While caffeine offers clear performance benefits, it’s not without drawbacks. In this segment, Dr. Logan Pendergrast, Ph.D., examines the potential side effects of excessive or poorly timed caffeine use — from restlessness and elevated heart rate to disrupted digestion and fragmented sleep. He explains how even caffeine consumed several hours before rest can shorten total sleep time by up to an hour, a concern that’s especially relevant for night-shift workers. This segment underscores the importance of timing and moderation to preserve both alertness and recovery.
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Caffeine, however, is not risk-free. So,
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there are multiple negative effects of
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consuming too much caffeine or consuming
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caffeine at an improper time. Some of
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those effects include jitteriness or
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increased heart rate or even an upset
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stomach in the physical body. But
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critically, caffeine also fragments our
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sleep. Even when it's taken many hours
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prior to going to bed, if we're
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consuming coffee or energy drinks too
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close to bedtime, we can experience a
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fragment of sleep.
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And this is especially problematic for
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those of us who are working shift work
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where we're potentially consuming
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caffeine in the form of coffee or energy
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drinks near the end of our shifts but
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then needing to go to sleep right when
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we leave work. Uh this could fragment
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our sleep and make us less wakeful the
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following day. So of course it's
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important to consider caffeine timing
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when we're working uncommon hours. And
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an interesting fact here is that when
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caffeine is consumed about 6 hours
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before bedtime, in the scientific
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literature, we see that that equates to
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a reduction in total sleep by about 1
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hour. Which means consuming caffeine too
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close to sleep can reduce the amount of
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sleep that we get by about 1 hour, which
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is quite significant over the course of
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an entire sleep phase. Now that we
