Many of us are partial to a daily coffee, or two, and it can often help the sleep-deprived to kickstart their day.
However, experts recommend lining the stomach with food before drinking your morning coffee, for a number of reasons.
Despite being packed with potent antioxidants, coffee intake can have negative effects. And drinking the beverage upon waking may significantly affect glucose control, according to findings published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2020.
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The research, conducted by the University of Bath, highlighted that disrupted sleep and coffee intake both independently impair glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in healthy adults. Blood glucose is imperative for the prevention of medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
The study was conducted on 29 healthy men and women who underwent three different overnight experiments. They were split into three groups, with the first given a sugary drink upon waking from a normal and uninterrupted night’s sleep, as reported in the Express.
Group two were given the same beverage upon waking, but this time after a poor’s night sleep, during which they were woken up for five minutes every hour. The third group also had disrupted sleep, but they had a strong black coffee upon waking, and the sugary drink 30 minutes later.
Blood samples taken afterwards suggested disrupted sleep appeared to have no significant effect on glucose levels compared to a normal night of sleep, but having a strong black coffee on an empty stomach increased the blood glucose response to their sugary drink by roughly 50%.
The study suggests drinking black coffee upon waking could have a significant effect on the body’s blood sugar and metabolic control. In other words, blood sugar is impaired when the body ingests coffee first thing after a night of disrupted sleep.
Though additional research is needed to understand the long-term risks, impaired metabolism is understood to be a risk factor for complications like diabetes. The suspected culprit, in this case, is cortisol, which is known to raise blood glucose by releasing stored glucose.
Medicover Hospitals states: “[…] Experts warn that coffee should never be consumed in the morning when you wake up. The reason is that coffee will increase the levels of cortisol very quickly and the body will take a long time to return to its normal state. This hormone controls our biological clock and the ability to stay awake.
“[…] The consumption of coffee on an empty stomach will increase the level of acid in the stomach, which can lead to bloating and vomiting."
Olivia Hedlund, a functional nutritional therapist behind Livingwell, recently echoed this advice on TikTok. She explained: “Coffee is not only acidic […] but it literally causes our bodies to go into a stress response to shoot out cortisol and put us in a kind of fight or flight state.”
This effect could be softened by drinking coffee after the stomach has been lined with food, according to the expert.
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