Emma Miller
There is a well-known stereotype that coffee is such an invigorating and miraculous drink that it can help you cope with a lack of sleep. Scientists have answered whether this is true.
Coffee helps you wake up faster and increases the amount of energy, but it doesn’t make up for the hours of sleep that your body didn’t have enough to recover.
Representatives of the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Michigan evaluated how well coffee helps to overcome the negative impact of lack of sleep on cognitive abilities. The scientists conducted an experiment involving 275 volunteers. They were divided into groups: the first spent the night without sleep in the laboratory, and the second was allowed to sleep at home.
The next morning, both groups of volunteers were given a caffeine capsule and a placebo and then asked to solve a concentration test. The subjects also had to deal with a more complex placement task, which required participants to perform actions in the correct order without gaps or repetitions.
According to the head of the study, Dr. Kimberly Fenn, lack of sleep impaired the participants’ performance in both tasks. According to her, caffeine only contributed to the solution of the easy task, but for most participants, coffee still did not help them cope with the placement task.
