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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

As much as I love coffee and I'm happy to hear that drinking it is actually healthy, I think I'm just personally too sensitive to caffeine for it to be beneficial overall. My baseline stress level goes way up even with one cup a day and I have a much harder time falling and staying asleep.

For some reason tea doesn't affect me as much.

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I've heard that the L-Theanine [1] in green tea is responsible for a calmer caffeine effect. Although I haven't tried it, I've heard that you can get the same results by taking a supplement before your morning coffee.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine

I second this, and have used it for years with caffeine for this exact reason. By itself it also has an anti-anxiolytic and calming effect, and has been used to treat ADHD as well.

If you want to try it out, make sure you get Suntheanine. A dose that works for many is twice the theanine than caffeine, but YMMV.

I use L-Theanine and straight caffeine pills (100mg) as my preferred source of caffeine, it works very well. You get the alertness of caffeine without the annoying jittery feeling side effects.

You should mix L-theanine with caffeine to get the best of both worlds. No need to take supplements, just drink the right tea as well, Oolong for one.

http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics

I like the taste of coffee as well but its caffeine is too jaring (compared to tea), so sometimes I drink decaf. Most decaf coffee is kind of meh. A few months ago I found a new one I like better (I think they tout some kind of cold water process for decaffenating). The taste is better but still different from normal coffee.

Try decaf beans, if they're available in your local market (I buy them prepackaged in the supermarket here in the Netherlands). Grind them just before making the coffee and you won't taste the difference with 'real' coffee.

The benefits stated in the study seem to be present for both regular and decaf coffee, so if you like it, maybe seem if decaf suits you better.

How much time are you leaving between when you drink the coffee and go to sleep? If you drink it only before noon, then assuming you sleep somewhere around 10 PM - 2 AM, most of the caffeine should be out of your system.

I think I must be particularly sensitive to caffeine because even if I only have one cup in the morning I notice I still don't sleep as well. It may not be due to the caffeine directly but because of feeling agitated earlier in the day.

do you use a sweetener with your coffee?

Never. Sometimes I drink it with milk though. If I drink it on a full stomach I can manage it better but it still jacks me up too much.

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