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Caffeine is a type of alkaloid with effects that keeps you awake and promotes your digestion and absorption.

In this page, we are going to introduce the basic knowledge, detailed effects and tips for effective ingestion of caffeine.

Hope this article will help you benefit from caffeine in your life.

What is caffeine?

Caffeine is a type of compound called alkaloid that is contained in tea.

It is contained in tea and coffee, also used for medicine for cough and headache.

Caffeine causes bitterness in tea

Caffeine is an ingredient of bitterness as well as catechin contained in tea.

Caffeine attributes light bitterness, while catechin has astringency.

Who discovered caffeine?

Caffeine was discovered by a German doctor named Runge in 1819.

The year 1819 is in the late of the Edo period in Japan, which means that caffeine had been known very early in Europe.

Caffeine was first discovered in coffee, then also discovered in tea in 1827.

After, a lot of effects of caffeine got to be confirmed.

Effects of caffeine

Ingestion of caffeine has effects that;

  • keep you awake
  • stimulate heart and kidney to promote urination
  • promote secretion of gastric acid that helps digestion and absorption of food
  • promote fat burning in your body

Also, the highlight of caffeine is that caffeine effects are expected immediately as caffeine gets absorbed in your body right after ingestion.

Pay attention to the amount of your caffeine ingestion!

Taking caffeine has many effects, but it is confirmed that taking too much caffeine can cause some health risks.

For example, a study done by Hisashi Kurihara in 2015 reports that;

  • taking more than 100mg caffeine may cause insomnia
  • a risk of heart attack would be increased for 1 hour after taking more than 200mg of caffeine

However, as a cup tea in general (60ml) only contains about 16mg of caffeine, there would be no health problem as long as you simply enjoy tea.

Which one of tea and coffee has more caffeine?

Caffeine may remind you of coffee, but when comparing the same amount of tea leaves and coffee beans, tea leaves actually contain more caffeine than coffee beans.

For instance, sencha contains 1.7 times, Gyokuro has 2.7 times more caffeine than coffee beans.

However, when comparing the amount of caffeine per cup, more caffeine can be ingested in coffee than tea due to the amount to use of coffee beans.

For example, when comparing 100ml of coffee and tea, the amount of caffeine of each is ;

  • Regular coffee: 60mg
  • Sencha: 20mg

*Coca Cola Official Website

Therefore, those who want to effectively ingest caffeine should drink coffee rather than sencha.

Tips to effectively ingest caffeine in tea.

Since caffeine is likely to dissolve in hot water at a high temperature, brewing tea with hot water at a high temperature would be recommended. Whereas, there is not much caffeine in cold brew tea.

Thus, pay attention to the temperature of water when brewing tea.

January 08, 2023