For some people, coffee is a part of everyday life. Without drinking coffee, the coffee addicts cannot stay focused. However, there are also some other people who still feel sleepy even after drinking a cup of coffee, and it also happens to me. Drinking coffee makes me sleepy. Apparently, there are several reasons why drinking coffee does not work for certain people. Here’s the full explanation.
Understand how coffee works in your body
To understand why drinking coffee makes me sleepy, I try to firstly understand how coffee work in the human body. Basically, the substance that makes you more focused and awake after drinking coffee is caffeine. Caffeine itself is a substance that stimulates activities in the central nervous system. By consuming caffeine, you will feel more energetic for a while.
Meanwhile, in your body, there is a compound called adenosine. When the nerves in the brain catch and bind adenosine, you will be sleepy and want to take a rest. In this case, caffeine is a substance that is very much like adenosine. So when you drink high level of caffeine, your nerves will actually catch caffeine, not adenosine. However, if the adenosine effect makes you sleepy, caffeine actually makes the mind more refreshed. This is why drinking coffee can make you more awake and focused.
Read also: 5 Tips to Make Your Coffee Super Healthy!
Why drinking coffee makes me sleepy
The way caffeine works on everybody’s body is the same. The only difference is in your body’s reaction to these stimulant substances. Here are some possibilities why some people still feel sleepy even after drinking coffee.
- Lack of sleep
For people who are sleep deprived, a cup of coffee has no effect on their nervous systems. It is because the less sleep you have, the body will produce many more adenosine compounds. As a result, caffeine in a cup of coffee will lose against adenosine in your body. The caffeine that enters your body becomes wasteful and cannot work because it can no longer be placed in your nervous system. So, even though you’ve been drinking a few cups of coffee after staying up all night or several nights in a row, you probably will not feel any effect.
- The body cannot digest caffeine perfectly
When you have enough sleep, but drinking coffee still makes you feel sleepy, the cause might be the gene of your body. Apparently, there is a special gene that regulates how sensitive your nervous system is to caffeine. . People who have the perfect combination of genes with AHR, CYP1A2, POR, CYP2A6, and ABCG2 are able to digest caffeine faster. Thus, the effects of coffee are so much faster. However, some other people’s bodies have a difficulty in digesting caffeine. This is what makes them feel sleepy after drinking coffee.