The best and worst times to drink coffee if you’re the anxious type

It’s a classic paradox: you rely on your coffee to wake up and stay productive, but that same cup that boosts your energy also boosts your anxiety.

Giving up your coffee is one option, but for many people, that’s simply not an option. So what can you do? Well, it helps to understand your stress hormones and how your coffee intake (and timing of your consumption) impacts them. Read on to learn how to optimize your coffee fix --- or as some might call it, “biohack your brew” --- especially if you struggle with anxiety. 

Many of us drink coffee for the caffeine, the stimulant drug that’s responsible for coffee’s ability to keep us awake and alert. But while coffee’s energizing effects might help you tackle your tasks for the day, it’s also known to come with unpleasant and even debilitating side effects like anxiety, panic, and jitters.

This anxiety-inducing effect doesn’t impact everyone, but it tends to be pronounced among people who already experience issues with anxiety. A review published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that  people who experience anxiety-related disorders like panic disorder and social anxiety are reported to be especially sensitive to the stimulating effects of caffeine.

If giving it up cold turkey isn’t something you’re ready for, you may need to tweak when and how you consume it.

A morning cup of coffee is a part of many people’s rituals. But according to your body’s natural biological rhythms, you might not actually need that cup as soon as you open your eyes — instead, you might do better to wait an hour or so.

This comes down to your body’s natural cycle of releasing cortisol, a hormone that is commonly referred to as your “stress hormone.” Your adrenal glands release cortisol in response to stressful situations. But it also has a natural daily cycle — cortisol is naturally at its peak levels as soon as you wake up, then declines gradually throughout the day and bottoms out while you sleep.

One of coffee’s effects is that it also spikes your cortisol levels via its caffeine dose. So by drinking your coffee at the very first moment you open your eyes, you could potentially be compounding your natural cortisol spike and bringing your biological stress response even higher.

If you’re finding that you spend a lot of time tossing, turning, and running through all of your anxiety-ridden thoughts at night when you really should be sleeping, you might want to curb your afternoon coffee habit.

Not only can the caffeine in coffee directly affect your anxiety, but it can also impact your sleep, as evidenced in a 2017 study published by the Journal of Caffeine Research that evaluated both. This could come down to its cortisol-spiking effects again: during a normal sleep cycle, your cortisol levels tend to fall at nighttime, but a caffeine-induced surge can make it harder to get drowsy. In fact, the writers of the study even suggested that people with stress-responsive illnesses might do best to refrain from heavy caffeine consumption at all!

It also takes hours for your body to get rid of caffeine and all of its stimulant-inducing side-effects. The half-life of caffeine (aka the time it takes for half of the caffeine in your system to be eliminated) is about five hours, but this can also range up to a whopping 9.5 hours for some. So to be safe, it might benefit you to stop the coffee (and any other caffeinated substances) at least five or six hours prior to bedtime.

And to better understand potential issues blocking your ability to drift off at night, consider taking a hormone test like Base’s Sleep Testing option to see if certain imbalance hormone levels are keeping you up.

Coffee, as well as other forms of caffeine, is often used as a “ergogenic aid”, or a workout-boosting supplement that boosts energy, maximizes athletic performance, and even helps with fat burn. However, for those whose cortisol levels are already on the rise, they may get a “double whammy” --- since both coffee and some forms of exercise can further spike your cortisol levels.

Wait, doesn’t regular exercise help manage your cortisol levels? In general, yes. But certain high-impact exercises can cause temporary cortisol spikes, and chronic overtraining has also been linked to issues with your adrenal gland, the hormone-producing organ that is responsible for cortisol and other stress hormones. So it’s worth bearing in mind if you’re going to be drinking coffee or taking any other caffeinated supplements prior to a workout since caffeine can also elevate cortisol levels.

While it’s impossible to eliminate stress from our lives, there are ways to lower high cortisol levels besides minimizing your caffeine intake, including:

Your cup of coffee should energize you, not wear you out. If you find yourself struggling with anxiety (either with or without your daily brew), you may want to check in with your hormones a little more closely.