How to Make Yourself Sleep After Caffeine – 16 Clever Tips


I like coffee, I like cola, I like tea, and I like chocolate. All of these products contain different amount of caffeine.

So, how can I sleep if I have enjoyed too much caffeine, especially late at night? After enjoying caffeine, it may be that it takes for a while to fall asleep.  There should not be any pressure to fall asleep. However, you can help yourself relax, for instance, by drinking milk, doing relaxing exercises and making sure that your sleeping environment is dark and cool.

So let’s find out what specific actions you can take to sleep after caffeine. There is no any guarantee, but you may try tips described in this post, and see if some of the tips can help you.

But Why Caffeine Can Make it Difficult to Fall Asleep?

Getting sleep after caffeine may be extremely difficult. I know this very well because if you have sometimes drunk too much coffee, it may affect so that for a while you can’t get any sleep anymore. The problem may arise especially in a situation when you have a drank too late at night.

But we need to remember that enjoying caffeine at late might not cause similar consequences to all.

Furthermore, the main problem with caffeine might be that you have been somewhere with your friends, maybe in your friend’s house and he offers a lot of coffee for you because he likes coffee and for he there is no problem to drink so much coffee at night.

However, your friend might not realize at all when to someone else it is a problem to drink too much coffee at night.

Of course, because he is your friend you can’t say no if he offers you a coffee. But actually, you should be able to say “no” because he is your friend.

Well, we can’t go back in time now, so we need to think about some practices that could help in your case. Just now.

So what to do? What can help you to sleep after caffeine if you have drunk it too much and too late?

There is no any sure way to sleep after caffeine, but you may try if some of these tips can help you:

1. Try to Skip the Fact That You Have Enjoyed Caffeine

Just try to forget that you have drunk coffee. If you know that your sleep may interrupt by drinking coffee, it may give a signal to your brain that you can’t fall asleep just because of caffeine.

If you can ignore that, it may be that you actually can fall asleep even after enjoyed caffeine. That may be because if you know that caffeine may keep you awake, it is probably one reason why you are awake even though you would otherwise fall asleep.

So just do what you can to ignore that fact and try instead to relax:

2. Do Some Relaxing Exercises

If you want to do exercises, then do light exercises, that they won’t raise your heart rate too much so that would make your ability to fall asleep even worse.

Stretching may be a good way to get relaxed and your ability to fall asleep may rise significantly.

It could be true especially in the case when you have tension, or you have difficulties to relax.

Then stretching can help you feel comfortable and falling asleep can happen even without your notice.

3. Drink Warm Milk

It might be that drinking milk helps you to fall asleep, even if you have drunk coffee. Some people may claim that milk can increase the levels of melatonin. Might be so, but it won’t probably increase so much that it would affect significant enough to your fall asleep process.

So the claim that milk helps you fall asleep doesn’t associate within the fact that in milk itself has some ingredient that could make you sleep.

But milk, especially warm milk, can be one of the drinks that may calm you and help you in the fall asleep process.

Anyway, you can look these milk fixes, and choose if there is some that you want to try. The author of that blog tested different kinds of milk mixes so that they can make even more pleasant taste experience and calming feeling when trying to sleep.

4. Make Sure That Your Sleeping Environment is Ideal to Fall Asleep

Make sure that it is cool and dark enough. If there is not enough cool, your body might not want even to try to fall asleep.

Furthermore, if there is not enough dark, it may cause a lack of sleep. Using sleep mask may help you if you are familiar with that.

5. Keep Away Any Electric Device That May Interrupt Your Sleep

When you are awake, and it feels that it is impossible to fall asleep, it could make it even harder if you let any other thing interrupt you to fall asleep.

Especially, looking at any screen (cell phone, computer or TV, etc.) can weaken your ability to fall asleep.

6. Use Screen Dimmer

If you can’t fall asleep at night after drunk coffee, there might be a temptation to watch TV or use your cell phone.

If you decide to use some electric device with a screen at night, it is highly recommended to use a screen dimmer APP, that can filter the blue light. The blue light is one of the biggest reasons why you probably can’t fall asleep when using electric devices.

Actually, if you ever use your cell or other devices in the night, it would be best to use screen dimmer that helps you to keep stable melatonin levels.

In such a case you need to use proper screen dimmer, that effectively dims the blue light. There are a lot of different kinds of screen dimmer APP’s, so it is good to know that all of them are not so functional than others.

I did some research, and I found multiple screen dimmers that are not so good. But I selected three best, and you can find more information about these screen dimmers, including review and comparison between the two of them.

So select a good, solid screen dimmer, if you are planning to get one.

7. Don’t Try to Force Yourself to Sleep

To trying to put you sleep may cause that you actually can’t sleep. If you didn’t fall asleep, it would better not to do all you can to fall asleep.

Actually, at some point, it would be good to do something else than try just to fall asleep. If you can’t fall asleep in 20 minutes, it is more useful to do something else than try to sleep.

For example, Get out of bed, read a book or do something that can help you relax.

8. Take a Shower

Taking a shower, maybe a hot shower, might calm you and make you a bit more sleepy. It won’t reduce the effect of caffeine, but calming down this way may help you fall asleep even though there is a hard edge.

Furthermore, if you have a bath tube, why not take a bath!

9. Listen to Peaceful Music or Sounds Which Can Help You Relax 

After enjoying caffeine, it might be that your mind is full of thoughts, and you may feel anxious. To keep your mind calm, some music or different kinds of sounds may help you to relax your mind and finally fall asleep.

If you want to try this tip, you can find different kinds of sounds very easily. For instance, I did research, and I found 66 different sounds that may help you fall asleep.

10. Don’t Stress

Even though there would be early wake up at next morning, it would be better to not stress about it.

Easy to say, but how can you succeed?

You can get sleep at some point, so it is good to know, even if you may have stress.

If you still feel any stress, try:

11. Massage

Massage can relax so that you can fall asleep even if you feel spry after caffeine. If no one in your house could give the massage to you, you can actually provide at least some kind of massage to yourself.

How is it possible?

Try the massage to relax, but:

12. Don’t Make It Even More Worst by Drinking Alcohol

If you have high caffeine at night, it is even more important to avoid drinking any alcohol. It is because alcohol can also disturb your sleep badly. Drinking both, coffee and alcohol can cause lack of sleep for different reasons.

Coffee because of caffeine, but alcohol because of, for instance, biphasic effect.

Source: Psychology Today

13. Don’t Make It Even More Worst by Smoking

First above, smoking is unhealthy. But also cause poor sleep. Do everything you can to avoid smoking, especially at night.

Smoking may also cause wavelengths for you and make your ability to fall asleep very low.

14. Consider Should You Eat Any More Couple Hours Before You Are Planning to Sleep

It may also be better to stop eating some time before going to bed. If you just keep eating it may affect your blood sugar levels badly.

On the other hand, in some case eating may actually help you fall asleep.

It may be hard to know which option would be better. But in general, you can think about how well you can usually get sleep if you have eaten before bed.

How you member, does eating helped or make it even worse to fall asleep?

Based on this you may try to accomplish whether you want to eat or not to eat when you have enjoyed caffeine at night.

15. Make it Easy as Possible to Sleep with Comfortable Pillow(s) and Mattress

You could gather all the most comfortable pillows in your house, and use as many as make you feel comfortable enough to make you fall asleep.

You may also collect some blankets or other bed sheets to keep you as comfortable as possible.

16. Drink Water

Some may claim that water dilutes the effect of caffeine. Unfortunately, water doesn’t dilute coffee.

However, drinking some water can be very beneficial when trying to sleep. Actually, it would be good to drink some pure water with coffee. Is it because coffee dehydrates you? No, coffee won’t dehydrate you, but drinking water can make you feel relax, and it can keep you fresh.

Prevention is the Best Cure

Well, you can’t ignore anymore that you drunk coffee too late at night, but you can prepare for next time.

Prevent temptation to drink coffee, if you know that it affects your ability to fall asleep. It may sound so tempting to drink coffee if someone offers it to you. But you have to learn to say:

“No, thank you!”

It is crucial to be aware of the fact that you should stop enjoying coffee or caffeine at least 6 hours before bed.

So next time when you have a temptation to drink coffee late at night, remember “no”!

Related Questions:

Why Caffeine Keeps You Up?

Caffeine keeps up because it goes straight to the bloodstream after 15 minutes you have enjoyed it. Only half of the caffeine is eliminated in 6 hours.

Other effects, such irritability, and fast heartbeat may cause lack of sleep.

So it would be ideal to stop drinking coffee or taking other caffeine products before 6 hours when planning to go to bed.

Why am I Sleepy After Drinking Coffee?

For some, it may actually feel that they are sleepy after drunk coffee. Usually coffee makes people spry, but for some, it may actually help to sleep, especially when planning to take naps.

There can be many various reasons why you feel sleepy after drinking coffee since we all are different. But mainly the reason may be connected to your body’s ability “handle” caffeine.

One reason may be connected to how long it takes for caffeine to start to affect so that you may begin to feel spry. It actually may take even a few hours before you can feel spry. Therefore, just after enjoying coffee the effect of caffeine won’t probably be clear.

Source: NCBI

How Much Caffeine in Each Drink?

Take a look at this chart, where you will find 100 different drinks and detailed info about the amount of caffeine in each drink:

Caffeine Chart
Click to Download a PDF File
Source : Caffeineinformer

Sources:

National Sleep Foundation

EliteRest

AskMan

ecoeo

Quora

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