Coffee Makes You Physically Active, but What About Sleep?

Coffee drinkers seem to be physically more active than non-drinkers but are also falling short on sufficient sleep. These are some of the findings that a new, randomized study revealed.

Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee each day. Still, researchers haven’t taken a definite stance on whether this is good or bad for our health. The aforementioned study presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2021 attempted to answer that.  

The randomized trial involving 100 participants showed that coffee drinkers logged about a thousand steps more than non-drinkers per day. 

More precisely, each coffee-drinking participant in the study logged around 600 additional steps per cup of coffee compared to participants in the other group.   

You might think that this is excellent news for those trying to lose weight and get in shape. However, this is great if we disregard the downsides that the researchers from the University of California discovered in the study. 

Namely, the results showed that each cup of coffee drunk meant 18 minutes less sleep per night for a participant. 

So, on those days when they were drinking coffee, people slept about 36 minutes less than when they didn’t drink it. Also, bearing in mind weight gain is one of the negative effects of sleep deprivation, this doesn’t tell us whether drinking coffee contributes to weight loss or not.

Moreover, coffee drinkers had abnormal heartbeats originating in their lower heart chambers. Their abnormal premature contractions were up by 54% compared to non-coffee drinkers. 

On the other hand, the EEG portables’ measurements also showed that coffee seems to be beneficial in preventing a specific type of arrhythmia—supraventricular tachycardia.

So, is coffee good or bad for our health and sleep? We’ll need more research to solve this puzzle.