Sencha steaming and polyphenol : caffeine ratio

[astrocy]

Hi fellow tea drinkers,

I've been through many deep steamed bags of sencha (purchased from O-cha, so obviously quality is definitely not a problem) and I have also been through many bags of medium and lightly steamed sencha.

What I've noticed is that I do very well (anxiety wise) on both medium and lightly steamed sencha, but the deep steamed kind causes me to experience noticeably more stress/tension/anxiety.

I'm thinking this may well be related to the polyphenol (i.e. EGCG) to caffeine ratio. I'm absolutely convinced it has nothing to do with the theanine content, since there's very little of same in sencha due to how it is grown in full sun. I've scoured the web in an attempt to find out information about this, but to no avail.

What do you guys know about this ?

[Frisbeehead]

I'm not sure about the levels in different senchas, but do you drink matcha often? What is your reaction to that like?

[astrocy]

I'm not sure about the levels in different senchas, but do you drink matcha often? What is your reaction to that like?

I do well on matcha - but then there's more polyphenols on matcha than sencha. Consumer labs recently performed an analysis on a few matcha products - that is where I've seen there's generally more EGCG in matcha than sencha - it also makes sense since you get to drink the whole leaf.