Coffee started as a utilitarian solution for me, a blunt tool used to jumpstart my mornings and to push me through late nights completing my PhD thesis. I was in it for the caffeine. Sometimes I even resorted to drinking hours-old coffee reheated in a microwave.
But my relationship with coffee quickly began to sour. I, like many of us, have a low caffeine tolerance - more than a cup or two and I got anxious and I lost my ability to concentrate. A good night's sleep became a rarity - I'd have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.
My reaction to coffee is very common: caffeine magnifies feelings of stress and puts the body into a state that looks a lot like fight-or-flight. While some people may want their coffee to “punch them in the face,” the majority of us aren’t so masochistic.
Nearly half of caffeine drinkers have attempted to quit or decrease their caffeine consumption - it's a difficult thing to do. I tried and failed more than once.
So when I had the opportunity to use my PhD in Bio-Engineering to perfect an alternative to caffeine, I jumped at it. I wanted to find a solution that didn’t mean giving up the ritual or the taste of coffee, but would fix the negative side effects of caffeine.
Enter Px, short for paraxanthine. It's a naturally occurring metabolite of caffeine (think of it as caffeine’s kinder cousin) that increases alertness, reduces fatigue, and decreases drowsiness. Just like caffeine, Px wakes you up and increases energy.
But unlike caffeine, Px won’t leave you feeling jittery, wired, or over-caffeinated. Px is also cleared from your body faster than caffeine, so you can drink Px coffee later in the day without worrying about it affecting your sleep at night.
For our first product - ground, high-quality Colombian coffee - we decaffeinated the beans to remove the caffeine, and infused Px. The result is so good that the Specialty Coffee Association selected our coffee as the “Best New Product” in 2023.
And we're just getting started - we have grand ambitions for Px coffee and the positive influence it can have. Ready-to-drink Px coffee, K-Cups, and more. And it all starts with one cup, one person at a time. So here's to better coffee and better health.
