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My 16-month theanine self-experiment
101–110 of 447 posts
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#102I love theanine as a low-level anxiolytic. My recommendation:
* Try a lower dosage first. 400mg made me irritable. 100mg works great for me.
* Effect seems to lessen if taken consecutive days; in fact it might have the opposite effect of making one more irritable than calmer.
A few nights ago I was tossing and turning because I had too much coffee before bed. A theanine pill and sleep was restored. It doesn't do much more than that, but it's good to have for one of those days that you just want to punch a wall.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#103I've been using L-Theanine for a over a year now and then and it definitely has effects! I use it mostly for sleep 100-150mg in combination of 5HTP which I found it to be an incredible sleep cocktail. I generally don't have trouble sleeping but this cocktail gives me great dreams and increase the quality of my sleep where 6-7 hours is very much enough for me compared to the usual 8-9. Unsurprisingly, l-theanine is po…
It’s almost as if this post is attempting to gaslight the world into thinking that L-Theanine doesn’t work. It’s the exact equivalent of saying “Look at the data, LSD does not make you hallucinate, it’s just conjecture. Look at my data and numbers.” This entire post makes me think there is either an ulterior motive for writing it to try and discredit the obvious impact L-Theanine has on people, or, the write up is si…
What makes you think it is trying to gaslight anyone? The post makes it clear that it just not working on the author is a possibility, but also fairly points out that there are other studies with more participants that weren't really promising either. It then suggests that those who do really believe it works on them also replicate a blinded self-experiment, which seems pretty fair to me - because then surely they'd be able to show results, if they're one of the (apparently many many) people whom it works for.
I also think/thought L-Theanine works for me, and since it's not harmful I'll keep taking it, but at this point I accept that it's likely just placebo effect until shown otherwise.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#104I tried it and it never did anything, I tried all sorts of CBD products as well (while in SF) and I never noticed a thing. The only thing that worked was microdosing shrooms which I've done twice in SF. I felt very calm and had a lot of novel ideas during these two days. Would recommend trying. Never microdosed LSD.
CBD works, but it needs to be high quality and if you're a stoner with crazy high tolerance probably you just won't feel it.
For sake of experiment, I recently acquired and vaped a good amount of CBD herb, and I was definitely high as a kite, though in a much different way than if it had been loaded with THC.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#105>Many people try theanine and report wow or great for ADHD or cured my (social) anxiety or changing my life [...] But does it really work? As someone who has dealt with insomnia and anxiety disorder in the past, the answer to that is, no. If green tea cured anxiety you'd know by now and all of Asia would be anxiety free. Insomniacs will usually do the reverse, they'll say manically monitor every bit of caffeine they…
> when you read studies, giving people 400 mg of caffeine (~4 cups of coffee) delays sleep by 30 minutes or so.
I'll need to see those studies. I'm finding the reverse: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805807/
> One study examining the sleep effects of 400 mg caffeine administered 30 minutes before bedtime demonstrated both severe sleep disruption as well as important cardiovascular effects during sleep likely related to increased sympathetic activity.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#106For a community that prides itself on critical thinking, I'm always surprised to see HN lap this sort of pseudoscientific witch-doctor stuff up. This poorly-controlled, N=1 experiment tells you nothing, not even about the author. There's absolutely no reason to consider these novice self-experiments when professional scientific experiments are available (unless you're hunting for a specific result).
Uh, I think the article itself is fine. Not the most rigorous science, but not too bad for an amateur.
But the comments on HN, on the other hand... Every single post about medicine or disease is full of anecdote upon anecdote and pseudoscience. It's really hard to tell the difference between HN and Reddit in this regard.
The most insane part is that people here are so eager to jump on the train and recommend random treatments to others when they've only vaguely described their problem. I never understand this.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#107For a community that prides itself on critical thinking, I'm always surprised to see HN lap this sort of pseudoscientific witch-doctor stuff up. This poorly-controlled, N=1 experiment tells you nothing, not even about the author. There's absolutely no reason to consider these novice self-experiments when professional scientific experiments are available (unless you're hunting for a specific result).
The author directly quoted the European Food Safety Authority, who found the same thing he did. There's a rich history of self-experimentation in medicine and nutrition, I don't think you need to be so negative.
My point was that no data gleaned from this experiment would've been meaningful, regardless of the result, because it was not conducted very rigourously.and on a sufficiently large scale.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of this stuff is just takes from random people, not medical research. For example, the article links to 5-month old HN thread where the first comment says: > And you do not want to mess with the 5-HTP and alcohol at the same time so I googled it > Internet forums are full of horror stories of people vomiting, blacking out or having seizures after drinking while on 5-HTP. It’s impossible to know if the stories ar…
I don't disagree with your main point, but the plural of anecdote is data. Phenomena exists before the related studies do. The link you provided goes on to say: > Antidepressants also affect the balance of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Popular antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors increase levels of serotonin in the brain. The labels of SSRIs such as Celexa and Prozac warn patients not…
Nah, the plural of anecdote is confirmation bias. Why do people keep trotting out this "plural of anecdote is data" line, is it a quote from some high-profile idiot?
Of course data can also give you confirmation bias, maybe that's the point, maybe that's why people defend anecdotes. What you have to do to find out if something is really happening is reason about it, then test your theories by doing your best to knock them over. Often though we just end up testing for statistical correlation without any better theory than "these two things go together". In that case, the plural of anecdote is bad methodology. The best thing I can say about anecdotes is that they might give you ideas.
Edit: found it, it's due to one Ray Wolfinger, behavioral political scientist: When a student once categorized one of Wolfinger’s claims as “just anecdotal,” he paused for an expectant second, dropping a copy of Robert Dahl’s “Who Governs” onto his seminar table as he replied, “The plural of anecdote is data.” His quip, emphasizing that statistics represent human stories, would become a well-known aphorism throughout the field. Well this probably shouldn't be taken literally and I suspect the criticism of his claim was fair.
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#109The biggest takeaway for me is how unreliable our subjective sense of "this works" can be without proper controls. Also, the way placebo + regression to the mean can make almost anything seem effective in the moment
Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment
#110I tried 200mg L-theanine pills for some days. I noticed a slightly calming effect, but after the supposed effect wore off, I suffered from unusually high level of anxiety. So I guess it can give you withdrawal symptoms. CBD worked much better for me in that regard.