Another Proven Coffee Benefit

We’ve extolled some of the health virtues of coffee drinking here in the past: e.g. on short-term memory and diabetes. Now its use by people driving at night has been explored in a study reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Nighttime driving performance was tested after regular coffee (half a cup containing 220 mg caffeine), a 30-minute nap, or placebo (‘decaffeinated’ coffee containing 15 mg caffeine). The subjects – 12 young men – drove 125 miles between 6:00 pm and 7:30 pm for daytime reference conditions, and then after one of the test options between 2:00 am and 3:30 am.

Questionnaires, tests, and polysomnography results showed that nighttime driving performance for 75% of the subjects after coffee, 66% after their nap, and only 13% after the placebo were the same as their daytime driving. And subsequent sleep (in the sleep lab) was unchanged by any of the options.

Score another one for coffee (this time, not decaf!).