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Catching The New Trend: Caffeine Inhalation

This article is more than 8 years old.

A new trends appears to be emerging - at least according to the New York Times. More people are starting to notice caffeine vape pens - essentially devices using the vapour technology from e-cigarettes to deliver caffeine quickly to the bloodstream through inhalation.

The idea is not new. Some e-cigarette manufacturers have been attempting to add caffeine to e-liquids for some time now. However, the efficiency of these products in delivering both a caffeine and nicotine hit leaves something to be desired, according to many users.

This is because the chemistry behind the vapourisation and absorption of caffeine and nicotine is very different, says Elliot Mashford, founder and president of Eagle Energy Vapor, a producer of caffeine vape pens.

“I got very interested as to why combined nicotine and caffeine products didn’t work properly and why such products had bad reputations. It’s more complicated than you think,” Mashford says.  “You can't just add caffeine to nicotine juice. It’s a completely different chemical process in terms of creating the formula and what temperatures you're heating it up to.”

For example, caffeine and guarana need some specific organic compounds to be present in the liquid used to form the vapour in order to activate properly and these are not usually found in typical nicotine e-liquids, he says. Equally the two compounds require different temperatures for activation - caffeine activates at 200 Celsius and nicotine at 400. This means it is impossible to make one device successfully deliver both at the same time, he explains.

“When caffeine is heated to typical e-cigarette temperatures, it’s destroyed instead of allowing it to activate and be absorbed into the lung,” Mashford says. “It needs to be heated at a lower temperature than most nicotine products, which is another reason that the nicotine space has failed to properly create this product.”

However, some doubt was expressed over Eagle Energy’s theories.  E-cigarette research specialist, Doctor Konstantinos Farsalinos noted that he had not studied nicotine and caffeine mixed together and that there was no published science measuring the efficiency of caffeine absorption through inhalation.

Caffeine has low solubility - 16 mg per ml - and decomposes when it comes into contact with a strong base like nicotine. It is also more volatile than nicotine, which means temperature is more likely to have an effect on evaporation rate, he says.

Overall, inhalation is theoretically going to lead to quicker absorption but there would need to be a higher dose as the total amount you would get from vaping would be lower than what you would get from drinking caffeine, Dr Farsalinos adds.

“You get much more caffeine from coffee that you can get from e-cigs,” he says. “You need much higher caffeine levels in order to have an effect.”

Whatever the science behind it, anecdotal evidence, such as the buzz experienced by the NYT journalist when they tried it, has  led to increasing product uptake.

Mashford estimates that company has managed to sell around 60,000 units at $4.50 each, for total sales of around $270,000.

The company is looking to create further business opportunities through expansion. It is currently in the midst of an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign that would enable it to start selling three-packs of disposable caffeine vape pens online. Currently it can only sell 10 packs, which while good for retailers are too costly for individual consumers to buy if they just want to try the product out, Mashford says.

This article forms part one of a two part series. Click here for part two