đWhy Does Caffeine Make Me Tired? The Truth About Coffee and Tiredness
My morning coffee is something I cherish. Often, I donât quite feel like myself until after Iâve sipped on that first brew. However, there are mornings when Iâm so exhausted that even a strong espresso barely makes a difference. Actually, sometimes itâs the complete reverse. I drink a coffee hoping itâll give me a boost, but within twenty minutes, I find myself struggling to stay awake at my desk! This made me question âwhy does caffeine sometimes make me tired?â
Can caffeine make you tired? I looked into it, and the answers surprised me! Read on to find out why coffee can actually make you more tired, why this happens, and what you can do about it.
Coffee Dehydrates You
Coffee is a diuretic. This means it makes you want to pee. So you go to the toilet, which dehydrates you. And right now what youâre drinking is coffee, so you drink more coffee. Which makes you want to pee. You see where this is going? Itâs a vicious cycle.
It also doesnât help that one of the major symptoms of dehydration is tiredness. Obviously, if you feel tired, youâre going to want to drink a refreshing cup of coffee to wake yourself up. But what your body really needs is water.
What Happens When Weâre Dehydrated?
See, when we get dehydrated, our blood gets thicker, because thereâs less fluid in our bodies. This means that it moves slower, so less blood gets to our organs. This means less oxygen also gets to our organs. All of these actions combined slows us down and makes us feel tired. Then, because youâre tired, the reflex is to down more coffee to make up for it.
So make sure you keep yourself hydrated by reaching for the water in between cups of coffee. Keep a bottle on your desk, and make sure you drink water whenever you come back from the loo. Even if you only drink one cup of coffee per day, or during the morning at least, it will aid the dehydration, and you would be wise to drink some water after that cup as well. Since I noticed that caffeine makes me sleepy sometimes, I started drinking more water, and it actually helps.
Your Body Can Get Resistant to Caffeine
When youâre tired, your body produces a hormone called adenosine, which binds to special receptors in the brain and lets your mind know youâre tired. But caffeine blocks this hormone by binding to these same receptors, stopping our minds from realising weâre tired. But it doesnât stop our bodies from producing the hormone, and doesnât stop our bodies from being tired.
So when the caffeine wears off, all of the sleep hormone thatâs built up in our bodies comes crashing into our brains, which makes us far more tired than before. Which generally leads to us cracking another cup of coffee to try and make us more awake again.
What Can Happen When You Drink Too Much Coffee?
On top of this, if your brain regularly finds itself using the vast majority of these sleep hormone receptors, it creates more to deal with the increased demand. But your brain doesnât know whether the receptors are being taken up by adenosine or caffeine. So if you regularly drink coffee every single day, youâre teaching your mind to be less and less receptive both to caffeine and sleep hormones.
This is why your body gets more resistant to the effects of caffeine over time, and why caffeine makes it harder to get to sleep. Youâre literally training your mind to resist the effects of being tired. Â
Sweet Sweet Sugar
Iâm guilty of this one. Iâve always had a sweet tooth, and I love a spoon or two of sugar in my hot drinks. But the sugar in sweet coffees can easily cause a sugar crash. Especially if weâve also not eaten too much in the same day. So if youâre guilty of regularly having just a coffee for breakfast, you might want to pay close attention to this one.
In fact, studies have shown that the particular combination of sugar and caffeine found in things like coffee and energy drinks has an incredibly particular effect on the body. It can increase blood sugar levels by a significant margin. But because sugar is processed by the body much faster than caffeine, the sugar rush wears off way before the caffeine high. This causes a major variance in insulin levels and actually affects the way your body processes sugar in the future.
Try Without it
This is especially important if your regular drink is a sugar laden, chocolate flavored, cream topped frappucino. In this case, it could even be that your body isnât responding to the caffeine, but the sugar. Â
If you regularly drink a lot of sugary coffee, try changing to a simple black with no sugar for a couple of weeks, and see how it affects you. Or even cut it out altogether for a little while.
You Could be Genetically Vulnerable to Coffee
Thereâs actually a specific enzyme in our bodies that affects how we process caffeine. Itâs called CYP1A2, and it determines how quickly and easily your body can break down and deal with the effects of caffeine. Most people are fast metabolizers, so their bodies quickly break down the caffeine in their blood, and itâs generally absorbed within 30 minutes.
But for a few people, their genetic makeup means they canât produce enough of the enzyme to break down caffeine properly, so it sits in their body without being absorbed, and has little to no effect. This means that no matter how much caffeine you have, itâs not going to do anything for you, besides being a placebo.
You can get tested for this, but for most people, itâs not something theyâre really going to have to worry about.
What You Should Do
So remember, to avoid fatigue when youâre drinking caffeine:
- Control your caffeine intake so you donât develop a tolerance. Try not to have more than 2-4 cups of coffee a day
- Avoid adding too much sugar with your coffee to avoid a sugar crash
- Make sure youâre drinking water alongside your coffee to avoid dehydration
Final Thoughts
So, long gone are the days when I could ask âwhy does caffeine make me tired?â Now I understand what Iâm putting into my body, and know how to fight the effects of caffeine and how to deal with my fatigue, itâs a lot easier to stay awake and I feel all the better for it.
Do you drink coffee every day? Have you ever felt more tired after drinking a cup of coffee? If youâve got any cool stories or interesting experiences, we want you to comment below and share them with the rest of us!