Morning, the worst time to drink coffee
We’re all addicted to those little pieces of glass that sit in our pockets and bags.
But that doesn’t mean you have to give in to the constant temptation without a fight. There are piles of apps for both iOS and Android that help ease the pain, turning off your phone’s most distracting features and rewarding you for time spent away from the screen.
Flipd
Instead of manipulating an individual feature or two, Flipd completely takes over your smartphone. It replaces your lock screen with something more basic, offers easy auto replies for text messages, and lets you build a list of emergency contacts in case you really need to make that call. The whole system can be turned on in spurts up to 12 hours long. You can even lock other people’s phones to keep your kids in check (or your screen-addicted significant other).
Right now it’s Android only. Free.
Moment
Taking a slightly more kid-glove approach is Moment, which tracks how much you’re using your phone and tablet, creating a pastel timeline of your daily screengazing. You can monitor how many minutes you spend staring at each device, how many times you pick it up, and whether or not you’re meeting your goals. If you want, you can even have Moment deter usage after you enter the red zone by giving you constant alerts that make checking email so tedious you’ll give up. From $US5 for iOS.
AppDetox
It’s time to get specific. AppDetox lets you tailor your mobile usage to keep you on task when you need to focus and to let you roam free when it’s time to chill out. You can restrict Facebook during business hours while leaving Outlook totally untouched. Conversely, you could always turn your work email off for the weekend – dare to dream. Settings are really flexible, letting you manage the number of times an app can be opened, what times it can be used, and how much time you can sink into it. Free for Android devices.
Offtime
Sometimes you want to filter out the unnecessary, rather than cutting your connection altogether. Offtime lets you block out contacts you want to ignore and restrict the apps that cut into your productivity, displaying your results in easy-to-read charts and tiles. It also keeps track of notifications you’re missing due to restrictions, so you can address them later. The only downside is that the app is so beautiful you may want to stare at it for way too long, defeating the purpose altogether. Free for Android with paid business options. Coffee has ingrained itself in the mechanisms of so many people’s early morning routines. There is something romantic about brewing a carafe, or holding a freshly bought cup close, first thing.
There is also something practical about it: Sipping piping hot caffeine as soon as possible prepares us for the day – or, at the least, for the coming few hours.
But drinking coffee shortly after waking up, as it turns out, is actually a bit counterproductive. Not only does it undermine the caffeine’s effect, but it tends to lead people to build a tolerance for the drug, thereby diminishing its effect down the road.
Our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol, which has been branded the ‘‘stress hormone,’’ because it tends to appear when we are either stressed or fearful.
But that same hormone is also a key component of our natural, daylong hormonal cycle, known as the circadian clock, which helps wake us up in the morning and wind us down at night. The gist is that when our body releases cortisol, we feel more awake.
But there is such thing as a less than ideal time to drink coffee. And that time is first thing in the morning, when cortisol levels are highest.
There are two basic problems with consuming caffeine when cortisol production is high. First, caffeine tends to interfere with the production of cortisol. The body then produces less of the hormone and relies more on the caffeine.
Second, drinking coffee while cortisol is high leads us to develop long-term tolerances for caffeine, which is why so many habitual coffee drinkers say it has less of an effect on them. In effect, caffeine replaces the boost we would ordinarily get from cortisol rather than supplementing it.
Three times throughout the day – in the early morning, around mid-day, and in the evening – cortisol levels rise. It’s highest between 6am and 10am
It’s during the troughs – between roughly 10am and noon, and 2pm and 5pm – when people should drink coffee if they want to get the most out of their caffeine.
Between those hours, the coffee is actually most needed, and, perhaps most importantly, will not interfere with our body’s own essential mechanism for keeping us alert.