Coffee and sleep

Getting adequate sleep is crucially important for your recovery and general quality of waking life. Some people would argue that a good coffee is also crucially important for the quality of waking life! A lot of us get trapped in a caffeine cycle where we have too much coffee throughout the day, have trouble falling asleep at night with our minds spinning about the day and all that we have to do the next, and then we need more coffee in the morning to get our butts in gear. This cycle tends to lead to energy lows mid afternoon that we often try to stave off with bad snacks or more coffee. It is probably better for your health to avoid the stuff all together: it makes you more sensitive to your REAL levels of fatigue in training, and gets rid of unnecessary stress on the nervous and digestive system (coffee is acidifying). But if your love of the stuff is too great to even consider it, here are some things to think about. 1) Don’t drink coffee with/right-after meals. Caffeine blocks the absorption of all sorts of minerals and nutrients, especially iron. 2) Limit the calories that you add. If you can only tolerate it with loads of cream and sugar, why bother? 3) Don’t drink it in the afternoon/ within 7 hrs of bedtime. Here is a good primer on coffee and sleep.