Caffeine strips are a type of caffeine packaging that resembles a regular stick of chewing gum but is thinner. They dissolve quickly in the mouth, according to the producers, allowing for faster caffeine absorption. This claim will be addressed later.
While caffeine strips have been available in the UK for some time, The emphasis is clearly on rapid absorption and little bulk, and it is definitely aimed mostly at the sports market (but study and work get a nod as well). It's not ideal for high-performance sports to have a lot of coffee or energy drink swimming about in your system while you try to push your limits.
Will the strips do what they are claimed to do?
Most likely not. Some medications are provided to be held beneath the tongue and dissolved/adsorb in the mouth. However, this is frequently the case for medications that are quickly eliminated by the liver before they enter the general circulation. Drugs like caffeine, where the majority of the drug reaches the circulation after being absorbed by the gut, demonstrate little, if any, benefit from oral absorption.
The skin of the mouth is less easily penetrated by medications than the lining of the gastrointestinal system, despite the fact that absorption occurs sooner in the mouth and the tissues of the mouth are rich in blood vessels. In addition, because the GI tract has a much larger surface area than the mouth, there is less absorption potential.
The strips will be absorbed faster than caffeine tablets, but only slightly faster than coffee and colas. Surprisingly, while caffeine strips may help you obtain your caffeine faster, they may also cause you to absorb less. When comparing caffeine-containing chewing gum to tablets and colas (not exactly equivalent, but the sole published research is on chewing gum), substantially less caffeine is absorbed. This could be because caffeine-laced saliva is swallowed before it can be absorbed by the mouth, causing the concentration to be smeared out.
Are They Safe?
For healthy adults with a normal metabolism, they should be safe. One caffeine strip at a time is supposed to be consumed. I'll compare the caffeine levels in the strips to the caffeine levels in a range of caffeinated beverages per average serve. Clearly, one strip of gum contains less caffeine than a cup of mediocre tea, let alone a great espresso.
What do we define as excessive?
A normal, healthy person with no cardiac disease or a mutation that impairs the liver's ability to break down caffeine, and who consumes a moderate amount of coffee, tea, or cola on a regular basis, is unlikely to be adversely affected by taking the entire packet of strips. Caffeine ingestions of 100-200 mg are routinely used by athletes as performance enhancers.
However, if you ate the entire package of caffeine strips and followed it up with two 80 mg caffeine-containing energy drinks, you'd be well on your way to showing indications of caffeine intoxication (assuming that the caffeine dose was properly absorbed, which it probably wasn't).
How much caffeine is lethal?
Caffeine poisoning occurs when 1-2 grammes of caffeine are consumed; symptoms include convulsions and severe heart palpitations. To attain these levels, you'd have to eat 5 boxes of strips. Only ingestions of 5-10 grammes of caffeine in one sitting should result in death (this is where you would need to drink 140 cups of espresso, over 100 cans of energy drink or 5 boxes of strips to kill yourself). Even with the use of an energy drink, standard strip use is unlikely to cause actual toxicity in healthy adults.
If you have severe liver illness, a mutation in the enzyme that breaks down caffeine, or are on certain drugs like fluvoxamine, the liver enzyme responsible for caffeine metabolism is diminished or stopped, and toxicity can occur at much lower dosages. He had cirrhosis of the liver when he died after eating 12 caffeine-containing mints (taking around 1 gramme of caffeine, presumably below the deadly dose). Heart disease can also predispose you to toxicity, in Western Australia, a 25-year-old woman with a disease of her heart valves died after consuming a solution containing around 10g/L caffeine.
How much caffeine should people take?
A challenging subject for which there is no clear consensus. Healthy, non-pregnant adults should consume no more than 500 mg of caffeine in a 24-hour period (300 mg per day is considered moderate), and no more than 200 mg in any single dose (many energy drinks' warning labels recommend no more than 200 mg per day, while some caffeine tablets recommend no more than 600 mg per day). Caffeine consumption should be limited to fewer than 200 mg per day for pregnant women.
While the strips are labelled with unambiguous warnings, children (and some adults) are renowned for not reading labels, and the individual wrappings are unlikely to deter them. The strips can be found in newsagents, convenience stores, and other places where kids go to buy candy. If the strips are sold near sweets or traditional chewing gums, there's a good probability that kids will buy them. People selling these products should keep the strips away from common chewing gums and confections, and make sure their employees understand that the product is not for minors.
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