Find Your Focus: Yerba Mate and Temperature Minimum
Yerba Mate: A Stimulating Coffee Alternative
Yerba Mate is a South American tea that is a great alternative to coffee. If you are looking for a less anxiety-producing form of caffeination it’s an excellent option. Plus research has shown that it has metabolic benefits related to weight loss and fat oxidation. Here’s a great study from 2017 that looks at a few of these effects of Yerba Mate consumption.
A trend towards increased satiety, reduced hunger, and improved mood state has also been found using visual analogue scale in human participants who ingested Yerba Mate combined with other fat-loss ingredients [15,16]. The reported psychomotor effects include improved total mood disturbance score [15], increased focus, alertness and energy, and decreased fatigue in habitual caffeine consumers [16]. Modifying behavioral factors of mood state and appetite control is considered essential for effective weight-loss lifestyle interventions.
Similarly, combining Yerba Mate use with exercise is suggested to promote even greater fat loss. Here’s an excerpt from the study below.
Along with the nutritional metabolic weight and fat-loss benefits, exercise is known to stimulate fat metabolism, and reverse associated metabolic health risks. YM effects on thermogenesis has been suggested to promote fat-loss by influencing indirect calorimetry measures such as energy expenditure (EE), fatty acid oxidation (FAO), and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) in resting healthy obese participants [21]
I use this brand of mate and have heard great things about this brand.
Temperature Minimum and Optimal Alertness
The importance of tracking and using your nightly temperature minimum (TM) was introduced to me on the Andrew Huberman podcast. The idea is relatively simple. We each operate on a 24-hour cycle daily. Each day our bodies reach a minimum temperature around 2 hours before we wake up in the morning. The time your body reaches that TM serves as an important anchor. If you keep track of the time you wake up you can subtract two hours and find your relative TM. We typically are in the best-focused brain state 4-6 hours after our TM.
So if you wake up at 7 AM
Your TM is around 5 AM
Making your ideal focus time between 9-11 AM.
I’ve been using this daily to schedule my most important work during this window with positive results. For more information on circadian rhythm and body temperature, you can access the in-depth research below.
Using both of these strategies can help you be calm, alert, and find your focus daily.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579675
