L-Theanine Tablet and Fasting

You absolutely can. I take my supplements in a fasted state. There are not any calories in the capsules or tablets. You might want to avoid softgels, as there are some calories in those. However, fasting is trying to prevent insulin spikes so that it results in positive epigenetic changes. If you keep the calories under around 10, you should be fine. My rule of thumb is 5 calories or less. So I only take fish oil around dinner, as that is over 5. I do take the CoQSol-CF in the morning, as they are only 1.75 calories. So not enough to break my fast.

You see crazy people online saying you need to be super strict on fasting. There are even people saying you need to dry fast with zero water, and that works much better. I am reading a Quora post right now and shaking my head at the pseudoscientific BS they are pushing.

Inflammation cannot survive without water, whereas a wet environment enables bad bacteria, viruses, and worms to thrive. When dry fasting, all or many of these critters exit your body.

WTF? They are seriously telling people that dry fasting will reduce the water content of your body enough that "critters" will just up and leave?!? It's asinine! If you dehydrate yourself enough for pathogens to not survive, you are likely dead. Our bodies are 70-80% water. You ain't drying yourself out enough to affect that, and if you are, you are harming yourself. Inflammation can't survive without water? LOL

So intermittent fasting is pretty simple when you boil it down. You want to exhaust your glycogen stores, and prevent any further insulin spikes to allow for autophagy and HGH production to increase. One of the primary regulators of autophagy is the kinase mTOR. Activation of mTOR stops autophagy, and inhibition of mTOR starts it. So perhaps you have heard of glucagon. Well glucagon is, in a very simplistic sense, the opposite of insulin. If insulin goes up, glucagon goes down. When we fast, insulin goes down and glucagon goes up. When we eat, primarily carbohydrates, insulin goes up and glucagon goes down. If we eat enough carbohydrates, the body uses insulin and glucagon to control our blood sugar levels in a tight range. If there is too much glucose in our blood, we store it as glycogen. If there is not enough, we release glycogen to use. Fasting is trying to use up all our blood glucose so that we burn off all our glycogen stores. This sends the body into a state of autophagy, using glucagon and mTOR signalling, and that signals for a release in HGH. On top of all that, it results in epigenetic changes to many different genes that lead to long-term benefits. Simplistically, it "resets" our body into a more efficient state. We just eat way too much in modern times, and we eat things we really shouldn't be. It is not how we naturally evolved. So resetting our genes to a more "natural" state results in healthy changes.

So what stops this process from happening? Well carbohydrates would absolutely cause an insulin response. Protein would stop autophagy. Fat is fine, though. It does not lead to any of the signaling pathways that would affect insulin, glucagon, or mTOR activation. So a small amount of fat should not break a fast like protein or carbohydrates would. So what about amino acids? Well many amino acids are what are called glucogenic amino acids. This means that they can eventually be converted into glucose by gluconeogenesis. These are alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, gutamine, glycine, histidine, methionine, proline, serine, and valine. So taking any of those amino acids could lead to an increase in glucose, which could lead to a spike in insulin, which could lead to a reduction in glucagon, which could stop autophagy. These amino acids should be avoided during your fast. It's also why protein should be avoided, as protein breaks down into amino acids. So what can we take to prevent the activation mTOR? Berberine! Berberine not only reduces insulin spikes, but also is an mTOR inhibitor. So if you take berberine, it should significantly help prevent any of these signaling pathways from breaking your fast, as long as you keep your calories under 10. I take berberine 3X per day during my fast. Any small amount of calories I do get, like the 1.75 from the CoQSol-CF, are not going to be enough to stop autophagy and the increase in HGH.