+
Sign up for
The Upworthiest
Our top stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.

When IS the best time to drink coffee? A new study offers some insight.

You there, with the coffee. Yes, you.

Are you going to bed in less than three hours? Or did you just wake up less than three hours ago?

If you answered, "yes" to either question, put the caffeine down and back away slowly.

Don't worry! You can pick it up again later (this is a judgment-free zone). But if you're reading this anywhere close to your bedtime or not too long after waking up, you may want to push pause on the caffeine intake just until you get to the end of this.

I've got news for you about when the best time to drink coffee isn't ... and is.

Big scarf, big coffee, big fun, right? That is, until bedtime. Photo by iStock.

For the first time ever, researchers studied caffeine's effects on our circadian clock, and the results are striking.

Your internal body clock is known as your circadian clock. This clock is present in every aspect of your body. As sleep physiologist Kenneth Wright told NPR, "[your circadian clock] is in your fat cells; it's in your muscle cells. It's in your liver, for example, as well as in your brain."

Doing something that offsets your circadian clock isn't just, like, setting your alarm for p.m. one night by mistake. Messing with your internal sense of time, especially over a prolonged period of time, can have a real negative impact on your health.

Yeah, you might even want to rethink the caffeinated drinks several hours before going to bed. Photo by iStock.

It turns out consuming caffeine at night doesn't just keep you awake. It can completely reset your circadian clock.

Wright and a team of researchers conducted a 49-day sleep study in which participants were given various treatments three hours before bedtime: exposure to bright or dim light and a double espresso or a placebo.

Then, the team checked the participants' saliva for melatonin, a hormone that controls sleep and wake cycles. Melatonin surges through your system at bedtime, helping you drift off to dream land.

For participants who drank the double espresso, their melatonin surge was delayed by an average of 40 minutes.

"Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by late-night caffeine." Photo by iStock.

40 minutes may not sound like much, but it's enough of a shift in your circadian clock that it could make it difficult to get out of bed the next morning and could affect your entire day.

We all have days like this every now and then without doing too much damage, but if every day feels like this, it might be because you're consuming caffeine too close to bedtime. And a consistent lack of sleep can wreak havoc on your immune system and make you more susceptible to colds and viruses.

And hopping aboard the caffeine train first thing in the morning might not be great for your circadian clock either.

Sorry to be the bearer of even more unfortunate research, but ... yeah. Sorry.

I know it's pretty and smells like productivity, but timing is everything. Photo by iStock.

You see, it's all about cortisol. Cortisol gets a bad rap as the "stress hormone" but it's also the hormone that controls your circadian clock. When your body releases it, you feel awake. Your cortisol levels are highest early in the morning.

Buuuuuut caffeine interferes with cortisol production, and if you're guzzling the good stuff early in the morning, your body learns to produce less cortisol and comes to rely on caffeine.

Photo by iStock.

Heavy caffeine intake (think five to six coffees or around 15 Diet Cokes a day) can lead to nervousness, muscle tremors, and insomnia.

So when *is* the best time to drink your coffee?

Because, oh yes, my friends, here's the good news: There are some benefits to drinking caffeinated drinks (especially coffee) in moderation.

The best time to indulge your caffeine habit is mid-morning, when cortisol production is down and, odds are, you're hours away from hitting the sack.

Yes, this post was a long con to use this stock photo. What's good? Photo by iStock.

Mid-morning! The perfect time to enjoy a cup o' joe with a diverse group of multigenerational friends! Or alone while you hide from your co-workers.

Like we said, judgment-free zone.

Badge
Acuvue
Acuvue
Sponsored

ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

Keep ReadingShow less
social media
Joy

18-year-old took her college savings and bought the restaurant where she was a dishwasher

Samantha Frye, the newest owner of Rosalie's restaurant, is proving there's more than one way to invest in your future.

Canva

There are many way to invest in your future

Eighteen year old Samantha Frye has traded college life for entrepreneurship, and she has no regrets.

Frye began working at Rosalie's Restaurant in Strasburg, Ohio at 16 as a dishwasher, working up the ranks as a kitchen prep, server, then line cook. All while working a second job, sometimes third job.

After graduating high school, Frye started college at Ohio State with plans of studying business or environmental engineering. But when she came back to work a shift at Rosalie’s for winter break, an opportunity arose—the owners had planned to sell the restaurant.
Keep ReadingShow less
college
Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
Keep ReadingShow less
movies
Family

Mom who packs her child a meal when going out to restaurants has parents fired up

Does she have a good point?

via UnbreakableMomma/TikTok

Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

A mom who admitted she packs her 2-year-old a meal when they go out to dinner has started an interesting debate on TikTok about restaurant etiquette and how it applies to young children.

The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

Keep ReadingShow less
parenting
Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

KCEN|YouTube

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

Keep ReadingShow less
love
Joy

12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

WFAA|YouTube

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide is called a silent killer for a reason. Many people don't realize they're experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning before it's too late. The gas is colorless and odorless and tends to have a sedating effect that causes people to sleep through the fatal poisoning. Having carbon monoxide detectors is one of the most effective ways to identify the gas before it's too late to get out of the house, but not every home has one.

A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

The girl called 911 after she noticed her mom pass out. On the call with the dispatcher, Jaziyah says she thinks her mother has died before explaining that there was something now wrong with her baby brother, who was just 5-months-old.

Keep ReadingShow less
kid hero
Pop Culture

In a touching, unscripted moment, Drew Barrymore rushes to comfort a crying audience member

"Are you okay?"

via Eva Rinaldi/Flickr

Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Barrymore has consistently starred in hit films and movies that are rewatchable cable-TV staples, such as “Charlie's Angels” (2000), “Never Been Kissed” (1999), “Scream” (1996), “The Wedding Singer” (1998), “50 First Dates” (2004) and “Fever Pitch” (2005).

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

Keep ReadingShow less
drew barrymore
Trending Stories