L-Theanine: The Secret to Nighttime Post-workout Recovery (Fade Out)
If you have been noticing you’re reaching a plateau in your training, but your routine and diet are solid, it is time to look into potential lifestyle issues. You might be under the impression that you are the sole ruler of your body and mind, and that is true to a certain extent, but a soul-sucking girlfriend, slave-driving boss, and daily traffic jams can sometimes get the best of you. In today’s world, stress is a very common problem for most people. The primary stress hormone called cortisol is a hormone that can break not only your performance but also break down your hard earned muscle. Needless to say, stress is something that every serious athlete wants to work at minimizing.
Stress: The Silent Killer
The most common issue with stress is that it will keep you up and prevent you from getting a good nights rest. Not enough rest will stall muscle growth and recovery, rendering your workouts completely useless.
Stress can come in many forms, both as mental stressors as well as extended physical stress such as that from chronic cardio. The effects of stress are the same in the end no matter where they come from. Chronically elevated levels of cortisol are catabolic and will start breaking down your muscle mass and make you gain more fat.
If you ever wondered why long distance runners are never that muscular it is because of chronically elevated levels of cortisol, it is tough to put on mass when you are always stressing your body in such a way as during extended periods of cardio. This is also a good example of why shorter duration heavy resistance training, only 2-3 times a week, will build more muscle than training every day.
Stress has been shown to affect your health in many ways negatively:
- Inhibits pituitary function (LH, TSH) which results in less produced testosterone
- Decreased thyroid function
- Breaks down muscle mass
- Burdens your liver (this also affects the metabolism of hormones)
- Inhibits the body’s use of leptin (this will affect fat loss and fat gain)
- Decreases the function of your immune system
- Increases inflammation
- Reduces sex drive
- Affects mental health (such as causing anxiety and depression)
Living a completely stress-free life is close to impossible, but the first step you can start working on right now is to foster a better mentality towards stress. What you really need to do is CTFO (chill the **** out) and give yourself time to relax if you want to beat stress and make good consistent progress towards your exercise goals. If that means you have to get away from draining people in your life or switch job, so be it.
On the way to de-stressing yourself, there are plenty of tools that can help. One of the absolute superstars of stress-busting nutritional changes you can make is consuming more tea and specifically the amino acid in tea called L-Theanine.
L-Theanine: The Relaxing Amino Acid
Green tea is often touted for its weight loss benefits and high amount of antioxidants which has been shown to prevent everything from cancer to the process of aging. However, the most valuable part of tea lies in its content of the amino acid L-Theanine, this amino acid is unique to only the tea plant (Camellia Sinensis) and a type of mushroom called Basidiomycete fungus, making it a rare treat in nature.
L-Theanine works by increasing dopamine and GABA neurotransmitter levels in the brain. Dopamine is responsible for much of our drive and focus (nootropic qualities), and GABA is the inhibiting neurotransmitter, crucial for relaxation and sleep. Basically, GABA slows down the traffic in your mind allowing for a more peaceful and relaxed outlook.
L-Theanine has been shown to promote alpha brainwave patterns, which is the same relaxed state that can be reached by a daily meditation practice, something we also highly recommend. What is amazing is that consumption of L-Theanine as a supplement enables your brain to reach levels of relaxation and alpha brainwave patterns otherwise only observed in Buddist monks from years of meditation training. This makes it easier to arrive at a deep state of focus and relaxation, optimal to either induce sleep or for working on demanding cognitive tasks.
In combination with caffeine, L-Theanine takes the edge of the jittery stimulating effects people can experience from large amounts of coffee. This is why excess tea consumption never come with the substantial side effects of the equal amount of coffee. L-Theanine is also one of the safest compounds to consume, with an LD50 (lethal dose) of 5 grams per kg in rats. This translates to about 350 grams consumed at once for a person weighing in at 70 kg. In other words, it would be close to impossible to die from L-Theanine consumption.
Fade Out: For Optimal Rest and Recovery
Because of the importance of getting a good nights rest after training, and the stressful demands today’s modern lifestyles can put on you, we formulated Fade Out as the perfect product for improving sleep quality during times of stress and high demand.
It contains a high dose of L-Theanine per serving along with many other relaxing and de-stressing compounds such as Phenibut, Mucuna Pruriens, magnesium, and melatonin, which will all help you get a good nights sleep. Remember life is too short to stay in unrewarding and stressful life situations, don’t let it suck your soul out, be your own master of your universe. Achieve your highest state of readiness.