L-Theanine Powder

What’s L-Theanine Powder？

Theanine (L-Theanine) is an amino acid unique to tea, with the chemical formula C7H14N2O3, accounting for 1-2% of the weight in dry tea. Theanine is the highest content of amino acids in tea, accounting for more than 50% of the total free amino acids, accounting for 1%-2% of the dry weight of tea. Theanine can not only be used as a green tea flavour modifier, but also inhibit the bitter and astringent flavour in other foods, so as to achieve the purpose of improving the flavour of food.

L-Theanine Powder function

Hypotensive effect
The regulation of blood pressure is mainly achieved through the increase and decrease of catecholamines and 5-hydroxytryptamines in the central and peripheral nervous system. Yokogoshi et al. proved through experiments that the administration of rat theanine can reduce the content of serotonin, reduce the synthesis of serotonin in the brain and increase its decomposition in the brain. When different doses of theanine were injected into spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), the blood pressure decreased, and the degree of decrease was dose-responsive, and the blood pressure decreased significantly in the high dose group. However, even the highest dose of theanine did not change the blood pressure of normal rats. Glutamic acid, which is structurally similar to theanine, was not found to lower blood pressure.

Adjuvant antitumor effect
Recent studies have shown that although theanine itself has no anti-tumor activity, it can improve the efficacy of a variety of anti-tumor drugs. adriamycm has an inhibitory effect on some tumors, and theine can protect the concentration of adriamycin in tumor tissues and reduce the exudation of adriamycin from Ehrlich ascites tumor cells. Therefore, when theine is combined with adriamycin, the inhibition of tumor growth in vivo can be increased by 2.1 times, and the concentration of adriamycin in tumor tissues can be increased by 2.9 times. In addition, the injection of the anticancer drug idarubicin can reduce the number of white blood cells and bone marrow cells, but when combined with theanine, it can alleviate the toxicity of idarubicin and promote the anti-tumor effect of idarubicin, indicating that theanine has a selective regulatory effect on the toxicity caused by idarubicin. The combination of doxorubicin and theanine can inhibit the metastasis of M5076 ovarian sarcoma to liver. Recently, Sa-dzuka et al. further studied the pathway by which theanine enhances doxorubicin’s anticancer activity, pointing out that theanine increases the concentration of doxorubicin in tumor cells by inhibiting glutamate transmission in tumor cells, so as to improve its anticancer efficacy. Theanine is very beneficial to the clinical chemotherapy of cancer patients, it not only promotes the action of some anti-tumor drugs, but also improves the quality of life of cancer patients.
Relax nervous tension, relaxation, etc
Terashima et al. found that the main receptor of theanine is brain. After theanine enters the brain through the brain barrier, the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain cells significantly increases, and dopamine is the precursor of adrenaline and norepinephrine, which is an important substance to convey the excitement of brain nerve cells, and its release will greatly affect people’s emotions. In addition, Yokogoshi et al., through the use of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) metabolic inhibitors, found that theanine can affect the synthesis and decomposition of serotonin in the brain. After taking theanine, the content of tryptophan in the brain increased significantly or had an increasing trend, but the content of serotonin decreased. Theanine may decrease serotonin synthesis and increase its breakdown, or inhibit serotonin release.
Caffeine has a refreshing and exciting effect, tea also contains more caffeine, ingesting caffeine alone has a certain harm to the human body, but after drinking tea, it will not produce the same amount of caffeine. Kimura et al. proved that theanine has an antagonistic effect on caffeine stimulation. He measured the spontaneous exercise of central nervous system induced by caffeine, and the results showed that caffeine and theanine had a significant inhibitory effect on stimulation when administered simultaneously. Recently, some scholars have further determined that theanine and caffeine have antagonistic effects on caffeine stimulation at almost the same molar concentration by using EEG evaluation method. These fully indicate that theanine is a caffeine antagonist, which has obvious calming, reducing tension and relaxing nerve effects.
In general, animals and humans always produce very weak impulses on the surface of the brain, called brainwaves. Under different mental conditions, the brain will produce different current frequency brainwaves. Brain waves are divided into α, β, δ and θ waves according to their frequency, δ waves are in deep sleep, θ waves are in a nap state, α waves are in a quiet (relaxed) state, and β waves are in an excited state. Some people in order to verify the effect of theanine on the mental side of the human experiment, let the test subjects drinking water and theanine water solution, 60 minutes later to determine the EEG; Results There was no change in EEG after drinking water, but significant α wave was produced after drinking theanine. Therefore, theanine has the effect of promoting the production of alpha waves, which causes a feeling of ease and pleasure. And theanine did not cause an increase in the number of theta waves during sleep, so theanine can stabilize people’s mood and improve concentration.

Protective effect on brain nerve cells
Glutamic acid is an excitatory neurotransmitter, and the content of glutamic acid in nerve cells is maintained at 1mmol to 10mmol/L. When the brain is ischemia, the supply of O2 in the cell is interrupted, the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in the cell is reduced and gradually dried up, the nerve membrane is separated, glutamate is released too much to the outside of the cell, and is used as a receptor, so that the concentration of calcium ions in the cell continues to increase, stimulate the activity of various decomposable enzymes, and finally act on the cell to destroy and die. Theanine has a competitive protective effect on glutamate receptors, so theanine has a protective effect on brain tissue and can avoid the death of brain nerve cells caused by cerebral ischemia.

Improve menstrual syndrome
Menstrual syndrome (PMS) is a mental and physical discomfort that occurs between 3 and 10 days before menstruation. Juneja et al. investigated the improvement effect of theanine on PMS and asked 24 women to take 200mg theanine daily. After two months, PMS symptoms were significantly improved, such as headache, low back pain, chest pain, weakness, fatigue, mental inability to concentrate, irritability and other symptoms were improved. Its mechanism needs further study, which may be related to the sedative effect of theanine.

Slimming effect
After feeding the mice with 0.028% theanine for 16 weeks, their body weight decreased significantly compared with the control group, and the abdominal fat decreased to 58%. At the same time, the levels of neutral fat and cholesterol in the blood were reduced by 32% and 15% respectively, and the cholesterol in the liver was reduced by 28%. Therefore, the weight loss effect of tea is the result of the combined action of various components in tea, including theanine, which is especially effective in reducing cholesterol in the body.

Antifatigue effect
After 30 days of oral administration of theanine, mice were subjected to weight-bearing swimming experiment, and the swimming death time of mice was observed and recorded. After swimming for a certain time, blood samples were collected to detect serum urea nitrogen and blood lactic acid. Liver was taken for glycogen detection. Results After 30 days of oral administration of different doses of theanine, the mice could significantly prolong the weight-bearing swimming time, reduce the consumption of liver glycogen, and reduce the serum urea nitrogen level during exercise. It can significantly inhibit the increase of blood lactic acid after exercise and promote the elimination of blood lactic acid after exercise. Therefore, theanine has anti-fatigue effect. The mechanism may be related to theanine inhibiting S-serotonin secretion and promoting catecholamine secretion (serotonin has inhibitory effect on the central nervous system, while catecholamine has excitatory effect).