L-Theanine & Caffeine: Your Best Morning Energy Without The Crash

I guess, some things were just made for each other: salt and pepper, bread and butter and you definitely can’t have tea without biscuits. Alone, these products taste just fine, but together, they enhance each other’s best qualities. Surprisingly, nootropics can have similarly synergistic relationships.

Uniting two ingredients together to create the perfect pair within a nootropic stack can not only enhance the effects of the ingredients but also the overall cognitive benefits you can enjoy. But what if we were to tell you the relationship between an amino acid and an alkaloid is a match made in heaven? The story between L-theanine, one of the finest ingredients within our Intramind blend and caffeine, is one that will kick-start your mornings like no other. These two powerful nootropics have an amazing synergy, enhancing each other’s finest qualities and plummeting the risk of unwanted side effects.

First, before we dive deep into the unique benefits of caffeine and L-theanine, we should talk about what they bring to the table as individuals. Let’s start with the most familiar nootropic of the two: Caffeine.

Caffeine: What is it exactly?

Let’s face it, the majority of us have a love-hate relationship with coffee. We reach for our morning pick-me-up just about every day, but we hate admitting how dependent we are on its energizing powers. Almost 6 in every 10 adults drink at least one cup of coffee a day, with this number increasing year on year¹. But caffeine is also found in over sixty other plants, nuts, fizzy drinks and beans.

So, how exactly does caffeine work? It acts by stimulating your central nervous system (your brain & spinal cord) making you feel more alert and keeps us going should we ever grow tired.

While drinking coffee undoubtedly has many benefits, it also produces a number of side effects in the body. Caffeine can increase our reaction time and improve our cognitive performance. In fact, the consumption of caffeine before exercising can improve both performance and endurance, giving you the most out of your workouts without exhaustion². But have you ever ended up feeling nervous, anxious or jittery? Or have a sudden case of the shakes? These are some of the side effects of high caffeine intake which is why it’s best to moderate coffee consumption to reduce your risk of experiencing these side effects.

Now let’s move onto the nootropic you are not so familiar with.

L-Theanine: Why We Love This Amino Acid

Though it may sound like something derived in a lab, L-theanine comes from plenty of natural sources, specifically, plants. Of the many plants we consume, we find L-theanine in green tea, black tea and certain mushrooms. Not only does this amino acid give these teas their rich umami flavour, but it also induces feelings of calm and relaxation.

Also known as a nootropic, a natural cognitive enhancer, L-theanine can help improve cognitive function. However, one of its most significant benefits is its ability to reduce stress and anxiety in humans. How? It lowers the hormone levels such as cortisol and blocking excitatory responses in the brain, helping to keep both your heart rate and blood pressure at optimal levels.

L-theanine also offers a soothing effect, thanks to its association with alpha brainwaves, which promote relaxed and even creative thinking without making you feel drowsy. These alpha brainwaves are often associated with mindful thinking and meditation. Therefore, the consumption of L-theanine helps your brain generate strong, consistent alpha waves and improve your overall mental health.

L-theanine also enhances levels of GABA as well as other hormones and compounds that regulate mood, focus and more. By itself, L-theanine is an effective nootropic, but when it is combined with coffee, there’s a pronounced synergistic effect. This means you experience heightened focus, energy and awareness as well as less stress and deepened mental endurance to even higher levels.

L-theanine and Caffeine: The secret to their relationship

In this section, we’ll uncover why this couple works so good together, even though their match is widely unknown, it offers potentially limitless benefits for those looking to boost their energy without enduring the afternoon jitters. Let’s explore their biggest triumphs.

When these two come together, they work out a compromise. Let’s think for a moment of the many drawbacks we discussed related to caffeine, it can induce anxiety; make you feel restless and increase your blood pressure. However, as the perfect partner it is, L-theanine works to correct these negative qualities, thus ensuring your caffeine intake experience is far more pleasant with little to no crash afterwards.

As caffeine replaces the adenosine in your brain, our minds are stimulated and end up running a bit too free for our liking. When we introduce L-theanine, that excitatory response is inhibited, and stress is managed as a result.

It allows us to accomplish tasks together. In one study, subjects improved their reaction times for delayed word recognition⁴. In another study, subjects reduced the amount of time it took to respond to flashing light cues on a computer, which suggests an improvement in acute attention⁵. Being able to focus on a task is only half the battle; accomplishing the task to fulfil satisfaction is just as important and this happy couple can offer their support. In a 2008 study, the caffeine-theanine mix induced improvement in task accuracy, especially for the most cognitively demanding tasks⁶.

So, how does one take L-theanine and Caffeine together?

According to experts, the ideal ratio of Caffeine to L-theanine should be around 1:2. Assuming there is roughly 100 mg of caffeine in the average cup of coffee, you should add about 200 mg of theanine with each drink. This is where our Intramind supplement comes in. Consuming two of our cognitive performance-enhancing capsules contains the recommended dosage of 200mg of L-theanine, makes it easy to introduce it into your routine. For well-rounded best results, we suggest you each capsule is with a light meal. Unlike many other nootropics, this combination of L-theanine and coffee is very well documented, extremely safe and delivers notable results throughout the day.

Whether you’re looking to increase your cognitive performance or just calm your caffeine nerves, getting your hands on Intramind may be what you need as it’s slow-releasing energy capsule can make you feel more productive and focused throughout the day without the strong caffeine crash.