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Napping better than coffee for young sleepy drivers8 December, 2007 Napping is more effective than consuming coffee to ward off sleepiness in the case of young and the middle-aged drivers. Researchers led by Patricia Sagaspe, of the Clinique du Sommeil at CHU Pellegrin in Bordeaux, France, studied 24 people – 12 of them aged 20 to 25 and the rest aged 40 to 50 – who drove 125 highway miles in the daylight. Then, in a test of the effects of coffee and napping on nighttime driving, participants drove another 125 miles in the middle of the night after taking a cup of coffee with 200 mg of caffeine, a cup of decaffeinated coffee with 15 mg of caffeine, or a 30-minute nap. Inappropriate line-crossings, self-perceived fatigue and sleepiness were recorded. In the study, published in the December 1, 2007, issue of the medical journal Sleep, it was found that, compared with the placebo – decaffeinated coffee – both coffee and napping reduced the risk of inappropriate line-crossings in the young and middle-aged participants. However, it was found that napping resulted in fewer inappropriate line-crossings in the younger than in middle-aged participants. During napping, young participants slept more and had more “delta sleep” than middle-aged participants (Delta sleep is the deepest stage of sleep). The French researchers said what was surprising is that the effect of coffee and napping varied by age. For middle-aged drivers, aged 40 to 50, coffee was a far better choice. Caffeinated coffee lowered risk for these drivers by 89%, while the nap only reduced line-crossings by 23%. However, among younger drivers, a nap was almost as effective as caffeine. Among drivers aged 20 to 25, the risk of line-crossing fell by 66% after a nap, and 74% after drinking caffeinated coffee. The researchers wrote in the journal Sleep that the effects of caffeine on driving performance were not altered by age, but that the younger drivers slept longer and more deeply than middle-aged drivers during the half-hour nap, and seemed to experience more restorative benefits of sleep. Though the study shows that caffeinated coffee is a better option than napping for drowsy drivers in certain cases, the better and ideal choice is to get off the road entirely and get a full night’s sleep, the study recommends.
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