First things first: I am not a physician, so I won’t be stating facts or medical advice in this post. I will merely share an experiment I did, and the results it produced on my body. You should take your own conclusions after reading this. That is exactly the reason why I put a “Try” in the title on this post.

As with most people, I used to drink coffee daily. I like the taste, and I like the energy boost you get from it. In fact I even believe that coffee is good for you if you drink moderately. Here’s a quote from the Wikipedia entry on coffee: “The consensus in the medical community is that moderate regular coffee drinking in healthy individuals is either essentially benign or mildly beneficial.”

If you are a healthy individual and don’t get any side effects from drinking coffee, therefore, you should probably keep drinking it.

In my case one side affect started to emerge: the quality of my sleep decreased.

Each person has a different level of sensitivity to caffeine. Some people are so used to it that they can drink coffee right before going to sleep. Others, will have trouble sleeping even if they drink a cup of coffee late in the afternoon.

The risk here is to create a vicious cycle. You get a restless night of sleep because of coffee, and then you drink coffee throughout the next day to get some energy and to be able to work. Before you know it you’ll be swearing you can’t live without coffee.

A couple of months ago I decided to run a small experiment: I decided to stop drinking coffee for a whole month. Instead I would drink chamomile and similar tea.

I certainly missed my cup of coffee in the first few days, but as the weeks passed the quality of my sleep increased a lot, and my energy level throughout the day was higher than when I was drinking coffee.

I was pretty happy with the results, so I decided to keep it going. I still drink coffee occasionally, but it’s mainly because of the taste, and not because of its stimulant effect.

Bottom line: If the quality of your sleep is not that good, a high consumption of coffee could be part of the problem. Solving this could increase your energy levels significantly.