L-Theanine As The Number One Remedy For Stress Management
Every human being in the world deals with stress in one form or another. Stress can be the precursor to many diseases. Everyone leads busy lives that demand our full attention and focus; which only adds to the mental burdens that can spiral and keep us in a state of losing control, buried under the weight of stress.
The key advantage to living a healthy life isn’t just crawling out from stress, but finding ways to reduce the stressors in your life; also, alleviating the physiological and psychological effects of stress as well. Some people, find different ways to relax or doing fun activities. For others, it means doing more exercise or sleeping better.
Yet, there may even be a highly potent stress-management nutrient you may consume on a daily basis to help curb stress. What is that you ask?
L-Theanine is an amino acid that is found in notably high concentration in the leaves of Camellia sinensis plant–the plant from which tea is made. Black tea, white tea, and green tea all come from the same plant, and each has different dosages of
L-theanine. Tea has the disadvantage of caffeine which can be a slight stimulant. Also supplement form is very popular as well. I personally take a 200 mg dose supplements twice during the day and during the night at wake-up time as well. I could actually feel my cortisol stress hormones going throughout my body. That’s bad! So, my chiropractor suggested L-theanine, and it really helped to regulate my body to a calmer state. L-theanine helps to regulate the production of GABA, which helps one to relax and feel sleepy at night. (I do use a GABA supplement as extra insurance for sleep measures.) L-theanine also enhances mental clarity, increases alertness. By sleeping better at night, there is less daytime drowsiness. It also increases your “feel-good” chemicals serotonin and dopamine which helps your well-being and combats anxiety.
The high levels of stress can be alarming to the body—and the stress hormone cortisol will disrupt sleep, stop you from drifting off, and bring about different levels of insomnia throughout the night. But, improving your sleep quality, you decrease cortisol production and avoid stress from negatively impacting your life. The only risks to L-theanine can be drinking the tea form before bed. The caffeine content in the green tea can make it difficult to sleep. Therefore, the supplements can be a wiser choice (they are caffeine-free). How much to take? This is where you learn to
listen to your body…start slow working up as needed. I have incorporated stress relaxing caffeine-free teas during the day. I avoid caffeine for myself. I make it my job to calm down, slow down and sleep good…that’s happiness
Let there be healing.
Marie
