What time should you drink coffee to get the biggest peak from it?
- From: news.com.au
- November 07, 2013
IF YOU are an adult Australian, there's a good chance you are having a coffee while you're reading this.
Or you've had a coffee already, or you're planning to have one at some stage today.
The average Aussie swills about 3kg of coffee every year, which is way more than the global average of 1.3kg.
But do you ever finish your first cup of the day and feel like it just didn't do its job?
Some mornings, it feels like we've reached saturation point and we'll never find that sweet coffee peak again.
Well there's a reason for that.
Just like any drug, caffeine should come with directions because there are many factors that can change its impact on your body.
A thoughtful PhD student in the US has taken the guess work out of it for us.
Steve Miller says your morning coffee is most effective if you drink it between 9.30am and 11.30am.
Careful timing can prevent you building up a tolerance to it, Miller explains on his blog.
Your body is producing its own natural alertness between 8am and 9am (thanks to the rising concentration of cortisol in the bloodstream), so it doesn't need any help from coffee.
But as your body comes down from that cortisol peak, a coffee will keep your alertness high.
Check out Miller's post for more of the science, if you like.
Or go fetch yourself a flat white.