Is Yerba Mate Tea The Ultimate Coffee Alternative For Acne?

If you’re a coffee fanatic who is nevertheless concerned about side effects, then you’ve probably heard of yerba mate tea.

Yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) is a tea-like beverage traditionally consumed in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Its made from the leaves and twigs of the Ilex plant, and these ingredients are distilled in hot water, though never boiling water, since that can make the tea too bitter.

Yerba mate has an herbal, grassy taste reminiscent of green tea in certain brands, and a green colour. Traditionally, the leaves are dried, shredded, and aged for one year before being sold as yerba mate tea leaves. The South American tradition is to drink the yerba mate tea from a hollow gourd with a metal straw; sharing the straw is a sign of friendship.

For decades, it was confined to South America, but now, yerba mate tea has exploded onto the worldwide market. It’s heavily marketed on university campuses, and advocates point to the Pasteur institute, which claimed back in 1964 that yerba mate contains practically every vitamin needed to sustain life.

We generally support coffee on this website, but sensitive people can explode with pimples just as badly as sugar. Is yerba mate a safe alternative, or should you stick with the tried and true original?

 

The truth about caffeine in yerba mate tea

Here’s how the main story goes. Essentially, yerba mate is said to provide the benefits of caffeine without actually containing caffeine. The tea provides the caffeine buzz, heightened mental performance, and burning desire to work hard, without the jitteriness and pumping heartbeat.

Many life hackers have declared yerba mate to be the next big advancement. Reportedly, you can drink yerba mate and enter a heightened state of being, but keep the option to sleep whenever you want. There’s no traditional coffee trade off.

These miraculous properties are said to be down to mateine, a chemical analog of caffeine with virtually identical psychoactive properties, but no side effects.

Is yerba mate tea a revolutionary drink, allowing you to work like a demon but have the clear skin of a Kitavan islander? 

No, because there’s a small problem – mateine is the exact same thing as caffeine.

Mateine is just a synonym for caffeine. It was derived from the “mate” in the yerba mate name. Analysis of common yerba mate brands reveals a very similar quantity of caffeine to coffee, and that’s why it works as a stimulant.

Adverts boast of it, people on forums recommend it avidly, normal people get misled by it. But the story of the fabled mateine is one of the great health myths of the times.

 

Why yerba mate succeeds

That said, the glowing testimonials of life hackers are very real, and there’s a good explanation –  the presence of theobromine and theophylline.

Those are the stimulants that give very dark chocolate its pep up powers. They’re in the same xanathine family as caffeine, but have subtly different properties. Theobromine, for example, provides a smoother and longer lasting increase in alertness, but also less side effects related to heartbeat and sleep deprivation.

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Depending on the brand, the caffeine to theobromine ratio of yerba mate tea varies from 10:1 to 2:1. It’s very possible that the theobromine counteracts the alterations in neurotransmitters from caffeine, and this study dropped strong hints: “caffeine intake may lead to insomnia whereas theobromine intake seems to favor sleep”.

In fact, some companies have ditched the idea of mateine as a unique stimulant, and are instead using “mateine” for the overall stimulant complex – the trinity of caffeine, theophylline and theobromine. The trinity supposedly provides a “unique energizing awakening”, and given the study above, they may be on to something. Others claim that the theobromine delays caffeine’s absorption, making it gentler.

But none of this changes the fact that mateine isn’t real – it’s not a scientific substance, it’s an everchanging marketing term. Yerba mate does contain caffeine.

 

What does this mean for your skin?

If you’re sensitive to caffeine, then you need to keep yerba mate under tight limits as well.

Perhaps you’re Argentinian or Uruguayan, or maybe you’re a health shop visitor who’s just discovered yerba mate in a cramped aisle. Either way, the dangers are the same: caffeine increases the stress hormone cortisol, possibly up to 52% (study). Spiralling cortisol is why anxiety triggers acne, via digestive problems and delayed wound healing. A cup of coffee per day is no problem, but five cups is entering the red zone.

What’s more, there’s a spanner in the works called CYP1A2, a gene which extends caffeine’s half life in the body to ten hours from 6. This gene is why some acne patients are sensitive to coffee while others are invincible.

Caffeine also has the power to lower vitamin B6 and magnesium levels, and may damage your insulin sensitivity.

If your skin has ever broken out following an all night coffee bender, then yerba mate isn’t the miracle alternative you’ve been waiting for.

But what if you can tolerate it? In that case, yerba mate has several promising powers…

 

The coffee comparison – antioxidants

Coffee isn’t close to the richest individual foods in antioxidants, with dark chocolate and pomegranates racing past. But because of its popularity among yawning morning workers, and strong amounts of lignans, polyphenols and flavonoids, it’s now the number one source of antioxidants in the Western diet.

Yerba mate also contains a fair supply, as this study detected the antioxidant forms rutin, quercetin, kaempferol, chlorogenic acid, and melanoidins. This study found a slightly higher antioxidant count than green tea, which is promising given that green tea is widely hailed for its antioxidant counts. This study called yerba mate a “strong free radical scavenger“, while this one found reduced oxidative stress in the hippocampus of rats.

Yerba mate is at least a good source of antioxidants, which prevent acne by preventing clogged pores and keeping skin cells strong. However, its ORAC antioxidant score is only 1704. That’s very respectable, but medium roast brewed Arabica coffee scores 2780 (per 100 grams), while brewed dark roast Arabica bean coffee scores 2690.

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I haven’t seen any truly stand out results in studies, no specific pimple-slaying antioxidants like resveratrol in red grapes or pterostilbene in blueberries. Yerba mate is strong, but somewhat inferior to coffee as an acne-friendly antioxidant supply.

 

The coffee comparison – inflammation

Instead, the most promising acne arena for yerba mate is easily inflammation. Coffee itself is packed with anti-inflammatory compounds, and yerba mate seems to at least match it:

ONE – this study tested derivates of caffeoylquinic acid, a compound found in yerba mate tea. One cup worth of the compounds were tested, and when exposed to colon cancer cells, they swiftly died. The higher the concentration, the more cancer cells were wiped out. Importantly for us, the yerba mate extract reduced important biomarkers of inflammation.

TWO – some scientists wanted to know why yerba mate constantly appears in traditional medicine for inflammation (study). Hence, they applied an extract to lung cells, and observed significant increases in the anti-inflammatory immune chemical interleukin-10. The cellular architecture of the inflamed lungs also improved. Their conclusion: “use of this plant as a beverage can protect against… inflammatory diseases”. Acne is an inflammatory disease.

THREE – this 2014 study was probably the best I’ve seen for acne, as it tested inflamed skin directly. Mice with swollen patches of skin called oedemas were selected, and applying yerba mate topically reduced the inflammatory swelling by 63%.

Taking yerba mate internally lowered one pro-inflammatory chemical by 43%. There was a reduction in “dermis with mild inflammation”, or skin with mild inflammation.

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FOUR – scientists reviewed multiple studies on yerba mate at once, and noted that “Intervention studies in animals have provided strong evidence of anti-inflammatory effects“. They were waiting patiently for the first double blind studies on humans.

Chronic inflammation is the biggest reason why a pimple swells, reddens and exists at all.

This is the best reason for an acne patient to drink yerba mate, except for addiction or keeping ancient traditions strong.

 

The coffee comparison – vitamins and minerals

Coffee and yerba mate are both claimed to be rich in nutrients, but the amounts are too tiny to affect acne. For example, a cup of coffee contains magnesium, manganese and potassium, but only at 2%, 3%, and 3% of the RDA respectively. Similarly, yerba mate tea contains B-vitamins, vitamin C, manganese, zinc, and potassium. It’s said to contain 7 out of the 9 essential amino acids, but once again, the amounts are too small.

Blocking nutrients may be the more significant phenomenon. Coffee can block iron absorption through the gut by 70%, and vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 by smaller amounts. This probably happens in yerba mate as well, because caffeine is the culprit.

Caffeine is also a potent diuretic, and in response to the increased blood pressure triggered by the dehydration, your kidneys release magnesium. Hence, your overall stores of magnesium drop, and magnesium is a vital acne mineral.

But then there’s weird study on Saudi Arabians. It was weirdly positive, as drinking coffee regularly increased their bloodstream vitamin D, despite coffee containing none.. Whether this occurs in yerba mate is unknown, but the two beverages have similar nutritional profiles, whether it’s the caffeine or the healthy chlorogenic acid.

In impacting your essential acne nutrients, yerba mate is identical to coffee – mostly a non-entity. 

The strategies are exactly the same. Because of the magnesium factor, you need to limit your intake to three cups per day (ignoring sensitivities). Because of the iron and vitamin B6 factor, you should drink your yerba mate between meals.

 

The coffee comparison – PAHs

One of the lesser known villains of coffee is polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS). These are carcinogens which also appear in the top notch acne treatment grapeseed oil, which are formed to varying amounts during coffee’s roasting.

It appears that yerba mate is even worse for PAHs. In many commercial brands, the yerba mate leaves and twigs are dried and smoked using burning wood, for an entire day. This increases PAH levels 5 fold compared to traditional air drying techniques.

PAHs may cause cancer, but importantly for acne, they’re strong villains behind antioxidant depletion and inflammation. Are they a threat? Only if you buy a dodgy brand. The main requirement is to buy hot air dried yerba mate, and avoid smoke dried yerba mate.

Another claim against yerba mate tea is several studies linking it to esophageal and oral cancers, but this is explained by overdoing the temperatures. The phenomenon has been observed with hot beverages in general, whether it’s coffee or other types of tea.

 

The coffee comparison – mycotoxins

What about that more famous coffee villain? It’s mycotoxins, which big time coffee barons constantly try to outsmart. 

These invisible toxins are produced by moulds growing on the coffee bean crop, mostly poorly produced ones. Sometimes the farmers fail to scoop up beans quickly enough when they drop off trees, allowing mouldy ones to roll into healthy ones and spread the infection, or sometimes the old storage barrels are mould dens. Sun-drying is also dramatically worse for the beans then wet-milling, as the beans fester on wooden surfaces for weeks.

As for yerba mate? There’s only a fraction of the data, but a study mentioned here found 2072 strains of aspergillus, the main mycotoxins producing strain. There was aspergillus foetidus, niger, japonicus and carbonarius, but fortunately, only 1% were shown to pump out ochratoxin, the most feared mycotoxin group alongside aflatoxins.

On the other hand, this study found a 29% contamination rate of fumonisin B, a less notorious but still inflammatory mycotoxins. Again, many aspergillus strains were found, but many were inactive. The conclusion was promising: “Although toxigenic species were found in this herb, the incidence was low.”

It’s very likely that yerba mate suffers from the same dodgy production methods outlined above. It’s a more prestigious health product generally, but that only applies to taste – most Western consumers aren’t even aware of mycotoxins, even if it feels different on the health-inclined corners of the internet. The farmers will probably be split between the lazy amateurs and the dedicated craftsmen as usual.

So your task with both PAHs and mycotoxins is simple – buy a reputable brand, preferably one that has a website. You’d be surprised at how many natural health dealers seem like internet ghosts – essential oils are notorious for this.

 

The verdict

Yerba mate is not the saviour of your skin. It isn’t a healthier version of coffee, with all the performance enhancement but none of the side effects. It isn’t even exceptionally nutritious; coffee has more antioxidants.

Nevertheless, if you’re a fan of yerba mate and its rich soil taste, then drinking two cups per day won’t destroy your skin unless you have a genetic sensitivity to caffeine. The rules for acne patients are close to coffee – limit your intake and buy a quality brand.

Overall, yerba mate is far from exceptional, but is a decent beverage for acquiring the antioxidants and anti-inflammatory powers you need. 

NEXT: learn the root causes of acne, clear your skin permanently

 

 

Thanks for reading!