In Praise of the Coffee Nap

Ever since the coronavirus lockdowns started, I have not only been having very vivid dreams but I’ve also been having blessedly uninterrupted 7-8 hour stretches of sleep each night. As most 50-something-plus women (and men) will tell you, this is fairly unusual at our age. It seems that from about 2-3 years before menopause onward it has been very common for my friends and I to wake up at 3-ish o’clock in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep. So when I started to sleep soundly through the entire night, I counted it as one of the silver linings of this dismal time. 

For some reason last night was an exception. Having gone to sleep at my usual 10:00, I woke up at 2am for no particular reason and could not get back to sleep. I listened to an audiobook I have on loan from the library for about an hour and then felt sufficiently sleepy to get back to sleep. I usually wake before my 6:30 alarm, but not this morning. I turned the alarm off, slept until 7 and then forced myself out of bed for my morning walk with Chris.

I dragged myself through the morning, and by 11:30 I was feeling very sleepy indeed. That’s when I remembered reading about coffee naps! 

What is a coffee nap, you ask? First, a little background (and here’s an excellent article for further reading). Our bodies produce a chemical called adenosine, which makes us sleepy. When we fall asleep, adenosine levels drop. That’s why a nap can be very refreshing. Now comes the coffee part. Caffeine actually competes with the adenosine receptors in your brain. The level of adenosine in your bloodstream stays the same, but less of it gets to your brain – hence why caffeine helps keep you awake.

In a coffee nap, the caffeine and the nap have a synergistic affect on your level of sleepiness. Studies have shown that the combination of caffeine + nap has a more favorable impact than either taken alone. 

So, how does it work? Since caffeine takes 20 minutes to act on the body what you have to do is drink a cup of coffee fairly quickly (I added enough milk to my coffee so that I could chug instead of sip it) and then take a nap between 15-20 minutes long. Any longer than 20 minutes and you enter a deeper phase of sleep that will be harder to come out of and leave you groggy. The nap lowers the level of adenosine in your bloodstream, and then the caffeine competes with whatever adenosine is left. It’s such an elegant solution, it just might rise to the level of things-that-make-me-happy. I felt completely transformed by my coffee nap from sleepy head to buzzing with energy. I just knew I had to spread the good news of coffee naps far and wide. 

I hope your week is going well!

Love,

Michelle xoxo