Pure conjectural or anecdotal but it is my intuition that there is something to it

EDIT: My running theory is related to hormesis or tolerance where the body produces an opposite effect to the ligand to maintain homeostasis and there is not a sufficient dose of the exogenous drug taken to override the body’s compensatory reaction

So even tho caffeine is a stimulant (adenosine antagonist) it actually causes the body to produce the opposite reaction, causing the reverse effect of making you sleepy

  • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    2 months ago

    There’s exhaustion, which builds up and is relieved gradually with sleep, and is effectively masked by caffeine. Then there’s the feeling of incomplete/interrupted sleep; maybe the quality of sleep was poor somehow, maybe you were woken up by an alarm in the middle of a sleep cycle, but it’s painful, cognitively debilitating, and sticks around like a splinter in your brain. Caffeine doesn’t help it at all, but it can be completely relieved by a nap in which you succeed in falling completely asleep even just for a few minutes, which caffeine does not prevent from happening.

    I don’t know how much of that is objectively how it works for everyone, but that’s how I understand it.