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Should I Drink Tea, or Take L-Theanine?
A simple amino acid may help with focus and sleep.
Recently, Joe, one of my patients, asked if he should start taking L-theanine. Joe has ADHD, and he had found an online supplement site selling L-theanine as an aid for both improving attention and decreasing anxiety.
Joe had felt overly revved up on coffee, but still relied on it on occasion when deadlines loomed at work. He knew that tea, like coffee, contained caffeine. He had wondered why tea affected him substantially differently than coffee.
I discussed with Joe some of the properties of L-theanine, a chemical abundant in tea. I compared the likely effects of taking L-theanine supplements to drinking tea. We also reviewed some of the uncertainties inherent in consuming any plant-derived product, and the loose regulation of supplements in the US.
Joe decided to hold off on trying L-theanine. That had less to do with the content of our discussion, and more to do with his ADHD trait of waffling rather than making a decision. He wasn’t sure that L-theanine was his cup of tea. But he felt that much of what we had talked about would be useful to share with others.
Reading the tea leaves: what is tea?
Water is the most commonly consumed beverage on our planet, but tea derived from tea leaves comes in a strong second.
We brew tea from the leaves, and sometimes the buds, of an evergreen shrub very closely related to decorative camellia trees. The leaves are fermented, (chemists would say oxidized) and then baked or dried. The oxidation process continues to a greater extent as one progresses from white to green to oolong to black tea.
Herbal teas are made from any number of different plants, such as mint, chamomile, or sassafras, and won’t be addressed further in this article.
Tea leaves contain three stimulants with similar chemical structures: caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine. Although they have subtly different actions on the brain, bladder, and muscles, these chemicals behave rather similarly in their ability to activate our nervous system. Unless it is decaffeinated, caffeine is the most abundant and powerful of these three chemicals in any…
