Drinking an afternoon coffee is not bad for your health, but you should pay attention to your metabolism At this time of year, no one needs an excuse for curling up on the sofa and drifting off during Beauty and the Beast or The Magnificent Seven . But admit it, this year haven’t you also been guilty of grabbing 40 winks on your settee while you were on the company dime?
Working from home has fuelled a surge in the number of adults napping on their employer’s time, according to recent research. Nearly one in ten Britons admitted to regularly taking naps during their working day when they aren’t in the office. The most popular period for a siesta was between 3pm and 4pm. The estimated 4.3 million people napping could cost companies up to half a billion pounds a week in lost productivity.So what can be done to avoid the mid-afternoon slump and stop our energy levels from dipping?
We asked top health, exercise and nutrition experts what they recommend. The nutritional scientist: Dr Sarah Berry
Drink an afternoon coffee
Coffee’s properties are renowned: it promotes alertness and reduces tiredness by blocking adenosine receptors, which slow nerve activity. However, this only happens once the caffeine has been absorbed into the bloodstream, so take your coffee break about twenty minutes before the time of day you normally feel like taking forty winks.
Don’t worry if you already started the day with a caffeinated pick-me-up — the fear that drinking several cups of coffee could be deleterious to one’s long-term health isn’t supported by contemporary research. In fact, says Berry, professor of nutritional sciences at King’s College London, “Those who say that we shouldn’t be having loads of caffeine because it’s a stimulant are misguided because the evidence also shows that adding coffee or tea into our diet reduces our risk of all-cause mortality.”
Berry’s only word of caution is that people metabolise caffeine at different rates, so drinking coffee later in the day “may impact your ability to get to sleep, which we call sleep latency, but also your quality of sleep”. A […]
Feeling tired? How to boost your energy to avoid an afternoon slump
