Your Expert Guide To Theacrine

Want a way to boost your energy and focus without all the jittery side effects of caffeine? Look for this ancient Chinese ingredient in your workout products.
A relatively new compound is starting to show up in more workout products. Officially known as 1,3,7,9-tetramethyluric acid, theacrine is gaining popularity because of its ability to act as a stimulant—without the usual unwanted side effects.
While less known than caffeine or creatine, theacrine shows some promising properties as a pre-workout ingredient that gives a big boost to both physical and mental performance.

What Is Theacrine?

Found primarily in the leaves of the plant Camellia assamica var. kucha, theacrine has been a long-standing component in the traditional Chinese tea known as kucha, and now appears in pre-workout and energy drinks. It works a lot like caffeine, helping to boost energy and performance while decreasing fatigue.
What Is Theacrine
It does this by preventing dopamine from being reabsorbed after it is released in the brain. This causes dopamine levels to rise, which can increase energy levels, improve mood, and provide greater mental focus. It also blocks adenosine, the chemical responsible for feelings of sedation and relaxation.
By increasing dopamine and reducing adenosine, theacrine increases alertness, physical performance, wakefulness, and coordination. No wonder it's getting more popular!

Energy Without The Jitters

Theacrine is good on its own, but when combined with caffeine, the combo can provide all the wonderful benefits of caffeine without unwanted side effects including shakiness, dizziness, elevated heart rate, and elevated blood pressure.
Data published at the 2017 International Society of Sports Nutrition conference demonstrated a large improvement in reaction time among soccer players after they took a combination of TeaCrine, a pure form of theacrine, and caffeine. Researchers suggested that the athletes were able to sustain greater focus under fatigue for a longer period when combining the two ingredients.[1]
As well as fueling physical exertion, theacrine also delivers a smooth increase in energy that can help boost brain power. When combined with caffeine, theacrine can make it easier to concentrate on the task at hand and help reduce mental fatigue. Data published in the Journal of Nutrients demonstrated improvements in feelings of attentiveness, alertness, and focus following supplementation with TeaCrine and caffeine.[2]
A 2014 study showed that a single 200-milligram dose of TeaCrine significantly improved energy and reduced fatigue.[3] When taken for seven days, participants noted improvements in their energy, fatigue, concentration, anxiety, and motivation to exercise.

Is Theacrine Better Than Caffeine?

Caffeine's stimulating properties can make it hard to wind down or fall asleep following a late-night workout. But theacrine is gentler, helping your body return to a state of calm after use.
Even better, it's unlikely you'll have to keep adjusting your theacrine dosage over time. In contrast, the longer you take products containing caffeine, the more your body becomes habituated to it. You must take more and more to produce the same level of stimulation.
Theacrine doesn't appear to work in the same way. A 2016 study showed that participants who took 300 milligrams of theacrine for 60 consecutive days showed no signs of getting used to it.[4] Longer-duration studies are needed, but research so far suggests that your first dose of theacrine would produce the same effect as your 200th!
Is Theacrine Better Than Caffeine?

The Best Way To Supplement With Theacrine

You'll increasingly find theacrine as part of pre-workout and fat-burner formulas, often under the name TeaCrine. It works well with other common performance-related ingredients like creatine, branched-chain amino acids, caffeine, and beta-alanine, making it the perfect complement to your supplement stack.
In a pre-workout, you might see it dosed anywhere between 50-200 milligrams, often combined with caffeine. Theacrine can be taken on its own in pill form or, more commonly, under the name TeaCrine. Whether you take it in pill or powder form, it's best to take it 30-45 minutes before your workout.
Theacrine can enhance and extend the effects of caffeine, enabling you to use 150 milligrams of caffeine or less and still get a strong energy boost. This is great news for anyone sensitive to the side effects of caffeine or who wants to control their daily caffeine consumption.
As with any new supplement, take theacrine at the lowest dose possible before jumping to higher dosages.
While theacrine has made its way into the world of supplements, you can still consume it the way it has been for centuries, as kucha tea. Due to the tea's unpleasantly bitter taste, you may have to purchase it online or in a specialty tea shop.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Is Selenium? Your Ultimate Guide To Selenium.

Image
Selenium is an important trace mineral that's high in antioxidants. Here are the health and fitness benefits, side effects, and what happens if you don't get enough. Due to intense training regimens, strict diets, and modern life in general, bodybuilders and other athletes are at risk of racking up too much physical stress. When this happens, they can limit their ability to recover from training, severely limiting their performance and results. Plenty of nutrients play their part in keeping this from happening—some you know, some you probably don't. One of the surprising big hitters in combatting oxidative damage is the mineral selenium.  What Is Selenium? Selenium is a trace mineral that is part of many proteins in the body. A "trace" mineral is any mineral the body needs in amounts of less than 100 milligrams per day.  Selenium exists in the body mostly in the form of selenoproteins. Selenoproteins are selenium-containing proteins which provide the...
Read more

Your Expert Guide To ATP Supplementation

Image
Our bodies create ATP to power all our movements, but they don't usually produce enough. Can you take ATP as a supplement? denosine triphosphate, or ATP, is the main energy source that keeps our bodies alive. In fact, if your body isn't constantly producing it, you're...well...you're clinically dead. ATP has long been thought of as a chemical the body creates from other nutrients, not a substance that can be taken as a supplement. But taking ATP pills or powders could benefit your workouts. What Is ATP? ATP has three phosphate groups (tri-phosphate) in each molecule. When these groups are removed from the molecule, a huge amount of energy is released. Your body uses the energy to carry out a number of critical processes. These include the transportation of  protein  and lipids ( fat ) into and out of your cells, communication between cells, DNA and RNA synthesis, and—last, but not least—the muscle contractions that make movement possible. How ATP Work...
Read more

The Science Behind The Best Pre- And Post-Workout Supplements

Image
If you already take these supplements or have been wondering about them, bookmark this page to learn about how they can enhance workouts, and when and how much to take for maximum muscular results! Building muscle isn't just a question of "working out" or "dialing in nutrition." It's about finding the perfect symbiosis between both components, to help them feed off of each other. On the physical side, a well-designed workout program will systematically stress the body, giving your muscles a message they have no choice but to heed. You balance volume (how much you train), intensity (how hard), and frequency (how often), trying to maximize each one without detracting from the others. When muscles are stressed systematically like this, they adapt, and performance increases. Nutrition is another variable that's essential for getting the most out of every single workout—and by extension, for maximizing gains over the long haul. Several supplements h...
Read more