Coffee, tea, or energy drinks: Which should you choose?

The natural world is pretty good at responding to the seasons. Bears hibernate. Trees drop their leaves and conserve resources for spring. Birds migrate toward warmer weather. Even my dogs seem perfectly content to spend a little more time asleep when the days get short.

Humans are a different story.

Daylight dwindles, temperatures drop, and some part of us feels the shift but the demands of modern life don’t exactly follow the seasons. Your alarm still goes off at 6. The kids still need to get to school. The workday doesn’t end when the sun goes down. And right around the time the days get darker, Q4 brings holidays, travel, parties, deadlines, and the annual push to wrap up everything we swore we’d finish this year.

So we do what humans do: We find ways to keep going. And for roughly 90% of American adults, one of those ways is caffeine.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Caffeine is an incredibly useful tool but not all sources are created equal. Dose, the compounds riding along with it, and how you drink your caffeine changes how it feels.

Tea generally delivers a smaller dose of caffeine alongside L-theanine, which can help promote a calmer, more focused experience.