Comment by Aurornis
6 hours ago
> Tea, especially green tea, doesn’t have the same caffeine bioavailability as coffee – otherwise people would abuse it just as much as coffee
You can absolutely get high doses of caffeine from tea if you really want to. It comes down to the type of tea, how much is used, and how strong it’s brewed.
There is nothing special about tea that breaks the rules of caffeine. It comes down to the content of the leaves, quantity, and extraction into water.
> while even a light coffee or a caffeine pill is clearly noticeable
Caffeine pills generally have really high dosages, FYI. Even light coffee drinkers can be caught off guard by how much caffeine is in a typical off the shelf caffeine pill.
> There is nothing special about tea that breaks the rules of caffeine.
There's definitely something special, just poorly studied: typical "how much caffeine is in X?" tables show tea having caffeine levels similar to coffee, but I never feel the same effects.
> Caffeine pills generally have really high dosages, FYI.
I use 200 mg tablets split into quarters for doses of 50–100 mg. Yet, they produce a much milder curve than coffee (which I no longer drink) and, as a side effect, cause no gastrointestinal side effects!
> typical "how much caffeine is in X?" tables show tea having caffeine levels similar to coffee,
I have never seen a caffeine comparison table that shows tea and coffee at the same level.
It’s common knowledge that typical coffee brews are in the range of 2-5X higher in caffeine content than typical tea brews.
Tea is widely used as a lower caffeine alternative to coffee.
Quick search shows various infographics: green tea at 20–35 mg, black tea at 45–50 mg, espresso at 45–75 mg, and instant at 60-80 mg on average. The day I feel anything close from a cup of black tea to what I get from an instant coffee or a quarter of a pure caffeine pill, I might start trusting those numbers, but for now I see them as nonsense that tries to present as science.
i thought that the mechanism in green tea is that it has l-theanine that helps with caffeine jitters/spikes. a bunch of people drink coffee + theanine which gives a much calmer high.