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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#131

Post by aszantu »

mg wrote: post #126

This is great. The author defines their own metrics, is doing their own A/B tests and publishes their interpretation plus the raw data. Imagine a world where all health blogging was like that. Personally, I have not published any results yet, but I have been doing this type of experiments for 4 years now. And collected 48874 data points so far. I built a simple system to do it in Vim: https://www.gibney.org/a_syntax_…

I found, I take Abt. 4 days to react to stuff. Except for those cheap cooking oils, I get migraines within a time-frame of about 3 hrs.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#132

Post by [deleted] »

jaggederest wrote: post #46

This is actually a thing I wish existed, but I don't have time and energy to make it right now. I'd pay $25 a month or more. Basically it's an application that lets you do self-experiments like this, properly blinded and with good statistics. A challenge-dechallenge-rechallenge study is one of the ones I like, but if you want to do one you essentially have to design the study anew each time, and it would be convenien…

[deleted]

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#133

Post by YetAnotherNick »

I wish people can pay for trials on products. e.g. In subreddits for hairfall, people cite all sort of very badly done research that shows some chemical in expensive product as effective, for which the only research is sponsored by the company making it. If 1000 people in that subreddit pays $100, it might be enough for a good trial and knowing the active people there, they would likely pay even more. Same for multivitamins, the research on that is so important yet so bad and biased, and getting million dollar crowdfunding should be possible.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#134

Post by drakonka »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #125
drakonka wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Placebo is such a curious thing. If you can prove to yourself that your effects are placebo-effects, then those effects should disappear, because you no longer believe in them. So if it's working for you, you probabaly should NOT start a study to find out if it works or not. It might stop working (for you). What good would that do?

I am hoping my level of self-delusion would be strong enough. When I was a kid and wanted to play sick to get out of school, I'd always quickly develop an actual low-grade fever and begin feeling legitimately sick. Even after I noticed the pattern, it still happened.

I'm hoping I can use this power of deception against myself with L-Theanine if I were to run this kind of study (but, maybe fortunately, have no motivation to do so at this point).

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#136

Post by mathgeek »

walthamstow wrote: post #100
jaggederest wrote: post #46

This is actually a thing I wish existed, but I don't have time and energy to make it right now. I'd pay $25 a month or more. Basically it's an application that lets you do self-experiments like this, properly blinded and with good statistics. A challenge-dechallenge-rechallenge study is one of the ones I like, but if you want to do one you essentially have to design the study anew each time, and it would be convenien…

I think this is an awesome idea. You get two boxes of daily pills labelled A and B, you take A for a month then take B for a month, and log your feelings throughout. At the end the service reveals which month was Vit D (or whatever) and which wasn't. I guess you could get your partner or a friend or family member to do it for you?

While this is a wonderful idea in theory, a key reason it's often not used for experiments is that there are just too many variables to control for (including, for example, the ongoing effects of spending a month wondering if you're taking something that's affecting you... which affects you in and of itself).

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#137

Post by Jolter »

AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #6

From the discussions I've seen about theanine, the real benefit supposedly came when it was taken alongside caffeine. The thinking being that theanine moderated some of the jittery effects of caffeine, allowing the user to take higher doses of caffeine, which itself has some benefit on task concentration and focus. I wish the author had spent time addressing that theory specifically.

The author was apparently not interested in that hypothesis. Why don’t you do a little self-experiment, now that a method has been laid out?

(Personally, I think the existing literature by itself should be more than enough to convince anyone that orally taken theanine most likely has no effect. The reason more scientists don’t explore theanine is probably because they don’t think it’s likely to produce an interesting result.)

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#138

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

For anyone looking for a sleep supplement, before you go down the rabbit hole of Theanine, Mg, etc. Try an OTC Azelastine or Fluticasone nasal spray for a month.

Turns out my chronic poor quality, restless sleep was a dust mite allergy that I should have figured out and treated a decade ago. Would wake up with a stuffy nose and very dry mouth but didn't have too many issues during the day. I was allergic to my bed.

Been using antihistamines, and a dehumidifier for several months now and sleeping better than I have in years. Given how extremely common mite allergies are there's got to be a lot of folks with undiagnosed issues here.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#139

Post by OuterVale »

Since reading Gwern's essay on nootropics [1] I've wanted to experiment with theanine. Caffeine is obviously a fantastic stimulant, and I take care not to consume it too frequently (I try to limit my intake to no more than three times a week based on the research of Michael Dickens [2]).

As such, I have next to no tolerance. As great as having no tolerance is for the productivity benefits, it does have undesirable side effects. A single cup of coffee can get me twitchy and slightly shaky, and a cup of tea past noon can impact my ability to fall asleep.

A gripe I have is the lack of good research into the combination of theanine and caffeine, and I think I'd be a good candidate for a blinded test looking into it. I would like to carry one out but really do lack experience in tests of this nature.

Does anyone know any good resources for someone interested in learning how to conduct a self-study such as this, including details regarding common pitfalls?

[1]: https://gwern.net/nootropic/nootropics [2]: https://mdickens.me/2024/04/11/caffeine_self_experiment/

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#140

Post by scotty79 »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #123
TimByte wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great point. Dose-response relationships can be really weird

I have a strange relationship with psilocybin where microdoses reliably give me an almost unbearable headache, but a large dose will reliably get rid of a headache (even a migraine in one case). I haven’t tested it in many years (boring parent mode engaged) but that was my first experience with bizarre dose response relationships where one effect was very acutely inverted. It took me months to figure out the source o…

This reminds me of hydrogen sulfide that at low levels smells awful but at little higher doesn't smell at all, because it just fries receptors.
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