Whether it’s a quick shot of espresso, a flat white blended with oat milk or a standard cup of whatever instant caffeine your office supplies, there’s no denying the power the coffee bean has on our working day.
A wash down of elixir supplies us with an energy boost, and apparently, a productivity boost of 24 minutes, according to research from Service Partner One.
In fact, the firm go on to theorise that if every worker had access to a coffee machine the UK economy could save £42.7billion via increased productivity.
But, we could be increasing those figures if we tinker with how we drink it – and no, I’m not suggesting we all become baristas rushing out to buy chemical apparatus to perfect our brew – it’s far simpler: by taking a power nap.
According to sleep and wellbeing expert, Professor Chin Moi Chow of the University of Sydney, 'coffee naps' can enhance the powers of caffeine.
“When you drink a coffee, the caffeine stays in the stomach for a while before moving to the small intestine,” writes Chow, in a piece for The Conversation. “It is from here that caffeine is absorbed and distributed throughout the body. This process, from drinking to absorption, takes 45 minutes.
“But caffeine’s alerting effect kicks in sooner, about 30 minutes after drinking. So, drinking a coffee just before a short nap of less than 15 minutes doesn’t affect the nap as your body hasn’t yet experienced the caffeine hit.
“Once you wake up from your nap, not only do you experience the hit, your body feels the effects of the caffeine hours later.
“It is this caffeine hit after you wake up and the 'long tail' of caffeine in your body that helps you power through the day.”
Chow summarises a 1997 study, where 12 sleep deprived participants drank the equivalent of one large cup of brewed coffee and five minutes later had the chance to nap for 15 minutes. They then did driving tests in a simulator to check their alertness.
Although drinking a coffee without a nap helped their driving performance, combining caffeine with a nap improved it even further.
People who took a coffee nap were less likely to drift out of their lanes on a two-hour monotonous simulated drive, compared to when they just drank a coffee, or when they had a decaffeinated coffee – Stylist reports.
However, be careful not to oversleep - a snooze of 15 minutes after a coffee is enough to reap the rewards, otherwise you'll wake up feeling worse.
Would you let your staff take ‘coffee naps’? Tell us in the comments…
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