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Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

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Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#31

Post by aitchnyu »

sheefrex wrote: post #7
wslh wrote: post #3

It is great the author highlights that green tea already includes L-theanine where it is common to read about buying supplements.

Indeed, but you would really need to drink a lot of green tea to get the same amount of L-theanine you would in a supplement: "2.5 litres of brewed green tea would be needed to get 200mg of L-theanine". Also a question of how much dose you want of course...

Will we discover one day that we shouldnt have consumed the equivalent of jugs of green tea in a pill? I'm having trouble braining the internet saying short term L Theanine consumption "generally recognized as safe" but green tea (with all its chemicals) and supplements have been harmful.

https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/adverse-effects-of-gree...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29078257/

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#32

Post by cfcf14 »

L-theanine (200mg) with around 100-150mg of caffeine has an extremely noticeable, positive effect on my ability to focus, feeling of "well-situatedness", and overall calmness. L-theanine by itself doesn't seem to do much. Caffeine on its own wakes me but makes me feel jittery and anxious, so it's definitely an interaction effect. Taurine has a much smaller effect on calmness, sans interactions - often indistinguishable from any other mild focus exercise like box breathing or stretching.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#33

Post by sheefrex »

aitchnyu wrote: post #31
sheefrex wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but you would really need to drink a lot of green tea to get the same amount of L-theanine you would in a supplement: "2.5 litres of brewed green tea would be needed to get 200mg of L-theanine". Also a question of how much dose you want of course...

Will we discover one day that we shouldnt have consumed the equivalent of jugs of green tea in a pill? I'm having trouble braining the internet saying short term L Theanine consumption "generally recognized as safe" but green tea (with all its chemicals) and supplements have been harmful. https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/adverse-effects-of-gree... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29078257/

This is a good and fair question (although noting that the doses in the second study seem extremely large compared to supplement values). I think the solution is to test, test, and test on as many things as possible which is not being done at the moment. Most supplements will probably not have any notable effect, like L-theanine in my case, so a precautionary principle would lead one to discontinue use.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#34

Post by sheefrex »

cfcf14 wrote: post #32

L-theanine (200mg) with around 100-150mg of caffeine has an extremely noticeable, positive effect on my ability to focus, feeling of "well-situatedness", and overall calmness. L-theanine by itself doesn't seem to do much. Caffeine on its own wakes me but makes me feel jittery and anxious, so it's definitely an interaction effect. Taurine has a much smaller effect on calmness, sans interactions - often indistinguishab…

Quite good support for the caffeine/theanine interaction in the literature -- I was mainly trying to see if it could improve sleep which is why I didn't take it with caffeine. Would be interesting to do some blinded cognitive test at some point though to get some estimate on how much congitive performance is increased. I need to think about ways to measure that, aside from flashcards. I actually have the website connected to a chess API so that might be a nice test.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#35

Post by coreyh14444 »

Kindof softof related - I also "discovered" L-tyrosine effectively cured my Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). The tl;dr version of that story is I used to take electrolytes for it and switched from the Heed brand regular version to the "extreme" version which didn't do anything for RLS, compared the ingredients and L-Tyrosine was the key. For going on 15 years now I take it daily before bedtime and it is effective 98% of the time. Bottom line is these amino acids deserve more attention and research.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#36

Post by sheefrex »

coreyh14444 wrote: post #35

Kindof softof related - I also "discovered" L-tyrosine effectively cured my Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). The tl;dr version of that story is I used to take electrolytes for it and switched from the Heed brand regular version to the "extreme" version which didn't do anything for RLS, compared the ingredients and L-Tyrosine was the key. For going on 15 years now I take it daily before bedtime and it is effective 98% of…

Very interesting -- I often move my legs when seated and this annoys people haha

Curious to try this out now -- have never tested L-tyrosine before. I wonder what other effects it could have.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#37

Post by hombre_fatal »

aitchnyu wrote: post #31
sheefrex wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but you would really need to drink a lot of green tea to get the same amount of L-theanine you would in a supplement: "2.5 litres of brewed green tea would be needed to get 200mg of L-theanine". Also a question of how much dose you want of course...

Will we discover one day that we shouldnt have consumed the equivalent of jugs of green tea in a pill? I'm having trouble braining the internet saying short term L Theanine consumption "generally recognized as safe" but green tea (with all its chemicals) and supplements have been harmful. https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/adverse-effects-of-gree... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29078257/

High doses of green tea extract is not the same as isolated L-theanine. You'd have to show research on the latter here.

The writing in that first paper is so poor that it's hard to take it too seriously, but it's a narrative review, not a study. The second link is a study on a few rats.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#39

Post by binary132 »

Anecdotally, my theanine use correlated strongly with my development of terrible chronic migraines which lasted years. But I was also experiencing severe stress during that time, so it could just be that. However, when I stopped taking L-theanine, my headaches did lessen in severity and frequency, so there may be something there and I’ve heard others mention headache in relation to it.

Re: Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition

#40

Post by sheefrex »

binary132 wrote: post #39

Anecdotally, my theanine use correlated strongly with my development of terrible chronic migraines which lasted years. But I was also experiencing severe stress during that time, so it could just be that. However, when I stopped taking L-theanine, my headaches did lessen in severity and frequency, so there may be something there and I’ve heard others mention headache in relation to it.

Yes, apparently headaches are listed as one of the possible side-effects
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