Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition(metasophi.com)
metasophi.com
Self-experiment with L-theanine: effect on sleep and cognition
https://metasophi.com/blog/does-l-theanine-work-for-me/
43 comments
Be careful with large doses of Niacin. It may be bad for the heart.
Source: https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2024/02/19/cleveland-cl...
Source: https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2024/02/19/cleveland-cl...
Good to hear they seem to be working out for you. I tried L-tryptophan a few years ago but discontinued rather quickly as I thought my sleep quality was going down (I think I was waking up during dreams more often). I guess 5-HTP would have been even more powerful.
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.
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.
Are you consuming these things pure or via tea/coffee?
For my biology, L-theanine (200 mg) rounds out caffeine by stamping out the anxiety-inducing effect. By itself it just gives me a headache sometimes.
I don't even notice it without caffeine (coffee), but it has transformed coffee for me from something I had to be super careful with to something that is incredibly enjoyable and productivity-inducing without feeling sick and insane.
Absolutely. This is what I came here to say.
Coffee gives me the anxious jitters. L-theanine turns that into focused alertness. I have reduced my coffee intake overall and supplemented my caffeine intake with a small glass of energy drink each day (not a whole can).
My daily supplements intake includes L-theanine (the brand depicted by the video thumbnail in the linked post), St Johns Wort and an IBS support supplement (NutraLife Gut Relief) that contains 2000mg of glutamine per dose.
All of that really helps with anxiety and depression. If I want extra energy, throw in some L-carnitine.
Coffee gives me the anxious jitters. L-theanine turns that into focused alertness. I have reduced my coffee intake overall and supplemented my caffeine intake with a small glass of energy drink each day (not a whole can).
My daily supplements intake includes L-theanine (the brand depicted by the video thumbnail in the linked post), St Johns Wort and an IBS support supplement (NutraLife Gut Relief) that contains 2000mg of glutamine per dose.
All of that really helps with anxiety and depression. If I want extra energy, throw in some L-carnitine.
Indeed, one of the studies cited supports this view.
I once was sitting at my desk and had this overwhelming calm come over me. I was trying to figure out what I had eaten that morning/afternoon and then realized the 2-3 'Just Chill' sodas in my trash my mom had gotten me contained L-Theanine. Was a pretty blind test but I wasn't able to reproduce it effectively with L-Theanine supplements I found on amazon.
Very interesting: maybe it could have been something else in the sodas? Alternatively, the quality of the amazon supplement might not have been great (unless you tried from multiple sources)
Quality of L-theanine seems to vary wildly across brands. I’ve had one that does nothing, one that gives me consistent headaches, and one that gives me consistent diarrhea.
I would have liked to have seen if there was any difference in the effects over time. I think it is easy to find something that helps with anxiety in the short term, but over enough time habituation, tolerance, and dependence can develop to most substances.
Yes, you are very right: this is something I will definitely add eventually.
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.
I tried an L-theanine supplement for anxiety. It had a notable short-term effect, but when I was off it my anxiety significantly worsened. Got better once I stopped taking it, so I guess it was a dependency kind of thing.
So, I would say that it definitely has an impact. Perhaps it would have worked better with a smaller dose.
So, I would say that it definitely has an impact. Perhaps it would have worked better with a smaller dose.
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/
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.
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.
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.
And matcha tea?
That has a lot more L-theanine, but even then seems very variable so could be the same or way off.
For example, in one study "the final dose of 1 gram of Matcha green tea was taken on the testing day and contained only 12.4 mg of L- theanine." Source: https://www.ffhdj.com/index.php/DietarySupplementsNutraceuti...
Another study: "According to Kaneko et al., the content of l-theanine in matcha tea infusions amounts to 6.1 mg/L [50], while Unno et al. [9] found as much as 44.65 mg/g of that compound in matcha tea samples." Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7796401/
I'm not sure, but I guess one would use around 4 grams of matcha in a cup? So then at the upper bound you would come close to 200mg. But matcha has a lot of caffeine so probably not suitable to improve sleep.
For example, in one study "the final dose of 1 gram of Matcha green tea was taken on the testing day and contained only 12.4 mg of L- theanine." Source: https://www.ffhdj.com/index.php/DietarySupplementsNutraceuti...
Another study: "According to Kaneko et al., the content of l-theanine in matcha tea infusions amounts to 6.1 mg/L [50], while Unno et al. [9] found as much as 44.65 mg/g of that compound in matcha tea samples." Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7796401/
I'm not sure, but I guess one would use around 4 grams of matcha in a cup? So then at the upper bound you would come close to 200mg. But matcha has a lot of caffeine so probably not suitable to improve sleep.
Tried it too a didn’t go well. No immediate effect and then after a couple of days experienced severe emotional fragility. That “about to burst into tears“ type feeling. Quickly dropped that stuff
I've taken L-theanine for anxiety before, and it seems to help. I'm not sure if it's a placebo or not, but either way it seems to help
Same here. I find that I am less likely to wake up in the middle of the night. Based on the post, my guess is that I'm less likely to wake up during REM from anxiety.
I don't really notice a change when I take theanine but the times when I have taken it consistently I notice I stop biting my fingernails.
I just realized this week I haven't been biting my nails and from this popping up thought about it, went and checked, and the new magnesium drops I started taking have theanine.
I just realized this week I haven't been biting my nails and from this popping up thought about it, went and checked, and the new magnesium drops I started taking have theanine.
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.
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.
Curious to try this out now -- have never tested L-tyrosine before. I wonder what other effects it could have.
fitbits and similar are fine for measuring awake vs asleep but really terrible at breaking up the stages
They're not as accurate as polysomnography but there is some correlation which should allow these measurements to serve as a useful proxy over 100-180 days. See this review for example:
"The findings of this systematic literature review indicate that the devices with higher relative agreement and sensitivities to multistate sleep (ie, Fitbit Charge 4 and WHOOP) seem appropriate for deriving suitable estimates of sleep parameters. However, analyses regarding the multistate categorization of sleep indicate that all devices can benefit from further improvement in the assessment of specific sleep stages."
Source: https://mhealth.jmir.org/2024/1/e52192/PDF
"The findings of this systematic literature review indicate that the devices with higher relative agreement and sensitivities to multistate sleep (ie, Fitbit Charge 4 and WHOOP) seem appropriate for deriving suitable estimates of sleep parameters. However, analyses regarding the multistate categorization of sleep indicate that all devices can benefit from further improvement in the assessment of specific sleep stages."
Source: https://mhealth.jmir.org/2024/1/e52192/PDF
I've been curious about this. They all are reporting it, nowadays. I'm assuming they have reason to think they are getting better at it?
I have reason to believe product management wants not to be left behind by the competitors, independent of the quality of their implementation.
metrics sell, even when they're not that accurate, and even when people know that.
Well at the end of the day the underlying metrics are still just heart rate and movement which can only tell you so much.
> This study was not blinded so there could be a placebo effect.
Saved you a click.
Saved you a click.
My view on this is if you don't find any effect or a tiny effect (the case here) that is already useful information. For most supplements, my bet is that you won't even benefit from a placebo effect.
And if you do find an effect, then you should do a more high-effort self-blinded test.
And if you do find an effect, then you should do a more high-effort self-blinded test.
This seems reasonable to me too — first test feasibility, and then if it’s feasible let’s go do a more in depth study. But still, the feasibility result isn’t very interesting to external folks like us, and probably shouldn’t make the news. I think it should _just_ motivate the new study you mention
bold of you to assume I'd ever read an article rather than just skimming the comments
gwern.net has entered the chat
Seems like a nice way to have some weird dreams while probably improving my health (high dose B vitamins seem to do great things for mental disorder and the only apparent downside is colorful piss and possibly turning into a cherry).
For people who don't do vita-drugs, there's always tea, coffee, chocolate, and matcha.