How do you cope up with the eleventh hour stress? It’s late in the evening and you are still working on the project which you have to submit in next two days. You just can’t rest easy because you are still quite far from the finish line. You are one among those who have perfected the art of procrastination. And at situation like these you take help of an all-nighter. What is your choice of beverage or an all-nighter? I am sure your answer would be a strong cup of coffee.
However, what a lot of you view as a miracle mug of fast energy can in fact have the opposite effects. In his book “Sweet things are bad for the brain”, the famous nutritionist and meal counselor Natsuko Kasai elucidates how drinking coffee has surprising side-effect that can in reality wear you out more than wake you up.
Read Also: Lack of Sleep and Death of Brain Cells
Why You Should Say ‘NO’ to Coffee?
All-nighters should say no to coffee as much as possible. Basically, the caffeine in coffee induces increased production of urine. Sure it’s good to take a break and stretch your legs and arms in-between the work, especially when you are working beyond your bedtime, but disrupting you in every half hour for a quick run to the bathroom is not the way to do it. It’s not only annoying, but it actually creates even greater problems for your well-being. Every time you relieve yourself, you actually lose a lot of water from your body that make you become more and more dehydrated. It thickens your blood and now its moves relatively slow through your veins. Slower blood flow directly means your body is getting disrupted flow of oxygen, and lack of oxygen to each part of your body makes it sluggish.
The Truth behind Stimulating Effects of Caffeine
Now, we just can’t entirely ignore the stimulating effects of caffeine. It’s a kind of drug that triggers sympathetic nerves, which helps you to keep awake the whole night. A cup of coffee or other caffeinated drink comes like an electric shock to your body, but within two hours the electrifying effect wear off and you feel like having another cup. The more you drink, the more you go to the bathroom. The more you pee the less water remain in your body. And as you know, less water means slower blood flow—now your body is even more tired than before. This is how the idea of a cup of coffee or a caffeinated drink becomes a vicious cycle that is doomed to fail. Intake of more caffeine exhausts the nervous system to the point where sympathetic nerves are numb to the caffeine. At this stage, another cup of coffee won’t even give you that initial kick of energy.
What Can You Drink Instead?
Caffeine is definitely a NO! You should also avoid high sugar content as they cause sudden rise and fall of the blood sugar levels. When it’s necessary to awake and work whole night, drink non-caffeinated teas and water to stay hydrated and alert to comfortably complete the task at hand.
