Explain why it is recommended to wait 1-2 hours after waking up to ingest caffeine?

Just from personal experience, I find that I feel better if I spend 1-2 hours simply drinking water + hydrating before I consume any coffee.

Maybe it's just a matter of actually getting some fluids in my system before I begin to dehydrate myself for the remainder of the day.

Otherwise, I haven't heard that you're supposed to wait before drinking caffeine.

Yeah. It's advice that is making the rounds among the bio-optimizer folks.

I do hydrate a bit first. My routine is 125ml of water, then 235ml of green tea (containing roughly 35mg of caffeine) and add in 295mg of sodium, and THEN I have my coffee (black, containing roughly 150mg of caffeine).

I end up having my coffee about 30 minutes after waking up. I can't push it later because I treat it like a pre-workout supplement.

Drinking coffee doesn't 'dehydrate' you.

So I'll say something like "caffeine is a diuretic". And then someone else will say "yeah, but the water in coffee offsets the diuretic effect, so it's not dehydrating you technically" or something like that.

And it'll be a really boring argument.

The point is that drinking some water first, when you wake up dehydrated in the morning, may make you feel better.

Is this some new bro-science thing that likely has no basis in anything?

Andrew Huberman, professor of neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine begins to discuss this topic at 54:00 in the video.

I have trouble understanding why I would need to avoid caffeine first thing in the morning if I am also clearing the remaining night adenosine with exposure to early morning sunlight and early morning exercise.

Huberman has explained it. Send him an email if you still can't comprehend.

God damnit.

Old Wives Tale

Well it's also a correct argument... Caffeine's diuretic effect is practically negligible and more than offset by the water content, unlike alcohol.

I just drank coffee. 39 minutes after waking up.

Consider myself unoptimized.

Many of Huberman’s youtube ideas sound either woo-woo to me or they don’t add much to what I already know or what other less educated YouTubers also talk about and do it better, so I don’t listen to him.

For what it’s worth, he does disclaim that his YouTube channel is separate from his neuro research work at Stanford, and it sure looks like it. Can’t stand clickbaity video titles like “They lied to you” only to tell me that you don’t have to lift maximal weights for hypertrophy (so nobody lied to me after all). His first-thing-in-the-morning sunlight stuff is overrated. Just like cold showers and saunas and what not. These things may have demonstrable benefits but very very modest ones if at all.

I'll listen to his videos as background noise as I do household chores and sometimes he'll say something interesting.

It's just his hobby. Just like some people like dicking around on pinball machines or old cars. He likes nudging on all the levers to see what happens. He also might be a bit of an attention whore.

People just feel like sh*t and they are looking for that one little hack that will make them stop feeling like sh*t when in reality, we are all gradually falling apart and dying, and that process will make us feel like sh*t no matter what we do.

When I wake up I'm getting my coffee fix within 1-2 minutes! I see no benefit to waiting.

Do you fill your waterbed with coffee and you tap dat bed immediately as your morning alarm goes off?

No, coffee maker is set to start brewing before my alarm goes off, so right after the morning leak I'm pouring a cup of hot joe!

Whoever said "dumb bro-science" is spot on. The point of the drug caffeine is to wake us up and stimulate our metabolism and GI tract. It is literally called a stimulant.

What kind of insane person would wait hours to drink coffee. Does this person also drink their first beer after the party is over?

Seriously though, stop with the life-hacks. Enjoy the little things in life like a cup of morning coffee and a beer with friends. The drive to "optimize" will ruin your quality of life in the long run. Butter on your toast won't kill you. Be normal, don't over do it, and life will be a lot better.

People have been drinking coffee first thing in the morning forever and it didn't kill them. One good thing about waiting is that you don't get to the point where you have a headache if you don't get it by 8am.

Listen to this podcast and/or read the articles cited.

hubermanlab.com

Using Caffeine to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance

https://www.facebook.com/hubermanlab

In this episode, I explain how to use caffeine to enhance mental and physical health and performance, including the optimal dosages and intake schedules for caffeine.

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"Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, takes it a step further, waiting 90 to 120 minutes (2 hours?!!) for his first cup of coffee, even though he’s “thinking about and fantasizing about and craving caffeine” the moment he wakes up.
“The reason I delay caffeine is that one of the factors that induces a sense of sleepiness is the build-up of adenosine in our system,” he said. "The buildup of adenosine accumulates the longer we’re awake, so early morning your adenosine levels are likely to be very low.

"However, caffeine is an adenosine blocker—actually a competitive antagonist, meaning it binds to the same receptors that adenosine does." That’s why you feel more alert after your cup of joe (and after your coffee nap), because the caffeine is essentially blocking the adenosine from adhering to its normal receptors.

By delaying his caffeine 90 minutes to 2 hours after waking, Huberman wards off a late afternoon, or even early afternoon, crash after the caffeine wears off. And the delay allows for cortisol to follow its regular pattern."