Caffeine Can Only Power Lift You So Far Before The Crash

The Pacific Northwest is grounds zero for coffee lovers.  “Grounds” zero…see what I did there….”grounds”…. get it?   Ok, that’s what happens when you are running on caffeine fumes and haven’t had enough sleep – the jokes get worse than usual!   But if  insufficient sleep is the problem, a couple of cups of Joe can only take you so far.

The U.K. Telegraph reports that research scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute found that the alertness born of two cups of coffee per day helped people maintain their performance for two days.  However, by the third night of getting less than five hours of sleep a night, coffee lost its effectiveness and even caused people to become grumpy.

Doctors conducting the study say the data suggests that the same effective daily dose of caffeine is not sufficient to prevent performance decline over multiple days of restricted sleep which is an important find because caffeine is a stimulant widely used to counteract performance decline following periods of restricted sleep.  Ask any medical intern or double or triple shift worker.  To keep us all safer it will take more sleep or more than caffeine.