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How regular coffee robs you of your sleep,
and why Px coffee is different
Published
26 Feb 2025
8 min. read
Caffeine is affecting your sleep quality, regardless of whether you feel it
If you struggle with getting sufficient restful sleep, you’re not alone. An estimated 33% of us don't get the recommended amount of sleep. Meanwhile, nearly 80% of us are relying on the caffeine in our coffee to push through the resulting fatigue. The irony? The very thing we’re using to wake ourselves up in the morning is one of the main reasons we can’t fall asleep, and stay asleep, at night.
Caffeine has long been the go-to solution for alertness and productivity. But while it can temporarily stave off drowsiness, it does so at a cost—by interfering with your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle. Many people don’t realize that caffeine affects sleep
even if you drink it early in the day. Its effects linger in the body for hours, subtly degrading the quality of your rest, often without you even noticing.
The Link Between Caffeine and Sleep Disruptions
Many people assume that as long as they don’t drink coffee in the evening, their sleep should be fine. But caffeine's impact is more insidious than that. Studies show that consuming caffeine even 6–8 hours before bedtime can:
Reduce total sleep time and efficiency - You might think you're getting enough hours of rest, but caffeine can shorter deep sleep stages, leading to a night of fragmented, less restorative sleep (Clark, 2016).
Delayed melatonin production - Caffeine blocks adenosine, the brain's natural signal for relaxation, which in turn delays melatonin - the hormone responsible for helping you fall asleep (Reichert, 2022)
The Cycle of Dependency: Caffeine → Poor Sleep → More Caffeine
One of the biggest traps of caffeine consumption is that it creates a cycle of fatigue:
You feel tired from poor sleep.
You drink more coffee to feel alert.
The caffeine lingers in your system, affecting your sleep quality.
You wake up groggy, needing even more coffee to get back to baseline.
This cycle repeats, making you more dependent on caffeine over time—and leaving you perpetually exhausted and burned out. Many people misinterpret their fatigue as a need for more caffeine, when in reality, the solution is less caffeine and better sleep.
Why caffeine lingers in your system
You may think that your morning coffee is long gone by the time you’re winding down for the night—but caffeine lingers in your body much longer than you realize. While you may not feel the initial energy boost hours later, caffeine is still actively circulating in your system, affecting your sleep
Reason #1: Your body metabolizes caffeine slowly.
The speed at which caffeine is metabolized varies from person to person, but on average, caffeine has a half-life of 5 to 6 hours in a healthy adult. That means if you drink a cup of coffee at 2 PM, you’ll still have 100mg in your system by 8 PM – and 50mg lingering well past midnight. That’s more caffeine than is found in 12 ounces of most sodas.
Reason #2: Active metabolites extend the duration of effect
But caffeine itself isn’t the only factor influencing how long its effects last. Once consumed, caffeine is metabolized by the liver into three active metabolites: paraxanthine, theobromine, and theophylline. Each of these have stimulatory effects on the central nervous system, thereby prolonging caffeine’s physiological effects—meaning that even as caffeine itself is breaking down, its metabolites continue to influence your nervous system, extending caffeine’s duration and making it harder to wind down for sleep.
For example, caffeine’s primary metabolite, paraxanthine, can accumulate in the bloodstream with regular daily caffeine consumption. Research shows that paraxanthine remains detectable in circulation even after 36 hours of caffeine abstinence, indicating that its physiological effects persist for days after the initial caffeine consumption (Frontiers in Nutrition, 2021).
This prolonged presence of paraxanthine likely contributes to many of the lingering stimulatory effects of caffeine, affecting sleep patterns, cognitive function, and overall caffeine tolerance in habitual coffee drinkers
The metabolism of caffeine. Caffeine is converted into active metabolites that extend the duration of caffeine's effects.
Why Px coffee supports better sleep quality
One of the reasons we invented Px coffee is because Px is metabolized differently than caffeine, thereby lessening many of caffeine’s undesirable qualities.
Instead of traditional caffeine, Px coffee contains paraxanthine (Px) — the active metabolite of caffeine we described in the preceding section. Like caffeine, paraxanthine interacts with the brain’s adenosine receptors, waking us up and making us feel alert; but, unlike caffeine, it doesn’t overstimulate our nervous system and has better metabolic clearance than caffeine.
Px Has a Shorter Half-Life Than Caffeine, Meaning It Clears Faster
One of the biggest differences between caffeine and Px is how long they stay in the body. While caffeine has a relatively long half-life (5-6 hours, see above), Px is cleared from the body about 25% faster (Lelo, 1986). This means, compared to caffeine, far less Px persists in our bodies in the evening from the Px coffee we drink throughout the day.
Px Has No Active Metabolites
We described above how caffeine is metabolized by the body into three active metabolites (paraxanthine, theophylline, and theobromine); these active metabolites extend the duration of caffeine’s effects. Px, on the other hand, is broken down into benign, non-stimulatory metabolites which do not activate the nervous system or prolong wakefulness.
This cleaner metabolic pathway means that paraxanthine is processed more efficiently than caffeine and doesn’t leave behind metabolites that continue to stimulate the nervous system. This reduces the risk of sleep disturbances, making it easier for your body to naturally wind down at the end of the day.
Px coffee's other benefits
Beyond better sleep quality, Px coffee offers additional advantages that set it apart from regular, caffeinated coffee. With Px, you don’t just avoid caffeine’s pitfalls—you gain a more controlled energy experience that doesn’t overstimulate the nervous system.
1. Less of a Shock to Your Nervous System
One reason caffeine can feel harsh is that it triggers a stress response in the body. Caffeine spikes cortisol and adrenaline, activating the fight-or-flight system and putting your body into a heightened state of alertness. This forces you into wakefulness artificially, but over time, these repeated stress hormone spikes have been linked to increased anxiety, burnout, and overall stress reactivity.
Px, on the other hand, doesn’t overstimulate the nervous system in the same way. Studies suggest that Px leads to lower stress hormone release compared to caffeine at doses representative of daily consumption. Additionally, research indicates that Px may have a reduced impact on anxiety levels compared to caffeine.
That’s why 80% of people who switch to Px coffee report feeling less stressed during the day.
2. No Afternoon Energy Crash
One of the hidden downsides of caffeine is the adenosine rebound effect. Caffeine works by blocking adenosine, the brain’s natural sleep signal, which makes you feel awake. But once the caffeine wears off, adenosine floods back in, leading to drowsiness, brain fog, and an energy crash—often in the late afternoon, prompting the need for more caffeine.
Px coffee drinkers report a smoother energy curve without the abrupt afternoon crashes. We’re still working to better understand the why, but one reason may be because paraxanthine binds more tightly than caffeine to the A1 and A2A adenosine receptors, slowing the flood of adenosine that we associate with the caffeine crash.
Px coffee compared to regular coffee. Because its less disruptive to your stress response system, Px coffee provide calm, focused energy to help boost your productivity.
Find out why thousands of coffee drinkers have already made the switch to Px coffee.
If you love coffee but want better sleep and better energy, Px coffee is the smarter alternative. It delivers the alertness and productivity benefits of caffeine — without the overstimulated nervous system and sleep disruptions that come with traditional coffee.
This is the way your body was meant to function.
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Written by: Jeffrey Dietrich, PhD
Reviewed by: Rarebird Editorial Team
8 min. read
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