If you’re not worried about the world, you must be a meditation by yourself in a cave in the Himalayan Mountains.
Or you’re otherwise out of touch with reality.
Your list of worries is probably different than mine, but no matter – there are more than enough global problems to worry us all for decades to come.
If fear and worry were just about finding solutions to our problems, that’d be good. We’d have fewer problems to worry over.
Unfortunately, worrying has a negative side-effect – stress.
What is Stress?
Years ago, Dr. Hans Selye revolutionized athletic training by writing his groundbreaking book, THE STRESS OF LIFE.
Basically, he described how a small amount of stress can make us healthier. Your body adapts to the new, additional stress, becoming stronger in the process.
Example: You want to have stronger arms, so you begin doing pushups. At first, you can do only a few. But you keep at it every day, completing pushups – more than the day before. That is, every day you become a little bit stronger. Over time, it adds up.
Training athletes is basically forcing the athletes to stress themselves, so they get stronger.
But there’s a limit to how much stress we can tolerate – in both the short and long runs. When we go over that limit, we get weaker instead of stronger. We may suffer an overuse injury.
The Stress of Everyday Life
Over time, this can become dangerous. If you try to run too far or too fast, you could hurt yourself with an injury.
But, eventually, you’d heal. The most damaging stress is chronic stress – the stress of everyday life we suffer from every . . . day.
It’s the most damaging because we never have enough time to relax and recover from it. Tomorrow, we experience . . . more stress.
We need a quick and easy way to manage the many stresses of life because they do damage our health.
Stress Health Risks
When you’re chronically stressed out, that increases your stress hormones such as cortisol.
Other health risks from long-term, chronic stress:
* Cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure and strokes
* Weight gain
* Weaker immune system
* Digestive problems
* Depression
* Problems with memory and thinking
* Chronic fatigue
* Hormonal imbalances
* Musculoskeletal problems
* Poor sleep
The Search for Peace & Calm
Asians have drunk green tea for many centuries, and it has traditionally had a reputation for calming people down.
In 1949, scientists analyzed what made green tea so relaxing, and found the specific compound is L-theanine.
In 1964, Japanese scientists completed experiments demonstrating L-theanine is safe and effective.
Many later clinical trials have proven L-theanine improves health by reducing stress.
L-theanine is the ideal stress reducer. It makes us feel calmer and more relaxed – WITHOUT drowsiness.
You feel calmer, yet also more alert – all without the heaviness, brain fog, and sleepiness of taking a sedative.
What is L-Theanine and How Does It Work
It’s an amino acid that is water soluble, and can cross the brain-blood barrier. Because it can get into your brain, it can work directly on your central nervous system.
Evidence suggests it modulates the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate.
L-theanine stimulates the production of GABA. That’s a neurotransmitter associated with sleep – and it reduces stress and anxiety. GABA inhibits the overexcitation of brain neurons. This helps reduce your general feelings of anxiety, encouraging a calm tranquility.
It also increases your brain’s alpha wave activity. Alpha brain waves are slower than the brain waves we usually have during ordinary, day-to-day activities, so they’re associated with calm and relaxation.
Lower Caffeine
Green tea and matcha do contain caffeine. The caffeine content varies a lot by the plant itself, how well it was grown, the environmental stressors and so on.
However, despite its caffeine, drinking green tea calms us.
2024 Study Results
Participants considered themselves MODERATELY stressed and ranged from 18 to 65 years old. The study lasted for 28 days.
Half of the group were given a placebo, half 400 mg of L-theanine per day. (Taken as 200 mg in the morning, 200 mg at night.)
The group given actual L-theanine had a decrease in morning salivary cortisol, indicating lower stress.
This group also achieved:
A. Greater attention to cognition – that is, thinking.
B. 18% lower levels of PERCEIVED stress – meaning they felt significantly less stressed than when the study began.
C. Improved quality of sleep.
How to Take L-Theanine
The best source is green tea itself.
The most concentrated form is matcha – which is super green tea. Matcha uses only the finest green tea leaves, so matcha is the best quality. The best matcha is from Japan. It’s grown in China too, but they take less care to keep the matcha pure and free from contamination.
If you don’t care to drink hot tea, or you don’t like the taste of green tea, simply add some green tea powder to a smoothie or other food. A quarter teaspoon should work well.
If you take L-theanine in supplement form, the upper daily dose is around 400 mg. That’s around the usual amount given to participants in the clinical trials.
Also: Breathe Slowly
If you have a tendency to feel anxious and out of breath, drinking a few cups of green tea – matcha especially – will clearly help you.
But also remember to breathe . . . slowwwwwlllllyyyyyy.
Inhale through your nose: 5-6 seconds.
Exhale through your nose: 5-6 seconds.
Anytime you feel stressed or nervous or anxious or out-of-breath – breathe slowwwwllllyyyy.
When you use the above count, you breathe five or six times per minute. That’s about optimum.
It helps calm you down by bringing your heart and your breathing pattern into alignment.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/matcha-vs-coffee
https://www.drweil.com/health-wellness/balanced-living/healthy-living/matcha-tea-bags/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6836118/
https://richingmatcha.com/how-much-l-theanine-in-matcha-2/
