Been mucking around with huge doses of B Vitamins (especially B3/Niacin) and 5-HTP (a serotonin precursor). Both of those are rather, uh, effectful. 500mg+ Niacin will turn you red unless you're actually deficient. And you do not want to mess with the 5-HTP and alcohol at the same time, plus 5-HTP can cause some nasty side effects in some people.

Seems like a nice way to have some weird dreams while probably improving my health (high dose B vitamins seem to do great things for mental disorder and the only apparent downside is colorful piss and possibly turning into a cherry).

For people who don't do vita-drugs, there's always tea, coffee, chocolate, and matcha.

L-theanine (200mg) with around 100-150mg of caffeine has an extremely noticeable, positive effect on my ability to focus, feeling of "well-situatedness", and overall calmness. L-theanine by itself doesn't seem to do much. Caffeine on its own wakes me but makes me feel jittery and anxious, so it's definitely an interaction effect. Taurine has a much smaller effect on calmness, sans interactions - often indistinguishable from any other mild focus exercise like box breathing or stretching.

For my biology, L-theanine (200 mg) rounds out caffeine by stamping out the anxiety-inducing effect. By itself it just gives me a headache sometimes.

I once was sitting at my desk and had this overwhelming calm come over me. I was trying to figure out what I had eaten that morning/afternoon and then realized the 2-3 'Just Chill' sodas in my trash my mom had gotten me contained L-Theanine. Was a pretty blind test but I wasn't able to reproduce it effectively with L-Theanine supplements I found on amazon.

I would have liked to have seen if there was any difference in the effects over time. I think it is easy to find something that helps with anxiety in the short term, but over enough time habituation, tolerance, and dependence can develop to most substances.

Anecdotally, my theanine use correlated strongly with my development of terrible chronic migraines which lasted years. But I was also experiencing severe stress during that time, so it could just be that. However, when I stopped taking L-theanine, my headaches did lessen in severity and frequency, so there may be something there and I’ve heard others mention headache in relation to it.

I tried an L-theanine supplement for anxiety. It had a notable short-term effect, but when I was off it my anxiety significantly worsened. Got better once I stopped taking it, so I guess it was a dependency kind of thing.

So, I would say that it definitely has an impact. Perhaps it would have worked better with a smaller dose.

It is great the author highlights that green tea already includes L-theanine where it is common to read about buying supplements.

Tried it too a didn’t go well. No immediate effect and then after a couple of days experienced severe emotional fragility. That “about to burst into tears“ type feeling. Quickly dropped that stuff

I've taken L-theanine for anxiety before, and it seems to help. I'm not sure if it's a placebo or not, but either way it seems to help

I don't really notice a change when I take theanine but the times when I have taken it consistently I notice I stop biting my fingernails.

I just realized this week I haven't been biting my nails and from this popping up thought about it, went and checked, and the new magnesium drops I started taking have theanine.

Kindof softof related - I also "discovered" L-tyrosine effectively cured my Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). The tl;dr version of that story is I used to take electrolytes for it and switched from the Heed brand regular version to the "extreme" version which didn't do anything for RLS, compared the ingredients and L-Tyrosine was the key. For going on 15 years now I take it daily before bedtime and it is effective 98% of the time. Bottom line is these amino acids deserve more attention and research.

fitbits and similar are fine for measuring awake vs asleep but really terrible at breaking up the stages

> This study was not blinded so there could be a placebo effect.

Saved you a click.

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