So, up in Preston I ran into Paul (otherwise known as Gun-Mad Paul, since there were many Pauls in Aberystwyth and therefore modifying local custom people became widely known by nicknames: Gun-Mad Paul, Strange-Behaving Dave, Blue-Haired Elaine, and so forth) – who aside from having an encyclopaedic knowledge of firearms is also a toxicologist, and rather a good one at that.
He explained to me something that I’ve always sworn was true, but never had any external evidence for – that Tea is actually a stronger stimulant than Coffee, being laden with Theobromine and other stuff that I can’t remember the name of – and it also has a significant caffeine content, comparable to coffee.
If I understood it right, the trick is: the caffeine in tea won’t be digested by the body unless the body is already set-up to digest caffeine, eg: from recent exposure to coffee or similar, so that something called a cascade (?) has already been set up.
This would explain my occasional experience with something I call wake-up juice which is a mug of darkly-stewed Indian-based tea, served with sugar and a couple of teaspoons of instant coffee, which I have always sworn has a stronger action than would be expected of the sum of its individual components – my assumption being that once you’ve swung the body around to digesting caffeine, the rest kick in synergistically.
Next time I need to seriously wake up, I shall experiment.
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