Ok so I cut out coffee completely a few weeks ago, and have gone over to a mostly raw, 100% gluten and dairy free diet. I stopped drinking green tea yesterday becasue the caffine in it was still bothereing me..even with the theanine in it and extra gram of L-glutamine I take daily. Yerba mate is my last stimulant crutch..but if it contains caffine I dont want to drink it..

So many sources say that yerba mate contains mateine, and that it is a sterio-isomer of caffine..but than other sources say that there actually are no stereoisomers of caffine, becasue it constains no stereo centre.. I am not a chemist so I dont really know..but seems to make sense..could this whole mateine thing be a myth that the mate industry keeps putting out there?..I know the effects differ from coffe and tea somewhat..but if not caffine than what? not enough theobromine present apparently..

Mateine is nothing but another name for caffeine, just as guaranine from guarana and theine from tea are. They are all the exact same chemical - caffeine.

but what is it that makes it apparently different in effect from green tea or coffe than?..other than theanine in tea..

I do not know, and I don't think any good cause of the different effects have been provided in the literature. One reason could be the other Xanthines, such as Theobromine and Theophylline. Yerba mate does appear to have other active chemicals, but to my knowledge they have never been isolated or described. According to several US patents, Yerba mate have a MAOI effect. Perhaps some unknown substances account for the MAOI, and also the different effects than tea or coffee?

Mate also contains elements such as potassium, magnesium and manganese which could give some energy. I never knew Theophylline was useful for asthma might be useful combined with psychedelics that cause bronchial constriction.

I don't think that caffeine is the enemy. Tea, coffee and mate all contain caffeine but if I drink coffee it has a really bad effect on me, makes me jittery, upsets my stomach, makes me very irritable and depressed when I come off it. The others are a lot smoother (I'm a big fan of mate in particular).

I can only reckon it must be something about the way that it's released, rather than the chemical itself - I'm pretty sure that the mateine thing is a myth.

Unless it gives you a bad side effect (like coffee does for me) I wouldn't ditch mate just because it has caffeine instead of 'mateine' in it, because it contains lots of other good things as well.

cool, thanx for the quick replies..I want to detox completely form caffine..and than maybe go back to mate in a month or so and see how it effects me than..I think that maybe the small ammounts of caffine in tea and mate just agrivate my food allergy symptoms..which I am trying to purge myself of with my diet, and it's giving me yeast die off symptoms..than again, maybe the mate and green tea were actually helping the detox precess and tricking me into thinking it was making things worse..

It's the other active alkaloids that make the difference.

Coffee contains caffeine almost exclusively

Tea contains mostly caffeine and theophylline. Theophylline is a caffeine relative, but is less stimulating and has stronger bronchodilation effects. The amount of theophylline is sometimes as much as 50% of the caffeine content. It has a dramatic effect when combined with caffeine, smoothing out the caffeine experience. This is why tea is considered less harsh than coffee.

Chocolate contains mostly theobromine. Some say it contains no caffeine, others say it contains traces. Theobromine is a caffeine relative, but it has almost no stimulant properties. Of the three, it has the stronger vasodilation effects, and it’s bronchodilation effects are less potent then theophylline, but stronger than caffeine. Many people find this to be more of a mood enhancer than the other two.

Kola nut contains mostly caffeine and theobromine. Of the three, this is by far the most euphoric.

Mate contains a mix of caffeine, theophylline and theobromine.

It’s the varying levels of these alkaloids that are mostly responsible for the different effects of each of these herbs. However there are other trace elements that do affect the experience. For example, kola nut is far more euphoric than just caffeine and theobromine are when mixed together, so the trace elements in kola nut have a huge impact on the experience and are partly responsible for the large about of euphoria it produces.