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Can Yerba Mate Give You the Same Pre-Run Energy Boost as Coffee?

We investigate whether it’s time to turn over a new leaf when it comes to your hot beverage of choice.

Many of us call upon the powers of caffeine to perk us up and put a little more spring in our stride before workouts. Most often, we turn to coffee, but lately, some have been brewing up another drink that promises to energize the body without any jittery side effects: yerba mate.

There are only a handful of plants in the world that naturally produce caffeine, and yerba mate is one of them. This makes the herbal tea a potential stand-in for java, and it may have you wondering if it’s time to turn over a new leaf when it comes to your hot beverage of choice. Here’s everything you need to know about yerba mate’s benefits and if it can help in your PR pursuits.

What Exactly Is Yerba Mate?

Yerba mate is an herbal tea made from the dried leaves and twigs of the evergreen Ilex paraguariensis plant, which is native to South America. This is not the same plant that green tea hails from. Traditionally it is consumed from a container called a gourd (calabash) and sipped with a metal straw (bombilla) that has a filter at its lower end to strain out the leaf fragments.

Yerba mate is often described as earthy, vegetal, herbaceous, and bittersweet in flavor. Several brands of mate also contain tender stems and branches in the mix, which can impart a woodsy flavor to tea. 

What Are Yerba Mate’s Benefits?

Yerba mate may help give your runs a jolt. While the caffeine content of yerba mate will be impacted by a few factors, including brewing time and quantity of leaves used, it’s thought that a cup of the beverage contains about 40 milligrams of caffeine. In comparison, brewed coffee ranges from 60 to 180 milligrams in a 6-ounce serving. Yerba mate also contains two other stimulants—theophylline and theobromine—which may work together with caffeine to put more pep in your stride or help you shake off morning brain fog.

Caffeine has been shown to help improve athletic performance for a few reasons, including lowering perceived effort. But you may need more caffeine than yerba mate delivers for all the performance-boosting benefits. To effectively rev up your workouts and races, you’ll need between 3 to 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. So for a 150-pound runner, that’s 204 to 408 milligrams of caffeine or roughly 5 to 10 cups of yerba mate. People who are not used to consuming caffeine (and are thus more sensitive to it) may get more of a boost from less.

For some people, the naturally caffeinated beverage delivers enough without the pre-run jitters or irritability. But this benefit remains largely anecdotal. And since the drink contains fewer acids than coffee, some people find this beverage is easier on their stomachs than coffee, which can be especially beneficial before a big workout.

What’s more, an investigation in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise reported that trained male cyclists who took 5 grams of capsulated yerba mate for five days and then the same amount again one hour before the exercise trials burned more fat during exercise and had improved time trial performance than when a placebo was consumed. So when paired with endurance activities like running and cycling, yerba mate could help aid in efforts to burn body fat and also improve athletic performance by conserving carbohydrate stores for high-intensity moments, but this was a very narrow study conducted only on trained males.

The optimal amount of yerba mate from a supplement or drink to consume daily and prior to exercise is still to be determined. Many studies have used standardized capsules, so we need more research to see if the same benefits would occur using brewed tea.

When yerba mate leaves are brewed, they release several types of antioxidants, which may limit oxidative stress (a harmful chemical process) and inflammation in the body, leading to a lower risk for several health conditions such as heart disease, dementia, and cancer. And while no research has shown any definitive links between yerba mate and the reduction of disease risk, a study in the British Journal of Nutrition speculates that the abundance of phytochemicals (plant compounds) in yerba mate is the main reason why 11 days of its consumption was found to improve the rate of strength recovery from eccentric exercise (weight lifting) by an average of 8.6 percent. It should be stressed that brewed coffee also contains a slew of antioxidants, and it’s not yet known which drink wins out for packing the biggest antioxidant punch.

Additionally, in one 40-day investigation, participants who drank a little over a cup (330 milliliters) of yerba mate each day lowered their LDL (bad) cholesterol levels by about 8 percent and raised HDL (good) cholesterol by 4.4 percent, which may lower the risk for heart disease.

Yerba mate does contain a few essential minerals including manganese, iron, zinc, and copper, but levels are likely not large enough to make a big impact on your diet compared to what you get from foods.

It’s worth noting that there is some evidence that drinking large amounts of yerba mate for an extended period of time may increase the risk for upper-body cancers, namely in the esophagus, larynx, and mouth. One possible explanation is that the drying process of yerba mate produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known carcinogens also found in tobacco smoke and grilled meat. A more likely scenario, however, is that the very hot temperatures that yerba mate is commonly consumed at in countries with frequent use induces tissue damage that leads to cancerous cell formation. As long as you are not brewing up liters a day and also letting your drink cool for a few minutes so that it is below 150°F before sipping, the cancer risk should be minimal. Levels of PAHs can vary considerably among brands.

The latest recommendations are that women who are pregnant should limit their intake of caffeine from any source, including yerba mate, as it may raise the risk for complications including low birth weight and miscarriage.

How Do You Use Yerba Mate?

To prepare yerba mate, fill the bottom third of the gourd with dried mate leaves before adding hot water, or use a tea strainer filled with a tablespoon or so of leaves set in a mug. You can also brew it up using a French press. Yerba mate tea bags are also available, but you’ll likely get the freshest flavor (and more of a caffeine boost) with loose leaf.

For the warmer days ahead, you can prepare mate like you would iced tea and keep a jug stashed in the fridge. A few brands are offering pre-made bottled or canned mate drinks, but read labels so you aren’t also drinking heaps of sugar.

Some sports nutrition products, like chews and gels, will include yerba mate extract as a way to deliver you a shot of caffeine when on the go. These products should tell you how much mate-derived caffeine you’re getting in a serving.

Remember, because it contains stimulants, sipping yerba mate within a few hours of bedtime may lead to a restless night.

(04/25/2021) Views: 2,045 ⚡AMP
by Runner’s World