[manche]

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.

[Alex3917]

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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/why-plants-are-...

[mhd]

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…)

[Alex3917]

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:

http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=129

Again there is a lot of speculation, but there's nothing wrong with that at least in my book.

[nollidge]

> 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:

http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/weil.html

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/06/science_is_irrelev...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4431

http://scientopia.org/blogs/whitecoatunderground/2009/10/18/...

[Alex3917]

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.

[nollidge]

> homeopathy that invented evidence-based medicine and drug testing

I'll need a citation for that. Homeopathy is one of the most blatantly nonsensical, improbable, and unproven "disciplines" I've ever come across.

Edit: For context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy

[nollidge]

(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.

[wanderr]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[sophacles]

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

[juiceandjuice]

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.

end tangent.

[billjings]

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.

[theflubba]

Yep, it's a common misconception. Stimulants will have the same effect on people with and without ADHD.

[manche]

Looks like my BS detector fired too soon.

My "straw-man" was not meant to be anything as such. It was an example of a different meditation tradition where tea/coffee is to be avoided.

[zcid]

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.