The Following Is A Guest Post by a Super Cool Dude. – Lubimûr

Coffee Nap (3)

I mostly skimmed the article as I was trying to get multiple things done during my 15 minute break, so I haven’t figured out how much coffee (or more specifically, caffeine) one would need to get the most benefit from this, but it sounds like a cup or an espresso followed immediately by a 15-20 minute nap would suffice. As a point of reference, 8 oz. (237 mL) of coffee has about 95-165 mg of caffeine, a Starbucks Pike Place roast has about 310 mg in the Grande, 235 mg in the tall, and about 385 mg in the venti, in case you decide to use an alternative caffeine source.

One of the highlights I want to add here in case the article disappears forever is that in the brain caffeine fits into receptors that are normally filled by a similarly shaped molecule called adenosine. Adenosine is a byproduct of brain activity, and when your brain produces (generates?) enough of it to fill a large number of the receptors, you start feeling tired. However if caffeine is already plugged in to those receptors it prevents the adenosine from filling them thereby staving off tiredness. So caffeine and adenosine are in competition for those receptors in the brain. Coffee 101, right?

Sleeping naturally clears the adenosine out of the receptors, and it takes coffee (caffeine) about 20 minutes to get processed through the digestive tract and circulating in the blood stream. So all of the receptors cleared out by the 20 minute nap are now available to the caffeine just as it is hitting the system. Of course if you take more than a 20 minute nap you will then have to deal with “sleep inertia” which will diminish the results of what we are after. Even just reaching a tranquil half-asleep stage can be helpful. (1) (2)

Live Life!

BijanSojorn

(1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9401427

(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8936399

(3) https://getpocket.com/explore/item/scientists-agree-coffee-naps-are-better-than-coffee-or-naps-alone