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I have always gotten out of bed, go straight to the coffee pot, and started my day off with a cup of Joe before anything else happens in my day. However, while there are likely millions of people who do the same thing each day, a study that was published just a few years ago provides a good reason why breakfast should come before coffee.

The study was published in the British Journal of Nutrition, and according to the study, if you have a morning dose of caffeine before you eat anything, it could be negatively impacting your blood sugar levels, which in turn, will cause your risk for developing heart disease and diabetes to rise.

The study was conducted by physiologists at the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism at the UK’s University of Bath. Their focus was a group of around 30 healthy people, who they put through three major experiments.

For the first experiment, researchers had the participants have a normal night’s sleep and then provided them with a sugary drink first thing in the morning. Then, they had their experience a disrupted night of sleep, waking them up every hour for five minutes, and then they provided them with the same drink. In the third experiment, they had a disrupted night of sleep, but instead of being given a sugary drink, they were provided with a strong cup of black coffee before consuming anything else.

Through each experiment, the participants had their blood glucose levels monitored. While having a disrupted night of sleep by itself did not impact their blood glucose levels, having coffee before breakfast did. It caused their blood sugar levels to rise by 50%. “Put simply, our blood sugar control is impaired when the first thing our bodies come into contact with is coffee, especially after a night of disrupted sleep,” says James Betts, a professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath. “We might improve this by eating first and then drinking coffee later if we feel we still need it. Knowing this can have important health benefits for us all.”

“We know that nearly half of us will wake in the morning and, before doing anything else, drink coffee—intuitively, the more tired we feel, the stronger the coffee. This study is important and has far-reaching health implications, as up until now we have had limited knowledge about what this is doing to our bodies, in particular for our metabolic and blood sugar control.”

So, the next time you have a rough night of sleep, remember to drink your coffee after breakfast, otherwise, you could be setting yourself up for a plethora of health issues later in life.