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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

I've been taking 400mg of Magnesium Glycinate two times a day along with 200mg of Theanine (also twice a day) with my usual two cups of coffee.

I feel fantastically focused without the jittery edge that accompanies caffeine alone.

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I was given some L Theanine by a friend of mine, because I complained about not being able to silent my thoughts when I sleep. Apparently, L Theanine is great at reducing this mental crosstalk. I tried some for a few nights, but I didn't notice an appreciable change. Did you notice the effects after taking it for a few weeks, or do you get them immediately?

>not being able to silent my thoughts when I sleep

What do you mean by that?

Mind racing in bed, thinking about a million things at once. Keeps me up at night sometimes as well.

And this, too. I can sleep really well if I am not working on anything that spans multiple days, or if the problem I am stuck on is succinct and self-contained. A lack of closure on whatever I was last working on is the root cause for my disturbed sleep. Do you also feel this way, or is there some other source for you?

Thoughts are mainly about work and problems that I need to solve. When I am trying to sleep, I will sometimes work on a problem in my head because it's "bothering me", and this can postpone my sleep by up to an hour.

This happened to me a lot in college on homework sets. Some sets would take hours to complete, and if I could not solve a problem before sleeping, I would "give up" and go to sleep, only to continue thinking about the problem.

The best way to describe what is happening is: I'll be trying to sleep, and I will think about the problem statement. Sometimes I will find a new perspective, and follow that. If it doesn't lead anywhere, I will go back to the problem statement, and the process repeats. Sometimes I'll just repeat the problem statement in my head hundreds of times over the course of an hour, hoping I'll find a different path to the solution.

It's tempting to keep thinking and not sleep. In my experience, this is an affliction more than it is an asset. This is why I am interested in L Theanine.

keep thinking softly to fell asleep in a vivid dream and solve the problem

Too meta, cannot stop thinking about how much meta...

The Theanine effect is quite immediate and pretty noticeable.

But, if someone weren't anxious before or noticed enough that they have unwanted thoughts, I could see how the effects may not be apparent.

Caffeine usually has my heart racing. Even breathing slowly doesn't bring my pulse down. Within 20 minutes of ingesting Theanine, my pulse feels normal. My mind is no longer panicky.

I can't take Caffeine without L-Theanine. If I take caffeine alone I bite all of my nails and get a general sense of impending doom along with a shitty mood.

I ordered caffeine malaete, which is just caffeine bound to malic acid, in an attempt to cut out some of the stomach unpleasantness.

I had heard it was a little more gentle on the stomach and figured it was worth a shot, as caffeine is cheap anyway.

it actually worked as promised, it doesn't bother my stomach as much as a caffeine tablet or regular caffeine powder.

I usually mix it 1:2 with L-Theanine and cap it just like I would with regular caffeine and it gets the job done.

less jitters, less feeling like I'm going to die if I haven't eaten, less stomach unpleasantness. etc.

Do you worry about becoming dependent on that?

The only addictive thing there is the caffeine from coffee.

Addictive and dependent are too different things. I am dependent on my car, but it is not addictive.

Exactly. I am dependent on Google to do my job, but I am not addicted to it.

How are you dependent on Google for your job? Do you work for google?

Thank you for the downvotes, I appreciate it. Now would someone mind explaining how you can be dependent on Google for your job?

Probably not what OP meant, but I usually have to look something up on Google for every few lines of code I write.

It takes me less time to look things up than to learn em properly.

Okay well that kind of makes sense thanks. I use google all the time for gmail, analytics, admob, google searches, etc, but there are alternatives to all of it.

Speculation: Perhaps they use GAE, or another of Google's services as part of their stack. Or they use Google search heavily for looking up references.

A few years ago I discovered CogniTea[1]. It's a tea blend that puts 90mg of caffeine, 100mg of L-Theanine and some gingko and such in every tea bag. Best stimulant I've ever used.

So I guess I'm on 400mg+ of Theanine per day. Have been for 2 or 3 years. :D

I suggest giving it a shot. I got the entire office hooked.

My favorite part is that when I travel and don't drink it, there's no headache. Sure, feels like brain mush when unstimulated, but hey, no headache. :)

[1] www.cognitea.com

How many strokes have there been in your office? Ginkgo is not something I would widely suggest to people without knowing how robust their circulatory system is...

Could you elaborate?

None. I didn't know gingko had such dangers associated with it. (and I'm the heaviest drinker, most stick to 1 bag/day)

Where can I read more about these dangers? I've only see good things, really

I thought from reading about stimulants that Ginko was mild, bordering on placebo.

Ginko turned out to be extremely scary for me. Racing thoughts and intense nightmares every day. I will not take it.

Thank you! I've been looking for something like this to ameliorate the toxic aspects of caffine, whilst maintaining its positive effects.

On this topic, and related to the OP is the following study from 2010:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20614853

"RESULTS: Paraxanthine, caffeine, and modafinil significantly promoted wakefulness in both WT and narcoleptic TG mice and proportionally reduced NREM and REM sleep in both genotypes. ... However, the higher doses of caffeine and modafinil, but not paraxanthine, induced hypothermia and reduced locomotor activity, thereby confirming the lower toxicity of paraxanthine."

I was wondering whether anybody here has experience with paraxanthine?

According to Wikipedia

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

"Caffeine is metabolized in the liver into three primary metabolites: paraxanthine (84%), theobromine (12%), and theophylline (4%)"

I'd also be interested to know whether anybody had authoritative references to the LD50 toxicity in humans for caffine and its 3 metabolites ...?

That's interesting. My mother recently started raving about Magnesium Oil and forced me to try it while I was visiting. She had bought a spray.

I thought it was all garbage but I tried it and noticed I slept much deeper than normal and through the entire night, consistently. I have no idea if this is all placebo effect, but it's interesting hearing others have similar effects.

How did you hear about these substances and what conviced you to swallow 4(!) pills a day with our national drug caffeine ?

I don't know about the op, but I've also seen similar recommendations on https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/

I tried a simple caffiene and l-theanine routine, but couldn't properly self-evaluate the results.

Pretty sure that I initially heard about them through Tim Ferriss's podcast with Charles Poliquin (a world renown strength coach). He talked about them when outlining his sleep routine.

http://tim.blog/2016/11/06/charles-poliquin-mass-building-pr...

(you will sleep like a rock with a large dose of Magnesium Glycinate, especially if you've been deficient for a while (most coffee/soda/alcohol drinkers are))

I've always shied away from magnesium because of the laxative properties. Have you not experienced that with the glycate form?

Even taking in excess of 1,000mg, it may be a fairly running bowel movement but it's nothing that a normal session to the toilet can't handle.

Body gets rid of the excess and I move on with my day. I could back it off, but honestly, it just isn't that burdensome and I enjoy the consistency of taking the same amount every day.

And there may be days where I'm more stressed and the body could use more magnesium, so I just stick with my dosage.

There's another way to get magnesium that doesn't involve the digestive tract, avoiding any laxative effect. Epsom salt baths. Magnesium is well absorbed through the skin this way, and the digestive tract is not involved.

You might find this interesting wrt magnesium supplementation: https://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#magnesium

Beyond that, I wouldn't be surprised if the glycine along with the magnesium had neuro-inhibitory effect. Supplementation with gelatin might be worth trying for you. https://www.google.com/search?q=glycine%20in%20gelatin I put collagen hydrolysate in my coffee and I think it's pretty great.

>glycine along with the magnesium had neuro-inhibitory effect

Why is that?

I did't mean anything special about it in conjunction with magnesium, just that glycine itself is inhibitory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycine#As_a_neurotransmitter

> Glycine accomplishes several functions as a transmitter in the central nervous system (CNS). As an inhibitory neurotransmitter, it participates in the processing of motor and sensory information that permits movement, vision, and audition. This action of glycine is mediated by the strychnine-sensitive glycine receptor, whose activation produces inhibitory post-synaptic potentials. In some areas of the CNS, glycine seems to be co-released with GABA, the main inhibitory amino acid neurotransmitter. In addition, glycine modulates excitatory neurotransmission by potentiating the action of glutamate at N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11396606

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