L-Theanine

What is L-Theanine?

L-Theanine is a natural amino acid found mainly in the leaves of green tea. It is what gives tea its calming effect, despite the relatively high caffeine content in tea. It was first extracted in 1949 by the Japanese, and it’s been used as a supplement in many parts of the world since then.
Over the past few years, L-Theanine has been increasing in popularity at a rapid pace. Part of the reason is that there have been a lot of legitimate scientific studies proving the benefits of L-Theanine across a wide range of different health issues. Another key reason, which many people are unaware of, is that the production of premium quality of L-Theanine has improved dramatically. Using a pure and extremely high quality source of L-Theanine is essential to experiencing the benefits and avoiding any risks.
High quality L-Theanine has been also growing in popularity due largely to word of mouth from satisfied users who share their experiences, rather than from marketing hype. It’s a wonderful and safe supplement, and it’s one of our absolute favorites.

What is L-Theanine used for?

L-Theanine is used for a variety of conditions. It is commonly used as a fast-acting supplement for relaxation, promoting calmness and reducing anxiety, improving mood, and for improving mental focus. It’s unique in that it provides quick anxiety relief without causing drowsiness, so it can be used during the day. And even though it helps with focus and is “non drowsy”, it has helped many people sleep quickly and deeply when taken at night. This could be largely due to the fact that it increases alpha brain waves and promotes enough anxiety relief and feelings of calmness to induce peaceful sleep quickly. So it’s also used as a powerful sleep aid.
There are ongoing peer-reviewed scientific studies going on all the time with L-Theanine. Some of these, as well as many anecdotal reports, are looking very promising with regards to L-Theanine helping to lower the cravings for many addictions (one example is with nicotine). Many say that L-Theanine helps dramatically with their social anxiety, general anxiety, panic attacks, bipolar (manic depression), and ADHD. Like with all supplements, L-Theanine works differently on different people, but there is a growing consensus that it’s an outstanding supplement to try for any one of these issues listed. Many people also have great success with using L-Theanine to prevent hangovers, or lessen their effects the next day.
It’s important to note that there are possible legal and potentially safety issues when trying to market a supplement above and beyond what is listed in our official NPN license from Health Canada. We are not making official “claims” here, but rather discussing the usage trends and research being done about L-Theanine. To see our complete official claims for use and safety concerns, we encourage you to check out our official NPN.

How to determine the best quality of L-Theanine?

The quality of L-Theanine you buy is incredibly important. And there are a few things you need to take into consideration when evaluating the quality of a particular L-Theanine brand. First off, the “Theanine” molecule comes in both the “L” form, and the “D” form – think back to high school chemistry. The “L” form is much more effective, and there is strong evidence that the “D” form can be harmful. So to start with, you need to make sure your Theanine supplement truly contains at least over 98% of the “L” isomer. Also, “making sure” is about truly looking into the brand and making sure they are doing the lab testing they promise to be doing. It’s very easy for even well-intentioned brands to get fooled by low quality Theanine because it’s expensive to test, and the brands themselves need to get the ingredient from a supplier so they likely won’t even know if they have a low quality supplement. Please do your homework and make sure a brand is giving you the best L-Theanine possible.
The quality of the processing procedure is paramount. There are many products labled as “L” Theanine, even though the ratio of “L” to “D” isomers is 1:1, ie. a 50/50 split. This is horrendous. We won’t comment specifically on other brands, but the L-Theanine we use, which we call PureTheanine™ is well over 98% pure in the “L” form, and it’s lab tested by 3rd party scientists to ensure this.
It’s also essential to make sure that your L-Theanine has miniscule amounts of trace heavy metals. This is only possible to do by 3rd party lab testing. Getting a fresh batch which hasn’t been adulterated or sitting for a long time is key too. We monitor and test our L-Theanine supply at the source, and make absolutely sure we are getting the best, the freshest, and the purest L-Theanine possible. Quality makes a huge difference on both safety and efficacy, and we go the extra mile to ensure we have the best.
Those are the basics for what to look at when considering a premium source of L-Theanine. Then there are intangibles. Some brands of L-Theanine seem to work better than others. Again, we won’t comment on other brands or why we think this may be true, but we are sticklers with the quality from our L-Theanine source, and we’ve made thousands of samples to prove to people that our quality is top notch, and we challenge anyone to try it personally, and/or test it in a 3rd party lab, and see if they can find something as good or better. We’re extremely confident in our PureTheanine™ product and we believe you will love it as well.

Is L-Theanine for women, men, or both?

L-Theanine is perfect for both men and women equally. It works on the GABA receptors (the body’s main inhibitory neurotransmitter), which is essentially equally prevalent in both men and women. With many supplements, it’s important to know which hormones they affect and how this applies to men or women taking the same supplement. But L-Theanine doesn’t seem to work on the endocrine system, so this question is not something to concern ourselves with regarding the different effects L-Theanine has on men vs women. Again, it works great on both.

Is L-Theanine safe?

In a word, YES. We do always like to err on the side of caution when answering this safety question however.
Fortunately, the safety profile of L-Theanine looks quite impressive. To start with, it is found in nature, which doesn’t mean that it’s definitely safe, but it’s a good sign. It was first extracted in 1949, meaning that we’ve had the better part of a century to analyze the short and long term effects of the supplement. It has been used throughout the world as an additive in food, and also as a supplement people buy as a single ingredient, or in a combination formula.
We have been unable to find any cases where someone has overdosed on L-Theanine. It is extremely non-toxic and it can be handled by the body in very large doses. Many people have taken 10’s of times the recommended dose of L-Theanine and experienced no noticeable problems. (This does not mean we recommend doing this). The median toxic dose appears to be about 5 grams of L-Theanine per kilogram of body weight – meaning a 100 kg adult would need to ingest 500 grams of L-Theanine to reach that level.
With that said however, please use common sense and don’t treat yourself as a voluntary human guinea pig.

L-Theanine dosage:

Safe and therapeutic dosages for L-Theanine seem to vary, depending on where you read them. Some people find as little as 50 mg to be a therapeutic dosage for them. Many people take between 100-400 mg per day. And there are people (anecdotally) who claim to take more than that and swear by that dosage.
Many scientific studies on L-Theanine seem to be using dosages of between 50 mg and 200 mg (administered up to 2-3 times per day maximum).
Health Canada allows for the upper limit daily recommended dosage to be 250 mg per day. This is based on their assessment of what has been proven both safe and effective according to the scientific studies and research they have on file.

Scientific Evidence for L-Theanine:

Here are links to some respected peer-reviewed scientific studies showing the effectiveness of L-Theanine being used for various purposes.

L-Theanine for helping with relaxation, anxiety, and improving mood
L-Theanine for helping with sleep
L-Theanine + Caffeine for focus
L-Theanine to curb addiction (Nicotine and potentially others)
L-Theanine on increasing the effectiveness of cancer drugs

Questions about L-Theanine long term use:

There are no known risks or adverse effects with long term use with L-Theanine.
That said, the effects of long term daily use of L-Theanine haven’t really been properly studied either. So it’s always wise to be cautious.
L-Theanine is not physically addictive, and it appears to not give unpleasant withdrawal symptoms to anyone discontinuing supplementing with L-Theanine.
Some people say they seem to build up a tolerance to L-Theanine, meaning that the dosages they took when they started supplementation don’t seem to be working quite as well later on. This is typical with almost any supplement.

Interesting additional facts about L-Theanine:

Even though L-Theanine was first isolated all the way back in 1949, it has never been more popular than it is today. The demand for L-Theanine is growing steadily, and the trends appear to be organic, meaning that it didn’t spike in popularity from some major endorsement from a celebrity doctor, only to fall in popularity the following year. The steady rise in the interest of L-Theanine appears to be genuine and not based from marketing hype.
One reason that L-Theanine seems to be gaining so much popularity in recent years is that the quality is getting better. In the early part of the 21st century, a lot of the L-Theanine on the market was low quality “racemic”, meaning that it was a lousy 50-50 blend of L and D Theanine. The quality of the best L-Theanine has improved dramatically, and the positive effects have gone up in lock step.
More and more therapeutic uses for L-Theanine are being scientifically studied and introduced all the time. Not only is L-Theanine known for being a great calming agent with anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) properties, but it’s also being used as a sleep aid, and even as a supplement to help people focus. It’s also being studied, and used by some, for helping to improve the efficacy of certain cancer medications, and to help reduce food, drug, and nicotine cravings. Look for more studies to come out in the next few years looking into the effects of L-Theanine as a natural supplement for overcoming addiction.