Here’s why coffee keeps you up at night

But a new, less obvious study has revealed exactly how coffee affects your daily rhythms, and it may be costing you more zzz’s than you think.

The study was conducted by the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder and the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Researchers said findings of the research need further research and confirmation.

“It also provides new and exciting insights into the effects of caffeine on human physiology”.

Caffeine is undoubtedly one of the most of popular drugs in the world.

The body clock, or circadian rhythm, operates in every single cell in the body, turning genes on and off at different times to allow us to adapt to the external cycle of night and day. And additional findings from the study show that it’s not only sleep that is impacted by caffeine, says Wright, but other aspects of the human body as well.

Wright and his fellow researchers at the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado observed a group of participants for 49 days.

Study participants gulped down a caffeine pill-equivalent to the content of a double espresso-three hours before their habitual bedtime. It was about half the effect the scientists noticed when they instead exposed the volunteers to bright light. Previous studies have already shown that caffeine consumption does have the ability to change the internal clock of certain species and organisms such as algae, fruit flies, and maybe even mice.

But we can no longer pin the blame entirely on the alertness-boosting effects of caffeine.

It is common knowledge that coffee has stimulant properties.

Sleep experts have praised the study because it sheds light on caffeine’s affect beyond making people feel alert.

Researchers suggest that if you want to achieve the best sleep possible, caffeine should either be avoided or only be enjoyed in the early morning.

Analysis of saliva, blood and cells taken from the volunteers found that caffeine blocks the cell receptors that grant entry to adenosine, a neutrotransmitter carrying chemical signals which are used by a person’s system to promote sleep.

“Our findings suggest that if you take caffeine at the wrong time, it could make your jet lag on an eastward trip worse”, said Wright”. He added that coffee at night may not affect everyone considering that everyone’s body cycle is unique.

“These and other data clearly indicate that we can to some extent modify these rhythms and that part of the reason why we sleep so late relates to factors such as caffeine intake and the exposure to artificial light in the evening”, he said.

The study appears in the September 16 issue of Science Translational Medicine.