Reasons for the energy experiment
If you have read my previous posts, I caught the COVID-19 virus right at the start of the pandemic which made me very ill. I didn’t seek medical help having chosen to treat myself at home. Well, by treating myself I mean I was sleeping much of the time – or trying to sleep since the cough kept me awake much of the time in the first three to four weeks.
The cough was bad and long-lasting. I lost my sense of smell for about eight months too. But feeling constantly tired has been the worst side-effect of the illness. I felt tired all the time – even after I had slept the recommended eight hours. However, sleep was the other casualty of COVID. Falling asleep became very hard and I was waking up during the night all the time which used to make me feel like a wreck in the morning.
There were other things that followed. I gained weight and developed depression. It wasn’t severe but I felt it nonetheless. The tasks that needed doing became harder and harder to such a degree that I started avoiding them because I had no energy to do them. So I would do the most important things that I had to do – mostly in my paid teaching work and ignore my projects – including writing for this blog.
Unexpected Find
I believe that my diet is mostly healthy. I eat good quality protein, healthy fats, fruit and vegetables. My diet is a bit heavy on carbs which I am trying to cut down on. However, despite my mostly healthy nutritious habits, I think something wasn’t quite right. Maybe my body wasn’t utilising all the nutrients from the food I was eating. Maybe it was just an issue of metabolic changes that happened as I grew older.
So I decided to look for solutions to my fatigue and lack of motivation. I wanted to find a natural way to boost my energy and feel-good factor and keep it up. I started searching for information both from scientific sources and blogs like my own. Recently, I read an interesting comment on Dr Mercola’s website.
Someone commented under one of his articles where he was interviewing Tony Robbins about new developments in medicine. It was a simple combination of an amino acid called L-Theanine and niacin (vitamin B3). So I decided to read up on it and found a lot of interesting data. The website that I found most informative and easy to follow was Healthline.com. Here is their article about L-Theanine.
I kept looking through information and comments on some of these websites to see what people were saying about it. Many people were talking about their personal experiences of using the combination with astounding results.
My Energy Experiment Protocol
So I ordered L-Theanine. I had vitamin B3 in 500mg capsules already but decided to use a small dose of vitamin B complex instead because the Solgar niacin I tried some time ago caused bad flushing which felt uncomfortable.
I have just found non-flush niacin (Vitamin B3) on Amazon and ordered them for myself and my son. It comes in capsules containing 250 mg niacin, 100 mg resveratrol and try-methyl glycine. I’ve checked the feedback and it’s mostly very positive. People are saying that it helps them with mental health issues, fatigue, poor sleep and even skin problems! So I have ordered 3 bottles (each has 60 capsules).
Following is the protocol I have been using for the past two weeks: 400mg L-Theanine in capsules twice a day – one in the morning and one in the evening. I take the morning capsules with green matcha tea (about 2 grammes of matcha powder in about 150 ml of hot but not boiling water) or naturally brewed coffee.
Caffeine helps to boost energy. The caffeine in matcha tea is milder than in coffee though, and the content of caffeine is lower. I also take 1 tablet of B-vitamin complex (100% recommended daily allowance of all the B vitamins). However, now I am planning to replace it with the niacin I have just ordered.
In the evening, I take another 400mg capsule of L-Theanine but don’t add caffeine drinks to it. Instead, I take a 300mg tablet of magnesium bis-glycinate, cannabis oil and another tablet of the vitamin B complex. Again, I will be replacing it with niacin. The morning protocol is meant to help boost my energy and the evening protocol to help me sleep through the night.
I have added L-Taurine to the protocol as well recently – 2 grams in the morning and 2 grams at about 6 pm. You may read about L-Taurine on the Healthline.com website. I am going to test it all out and let you know about the results of my energy experiment. I will also keep researching amino acids and write about what I find out in my blog.
Early Results of My Energy Experiment
I am also feeling younger. Having read that there are lots of pros and almost no cons in terms of taking L-Theanine, (with the exception of some rare conditions), I decided to test how it was going to work for me long term. So I am now in the middle of my experiment.
So far, so good. I am happy with the early results. The chronic fatigue I was experiencing is much better now, I am sleeping through most nights and my brain is clear much of the time. I can do more in one day. However, I do realise that this is not a panacea and that there is still a long way to go. I need to do a lot of work on myself to restore and maintain energy and physical, mental and spiritual balance. And I need to work on my fitness and body weight (I’ve gained quite a bit during the lockdown).
I try to go to bed on time, go for daily walks, keep watching what I eat and stay away from what brings down my energy. It’s a challenge for sure. However, becoming aware of what brings me down and being mindful at least most of the time is the first step forward. I’ll also keep researching amino acids and their benefits and will be sharing with you what I have found out.
