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Your morning cup of joe doesn’t just help you power through the early hours of your day. Although you’ll get the biggest boost of caffeine after it goes down the hatch, research shows that its residual effects can linger for a very long time—even until bedtime.

According to 2024 research, 99 percent of caffeine is absorbed within 45 minutes of consuming it. However, the half-life of caffeine (aka the amount of time it takes for a substance to reduce by half in the body) is much longer.  For some folks, the half-life of caffeine can range anywhere between 1.5 to 9.5 hours. With that in mind, what time should you stop drinking coffee?

Michael Breus, PhD (aka “The Sleep Doctor”), a leading sleep specialist and clinical psychologist, says drinking regular coffee past noon is the number one mistake you want to avoid for the sake of your sleep.

Ahead, Dr. Breus shares how caffeine can impact sleep and why you should establish a strict caffeine cutoff time if you hope to achieve quality shut-eye. Plus, he shares helpful coffee-drinking tips that can also help promote better sleep.

Why it’s important to stop drinking caffeine early in the day

Coffee and sleep go hand in hand, but not exactly how we’d like it to. Although coffee may offer tons of health benefits—such as anti-inflammatory antioxidants—studies also show consuming caffeine can impact your quality of sleep in a potentially negative way. This is because caffeine blocks the neurotransmitter adenosine that helps regulate sleep-wake cycles. “[Caffeine] is a stimulant and it blocks sleep-promoting aspects of adenosine,” Dr. Breus says.

Typically, adenosine accumulates in your body throughout the day, which helps signal when it’s time to go to bed. However, caffeine can disrupt this process. The best way to reduce the long-term effects of caffeine is to cut off coffee consumption—and limit any food or drink that contains caffeine—early enough in the day, Dr. Breus says. “The number one mistake coffee drinkers make that impacts sleep is drinking it past noon,” he explains. However, if you need to stretch