My 16-month theanine self-experiment

> I’ve long found that tea makes me much less nervous than coffee, even with equal caffeine. Many people have suggested theanine as the explanation, but I’m skeptical. Most tea only has ~5 mg of theanine per cup, while when people supplement, they take 100-400 mg. Apparently grassy shade-grown Japanese teas are particularly high in theanine. And I do find those teas particularly calming. But they still only manage ~25 mg per cup

It's not uncommon for a substance to have different, even opposite effects at different doses. For example high dose melatonin can keep you up, and stress you out, whereas in most people you only need up to 1 mg to promote sleep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

I would also look at other ingredients in teas as a knock on effect vs straight supplement extracts. Sometimes the extract as a supplement isn’t the same once separated from the rest of the plant it’s found.

How about other ingredients in coffee?

That's certainly an interesting thing I wish we knew more about. My qualitative experience is that coffee gives me more anxiety than any other form of caffeine I've tried, including ones that don't contain L-theanine.

That's a great point. Dose-response relationships can be really weird

I have a strange relationship with psilocybin where microdoses reliably give me an almost unbearable headache, but a large dose will reliably get rid of a headache (even a migraine in one case).

I haven’t tested it in many years (boring parent mode engaged) but that was my first experience with bizarre dose response relationships where one effect was very acutely inverted.

It took me months to figure out the source of headaches. I felt certain it couldn’t be the psilocybin because it was so good at fixing my headaches prior to that. Sure enough, I could turn the headaches on and off like a switch by taking a tiny dose or not taking it.

This reminds me of hydrogen sulfide that at low levels smells awful but at little higher doesn't smell at all, because it just fries receptors.

About ten years ago both my wife and I had to switch to extremely low caffeine coffee because we would get panic attacks. It still happens now, just this week we were accidentally served caffeinated coffee at breakfast diner and both were having panic attacks by 4pm.

It's absolutely wild that I can drink a mug of a beverage that everyone else drinks by the liter but be crippled with anxiety. Brain chemistry is weird.

Do you not think it’s interesting that if affects both of you the same way, as far as to cause panic attacks in both of you? For an individual I could just about accept that it’s just how you react to caffeine, but the fact both you and your partner have the same result suggests some sort of influence on each other?

Assortative mating. Partners' genetics are not independent.

Coffee and tea are very interesting. I can drink caffeinated tea without any issues. But for some reason caffeinated coffee will trigger an acne break out several days later. It took a long time for me to connect this link.

I am the same way. I cannot even eat chocolate before bed or I am up all night.

I have Bipolar Disorder with an Anxiety Disorder and drinking coffee triggers a lot of paranoid manic thoughts as well.

But Tea is even worse for me, because, I think, of the theanine. I think I am very sesitive to Glutamate and really glad the blogger talks about it. It is one of the most under utilized neurotransmitters in psychiatry.

Also, cutting out foods with some certain additives helped me as well. Like isolated pea protein, autolyzed yeast extract, and malted barley flour to name a few. Theyare all flavor enhancers that contain glutamate.

Polyphenols...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8601035/

One proven property of tea (especially green tea prepared at a slightly lower temperature) is that it increases arterial flexibility. Contrast that with coffee, which increases blood pressure. I wouldn't be surprised if the effects on the cardiovascular system plays a large role in the calming effect of teas, and the anxiety-increasing effect of coffee.

Which leads to my other point: these experiments always focus so much on the brain without taking into account that the state of the body has a profound impact on the brain too.

Are you sure it's the caffeine and not another substance in coffee?

Even more crazy than caffeine interaction.

Coffee is a significant source of beta-carbolines.

I read a study about athletes given either a strong coffee, placebo, or a caffeine in capsule form. The study suggested that even if coffee had less caffeine than athletes got directly in a capsule (and measured in their blood) strong coffee boosted their performance more. This suggests that we might be getting a boost from sensing strong flavor by our receptors. Not sure how else to interpret it, but I really wish there would be more studies on this.

Anecdotally I feel way more productive while I'm sipping coffee than I am once I've finished my cup. This is true even after my first sips.

I think we humans just really really like ritualistic practices.

That's true, but melatonin is probably not a very representative example, (unless you're only talking about sleep) as its mechanism is really idiosyncratic.

It seems (from [1]) that the body has a day-clock which is synchronised to the actual day by the release of melatonin. Taking melatonin (at the right time) reinforces the signal; taking too much swamps it completely. It seems unlikely that many other body chemicals are part of the signal chain of a biological PLL (phase-locked loop).

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...

there is more in coffee than caffeine? maybe another substance?

One obvious one to consider is the diterpenes in filtered vs unfiltered brewing methods. Filtered methods will remove most of these. Diterpenes will help reduce inflammation and may enhance the flavor of the coffee for some, but the ones in coffee are unfortunately also linked to increased LDL (bad cholesterol), so as a drug choice, there's not a clear winner in whether filtered or unfiltered coffee (as in French press, for example), will result in a better black coffee.

From my own anecdotal experience, lower inflammation has a wide variety of cognitive benefits, regardless of the means, while things that increase my inflammatory response (for example, allergies), make it much harder to think clearly.

Side notes: I don't drink milk so can't speak to the lipids that might further influence intake. But even the heat of coffee will have an effect: if it's scalding hot, some of the caffeine will be absorbed in the mouth, and if it's very cold, it'll wind its way further through your system before being absorbed.

I'm just a coffee drinker, so take all of this information with a grain of salt, unless your sodium is too high? Caveat emptor

My high school chemistry teacher claimed that tea and coffee each have different isomers of caffeine and people may be sensitive to one both or none. This was pre internet and some quick googling seems to debunk this claim in that caffeine has no isomers. Though the same searching seems to indicate that there is a likelihood other compounds mitigate or exacerbate its effects.

I wonder if it has something to do with different receptor activity at low vs. high levels. Must have been frustrating trying to figure that out, though!