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It’s the perfect excuse to enjoy a cup of coffee during the day and a glass of wine at night; both together can make you feel less sleep deprived than taking them alone.
It is well known that coffee during the day can make it difficult to fall asleep at night.
But one study suggests that also having an alcoholic drink before bed could help you sleep longer, offsetting some of the effect of caffeine.
Meanwhile, a drink in the evening can lead to poor sleep, but coffee could make this easier to cope with by increasing alertness.
The best night’s sleep will always be achieved by avoiding both coffee and alcohol.
A drink in the evening can lead to poor sleep, but coffee could make this easier to cope with by increasing alertness.
But, for those who can’t resist, new research suggests that a coffee during the day and a drink at night could help balance each other out.
The findings come from a six-week study of 17 people, which found that each daily small cup of coffee, or a similar caffeinated beverage, reduced a person’s average amount of sleep by about 10 minutes a day, or an hour a day. week.
However, for every cup plus one standard alcoholic drink someone drinks per day, the results suggest they would see a sleep reduction of approximately just five minutes a day, or half an hour a week.
Therefore, an alcoholic drink, which tends to increase drowsiness, could cancel out some of the effect of a coffee earlier in the day.
The study found that each additional standard alcoholic drink per day, such as a small glass of wine or half a pint of beer, led to a more restless night’s sleep, based on people’s rating of how well they slept from zero to 100.
But if they also consumed caffeine that day, people rated the quality of their sleep worse.
Researchers believe that coffee may help mask daytime sleepiness caused by alcohol’s effect on sleep.
Frank Song, who led the study from the University of Washington, said: “We see evidence to suggest that people drink coffee and alcohol in an effort to ‘balance’ their sleep.
“In fact, drinking alcohol after coffee can make it easier to fall asleep, and coffee can make people feel less sleepy if they drink alcohol later in the day.
“However, they should be aware that they will probably still have poorer quality of sleep, and it is generally best to avoid both alcohol and caffeine.”
The study, published in the journal PLOS One, looked at financial traders as an example of busy, hard-working people who often rely on both caffeine and alcohol.
Every day for six weeks, male volunteers completed a daily survey that included how long and well they slept.
The apparently positive effect of alcohol being a sedative, causing drowsiness, is that people lose less sleep after drinking it along with caffeine, rather than drinking caffeine alone.
The most negative effect is that alcohol suppresses important “rapid eye movement” (REM) sleep at the beginning of the night, worsening the quality of sleep after a drink.
But, although people rated their night’s sleep three points worse on the 100-point scale after each glass of alcohol, this effect was slightly reduced for each small cup of caffeinated beverage they drank on the same day.
Caffeine, which stays in the body for hours, could mask the drowsiness someone feels after a bad night’s sleep after having a drink.
The study only looked at self-reported sleep duration and quality, rather than using sleep trackers, so more research is needed.
The researchers also did not track exactly what time of day people consumed caffeine or alcohol.
But they conclude that the results may help explain why people “self-medicate” with both alcohol and coffee to feel less tired.