This is interesting, but I'm always suspicious of articles that seem to hand-pick their science. This isn't a critique of tea being good for you (I'm sipping on a chai right now and feeling dandy) but a little healthy skepticism from seeing years of nutrition/health effects studies contradict each other. For more detailed thoughts on the problem see John Ioannidis' "Why Most Published Research Findings are False."
All teas contain L-theanine. I too am skeptical about all of the health-information swirling around about teas these days, which is why I researched this topic and wrote about it.
the wikipedia article seem to be much more useful and objective than the original post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine
,and see references there-in
I used medical journals for the research, they are all behind paywalls -- if you have access to some University Journal Databases, check the sources in the bottom of the articles. The most recent study was published in December of 2010.
Pretty much any amino acid will help brain function, but with any study, they always give absurdly high amounts to their test subjects in comparison to what the average human consumes. Plus, these are scientific research papers. Even a 1% improvement is enough for them to be quoted as saying "improves brain function."
Drinking tea is good for you, we've known this for years. Keep drinking it.
Tony - I never thought I'd say this on HN, but you should totally open up a brick and mortar store. There's so few places in Chicago to go and get good loose leaf tea, shipping seems silly (I live <1 mile away), and a great tea shop is such a cool thing to have around. There's all sorts of empty storefronts (one under my place, even) just begging for something interesting.
I guess "you should" is the wrong language. Perhaps supplant with "it would be incredibly inconvenient but way cool if you were to"
I think their retail model is actually really interesting, and their blog is very transparent about the realities of the business: http://www.tearetailer.com/
There are a few nice places around Chicago. Have you been to Ten Ren?
Edit: Most of the places in the child comments are great too. I'd personally try to avoid Teavana, though. From my experience, they take low grade teas and sell them for a much higher price for the masses. I've also seen paint come off of some teaware there with little effort.
I've never been to T&H, my work schedule doesn't really jive with their hours (they close at 6 m-w and aren't open on Sundays). But how's the vibe there? It always looked to me like a snooty wine shop, but for tea. Having worked in a moderately snooty wine shop, I would really rather go somewhere a little more genuine.
Its hard to explain rationally without sounding like a hipster, but I think I just got spoiled by the really cool tea shop I used to go to at school - it was like the kind of place you would find an ancient artifact of untold power in the corner behind a dusty basket of chocolate bars.
Not that that's the only kind of tea shop I would go to, but it really felt like a place owned by people who got it: they stayed open past their posted hours and when you walked in, whoever was working (there was a grand total of 4 people that worked there over the five years I went) would acknowledge you casually and never talk about product unless it really seemed like you wanted to.
They could not be less snooty. Bill Todd works retail at the store. There are shelves lined with what I imagine must be over a hundred different varieties of tea, arranged by type, packaged in small pouches and larger containers ready to take to the checkout, in front of a wall of much larger containers of other teas. You can walk in and pick things out by reading the pouches, or, if you signal the slightest bit of interest, Bill Todd will explain tea to you for as long as you could conceivably listen and (I've watched them do this for people but never asked myself) brew some up on the spot for taste tests.
Remember: their most common customer is "random person walking down Madison street in Forest Park".
I, a random person, was walking down Madison one day when I found the Todd and Holland store. Bill Todd spent over an hour introducing me to some white teas that were new to me, including providing taste tests. He was extraordinarily nice and I found a new favorite white while I was there. I can find tea I like cheaper online, but I am happy to pay a small premium on occasion just for his expertise. I sold my home in Oak Park, so I don't get in there as often as I would like anymore - but I can definitely recommend them as a great local merchant that knows their stuff. Unlike the mall shops where the staff tend to know little to nothing about tea.
Thanks Alex, I sincerely hope to in the future, but it isn't in the cards for a few years! We do tastings in Chicago however, I can put you on the list if you send me your email: tony@chicagoteagarden.com
Bourgeois Pig has a decent selection of teas, including the Theanine heavy Gyokuro, but they don't sell in bulk. Their baristas might be able to tell you where they buy from though - assuming it is local.
I've purchased some decent Silver Needle at Coffee and Tea Exchange in Lakeview - but the prices are a little high.
Thanks for screwing up my tea. Can't I just drink it to enjoy it? Now, I have high expectations from my tea which I am sure will not be met. Thanks a lot.
PS: I drink probably 3 cups a day. I am still not a genius and I get sleepy by mid-day.
Thanks for screwing up my HN. Can't I read someone's thoughts without someone feeling cranky and sleep-deprived all over it? Now my high expectations from HN haven't been met. Thanks a lot.
Drugs that act as agonists of GABA receptors or increase
the available amount of GABA typically have relaxing,
anti-anxiety and anti-convulsive effects.,. Many
of the substances below are known to cause anterograde
amnesia and retrograde amnesia.
Followed by a list of substances that increase GABA levels
I am not knowledgible about these things but I recollect reading that in vertebrates the primary function of GABA is to inhibit synaptic activity. It is probably good for someone who is high-strung or epileptic. But for a normal person is it good to boost GABA levels in the brain ?
Caffeine, I guess, will counter some of these effects, but still it makes me worried to play with brain chemistry. Particularly with supplements.
Edit: To one who downvoted, could you tell me what you found objectionable ?
Caffeine can decrease anxiety? That's highly contradictory to a bulk of medical wisdom out there. People can experience spikes in their heart rate due to stimulants like caffeine.
Also, tea is more of a cultural phenomenon in that region of the world. It's not thought of as a tool for meditation. In fact, in yogic traditions, you're supposed to stay away from caffeine.
Caffeine can decrease anxiety? That's highly contradictory to a bulk of medical wisdom out there.
"Medicinal plants contain a wide array of chemical compounds. At first, this looks like chaos, but more investigation reveals a distinct order. Natural selection pressures push a plant to "try out" variations on molecules to enhance the plant's odds of surviving stressful environments. So, often, one molecule is present in the greatest amount and has the most dramatic effect in a human body -- but along with it are variations of that molecule in the same plant.
For example, for several years, I did ethnobotanical study in South America, researching native uses for coca leaf, which most of us know only as the source of the isolated, problematic, addictive drug cocaine. For Andean Indians, whole coca leaf is the number one medicinal plant. They use it to treat gastrointestinal disturbances; specifically, for both diarrhea and constipation. From the perspective of Western pharmacology, this makes no sense. Cocaine stimulates the gut, it increases bowel activity, so obviously it would be a good treatment for constipation, but what could it do for diarrhea except make it worse?
However, if you look carefully at the coca leaf's molecular array, you find 14 bioactive alkaloids, with cocaine in the greatest amount. While cocaine acts as a gut stimulant, other coca alkaloids can have precisely the opposite action, they inhibit gut activity.
This means that when you take the whole mixture into the body, the potential is there for the action to go in either direction. What decides it? The state of the body, which is a function of which receptors in the gut's tissues are available for binding. During my time in Andean Indian communities, I collected many reports about whole coca's paradoxical, normalizing effect on bowel function, and experienced it firsthand, as well."
Andrew Weil isn't exactly regarded as the most credible source in medical circles. (And I'm being kind here. I've heard some comparisons to Deepak Chopra…)
He's pretty up on his science. Don't forget he graduated from Harvard medical school, was editor of the Crimson, and majored in botany as an undergrad, making him probably vastly smarter and more knowledgeable about science than anyone here on HN. I actually saw him give a talk this year where he talked about how LSD cured his cat allergies: http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video6.html
He speculates about a lot of stuff like this that sounds pretty crazy unless you're willing to take the time to understand his argument. Obviously these kinds of musings are unproven, but that is by definition the nature of speculation. And his actual medical advice is all pretty solid from what I've seen. My favorite talk by him is this:
> vastly smarter and more knowledgeable about science than anyone here on HN
Perhaps, but that's probably why the GP talked about his reputation "in medical circles". He's not any more knowledgeable about science than his major critics:
The quackwatch article you cite is extremely intellectually dishonest. It makes a couple points which would be interesting if true, but the overwhelming about of BS makes me highly skeptical. The author seems to have a complete inability to just point out any errors Weil has made and explain why they are wrong. Instead we get sentences like:
"The leaders of the establishment believe in the scientific method, and in the rule of evidence, and in the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology upon which the modern view of nature is based. Alternative practitioners either do not seem to care about science or explicitly reject its premises."
Not only is this intellectually dishonest because it has nothing to do with what Weil has actually written, but it isn't even true; it was homeopathy that invented evidence-based medicine and drug testing in the first place.
"19th-century homeopaths pioneered systematic drug-testing research, challenged the dangerously depleting procedures of mainstream physicians at that time, established rigorous professional standards, and valued advanced education at least as highly as their mainstream counterparts did. It was not without reason that homeopaths considered the bases of their approach to medical problems to be more logical and more promising than the inherited tradition of the ancients, upon which mainstream physicians still based their practices."
(For what it's worth, JAMA highly recommends the book.)
(Thanks for the homeopathy citation. I'll have to check that out.)
> The author seems to have a complete inability to just point out any errors Weil has made
Are we reading the same thing? The quote you cited was from the fifth paragraph of the 18-paragraph first section of a five-section piece which contains countless references to Weil's own words. Admittedly I have not read the whole thing yet myself, but I would hope you could reserve judgment on the intellectual honesty of the essay after reading somewhat past the introductory portion.
I skimmed through the whole article and found all sorts of problems. For example:
"Weil's writings are ambiguous about the conflict between science and alternative medicine, as they are about many other issues in alternative medicine."
What conflict between science and alternative medicine? How is his writing ambiguous? How is this a problem? How is his writing ambiguous about other issues in alternative medicine?
"[weil] thinks that all healing methods ought to be tested; and yes, modern science can make useful contributions to our understanding of health and disease. Yet the scientific method is not, for Weil, the only way, or even the best way, to learn about nature and the human body."
What does Weil actually get wrong? Is there actually some error in either his epistemology or what he is advocating?
"Many important truths are intuitively evident and do not need scientific support, even when they seem to contradict logic."
Where does he actually say this? What's the context? There isn't even any inherent problem with this statement, so it doesn't make any sense to criticize him for it unless you're going to actually go out and find something wrong.
"Weil is not bothered by logical contradictions in his argument, or encumbered by a need to search for objective evidence."
What logical contradictions?
The typical Redditor could write exactly the same article without even reading any of Weil's books. And it really only gets worse from there, e.g.
"According to Weil, many of his basic insights about the causes of disease and the nature of healing come from what he calls 'stoned thinking'"
Again he can't find any actual problem with what Weil is saying, so he's just poisoning the well.
He does eventually make a couple of points that appear to be solid, but there is so much other crap in there that it's hard to take seriously. If there are cases where Weil is wrong then by all means he should be called out on it, but this article is just nonsense.
It is the combination of Caffeine and L-Theanine. Drugs/compounds in combination can frequently have different effects than just smashing the lists of effects of the two together. Further, the effects of stimulants are not simply "increases anxiety, heart rate, reduces concentration, etc". Look at cases of ADD where stimulants increase concentration. Look at studies where low doses of caffeine increase alertness without the "bad" stimulant effects.
As for your strawman about yogic monks: the article did not say "all monks..", just "monks...". The difference here is that without the qualifier, english assumes the statement refers to a significant portion, but not all or even most. Further, some traditions, such as various forms of Buddhism, particularly those that practice sitting meditation, do in fact have tea as part of the meditative ritual.
tl;dr - you are way over-simplifying and being generally disingenuous
A lot of the cases with ADHD are very specific to the type of ADHD. Usually things that somehow alter norepinephrine or Dopamine levels in the brain (as Caffeine does) often alter somebody's response with ADHD.
For me, it doesn't work. I'm just too wired, my heart feels like it's going to pop out of my chest if I take an amount that will affect my actual concentration (not the same as alertness). Adderall, to me, feels like a much smoother caffeine, and I can concentrate. However, I hate the way it also makes me feel in high doses. Atomoxetine worked great for me as well, but had weird "sexual" side effects. Right now I'm mostly on Wellbutrin XL, which is a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and while it doesn't work as well stimulants, it does work to a point and I feel like my normal self and even better. So far, the best combination for me has been Wellbutrin with a small kicker (5-10mg) of Adderall. Before Wellbutrin, I would take 20-60mg of Adderall a day. Also, Wellbutrin helps with some of my natural anxiety as well.
Also, for what it's worth, Adderall (a stimulant) tends to decrease anxiety for me in certain situations, while amplifying it in others. It's a weird relationship. In some social situations where tons of things are happening, without Adderall I can't focus on anything and I start to go on a weird panic mode. With adderall, that decreases because I can ignore certain things. But it also decreases with alcohol too, because I just don't care.
Anyways, the best thing I ever did was see a psychiatrist. Treatment of ADHD sucks because it's hard to know what will and what won't work, and what side effects are involved.
The idea that stimulants only increase concentration for folks who suffer from ADD is bogus. I don't have the research at hand, but studies show that this effect is not unique to sufferers of ADD.
Obviously, the effects of caffeine are dose dependent like any other drug. At low doses (varies by person), you will often achieve lower anxiety, boosted confidence, and a positive overall effect on you mood. If you exceed a certain limit though, you will start to see the opposite of each of these. This is a common phenomenon that occurs with many drugs.
I can't speak for the science, but anecdotally this has been very true for me.
I used to never drink coffee or tea; when I really needed to "wake up" I'd have an espresso and I'd be good for 10-12 hours.
Then I had a kid and found myself needing it daily. After a few months of daily coffee I started to realize that I was exhausted until I drank some coffee; then I wasn't so tired but still couldn't concentrate very well.
Having read a similar article a few weeks ago I switched to tea instead of coffee and I must say I've felt much more productive on tea as well as slightly less exhausted before I drink it.
I have become very suspicious of caffeine as a stimulant.
For starters, with coffee there is the one-two punch that you get a sugar rush and then later on the caffeine kicks in. (I've read somewhere that caffeine takes about 6 hours to kick in, so if you're perking up straight away it is perhaps not the caffeine per se)
If you don't take sugar and it is the caffeine kicking in, it may be doing so in a particularly horrible and insidious way, that it is (mildly) addictive, and the perking up is simply the absence of the withdrawal symptoms (that old story about banging your head on a brick wall - it feels so good when you stop).
Anecdotally, something I found really interesting is that I play much better chess when I'm off caffeine than when I'm on.
Oh sure, on caffeine you feel all perky and smart and as if your brain is running ten times faster (or whatever), but I think what is actually happening is that we just get bored faster. On caffeine I might only think one or two moves ahead and then pick the moves that my intuition tells me. But off caffeine I can actually 'slow down' enough to play noticeably better, I can think an extra couple of moves ahead over and above the "do something now!!!" mode that caffeine puts me in.
If this is right, then caffeine makes me stupider, because I rush in, and can't sit still to do the deep thinking that really high quality thought and software design require.
hey, OP here... Researchers are still out to lunch as far as tea goes with: weight loss, cancer prevention, anti-aging, and diabetes as many conflicting studies have been made. The affects L-theanine, and the combination of L-theanine with Caffeine have been studied and there has been little variance in their conclusions. Myself, along with a few other tea industry-ites have been following these reports. We scoff at all of the weight loss tea spam out there and question each study that comes out. This is only to serve as a culmination of several studies done specifically about the combination of L-theanine and Caffeine. Enjoy! Questions? Find me on twitter: @worldoftea
First off, there doesn't seem to be much benefit in taking more than what's already present in a cup or so of good green tea, though, so the exact content in varieties probably doesn't matter.
If you ever get bulk l-theanine powder (it's quite cheap), you'll recognize the taste. It's particularly prominent in sencha, gyokuro, and other Japanese green teas - that savory/salty/MSGish taste.
Anecdotally, l-theanine negates most of the jitteriness from caffeine for me. Coffee, pop, etc. make me edgy in a way that tea doesn't.
If you like scotch, try lapsang souchoug - it's a smoked Chinese black tea.
If you like sushi, try Japanese sencha or gyokuro - the same umami flavors in nori and kombu come through in the tea.
Etc. Etc.
If you were me, I would suggest a "malty" Assam (or an Irish breakfast blend) for most mornings, lapsang souchong for cold winter weekends, bundled up with crossword puzzles or programming texts, cheap-but-decent Assam as a base for making masala chai (with fresh cardamom and vanilla sugar), and good Sencha for the office. Citrusy green teas are great for summer pitchers of iced tea.
A good tea shop will be able to find matches for what you like, though. (Also, somebody at Tea Gschwendner (in Chicago) taught me that, after smelling lots of interesting teas, the best way to reset your sense of smell is to smell your clothes. FWIW.)
Anything you like, it is best to approach tea by taste, not by health benefits... start with experimentation -- whites, greens, oolongs, yellows, blacks, pu-erhs all have extremely different tastes.
I'm able to buy loose leaf in bulk from a local store so I can't recommend a particular online retailer. In person I would go by smell rather than brand, the aroma of good sencha is very distinct.
Those medical studies are usually discarding the parallel social relation of drinking tea. Tea drinkers may have different habits than the coffee drinkers. This is similar than the "the children who have grown with books at home have better education", the reason is not really the books by them-self but more just a sign of the social behaviour. Might be the case of (some) tea drinkers.
We have created some great comments here, but they are disconnected or disassociated with the original article. When I write a comment I typically write in hacker news and on the original publication page.
Depending on where you live, there are probably decent tea shops (or, failing that, gourmet or health food stores with decent tea selections). It's nice to be able to smell different varieties, try samplers, etc.
That said, I've had consistently good experiences with Adagio, and (once you know what you like) tea is well-suited to mail order.
