Somebody Figured Out When The Best Time Of Day To Drink Coffee Is
We're pretty much all coffee obsessives around these parts. In fact, here are 10 stories that remind us that craft coffee is taking over the world. We tend to drink our coffee at all hours — morning (obvs), but also mid-morning, early afternoon, right around 4 and maybe to close a night of cocktails, dinner, dessert, cordials. But we've always wondered: When is the best time of day to drink coffee, metabolically and emotionally speaking?
It turns out to be 2:16 p.m., at least according to the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. "Research has shown that the most common time for energy slumps is 2.16 p.m., when workers feel drained and unable to concentrate in the afternoon."
The WTF knowledge drop doesn't stop there. Not only is it best to drink coffee at 2:16 p.m., but it's ideal if you can steal at 15-minute nap after the caffeine starts to course through your veins. What? Lifehacker reports on a three-step process:
1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.
2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you'll get what's known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.
3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain's prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.
Got that. Here's the drill. At a quarter past 2 (plus add a minute!), drink coffee. Then nap for 15 minutes.
Now you need to figure out how to drink that coffee. Here are some more stories: