Chances are, that you’ve experienced anxiety in your life. Whether it’s a real problem in your life, or you occasionally suffer from a bout of anxiety – feeling anxious and nervous is never a good experience. Luckily there are many calming supplement available. And one of them is theanine. Continue reading this l theanine anxiety review to find out exactly how theanine can combat anxiety.
For those interested, I’m also giving you a short description why l theanine works against anxious feelings.
If you’ve ever experienced an anxiety attack or want to get rid of feelings of nervousness, then L theanine might just be what you need.
NOTE: I do not suffer from anxiety attacks (anymore). When I was younger I ocasionally used to have OCD attacks. This led me to research which natural supplements could help me feel better whenever I had an attack and how to prevent them. Since finding (and using) l theanine the occurrence and severity of my attacks have been drastically reduced!
L theanine anxiety
Nobody likes to have anxious feelings. Even they do serve a purpose (to warn your brain against danger), many people have problems with feeling anxious or anxiety attacks.
Most of the time, these feelings are not based on dangerous real-life situations. And often the problem lies in the fact that your anxiety response is way too high for the event that caused it. Sometimes there even is no event that caused it – just the thoughts in your head (OCD and others).
So, since most of the time the problem lies in your head. And it is caused by a dis-balance in neurotransmitters. What this means is that you have too much glutamate (activates neurons) and not enough GABA (decreses activity in neurons).
Anyway, I’ll come back to the scientific part later on this L theanine anxiety page. let’s find out what happens when you take l theanine against anxiety…
L theanine works like magic against anxiety
L theanine calms you down. Many studies have shown this effect. L theanine is commonly found in green and black tea and explains why you don’t feel as ‘pumped up’ after a cup of tea compared to a cup of coffee (even though they both contain a lot of caffeine).
So, theanine calms you down. What happens when you take l theanine is that your brain starts to produce more GABA. Remember, that’s the neurotransmitter that decreases activity in your brain cells.
Many other anxiety supplements also work by increasing GABA. Think of benzodiapenes and others. Even alcohol increases GABA (and that’s why alcohol works against anxiety – short term).
However, there are many problems with these unnatural remedies againast anxiety:
- Often, when you stop taking the medicine, your anxiety will return twice as strong. This is because these medicines increase GABA unnaturaly.
- Many of these medicines also are toxic to your body. They put a lot of stress on your inner organs (especially your liver) and therefore are not a long term anxiety cure.
So, you need a NATURAL supplement
Because most over-the-counter medicines and alcohol have their obvious downsides, you’d do well to look for a natural anxiety supplement.
You need a supplement that works over the long term.
This is ibvious, since you do not want to harm your body and you’re looking for a cure that will make your anxiety go away. Taking medicines usually makes the anxiety become bigger in the long term…
L theanine anxiety is one of these natural supplements. And so far one of the most effective too, that you can take on a long-term basis.
Research has shown that there are no negative side-effects to taking theanine. Heck, there are even governments (Japan), that encourage the use of theanine in beverages and food.
Why l theanine works (naturally)
One of the amino acids in l theanine (glutamix acid) is a precursor to GABA. Now, in simple words this means that it is one of the building blocks for the calming neurotransmitter GABA.
If you’re not producing enough GABA (if you have anxiety, then you probably don’t have enough GABA), then your neurons are continually in ‘overdrive’. In other words, they don’t know when to stop and relax.
Chances are, that you don’t produce enough GABA, because you don’t have enough ‘raw materials’. And this is where l theanine comes in.
When you take l theanine, you provide your body with the necessary materials to produce the calming neurotransmitter GABA.
And that’s why l theanine is very effective against anxiety.
But why is l theanine anxiety naturally helping you?
Your body has its own optimal balance of neurotransmitters. This means that it knows exactly how much of each you need to feel calm and function optimally.
Now, if there’s a deficit in some of the raw materials to produce neurotransmitters… then you body wants to produce more GABA. But it simply cannot. Because there’s not enough building blocks.
That’s when you take theanine and provide your body with the means to combat anxiety.
This also means that it’s impossible to take too much theanine. When you take in more theanine than you need, your body simply uses all the theanine it needs, and discards the rest through your urine.
Now, taking a lot of theanine can make you sleepy, so I want to give you some recommendations for how to optimally dose l theanine anxiety.
Recommended l theanine anxiety dosage
If you suffer from anxiety, then l theanine is one fo the best supplements you can take to naturally combat anxiety.
But, how much theanine do you need? What is the optimal l theanine dosage against anxiety?
I recommend you take somewhere between 200 and 600 grams of l theanine if you suffer from anxiety.
The best thing would be to take it 2 or 3 times per day. 100-200 grams per time.
Now, as I said before. It’s really difficult to overdose on l theanine. Because it has no side effects. However, the anxiety releasing effect might become a little less trong if you take many grams per day on end.
That why I recommend you take 100-200 grams 2-3 times per day to combat anxiety.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me.
P.S. L theanine is one of the most effective natural supplements against anxiety. If you want to find out mroe about l theanine (where to get the best quality, other benefits & a lot more), you can read my comprehensive l theanine review here!