Ever feel a little (or a lot) nervous or anxious? We certainly wouldn’t judge you if you did – I mean, who doesn’t feel that way sometimes?
If you’re looking to reduce your nerves or achieve better mental clarity, we’d recommend that you try getting more L-theanine in your diet.
In this article, we’ll explain what L-theanine is, as well as it’s benefits and uses.
What Is L-Theanine?
L-Theanine is an amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks your body uses to build the proteins you need to function. L-theanine is a non-essential amino acid, which normally means your body makes some on its own. But in L-theanine’s case, it’s a non-essential amino acid, because it’s a non-dietary amino. In other words, that means we need it to live.
Essential or not, finding ways to include L-theanine in your diet is great for so many reasons.
Just to give you an idea of why, here are some of the benefits and uses of L-theanine.
L-Theanine Benefits And Uses
We went ahead and created a list of reasons why you should consider increasing the L-theanine in your diet. You can do it by consuming certain foods and drinks or you can do it by taking a simple supplement, but more on that later.
Here are seven reasons why you should try getting more L-theanine into your diet:
1. It Can Help Calm Down Occasional Anxiety And Stress
We all get stressed out sometimes. Work, family, money – all of these things can make us feel anxious. It’s hard balancing all of life’s demands, and that stress can make things even harder to handle.
If you often feel nervous or anxious, L-theanine can help. L-theanine produces a clarifying effect that’s caused by several factors. We’ll talk about each of these individual factors later, but for now, just know that L-theanine can help you settle down and focus on what you need to do and not worry about what’s coming up later.
2. It Can Work As A Natural Sleep Aid
L-theanine can help calm the mind. It does this by giving you mental focus while reducing your anxiety. Studies have found that these duel effects have helped with occasional sleepiness. If you find that your thoughts are always keeping you awake, but you’re worried about taking prescription sleep aids, don’t worry. L-theanine could be your all-natural sleep aid.
3. It Improves Mental Cognition
Do you find yourself forgetting things throughout the day? It’s totally ok, you probably have a lot going on in your life, and who could really expect you to remember everything all of the time? That being said, L-theanine can help you out.
L-theanine has been shown to improve cognition and memory. So if you need a little help remembering where you put your car keys, consider supplementing L-theanine.
4. It Helps With Bad Cholesterol Problems
Everyone knows about LDL cholesterol. This is the “bad” cholesterol that you probably want to avoid. You should certainly want to lower your LDL blood levels. The “LDL” stands for low-density lipoproteins, and it can cause a variety of health problems if it’s left unchecked for a long enough period of time.
But L-theanine has been found to help reduce LDL cholesterol.
Of course, L-theanine won’t miraculously cure your cholesterol problems. You’ll still need to eat a diet that’s relatively low in fat, but at least you’re doing something about the problem that has benefits above and beyond this one thing.
5. You Can Get It From Tea
One of the greatest sources of L-theanine is green tea. This is great news because, along with L-theanine, green tea comes with caffeine and tea catechins. The calming effects of L-theanine combined with the energy from the caffeine work in harmony for gentle, smooth energy. Plus, tea catechins are a wonderful source of antioxidants that can help relieve your body of free radicals.
6. It’s Really Easy For Your Body To Absorb
One of the coolest things about L-theanine is that it has a close to a 100% absorption rate. Meaning you only really need to take a small amount to make a difference. This is beneficial because that means you don’t have to radically change your diet in order to make room for L-theanine.
7. You Can Feel Energized Without Feeling Jittery
L-theanine can help give you energy throughout your day, but that energy doesn’t make you feel jittery like caffeine does. The soothing effect of L-theanine helps get rid of those jitters to the point where you can sleep if you need to, but you can keep going about your day as well.
There Are Many Ways To Get L-Theanine
You can get your L-theanine from a variety of teas. The best one, however, is green tea. Green tea is quite rich in L-theanine. Just make sure you get a quality, organic green tea if you decide to go this route.
But what happens if you don’t have the time to make a pot of green tea every day? Fear not. You can get your aminos from elsewhere.
For example, you can get your L-theanine from supplements.
Here at Zhou Nutrition, we decided that we couldn’t ignore L-theanine and we had to feature it into some of our products so you could reap the benefits. Both our Green Tea Extract and Energy + Focus supplements are great sources of L-theanine.
If you’re looking for an easy, convenient way to get L-theanine every day, consider Zhou Nutrition.
