The Ingredients I Chose and the Science Behind Them

I want to take you inside the formula. Not as a sales pitch. As a teaching. The three ingredients in Monarch Matcha™ are organic ceremonial matcha, organic tremella mushroom, and marine pearl powder. There is a reason for each one, and there is a body of research behind each one that I will share with you on this page.

I want to be honest about what I am sharing. The research I will walk through studies these ingredients individually, which is how nearly all nutrition science works. I will link every study so you can read the original paper yourself. My goal is not to convince you of anything. My goal is to give you the same information I had when I made my choices, so you can make your own.

I have always believed body stewardship is a practice, not a product. Monarch Matcha™ is one of the daily practices I built for myself, and now I get to share it with you.

Monarch Matcha™ is a daily care powder built around three ingredients: organic ceremonial matcha grown in the shade in Japan, organic tremella mushroom (sometimes called the snow mushroom), and marine pearl powder. I call this my TriBlend™ Formula because three ingredients work together to support the way I want to feel as I move through my day. Calm, focused, and present in my body.

Each ingredient in my TriBlend™ Formula was chosen because the research on it is genuinely interesting and because it fits into a daily care practice rather than a quick fix. I do not believe in quick fixes. I believe in showing up for yourself every morning, and choosing ingredients that support that showing up over years and decades.

I made Monarch Matcha™ for the woman who is intentional about how she lives. She is not chasing youth. She is not at war with her body. She is in her middle decades and beyond, and she has decided that the way she cares for herself in the morning sets the tone for the rest of her day. That is who I am, and that is who I built this for.

The phrase backed by science gets used so loosely that it has almost lost its meaning. So I want to tell you exactly what I mean by it on this page.

When I share research with you, I am sharing peer-reviewed studies on the individual compounds and ingredients in Monarch Matcha™. Some of those studies are randomized controlled trials in humans. Some are systematic reviews that pool many trials together. Some are mechanism studies that show how a compound behaves at the cellular level. They are all useful, and they all answer slightly different questions.

What I am not doing is claiming that Monarch Matcha™ as a finished blend has been put through its own clinical trial. The research I cite is on the ingredients themselves, the way nearly all nutrition and supplement science is conducted. I would rather tell you that plainly than dress it up in language that implies more than it should.

If you have ever wondered why a cup of matcha feels different from a cup of coffee, the answer lives in two compounds and the way they work together. The first is caffeine, which most people are familiar with. The second is L-theanine, an amino acid that occurs naturally in the leaves of the tea plant Camellia sinensis.

L-theanine is an amino acid that has been studied for its effects on the nervous system. A 2007 study by Kimura and colleagues, published in Biological Psychology, looked at what happened when participants took L-theanine before performing a stressful mental arithmetic task. The researchers measured both heart rate and salivary immunoglobulin A, which are physical markers of how the body responds to acute stress. They found that L-theanine reduced both responses compared with placebo, and they attributed the effect to a calming influence on the sympathetic nervous system. (Kimura et al., 2007 — PubMed).

Organic ceremonial matcha is one of the highest natural dietary sources of L-theanine. That is the first reason it sits at the heart of my daily care practice.

What is more interesting to me is what happens when L-theanine and caffeine are studied together, the way they actually occur in tea. A 2008 randomized study by Owen and colleagues found that the combination of L-theanine and caffeine improved both speed and accuracy on attention-switching tasks, and reduced susceptibility to distraction during memory tasks, more than either compound on its own. (Owen et al., 2008 — PubMed). A separate 2010 study by Giesbrecht and colleagues, using lower doses closer to what you find in a single serving of tea, replicated the finding and reported that the combination helped focus attention during a demanding cognitive task. (Giesbrecht et al., 2010 — PubMed).

More recent research has continued to support the pattern. A 2025 randomized crossover trial in sleep-deprived adults found that an L-theanine and caffeine combination improved both the accuracy and the speed of selective attention compared with placebo. (Sasaki et al., 2025 — PubMed).

Not all matcha is the same, and the difference comes down to how the tea plant is grown. The leaves used to make ceremonial grade matcha are shaded for roughly twenty to forty days before harvest. Shading the plants slows photosynthesis, which causes the leaves to produce more L-theanine and chlorophyll, and to retain a softer, sweeter flavor instead of becoming bitter.

A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences confirmed that shade growing increases both the L-theanine and the caffeine content of tea leaves while changing the polyphenol profile. (Liu et al., 2022 — PubMed Central). A separate 2020 review on matcha specifically noted that the shade-growing process is the reason matcha contains higher concentrations of these compounds than standard green tea. (Jakubczyk et al., 2020 — PubMed).

When I sourced organic ceremonial matcha for Monarch Matcha™, I was not buying any green tea powder I could find. I was buying shade-grown leaves because that is what the research is actually about. It matters to me that the ingredient on the label is the ingredient in the studies.

The other reason I chose organic ceremonial matcha is for its polyphenol content. Polyphenols are a large family of plant compounds, and the most studied polyphenol in green tea is a catechin called epigallocatechin-3-gallate, usually shortened to EGCG.

EGCG is the most abundant catechin in green tea. A 2023 review published in Antioxidants summarized decades of research showing that EGCG interacts with cell surface receptors, intracellular signaling pathways, and nuclear transcription factors, and is being studied for its broad antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. (Kciuk et al., 2023 — PubMed Central). A 2025 review in Molecules noted that EGCG comprises approximately fifty percent of the total polyphenol content in green tea, and that it is one of the most studied natural compounds in nutrition science. (Adekoya et al., 2025 — MDPI).

Matcha is an unusually concentrated source of these compounds because, unlike steeped tea, you consume the entire leaf. A 2020 analysis of matcha specifically reported total polyphenol content of approximately 1,765 mg per liter, alongside a high flavonoid content of roughly 1,968 mg per liter. (Jakubczyk et al., 2020 — PubMed).

Oxidative stress is the term scientists use for what happens when the body produces more reactive molecules, called free radicals, than its own defenses can keep up with. It is a normal part of being alive. It is also one of the processes that researchers connect to how our cells and tissues change over time. Polyphenols like EGCG are studied for their role in supporting the body's own antioxidant defenses.

I want to be careful with my language here. I am not telling you that drinking matcha will reverse anything. I am telling you that the polyphenols in matcha have been studied for their antioxidant properties for decades, and that supporting your body's own defenses with what you eat and drink every day is a meaningful part of body stewardship.

Organic tremella mushroom, sometimes called the snow mushroom or the silver ear, has been used in Asian food and traditional medicine for hundreds of years. It is one of the most quietly fascinating ingredients in Monarch Matcha™, and it is the one I get the most questions about.

The bioactive component most studied in tremella is a family of compounds called tremella fuciformis polysaccharides. A 2021 review in the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology summarized decades of research showing that tremella polysaccharides have been studied for their moisturizing, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-aging properties. (Ma et al., 2021 — PubMed Central). A 2025 structural review in Nutrients similarly noted that tremella polysaccharides exhibit antioxidant, immunomodulatory, anti-inflammatory, and skin-protective properties. (Zhao et al., 2025 — PubMed).

I want to be straight with you about something. A lot of the early research on tremella was done in the context of skincare, where it was applied topically and compared to hyaluronic acid. The newer research on oral tremella is what made me pay attention. A 2022 study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology compared topical and oral tremella polysaccharides in mice and found that oral administration outperformed topical application across multiple measures of skin barrier health. (Zhao et al., 2022 — PubMed).

And in 2025, a preclinical study published in Nutrients evaluated tremella fuciformis enzymatic extracts and reported that oral supplementation supported the body's response to chronic restraint stress in animal models, with effects researchers compared to L-theanine as a positive control. (Moon et al., 2025 — PubMed Central).

If you have been reading carefully, you have already noticed something. The L-theanine in organic ceremonial matcha is studied for the way it supports the nervous system under stress. The polysaccharides in organic tremella mushroom are being studied for similar properties through different mechanisms. The two ingredients are not duplicating each other. They are working in the same direction, the way well-built recipes do.

Marine pearl powder is the third ingredient in my TriBlend™ Formula, and it is the one with the longest history of use. Pearl powder has been part of traditional Chinese practice for more than a thousand years, both for skin care and as a daily food supplement.

Pearl powder is made by milling pearls into a fine powder. The pearl itself is composed of approximately ninety-five percent calcium carbonate and five percent organic matter, including a protein called conchiolin made up of seventeen amino acids, plus a range of trace minerals such as magnesium and selenium. (Yang et al., 2019 — PubMed Central).

What I think is most relevant for a daily care practice is the human research on oral pearl powder. A 2018 randomized placebo-controlled trial published in the Journal of Food and Drug Analysis gave twenty healthy middle-aged adults three grams of pearl powder per day or placebo for eight weeks. The researchers reported that the pearl powder group showed an increase in total antioxidant capacity, increases in glutathione content (an important internal antioxidant), and decreases in markers of lipid peroxidation. (Chiu et al., 2018 — PubMed Central).

That is a small trial, and one trial is not the final word on anything. But it is human research, on oral pearl powder, in the dosing range that matters, and that is the kind of evidence I want to share with you when it exists.

There is a difference between pearl powders, and I will not pretend the sourcing was easy. Marine pearl powder, the kind I use in Monarch Matcha™, comes from ocean pearls and has historically been associated with a higher mineral profile and a more delicate amino acid composition than freshwater alternatives. I chose marine pearl powder because of the tradition it carries and because of the way it complements the other two ingredients in my TriBlend™ Formula.

When I built Monarch Matcha™, I was building for myself. Three ingredients, each with research I respect, each fitting into a daily practice I could keep up with for the rest of my life. I built it because I wanted it. The fact that I now get to share it with women I will never meet is a privilege I do not take lightly.

If anything on this page made you curious, I would love for you to read deeper into the research yourself. The links are real and the studies are open. And if you want to make Monarch Matcha™ part of your own morning, I would love that too. But more than anything, I want you to walk away from this page with the same belief I built the brand on. Self-care is sovereignty. Radiant aging begins with the intentional stewardship of our bodies. And the small things you do every morning, before anyone else is awake, are not small at all.

With Love, Candice