Coffee Before Bed—Forget Everything You’ve Been Told

You've been told all your life that coffee will keep you awake and to not drink it before bedtime, well a study out of Florida Atlantic University claims there is no connection between falling asleep and coffee.

Coffee has zero effect on whether or not you fall asleep at night. Coffee also has no bearing on whether or not you stay asleep.

According to Christine Spadola, Ph.D., an expert in social welfare, coffee within four hours of bedtime has no significant impact on your sleep. Nicotine and alcohol have a much greater negative impact on sleep.

In fact, your computer and cellphone screens probably have a greater effect on your sleep than coffee.

According to inverse.com, Spadola studied the sleep quality of participants who used caffeine, nicotine and alcohol. Each sleep study participant was hooked up to sensors that monitored their sleep patterns for 6.7 nights. Including all 785 participants, that's a total of 5,614 nights of data.

After collecting all the data, the impact of caffeine on a variety of sleep parameters was minimal.

Because of this, we still recommend following general guidelines and limiting caffeine consumption after 12 noon for optimal sleep. -Christine Spadola, Ph.D., Florida Atlantic University to Inverse

Remember, every person is different. The results of the data were of general consensus. Not all participants experienced the exact same results. After all data was collected and analyzed, the study found that, universally, caffeine had no significant bearing on a person falling asleep or staying asleep based on the general study of 785 individuals.