Photographed by Angela Pham.
Coffee is, more or less, our lifeblood here in New York City. It's not just corporate greed that placed a Starbucks on every corner; us New Yorkers need our fix, and we needed it, like, 10 minutes ago. Some of us (like this humble author) drink a cup while putting our faces on, grab another on the way into the office, and then another after lunch. It's not a stretch to call it an addiction, but hey, vices, man.
Turns out our penchant for all that coffee in the morning is actually doing more damage to our bodies than we probably intend. Fast.CoDesign explains that our bodies don't actually need that cup of Joe right from the get-go. Due to our circadian rhythms, we naturally produce the energy caffeine gives us around 8 a.m. When we ingest coffee at that hour, we're putting more energy into our bodies than necessary; therefore, we crash sooner and harder. The snowball effect begins to roll out, and soon we've built up a tolerance for the drug and need more just to get going. We train our bodies to function with it.
If you're really feeling the slump, reach for a mug between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. Our bodies' cortisol levels (essentially energy distribution) are dropping before they spike again around noon. Coffee, in this case, is a lifesaver. In all others, it's us who need the saving from coffee. (Fast.Co)