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by cfcf14 616 days ago
L-theanine (200mg) with around 100-150mg of caffeine has an extremely noticeable, positive effect on my ability to focus, feeling of "well-situatedness", and overall calmness. L-theanine by itself doesn't seem to do much. Caffeine on its own wakes me but makes me feel jittery and anxious, so it's definitely an interaction effect. Taurine has a much smaller effect on calmness, sans interactions - often indistinguishable from any other mild focus exercise like box breathing or stretching.
2 comments

Quite good support for the caffeine/theanine interaction in the literature -- I was mainly trying to see if it could improve sleep which is why I didn't take it with caffeine. Would be interesting to do some blinded cognitive test at some point though to get some estimate on how much congitive performance is increased. I need to think about ways to measure that, aside from flashcards. I actually have the website connected to a chess API so that might be a nice test.
Are you consuming these things pure or via tea/coffee?