What is the relationship between l-theanine and sleep?

When our mind and bodies perceive or experience high stress over a long period of time, our adrenal glands are stimulated to produce more cortisol than usual. We end up with high cortisol levels that don’t allow our natural sleep cycle to function normally. Short term bursts of cortisol are great for short term responses to short term stressors. In this case, cortisol levels revert to their normal levels after the stress is gone. However, when we are experiencing chronic stress, our cortisol levels remain high over long period of time and this creates problems for our overall health. One of the first things we may notice is that our healthy sleep cycle is interrupted.

There is a strong relationship between sleep and cortisol: the higher the levels of cortisol, the less your body can relax enough to sleep normally. Instead, you might find yourself staying painfully awake all night as if there is a constant crisis. Your mind is abuzz with thoughts that won’t shut off. You need to reduce cortisol levels in your body. L-theanine is a supplement that has cortisol controlling effects which helps the body revert back to lower cortisol levels and healthy sleep patterns.

L-theanine is a naturally occurring amino acid found in green tea and will provide you with about 10mg of theanine per cup. The recommended dose is between 50 and 500mg a day. If you do drink that much green tea, great. However, if you prefer decaffeinated green tea, a lot of the theanine is filtered out with the caffeine. Fortunately, theanine is also available as a natural stress relief supplement through almost any health supplement provider. The most common l theanine dosage per supplement is 200mg, which supplies an adequate dose of theanine for best body calming results.

If you are really having serious problems sleeping, it’s likely your cortisol levels became stubbornly high over more than just a day’s or week’s worry. Rather, when cortisol levels remain high in the body, it is because the reaction to stress has been repeated over many days and perhaps weeks and months. So, it’s going to take some time to gradually decrease those same cortisol levels in the body through behavioral techniques enough to sleep tonight. And I can hear you say, “I need some sleep right now!” Exercising, meditating or waiting for your learning curve on stress relaxation techniques to kick in is not going to produce results in the now.

Quick Action

But there is good news! Medical professionals in nutritional biochemistry have shown that theanine reaches maximum levels in the blood between thirty minutes and two hours after taking it. So, it can be used when something stressful happens out of the blue and work fairly quickly to have cortisol controlling effects and immediate brain relaxation. Get back to sleep naturally!