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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

(dynomight.net)
817 points dynm | 3 comments | 09 Mar 25 03:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.605s | source
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pazimzadeh ◴[09 Mar 25 05:51 UTC] No.43306628[source]▶
> I’ve long found that tea makes me much less nervous than coffee, even with equal caffeine. Many people have suggested theanine as the explanation, but I’m skeptical. Most tea only has ~5 mg of theanine per cup, while when people supplement, they take 100-400 mg. Apparently grassy shade-grown Japanese teas are particularly high in theanine. And I do find those teas particularly calming. But they still only manage ~25 mg per cup

It's not uncommon for a substance to have different, even opposite effects at different doses. For example high dose melatonin can keep you up, and stress you out, whereas in most people you only need up to 1 mg to promote sleep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

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TimByte ◴[09 Mar 25 08:09 UTC] No.43307169[source]▶
That's a great point. Dose-response relationships can be really weird
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1. steve_adams_86 ◴[09 Mar 25 08:20 UTC] No.43307227[source]▶
I have a strange relationship with psilocybin where microdoses reliably give me an almost unbearable headache, but a large dose will reliably get rid of a headache (even a migraine in one case).

I haven’t tested it in many years (boring parent mode engaged) but that was my first experience with bizarre dose response relationships where one effect was very acutely inverted.

It took me months to figure out the source of headaches. I felt certain it couldn’t be the psilocybin because it was so good at fixing my headaches prior to that. Sure enough, I could turn the headaches on and off like a switch by taking a tiny dose or not taking it.

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2. scotty79 ◴[09 Mar 25 08:52 UTC] No.43307395[source]▶
This reminds me of hydrogen sulfide that at low levels smells awful but at little higher doesn't smell at all, because it just fries receptors.
3. TimByte ◴[13 Mar 25 08:18 UTC] No.43351231[source]▶
I wonder if it has something to do with different receptor activity at low vs. high levels. Must have been frustrating trying to figure that out, though!