Is Andrew Huberman Ruining Your Morning Coffee?

The Nugget

Delaying morning coffee, as recommended by Dr. Huberman, showed no clear benefits in preventing caffeine crashes; personal biases and complex body mechanisms play crucial roles in individual responses.

Make it stick

☕ Skip your morning coffee for 90-120 minutes, according to Dr. Huberman, to avoid afternoon crashes.
📊 No significant results: A personal experiment found no measurable impact from delaying caffeine on fatigue or reaction times.
🔍 Beware of oversimplification: Single mechanisms often lead to misleading conclusions about health and performance.
💤 Good sleep matters: Better sleep quality correlates with lower fatigue, regardless of caffeine consumption.

Dr. Huberman recommends waiting 90-120 minutes after waking before consuming caffeine to prevent afternoon crashes.
This advice is based on the theory that adenosine builds up during sleep; blocking it too early might lead to crashes later in the day.

A team of five conducted a 30-day experiment tracking caffeine intake and fatigue scores, using both subjective reports and objective reaction time tests.
Participants consumed coffee but were unaware of whether it contained caffeine or not, eliminating bias in reporting.

Fatigue Scores: No statistically significant difference between days starting with caffeine vs. decaf (p=0.291).
Reaction Times: Also showed no significant difference (p=0.313), indicating caffeine delay had no measurable effect.

Delaying coffee consumption did not lead to a greater intake of caffeine later in the day.
Participants did not feel compelled to compensate coffee intake if they skipped morning caffeine.
The hypothesis emerged that skipping morning coffee might lead to better sleep quality, thereby preventing afternoon crashes.

Better sleep quality was directly linked to lower fatigue the following day.
No conclusive evidence showed higher caffeine consumption led to poorer sleep quality, highlighting the multifaceted nature of how lifestyle affects fatigue.

"The science behind this isn’t really there. This recommendation is kind of an inference."
"You can’t just pull one mechanism and expect it to sort of directly produce a certain outcome in the world of biology."
"Be wary of simple mechanisms; they are a big red flag."
"We are weird, complex, fleshy bags of meat who don’t particularly understand how we work still."
"If you institute the protocol of skipping coffee for the first two hours, there’s a pretty high chance you’ll just drink less coffee."

This summary contains AI-generated information and may have important inaccuracies or omissions.