L-Theanine comes into focus at the LA Times

I take L-Theanine along with a handful of other amino acids—it is also an amino acid. Besides helping my poor cognitively impaired brain focus a bit, it also relaxes me. I take my final dose at bedtime. A lot of this article I’m quoting from is crap. I’m excerpting a bit about some studies because studies on supplements are rare and hard to find.

One thing they say is L-Theanine is better with caffeine (it is derived from tea after all) This may be true for some people but for most of us who have OD’d on caffeine and use it as a daily fix it ceases to be true. Addiction is generally simply not a good thing. And for those of us who are sensitive to caffeine it’s just plain dangerous. Lots of people who drink caffeine are not aware of how profoundly destabilizing it can be.

And many of those people are taking psych meds with the hope that they will stabilize while ingesting at the same time a very destabilizing substance—caffeine. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Here is the little excerpt on L-Theanine from the LA Times:

The study, published last year in the journal Brain Topography, showed L-theanine enhanced the processes responsible for sustaining attention, says John J. Foxe, a neuroscientist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in New York who conducted the study.

“In all the studies, theanine had an effect on the alpha rhythm and a small but measurable effect on people’s performance,” says Foxe, who receives some funding for the L-theanine studies from Unilever, which makes Lipton tea.

* Another study examined the effects of as little as 50 milligrams of L-theanine — what researchers called a more realistic dietary dose — in 16 healthy people.

The participants underwent EEG while relaxing with their eyes closed. They showed increased alpha-wave activity indicating “a relaxed but alert mental state” compared with 19 other participants who did not receive L-theanine. The study, also funded with a grant from Unilever, was published last year in the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

* L-theanine may also protect the brain from some types of damage and help people who already have cognitive dysfunction.