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[myhappyplace]

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Great info PF - supps are the way to go - for me anyway. One thing personally I've dropped out of the mix - which seems to grow everytime I go shopping! - is the GABA. Found it was making me have an early am nap and quite tired through the day (?) and also trouble on a couple of occasions stringing words together (?). Back to normal once I dropped it. Just my take on that one. Keep up the good work. HP

[available]

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Well PF i have written my list of vitamins and off to the chemist this arvo. thanks for the help as it is bewildering. also downloading the JV book and getting totally serious.
take care
x

[Prairie Fairy]

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Bumping for all the newbies - give yourself a fighting chance and consider what you maybe lacking...you don't need to take everything and your needs change depending on where you are in your quit...

But if you are just starting - B's, l-Glut, GABA and Amino complex are things I've found most helpful.

[Prairie Fairy]

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Bumping - may add some more tonight if I have time...

And again - many newbies in the nest

[Prairie Fairy]

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L-Theanine - Sleep issues post AL? Get a little rest...

LE Magazine January 2006

Theanine

Natural Support for Sleep, Mood, and Weight
By Terri Mitchell

Back when Europe was stone huts and the Mayans were playing soccer, the Chinese were drinking tea. Tea goes back at least 5,000 years as medicine and more than 1,000 years as a simple beverage. Made from the leaves of a bush related to flowering camellia, tea has had a starring role in major features such as the American Revolution and Zen Buddhism. The Japanese regard tea so highly that they?ve created a ceremony for it, and a separate little tea house in which to serve it.

The tea ceremony is remarkable in that it dramatizes tea?s physical effects on the human body. Tea causes changes in body chemistry that rejuvenate, relax, enhance the ability to think, and change mood.1-6 The biochemical changes provoked by tea are scientifically supported, and they?re not due to caffeine.6

Among the latest discoveries about tea is that it can prevent depression and lower blood pressure.7,8 Both green and black teas have beneficial health effects, the main difference being that black tea is oxidized. That would seem to destroy tea?s bioactivity, but it does not. Black tea continues to prove itself in scientific studies. Researchers with the US Department of Agriculture, for example, recently reported that five cups of black tea a day can lower potentially harmful low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and total cholesterol in people with mildly elevated cholesterol.9

Black tea has benefits, but green tea has undergone more investigation, especially in Japan, where it?s the most popular beverage. Many new reports have come out about green tea?s amino acid, theanine, since Life Extension introduced it. The only other known source of this unique amino acid is a mushroom.10 Discovered in 1949, yet just now undergoing substantial research, theanine occupies a place on the shelf quite different from that of other dietary supplements. It has to do with the tea ceremony.

Balancing Sleep/Wake

Millions of Americans will have trouble sleeping tonight. They won?t be able to fall asleep, won?t be able to stay asleep, or won?t feel like they slept. The primary reason is stress, followed by illness, inactivity, medications, and bad sleep environment. The net effect is a lot of grouchy, depressed, and accident-prone people.11 Most won?t see a doctor, even though insomnia can lead to depression, traffic accidents, and a pink slip. Instead, most people will reach for America?s favorite drug: caffeine.


Every day, millions of people take caffeine in one form or another. It?s not only in coffee, it?s in fruity sodas, over-the-counter drugs, and diet elixirs. ?Energy drinks? and espresso are popular caffeine fixes with megadoses of caffeine. Caffeine keeps Americans alert during the day, but it has a price. It can stay in the body for about 10 hours. That?s if you have a fully functioning liver. If you drink alcohol or take cimetidine (Tagamet?) and other drugs, it will stick around even longer.12,13 That means the cappuccino you had at three in the afternoon is still around at midnight.

To relax at night, Americans don?t have many choices except prescription sleeping pills. But these drugs don?t work for everyone, and have undesirable side effects. Better solutions are needed.

Tea Ceremony in a Capsule

Relaxation, rejuvenation, focus. The tea ceremony energizes without draining, calms without putting to sleep, and motivates without causing a jagged edge. Although tea can have as much or more caffeine than some coffees, it doesn?t have the same ?speedy? effect.14,15 The reason is its secret ingredient, L-theanine. Research shows that L-theanine neutralizes the speedy, jagged, bad effects of caffeine without reducing its mind-energizing, fat-burning features.16,17

L-theanine?s effect on the brain can be visualized on an EEG. Brain waves are actually smoothed out?but not flattened out?by supplemental L-theanine.16 The body is relaxed, the mind is calmed, but no drowsiness occurs.5 This is exactly the type of relaxation prescribed by sleep therapists. The person seeking help will be asked to listen to music or engage in a similarly relaxing activity immediately before retiring. Studies show that pre-sleep relaxation is very effective against insomnia, even in tough cases.18-20

Falling asleep is one thing; staying asleep and getting quality sleep is another. Researchers in Japan gave volunteers 200 mg of L-theanine daily and recorded their sleep patterns on devices worn around their wrists. The L-theanine didn?t cause the subjects to sleep longer, but it did cause them to sleep better. It was documented that sleep quality, recovery from exhaustion, and refreshed feelings were all enhanced by L-theanine. Those taking L-theanine felt like they slept longer than they actually did.21 This is good news for people who don?t get enough sleep, or those who want to sleep less and do more.

One of the other effects of the tea ceremony is that it leaves people in a better mood. Knowing that L-theanine can cross the blood-brain barrier and positively affect brain chemistry, scientists investigated its mood-modulating effects. The results of those studies have led to L-theanine being patented as a mood enhancer.22 How it works is not completely understood, but one thing researchers have discovered is that L-theanine changes levels of amino acids affecting serotonin and other neurotransmitters in the brain.5


Balancing Brain Chemistry

Memory impairment is frequently associated with old age or Alzheimer?s disease, but there are other causes. Stress and depression, for example, cause memory loss. Although usually thought of as mere psychological states, stress and depression cause physical changes in body chemistry. The brain is notably affected.

Stress hormones known as glucocorticoids are activated by both stress and depression. In turn, they cause imbalances in brain chemistry that interfere with mood and memory.23-26 The effect is biochemical. Glucocorticoids disrupt serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and other brain chemicals.27,28 These ?neurotransmitters? are the target of prescription antidepressants such as Prozac? and Wellbutrin?. And it has been shown that glucocorticoids can interfere with the ability of Prozac? and other drugs to work.29 Worse still, glucocorticoids can cause the brain to shrink.30,31 Counteracting glucocorticoids is extremely important.

Drugs that block glucocorticoids have been proposed as a treatment for depression, and strangely enough, people have been treated successfully with ketoconazole (Nizoral?), an antifungal drug with the side effect of suppressing glucocorticoids.32,33 Theanine also suppresses glucocorticoids, and it is one of the few dietary supplements that crosses the blood-brain barrier.

Theanine?s connection to the suppression of glucocorticoids is through glutamate. Researchers have discovered that this natural component of brain chemistry, which is not traditionally associated with depression, in fact plays a major role.34 In people who are depressed, glutamate levels are out of balance.35 Preliminary studies show that blocking certain signals in the brain activated by glutamate may be as effective as prescription antidepressants.36,37 L-theanine may act as a glutamate antagonist.38 Researchers believe that glutamate receptor antagonists may offset the harmful effects of high glucocorticoid levels and offer neuroprotective effects against both acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases.39

Glutamate-activated signals not only affect mood, they affect memory and learning.40 Memory and learning are similar biochemical processes in the brain. If an animal can?t remember, it can?t learn. Stroke, Alzheimer?s disease, and alcohol all cause memory loss involving disruptions in glutamate-related signals that inhibit the storage and retrieval of memories.41-44

If theanine is present in the body at the time stroke occurs, the damaged area will be significantly reduced.45 This is supported by a Chinese study of 14,000 people, which found that drinking tea slashes the risk of stroke by 40%.46 Maintaining healthy levels of L-theanine and other tea-related compounds in the body may thus help prevent memory loss and stroke-induced damage to brain tissue.

Balancing the Liver: Alcohol

Another part of the body that responds positively to theanine is the liver. Research from Japan shows that theanine is a powerful antidote to the effects of alcohol. If theanine is given to mice before or after they drink alcohol, it significantly lowers blood levels of alcohol.47 It works by modulating alcohol chemistry.

Alcohol is converted to a toxic chemical known as acetaldehyde, which is similar to formaldehyde and more toxic than alcohol itself. Theanine accelerates the break- down of acetaldehyde and blocks toxic radicals.47 The remarkable powers of theanine to intercept free radicals was demonstrated in the same study. It not only blocked radicals caused by alcohol, it suppressed levels to below normal for five hours.

One reason theanine is able to reverse damage caused by alcohol is that it restores the liver?s all-purpose antioxidant and detoxifier known as glutathione. Drinking alcohol causes significant suppression of this critical factor. If the suppression is infrequent, the liver bounces back; if suppression is chronic, however, the liver can?t overcome the stress. It breaks down and the effects are felt throughout the body. Theanine helps counteract the alcohol-induced loss of glutathione.47

Glutathione is not only something people who drink alcohol have to worry about, it?s something that oncologists have to worry about. Depletion of glutathione in vital organs like the heart is a major cause of chemotherapy toxicity. Because of it, some drugs that could otherwise be useful in treating certain types of cancers can?t be used. Researchers looking into the possibility of adding theanine to chemotherapy have found that it counteracts drug-induced losses of glutathione in vital organs like the heart, but not in tumors.48 In fact, it blocks tumors from getting glutathione, thus enabling some types of chemotherapeutic drugs to work better.49 By enhancing glutathione where it?s beneficial and reducing it where it?s not, theanine again shows its propensity to restore balance.

[Prairie Fairy]

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Magnesium - get rid of your tremors from early withdrawal.

After going through many medical articles on the subject, one comes to the definite opinion that a deficiency of magnesium is one of the principal causes of alcoholism. In Nutrition Reviews (July, 1960), "Magnesium Balance in Alcoholics," appears the following (p. 200): "Chronic alcoholics as a group possess a wide spectrum of nutritional deficiencies because they obtain their caloric needs mainly from drinks which are deficient in most nutritional substances except alcohol, water and carbohydrate." Another article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (June, 1963), comprising a study of three experiments with various numbers of people at the Veterans Administration Hospital, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, gives the following: "The serum magnesium content in patients with nutritional cirrhosis is also frequently low. This has been attributed to inadequate dietary intake ... magnesium depletion contributes significantly to the tremor, twitching and tetany, as well as the psychiatric disturbances occurring in chronic alcoholism." It states also: "Magnesium excretion induced by alcohol ingestion as well as poor dietary intake probably contributes to magnesium deficiency in chronic alcoholism ... Following alcohol ingestion under varying dietary conditions, the urinary excretion of magnesium increased strikingly in six of the twelve subjects."

We found a corroboration of this in several other medical papers. In other words it would seem that alcohol is quite a disturbing element when it enters the body. We know that every drink of alcohol removes some of the body's store of vitamin B. Now we see that it also removes some of the magnesium. The question is, what effect does it have on other important vitamins and minerals?

In a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine (February 20, 1964), "Metabolic Effects of Alcohol on the Liver," there is a separate discussion on magnesium metabolism in which it is confirmed that in chronic alcoholism the level of magnesium in the blood is low. But the following is important: "The evidence relating some manifestations of chronic alcoholism to magnesium depletion includes the favorable response to magnesium administration and the positive magnesium balance during the recovery phase of chronic alcoholism." It also mentions the fact that very low levels of magnesium in the blood can lead to hallucinations and delirium tremens. It states further that the authors as well as three other groups of investigators have found that there is a serious loss of magnesium in alcoholism. But the important thing about their work is the favorable effect the taking of magnesium has on the alcoholic.

The final statement in this section of the article is, "The current evidence suggests, therefore, that in addition to poor dietary intake, the hypo-magnesemia [low magnesium] of the alcoholic patient may be due to increased urinary magnesium excretion." In other words, alcoholism probably begins in a diet very low in magnesium, and this can happen easily on a diet of white bread and other refined food products.

An article on magnesium in Annals of Internal Medicine (47:956, 1957), in which alcoholism and magnesium are discussed, contains the following summary: "A clinical syndrome characterized by muscle tremor, twitching and more bizarre movements, occasionally by convulsions and often by delirium, has been described and is considered to be a manifestation of magnesium deficiency. The evidence for this concept is the many similarities to experimental animal magnesium deficiency, the occurrence of low mean serum magnesium concentrations for a group of patients, a positive magnesium balance during treatment, and, finally, the frequently gratifying and sometimes dramatic response to therapy with magnesium salts."

In conclusion, here is a quote from a newspaper column, by Dr. H. L. Herschensohn, in the Arizona Republic, sometime in 1958: "For years Epsom salts was given to persons suffering from acute alcoholism. The good effect was partially due to its cathartic action, but it was also due to the fact that Epsom salts, being magnesium sulphate, makes up for the deficiency of magnesium characteristic of alcoholism.

"In animal experiments, when the magnesium in the blood is decreased, tremors occur similar to delirium tremens ... magnesium is an important part of every cell in the body. It is possible that its deficiency, even in non-alcoholics, may account for some ailments which are difficult to diagnose."

[Prairie Fairy]

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Ok - that's it for tonight guys..I'm out.

[techie]

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great source thread!

[FlyAway]

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Interesting stuff about L-theanine!

[FlyAway]

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I've been aware of the health benefits of magnesium, but didn't realize that is could be helpful to alcoholics. Very cool. Thanks for the info.

[Prairie Fairy]

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My strict commentary - and I am NOT a doctor nor play one on TV:

L-Theanine - An A$$load of money that does NOT help me sleep. Just me. Think I'd be better off on iTunes paying for those freaky brain waves/new age down loads...yes - some of them sound like grinding metal BUT really - at least you can replay and lie to yourself that you got something from the con-artist.

Magnesium _ Ohhhhhhhhh. That will calm you down. Too much milk today? Had a venti latte - skinny or otherwise? Yeah....Mag fixes that. Cal overload - gone. And hey - to0 much coffee and lattes - you have overload.

In the interest of full disclosure - you will be thinner in the AM. Not a little. A lot. YOU will be slender. Give yourselves an extra 20 minutes to get up. You will need them.

So - Mag Calm? Kills the Shakes....kills all kinds of things... is going to make you poop...and poop...did I say poop? Because if you didn't do 3 times you didn't dose right...

[lukalee]

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This is awesome. The only time I have been successful stringing days together was when I was on top of my supplements; I guess it is time to load up!

[lukalee]

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I did not know that about magnesium. I think I will wait until the weekend to try that.

[FlyAway]

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I already supplement with magnesium. I tried the magnesium Calm stuff and yes, it made me poop! I read that magnesium malate is better for you and I've since started taking that instead. I also like soaking in Epsom Salt baths.

[FlyAway]

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Btw, I don't have the pooping issue with magnesium malate.