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Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...

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biological clock

donaldbathe
donaldbathe

i know a lot of people who drink coffee in the morning but when it comes to the night they find themselves taking sleeping pills because the caffeine has gone into their blood and nervous system and for some reason they have a hard time falling asleep!  comparing people who drink coffee who wind up taking sleeping pills vs non coffee drinkers who will have an easier time falling asleep, whose biological clock will work better coffee drinkers or non coffee drinkers??????????  can a doctor or health expert please tell me.  thank you. 

Edgar_2
Edgar_2
I'm no expert, but you've mixed up correlation and causation a bit here, I think. Perhaps people who drink coffee do so because they haven't slept well and need a boost? In any case, if someone only drinks one coffee in the morning, caffeine is out of their system by night. The effect of coffee can only be psychological. It's a different story when taking coffee later in the day though.
Hypnos07
Hypnos07
Agree with Edgar. The half-life of caffeine in your system is typically 4-5 hours. So in general most of us can enjoy a cup or two in the morning, and have it completely metabolized out of our system by bed time. Beware, however, caffeine in any form after about mid-day. And that includes chocolate.

As for the biological clock, that is a completely different internal process. It is cued more by light. When it gets dark, the circadian alerting signal goes down, allowing sleep. When it gets light, the signal ramps up, awakening us.

Caffeine can affect the sleep drive, however, by reducing its ability to track how much time has elapsed since the last sleep. That's another reason to avoid it after about mid-day.