Dear Friends,
Have you noticed the rising popularity of L-theanine as a supplement?
Frankly, I didn’t see it coming, but it makes sense because the calming properties of L-theanine can be used during the day or at night.
During waking hours, it can help you feel more relaxed allowing you to focus on your work or daily tasks, and it can also be taken at night to help you fall asleep faster and get a more restful night’s sleep.
This usage flexibility makes L-theanine especially appealing – it’s like those pants or maybe some other clothing item you can wear in many different situations, the versatility makes it very valuable to you.
After I describe L-theanine’s key properties and benefits, I’ll tell you how we like to use L-theanine in a supplement at NatureCity.
So what is L-theanine?
L-theanine is an amino acid found in small amounts in dietary items like mushrooms and tea leaves, with the greatest concentration found in green tea.
It helps give green tea its unique flavor, and helps take the edge off the caffeine, and reduce some of the effects of the caffeine crash that comes with ingesting a stimulant.
L-theanine is an amino acid, but for context, it’s not an essential amino acid, meaning your body doesn’t depend on it – you could live your entire life without it.
L-theanine’s value is how it can support the calming systems in the brain so we can function and sleep better – especially in the busy and stressful modern-day world.
How does it work?
The source of L-theanine’s benefits stems from its ability to stimulate the production of alpha wave activity in the brain.
Alpha waves help promote feelings of relaxation and help calm us down when we’re feeling stressed or anxious about something we’re doing.
L-theanine can do this because it’s able to cross the protective blood-brain barrier. The brain views it as a friendly substance and lets it in.
Once in the brain, L-theanine plays a role in the formation of a neurotransmitter called GABA.
You may know GABA is sometimes called the “calming neurotransmitter” because it works directly to promote the relaxing alpha waves in the brain that we just covered.
In addition, it’s believed that L-theanine helps support the release of dopamine in the brain.
Dopamine is one of the “feel good” hormones in our bodies and can help support mental alertness.
The bottom line is the activity of L-theanine can help us feel more relaxed without causing unwanted drowsiness.
Which is Best for Supplements?
I recommend the Suntheanine brand of L-theanine, which comes from Japan.
Suntheanine is made using a patented fermentation process that mimics the natural process green tea leaves use to produce L-theanine.
This fermentation process results in a highly pure and potent L-theanine ingredient.
Not only is Suntheanine the most studied form of L-theanine available, with hundreds of studies done over three decades, it’s one of the most studied supplement ingredients.
These studies demonstrate the potential benefits you may experience from supplementing with L-theanine, and its safety too. Suntheanine has extensive toxicity and safety data, which indicate it’s very well tolerated when used as directed.
Suntheanine will cost a few more dollars than some other generic brands of L-theanine, but I think you’re likely to find it’s worth the extra investment.
I know of a supplement company that sold Suntheanine for many years, and their new owners thought they could make more money by switching to a cheaper generic, and it didn’t work out – they lost a lot of customers and sales after the switch.
I can still picture my great grandfather telling me as a kid “you get what you pay for”.
What Are The Benefits?
The Suntheanine research helps us frame what benefits you may experience with L-theanine, and frankly, what it’s NOT likely to do – despite what you may have heard in social media.
I’ll also add that this research indicates the best results with Suntheanine come from using a 200mg serving size.
Yes, there are some studies indicating 100mg can be helpful, but in my opinion the best studies with L-theanine with the most desirable and consistent outcomes used 200mg of Suntheanine.
Let’s first review how Suntheanine can help when taken during the day.
The research shows that within 30 to 60 minutes of taking Suntheanine, you can start to feel more relaxed and less stressed by things happening around you.
Importantly, this occurs without making you drowsy – most folks feel both more relaxed and alert.
While it’s nice to feel less stressed and more relaxed, the research with Suntheanine shows it can help enhance cognitive performance during the day by improving focus, attention, and accuracy of work.
This is very valuable in a world where we’re surrounded by distractions and are frequently interrupted.
Suntheanine can help you maintain attention on tasks at hand, improve reaction time and working memory, and reduce errors.
A technical term for this in research is called executive function – which refers to your ability to control and coordinate your cognitive abilities and behaviors.
Suntheanine has been found to promote better executive function in healthy adults. Note, these effects are short term and typically last a few hours.
L-theanine May Help You During Exercise, Too.
Some years ago the makers of Suntheanine did an experiment to see if it could help golfers.
An important part of golf is staying relaxed, focused and being able to concentrate – and in this test, on average, taking Suntheanine resulted in better golf performance.
Now, realistically I don’t think there’s any supplement that can improve my golf game, but that may be more of a personal problem.
Related to this, some folks are finding L-theanine is helpful when working out, to help them “stay in the zone” and focused on their exercise.
This is important to get the most from exercise, but staying focused and not having your mind wander is likely to cut down on injury risk from bad technique.
What Are The Nighttime Benefits of Suntheanine?
Research shows that taking 200mg of L-theanine an hour or so before bedtime can help you get to sleep sooner.
It works by the same principle that results in daytime benefits – L-theanine helps your brain relax so you can fall asleep.
So if you’re someone who struggles to fall asleep at night, often it’s because your mind is still engaged in what you were doing.
Taking Suntheanine helps promote those relaxing alpha waves in the brain so you can unwind faster, and research studies have found this allows you to reduce what’s called sleep latency, or the time it takes to fall asleep once you turn off the lights and your head hits the pillow.
That alone is valuable, but taking 200mg of Suntheanine in the evening also has been shown to help reduce sleep disturbances during the night.
These sleep disturbances often cause us to wake during the night and sometimes it’s not easy to fall back asleep.
Research shows that Suntheanine may reduce sleep disturbances at night, to encourage a more restful sleep.
How We Use Suntheanine.
We combine Suntheanine with two other ingredients as part of a nighttime sleep aid, however none of the ingredients will make you drowsy, and all have research showing daytime benefits too.
So you could use this product, which is called TrueZs at night, or during the day if you prefer. You have that flexibility.
The TrueZs formula begins with 200mg of Suntheanine to help you fall asleep faster, and this is likely to be the first benefit you experience from this formula at night (results are often seen in the first week).
In addition to Suntheanine, we include the high potency Shoden ashwagandha extract, which offers great sleep benefits that build over a period of weeks.
Shoden can help increase the amount of sleep time you get at night, and importantly, can increase the amount of restorative sleep.
This is the rejuvenating sleep that helps your body recover, and helps you wake up feeling refreshed without drowsiness.
Last, TrueZs also includes saffron from the Affron brand. This saffron extract helps support your body’s natural melatonin production.
Unlike melatonin supplements it can improve sleep quality and mood upon awakening, without morning grogginess often associated with synthetic melatonin.
As mentioned, although it was designed for sleep support, TrueZs can be used during the day for stress support, help with cognitive performance or to promote better moods.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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