Comment · Thu, April 2, 2015 · Ceretropic
A word on caffeine + l-theanine
Original post in this thread
AoE-Priest · 60 points
I know this is like the most popular combo around here, but I like to stay skeptical and avoid falling into groupthink.
So, I was looking at the research index in the side bar. There are a number of studies posted for l-theanine. Unfortunately, most of these studies look at l-theanine+caffeine vs placebo. They do not compare l-theanine+caffeine vs caffeine alone. So basically you can't tell with these studies if the effect is coming from the caffeine or if l-theanine is having some contribution. (we already know that caffeine is a nootropic, so these results are not impressive) The ones that do this comparison don't have the most impressive results for l-theanine. Overall, I was fairly unimpressed by the quality of evidence for the efficacy of l-theanine.
I did find a recent meta-analysis on l-theanine/caffeine. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24946991). It was not very well written unfortunately. I read the full article (the abstract is fairly misleading I found) and once again, they did not do a good job, I don't think, in trying to assess whether l-theanine was synergestic with caffeine, for the most part they looked at the two in combination without really doing a go…
What they were answering
ender1944 · 4 points
I notice that caffeine withouut** l-theanine does not make me anxious. But I get jittery, and my heart rate is too high, and I feel generally worse. This coming from a person who loves harder stimulants.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
I need like 800mg or more caffeine to start feeling any jitters. I think I was actually incubated in a vat of caffeine as an embryo. That would explain things.