb your evenings slumber but in this video they are talking about coffee drinking and your cortisol levels.
It would seem that your body clock is regulated by cortisol, adrenaline and serotonin. We don’t want to get into too much detail here but cortisol can be described as the jumper cables to get your body going, but your levels only peak for short time durations. And here comes the rub, according to the video drinking coffee or other caffeinated drinks during a peak does not give you an extra “boost”. The cortisol can actually counter some of the effects of the caffeine and also lead to increasing your tolerance for caffeine so you would need to have more to get the same hit.
They say you should wait an hour after waking before consuming your first cup and should also avoid it at times of the day when cortisol is known to peak such as around 9am and between 12-1pm. Well isn’t that just great….