Are caffeine pouches safe?
"Safe" is a big word and this page is careful with it. What is known about caffeine at these doses is solid and comes from the regulators. What is known about the pouch itself, held against your gum, is close to nothing, because nobody has studied it. This page keeps the two apart, says who should not use a pouch at all, and says what to do if one disagrees with you.
PAX is caffeine. There is no nicotine in it and there never will be. We make PAX, and we would rather tell you what is not known than pretend it is.
Are caffeine pouches safe to use?
For a healthy adult who stays within 400mg of caffeine a day, the caffeine in a pouch is at doses the regulators call safe. The pouch format itself has never been studied, and we say so.
Two regulators and New Zealand's own health advice set the numbers, and they agree. FSANZ, which writes the food rules for New Zealand and Australia, says a safe habitual daily caffeine intake for healthy adults is 400mg a day. The European Food Safety Authority says single doses up to 200mg and daily intakes up to 400mg do not raise safety concerns for healthy adults. New Zealand's own health advice is no more than 400mg a day from all food and drink. A PAX pouch is 100mg. The tin says no more than four a day. That is the whole basis for the word "safe", and it is about the caffeine, not the pouch.
What has not been studied is the pouch: what sitting against your gum does over months, and what long-term use of any pouch does. There is no research on it, for any brand. Our caffeine pouches: myths and facts page covers what is known about the format and what is not, in full.
The "safe" answer also assumes you are not one of the people the tin excludes. That list is further down, and it is not small print.
Are caffeine pouches bad for you?
Too much caffeine is bad for anyone, in any form, and a pouch makes it easy to lose count. That is the honest risk, and it has nothing to do with the format.
FSANZ puts a single-dose caution at about 200mg. One pouch is half of that. Two at once is right on it, which is why the tin says one pouch per serving. The daily ceiling is 400mg from everything, so four pouches plus a flat white is over the line. Too much caffeine can cause an accelerated heart rate, nervousness, irritability and trouble sleeping. The way to avoid it is to count: a pouch is 100mg, an instant coffee about 80mg, a 250ml energy drink up to 80mg. How to count it is on our how to use a caffeine pouch page.
The one thing a pouch does that a drink does not is sit against your gum. We keep ours in for 20 to 30 minutes and take them out when the flavour goes. A mild tingle when you first put one in is normal; that is the cooling agent in the flavour, and it passes. A proper burn or sting that does not settle is different. A small number of people react to flavourings, in a pouch or in anything else, and every PAX tin names its flavour ingredients. If it happens, take the pouch out. If it keeps happening, stop using them and talk to a dentist or your doctor.
What are the side effects of caffeine pouches?
The same as caffeine's, because that is what is in it. With too much: an accelerated heart rate, nervousness, irritability and trouble sleeping. With regular use: dependence. For some people: a sting where the pouch sits.
Sleep is the one people underestimate. Caffeine's half life sits somewhere between roughly three and ten hours, and research has found that 400mg of caffeine taken six hours before bed still disrupts sleep. The pouch is out of your mouth in half an hour; the caffeine is not out of you for hours. If you are sensitive, work it backwards from when you want to be asleep.
Dependence is real and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Research has found that people who stop after regular daily use as low as 100mg get symptoms, and that is one PAX pouch. Headache is the best documented and turns up in about half of cases. This is true of coffee, tea, energy drinks and cola in exactly the same way.
Long term, nobody has studied what any pouch does to a mouth, and nobody has studied caffeine pouches at all. The category is a few years old. We will keep saying that rather than pretend otherwise.
Are caffeine pouches bad for your gums or teeth?
Nobody knows about gums, because nobody has studied it. On teeth there is no study either. What we can say is that PAX has no sugar, and the staining people get from coffee comes from coffee's pigments, not from caffeine.
We looked properly. There is no published research anywhere on what caffeine pouches do to oral tissue or to teeth. What has been studied is nicotine pouches and snus, which contain things a caffeine pouch does not, so the findings cannot be read straight across. With that limit stated, the pouch researchers describe changes at the spot where the pouch sits, and they put the cause down as both chemical and mechanical. The mechanical half, pressure in one place for a long time, does not need nicotine to be present.
So: move it around rather than parking every pouch in the same spot, and if the place where it sits starts to look or feel different, stop and see a dentist. The full answer, including our own experience and a statistic you may see quoted online that we could not trace, is on the myths and facts page.
Are caffeine pouches addictive?
Caffeine can cause dependence, and a pouch is caffeine. Regular daily use as low as 100mg, one pouch, is enough that stopping brings symptoms for some people, headache most often. It is not something a pouch does that a flat white does not. But if you are starting from no caffeine at all, you are starting a caffeine habit, and it is fair that you know that going in.
A caffeine pouch is not a way off anything else, either. It has nothing to do with nicotine, in the tin or in what it is for. If you are wondering how the two compare, that is on our caffeine pouches vs nicotine pouches page.
Who should not use a caffeine pouch?
Anyone under 18. Anyone pregnant or breastfeeding. Anyone sensitive to caffeine. And anyone with a medical condition who has not asked their doctor first.
Under 18 is not a marketing line. A Danish government risk assessment of a 100mg caffeine pouch put a 13-year-old's daily caffeine limit at 170mg. One pouch is more than half of that. PAX is for adults 18 and over, full stop.
New Zealand's health advice for pregnancy and breastfeeding is to keep caffeine under 200mg a day. PAX's label says not at all, and we hold to the label.
Sensitive to caffeine means what it says. If a strong coffee already makes you wired, this is not for you. If you have any medical condition, talk to your doctor before using it.
One pouch per serving. No more than four a day, and only if you are not getting caffeine from anywhere else. PAX contains caffeine, and too much caffeine can cause an accelerated heart rate, nervousness, irritability and trouble sleeping.
Questions?
Email hello@paxenergy.co.nz or call 027 777 2899. If something on this page is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
