Health expert Karen Owoc explains how long caffeine stays in your body.

Karen told KRON 4’s Marty Gonzalez that caffeine could be keeping you awake even though you never consume it at night.

Karen says caffeine disrupts deep (restorative) sleep and the ability to fall asleep which cuts down on total sleep time resulting in:

  • Overeating and binge eating
  •  Weight gain
  • Obesity
  • Increased mortality (According to studies on sleep and mortality, insufficient sleep can shorten your life. Causes of death: heart disease, cancer, stroke.)

Caffeine has a half life of five to six hours. In other words, it takes five to six hours for the amount of caffeine in your body to be reduced to exactly one-half of its concentration.

Due to the half-life of caffeine, caffeine starts accumulating in your body when you consume it throughout the day. This could be in the form of another drink, food, or even medication.

For example, if you drink two cups of coffee every day at 8 a.m., by Day 3 at 2 a.m., nearly 45 gm of caffeine could still be in your system.

To compound the caffeinated effect, if you drink another cup of coffee at 2 p.m. as an afternoon pick-me-up, by Day 3 at 2 a.m., nearly 90 gm of caffeine could still be in your system.

Karen says for optimum health, limit your caffeine intake to:

  • 400 mg/day or less (per the FDA)
  •  250 mg/day or less if you’re over 65 years old (1.5 cups coffee = 260 mg)
  •  0 mg/day if you’re anxious, agitated and/or depressed

The takeaway — try to avoid caffeine in the mid-afternoon and evening. Drinking moderate amounts regularly, such as one to two cups of coffee per day, doesn’t appear to be harmful as long as you’re getting seven hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.

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