Mate’s role in improving cognitive function
If you haven’t tried it, the best way to describe the taste is grassy, similar to green tea. If you weren’t raised on it, you might find it an acquired taste. But even if you don’t initially love the taste, you might want to drink it anyway. It’s gaining in popularity because of its many health benefits and how it makes people feel.
The obvious and immediate benefits of yerba mate are increased energy and enhanced mental clarity, alertness, focus, and concentration. Some of its other health benefits are less widely known, at least to those of us not living in a mate-drinking part of the world.
YERBA MATE PROVIDES A SMOOTH INCREASE IN ENERGY
Yerba mate is well known for providing an energy boost that’s described as gentle, clean, and calm. Compared to the other most commonly used stimulants in the world — coffee, tea, kola nut, cocoa, and guarana — yerba mate reportedly delivers the most balanced energy boost.
Mate drinkers experience a state of alert wakefulness similar to that of coffee, but without coffee’s side effects. It rarely interferes with sleep and doesn’t cause caffeine jitters.
It’s purported to be useful for people suffering from mental or physical fatigue, or from chronic fatigue syndrome. It contains approximately 40 mg of caffeine per 8-ounce cup, which is considered comparatively low and is somewhat less than brewed black tea.
" Yerba mate offers the “strength of coffee, the health benefits of tea, and the euphoria of chocolate.”
While the caffeine-like effect of yerba mate may feel different than that of coffee, a unique compound has never been discovered. One theory is that mateine is just caffeine bound to a tannin or phenol in the raw leaf.
YERBA MATE BOOSTS MENTAL FUNCTIONS OF ALL KINDS
Everyone wants to be as smart, productive, focused, and creative as possible, and yerba mate may help. Yerba mate contains a moderate amount of caffeine, the most widely used psychoactive drugin the world. The brain-enhancing benefits of caffeine are commonly known. Caffeine enhances memory, mood, and alertness. It makes you more motivated and productive by stimulating production of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
But besides caffeine, yerba mate contains two related compounds, theobromine and theophylline. These three alkaloids work together to provide unique, mild stimulant effects, as they also do in coffee, chocolate, and tea.
Yerba mate has found a niche following among brain hackers seeking to optimize mental performance. Bestselling author Tim Ferriss is among the world’s most famous biohackers. He’s experimented extensively with brain-boosting substances of all kinds, including smart drugs.
Ferriss has gone on record stating that his all-time favorite brain-enhancing substance is yerba mate. He prefers it over coffee since he experiences no crash afterwards and finds it non-addictive. And unlike smart drugs, it has no “payback time.”
Last but not at all least, there is very early and emerging science around Mate’s ability to protect the brain against Parkinson’s disease. Surely there will be much more to come on this subject in the coming years, but the link below is an interesting summary of current understanding into this: