Are you a frappuccino fanatic? An espresso expert? A flat white fiend? There’s a new coffee experience we’ve been discussing here at Wellington Beds this week… The nappuccino!

Ok we’ll be honest, it’s not actually a kind of coffee. It’s a new strategy for energising yourself on those days where you’re struggling to make it through the afternoon. The idea is to drink a cup of strong coffee, then immediately follow it with a 20 minute nap - that’s what we call a nappuccino!

This might sound a little strange as most people think they can’t sleep after a cup of coffee. But the technique actually exploits the way both sleep and caffeine affect your brain, achieving maximum alertness and reinvigoration by clearing special receptors right before the coffee kicks in.

To understand the effectiveness of this technique you need to know how caffeine works. Caffeine is absorbed through your small intestine before it passes into your bloodstream. This process takes about 20 minutes. When it reaches your brain the caffeine slots into receptors that are normally filled by a similarly shaped molecule - adenosine.

Adenosine is produced by brain activity, and when too much of it builds up your receptors get blocked up and you feel tired. However, if caffeine blocks these receptors first then adenosine is kept out, making you feel more alert.

Usually caffeine doesn’t succeed at blocking every single adenosine receptor, but it pushes past the adenosine when it can, filling some (but not all) of them.

And this is where the coffee nap comes in! Sleeping is a natural way of clearing adenosine from your brain. A 15-20 minute nap is enough to avoid entering deep sleep (which can make you groggy) but it will still help reduce your levels of adenosine. This leaves more receptors clear to be filled by caffeine once it reaches your brain! Your perfectly timed nap gives coffee the ultimate upper hand in its war against that pesky adenosine.

Studies have directly observed this process in action, and proven that this combination in the correct order is much more effective than either napping or coffee alone. Researchers in the UK found that tired participants who had a 15 minute coffee nap would later commit far fewer errors during a driving simulation. This was true even if they felt like they hadn’t fallen asleep properly during the nap.

A related study in Japan found that participants who had taken a coffee nap performed dramatically better on a series of memory tests than their non-nappuccino peers. Their results were compared to subjects who only took a nap, only drank coffee, or took a nap and then washed their faces. These subjects performed underwhelmingly on memory tests in comparison.

Convinced? Want to know how to take a good coffee nap? It’s incredibly simple. Just drink a strongly caffeinated beverage quickly (if hot coffee is difficult, iced coffee could be better). Then immediately lie down and try to sleep. Don’t stress if you’re finding it hard to drift off, you only need to close your eyes long enough to reach a semi-sleeping, tranquil state. Make sure you don’t sleep for longer than 20 minutes. Then wake up and feel the energy!

And if you’re feeling tired all the time, or taking more nappuccinos than a normal person should, maybe it’s time to get a new mattress! Poorly suited beds are one of the leading causes of sleep disturbances and insomnia. It’s critical that you choose one which is customised to your individual body type and needs, so talk to our team at Wellington Beds and we’ll help you find the perfect mattress for you!