Coffee or exercise: Which option helps beat drowsiness better?

There are two schools of thought for beating sleepiness in the early morning and early afternoon, the two times of day when you need to regain your alertness the most.

But whether a cup of coffee or a few minutes of climbing stairs would be better in this case, let’s find out:

Caffeine vs exercise

Exercise and Health Psychology Lab, a laboratory affiliated with Western University, Canada, has conducted a number of experiments examining the effects of exercise on human health and cognition.

Task memory is the ability to temporarily store and manipulate information that helps us complete a certain task.

To put it simply, task memory in the brain is similar to cache memory in a computer.

This type of memory is used a lot in our daily lives, related to everyone’s ability to learn and work.

In their study, scientists at Western University recruited volunteers and divided them into two groups.

The results showed that such a moderate-intensity exercise can improve task memory performance essentially as much as a dose of caffeine.

Another study was conducted in 2017, in which scientists divided healthy but chronically sleep-deprived volunteers into 3 groups to test the energy-boosting and alertness effects of coffee.

In the first group, volunteers were asked to drink 50 mg of caffeine, equivalent to a medium cup of coffee.

The results showed that both the stair-climbing and caffeine-consuming groups reported higher alertness and energy than the placebo group.

Exercise provides more long-term benefits

Scientific studies show that consuming caffeine by drinking coffee regularly is associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

Coffee may protect people against certain diseases such as dementia and cancer, but it poses a risk of osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

So, in the long term, coffee has many benefits, but it also seems to have certain side effects.

On the contrary, many studies show that exercise has complete overall benefits.

Research by Western University shows that people who regularly drink coffee can also easily switch to an exercise routine if they want.

Typically, people who drink coffee regularly without caffeine experience headaches, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritable mood, and lack of motivation.

However, after Western scientists asked people who had quit coffee to exercise by brisk walking for 20 minutes, their caffeine deficiency symptoms were alleviated.

The cause is believed to be from dopamine and epinephrine, two hormones released by the brain when we exercise.

In short, in the short-term battle for energy and alertness, a cup of coffee with a few minutes of moderate-intensity exercise is a tie.

In addition, some people who are sensitive to caffeine also suffer from some unwanted short-term side effects, such as nervousness, diuresis and muscle tremors after drinking coffee.

See Theconversation, Healthhavard