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Caffeine napping and how is it more beneficial than other methods for college students trying to find time for extra studying.
As college students, we all need a boost of energy from time to time. Our usual go-to is a dark roast coffee or something caffeinated to wake you up. I even heard of chocolate that has caffeine in it that keeps you awake. In general, college students try anything and everything to keep themselves awake and focused which they, in turn, expect to make them learn better by spending more time studying. Our only option is not just coffee. I recently found a new option on the menu, and it is called “nappucino.” Nappucino, or caffeine napping is a combination of two powerful means of giving us energy; sleep and coffee. To get a good caffeine nap, drink a caffeinated drink (preferably coffee will discuss later why) and take a 20-minute nap. After the nap, you should feel energized, alert, and ready to continue your work.
You may have heard that if you are sleepy when driving, you should sleep and then resume driving. This may be challenging for those who need to reach a certain destination by a certain time, but how can they drive without risking their lives in all that drowsiness? Similarly, how can you gain the rest you need while also having enough time to study? Oftentimes, after a long day in school, we plop ourselves onto our beds and fall asleep, but by the time we check our clocks, it is already 8:00 pm! The first thought that comes to mind is: “How am I going to finish all this work in this limited time?!” This can lead to a lot of avoidable anxiety and stress which can be detrimental to our morale and spirit to do any work. Instead of plopping ourselves mindlessly onto our bed, a quick caffeinated drink with a 20-minute nap will stop us from falling into a deep sleep which could also affect our sleep schedules. How do we know this works? Just as driving needs focus and attention to the road, studying is as important as operating behind the wheel, you need to focus to be able to retain information later on. We can use driving as an analogy for studying to cite Horne and Reyner (1996) who did a study on counteracting driver sleepiness using caffeine, napping, and a placebo. To show you how powerful napping and caffeine are (even separately!), the study showed that caffeine and napping significantly reduced sleepiness, drowsiness, and driving impairments.
So then why do we not make everything simple and choose either napping or caffeine?
Caffeine is indeed a strong stimulant and can play a significant role in increased alertness. Its effectiveness alone for studying is questionable as a study was conducted to see the effectiveness of caffeine in mood and performance. It had two groups, one who drank caffeine over time and one who drank it all at once, both groups showed alertness and anxiety “and improved performance on simple and choice reactive tasks, a cognitive vigilance task, a task requiring sustained response, and a dual task involving tracking and target detection” (Brice & Smith 2002). Notice that in the results, they mentioned “simple and choice reactive tasks” and “anxiety.” Studying for certain subjects may demand more than just alertness, they require intense focus and alertness. Also, anxiety may not be the best feeling whilst studying because it promotes a fight or flight response which could trigger the production of cortisol (a stress hormone). This hormone is known to inhibit memory which most college students trying to retain information may not look favorably upon.
How about naps alone? Many people have an issue with making naps last too long. Sometimes even though we put on alarms and timers, our body just refuses to have a 20-minute nap. One study showed that caffeine napping showed better performance and results than napping alone. 24 young adult male participants were first made to sleep at night normally then stay awake a whole morning and fall asleep back from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm followed by no sleep for 24 hours. Half the participants received 200 mg of caffeine at 1:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. This group had a combination of the 4-hour nap and caffeine while the placebo group only had the nap and no caffeine. The experimental group was able to maintain alertness and do well in performance tests like addition problems and logical reasoning. They were also able to maintain that performance very close to baseline levels throughout the 24-hour period of no sleep (Bonnet & Arand 1994).
Funnily enough, we all try similar methods to battle fatigue after a long day of school to get ourselves to do our homework. Washing our faces, walking under the sun, napping, and coffee are all ways we try to keep ourselves awake. A study on these different methods concluded that a combination of caffeine and napping showed better performance levels and alertness than a combination of napping and exposing oneself to bright light, napping and face-washing, and no napping at all. The study showed that napping and some bright light exposure were also good, but did not help performance levels. As for napping and face-washing, it only showed mild effects, but it did suppress subjective sleeping immediately after napping (Hayashi et al. 2003). Caffeine and napping helped with performance levels and focus after fatigue in the afternoon. While we could try all these methods and combine them as the conclusion of the study indicated, the results show an easier way out, and that is…you guessed it again; caffeine napping! After a long day of classes, just grab an iced coffee, drink it, snuggle in your bed or even the library, and wake up within 20 minutes.
The other day, I let a friend of mine in on this new method called caffeine napping. This friend tends to work in the late night hours and told me that they doubt it will work for them since they focus better at night. My friend struggles with staying awake the next morning and ends up drinking coffee, the cycle repeats itself and I could visibly see the fatigue it causes. So I showed a study done by Centofanti et al. (2020) which shows the effectiveness of caffeine napping on alertness during late night hours. The study was done on participants who were allocated to an experimental group wherein they consumed 200 mg of caffeine and took a 30-minute nap and a placebo group where they drank decaf instead. Compared to the placebo group, the caffeine group was more alert. This study was done during the night because the researchers wanted to see if the method worked at night too since all the other studies were done during the day. My friend is also a college student and after telling them about this technique had doubts about it since their naps tend to take hours. I then explained the science behind it that I read in a book called Why We Sleep, by Mathew Walker:
“Caffeine works by successfully battling with adenosine for the privilege of latching on to adenosine welcome sites—or receptors—in the brain. Once caffeine occupies these receptors, however, it does not stimulate them like adenosine, making you sleepy. Rather, caffeine blocks and effectively inactivates the receptors, acting as a masking agent…Levels of circulating caffeine peak approximately thirty minutes after oral administration” (Walker, 2017, p. 37).
Within those 30 minutes, the nap will help eliminate adenosine, because naturally, as you sleep, the adenosine will not need to make you sleepy since you are already sleeping. The caffeine then has no battle with the adenosine and will keep you alert after the nap. It is a win-win because there is no battle occurring in your brain to make you feel tired or crash after a little while.
Try your own study on yourself with caffeine napping! It worked in many studies and most likely will help you out too, but try to see if it is for you, because all our bodies are different and that is okay. Have a great semester and I wish you all sweet nappucinos!
References
Bonnet, M. H., & Arand, D. L. (1994). Impact of naps and caffeine on extended nocturnal performance. Physiology & Behavior, 56(1), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(94)90266-6
Bonnet, M. H., & Arand, D. L. (1994). The use of prophylactic naps and caffeine to maintain performance during a continuous operation. Ergonomics, 37(6), 1009–1020. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139408963714
Brice, C. F., & Smith, A. P. (2002). Effects of caffeine on mood and performance: a study of realistic consumption. Psychopharmacology, 164(2), 188–192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-002-1175-2
Centofanti, S., Banks, S., Coussens, S., Gray, D., Munro, E., Nielsen, J., & Dorrian, J. (2020). A pilot study investigating the impact of a caffeine-nap on alertness during a simulated night shift. Chronobiology international, 37(9-10), 1469–1473. https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2020.1804922
Hayashi, M., Masuda, A., & Hori, T. (2003). The alerting effects of caffeine, bright light and face washing after a short daytime nap. Clinical Neurophysiology, 114(12), 2268–2278. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1388-2457(03)00255-4
Horne, J. A., & Reyner, L. A. (1996). Counteracting driver sleepiness: effects of napping, caffeine, and placebo. Psychophysiology, 33(3), 306–309. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1996.tb00428.x
Semseddin, A. (2022). Napuccinos and College Students? [Unpublished Paper]. University Writing Program, The George Washington University.
Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep. Scribner.
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