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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#151

Post by herbst »

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.

It's not only the jittery but caffeine also tends to make people more anxiety, l-theanine mostly takes that away.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#152

Post by alexthehurst »

simion314 wrote: post #87
fragmede wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you blind the contents of the pills unless someone else does it?

>how do you blind the contents of the pills unless someone else does it? My idea ( you need to adapt the numbers) 1 you build say 30 paper small bags 2 you then get 15 pills of vitamins/drug you test and 15 of placebo , you need them to be similar in shape/color 3 you put the pills in bags and make two piles, say on left side you have the vitamin and right side you have the placebo 4 you make a script to generate 30…

This would work! QR codes would be even more opaque.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#154

Post by metalman »

I like this work a lot.It seems like the sort of thing that if done by thousands of like minded people would build a knowlege base that cuts through the very very messy reality of life, and gets us closer to rules of thumb that might help. chinese medicine with techno characteristics? cyber herbal8sm :) we need an app for this

But... data eh?

the ONLY repository of data, is genes.vast, tested in deep time, with countless trilions of runs.now running on quintillions of test units. we have access to a tiny portion of the data, but are at the stage of? do you read the text from the right?left? top? bottom?, but of course its read as a gestalt, and so outside of our capacity.

What may be accessable, is our enzimatic relationships with the substances in our environment, and how those balances are specific to groups and individuals, but it wont be easy to unravel, records plus actual chemical testing of anything, anywhere, anytime which boils down to "light" sensors, that are capable of seeing and diferentiating the exicitation of molecules under ambiant conditions.

what is dismissed by so called science, are the indivuals who survive and thrive under exactly the same conditions that decimate there peers, and how "science" is perfectly happy to call something "luck" and then move towards monitising "bad luck" .....scientificly.....rather that work towards understanding the framework that governs everything

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#155

Post by brodo »

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_…

Your self-tracking syntax looks neat. How do you track if you are not in front of a computer?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#156

Post by JackMorgan »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #48

> I’ve long found that tea makes me much less nervous than coffee, even with equal caffeine. Many people have suggested theanine as the explanation, but I’m skeptical. Most tea only has ~5 mg of theanine per cup, while when people supplement, they take 100-400 mg. Apparently grassy shade-grown Japanese teas are particularly high in theanine. And I do find those teas particularly calming. But they still only manage ~2…

About ten years ago both my wife and I had to switch to extremely low caffeine coffee because we would get panic attacks. It still happens now, just this week we were accidentally served caffeinated coffee at breakfast diner and both were having panic attacks by 4pm.

It's absolutely wild that I can drink a mug of a beverage that everyone else drinks by the liter but be crippled with anxiety. Brain chemistry is weird.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#157

Post by seabass-labrax »

wenc wrote: post #145
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #138

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. B…

You should consider a dust mite vacuum with UV. I bought one on Amazon (this one but you can check YouTube reviews for others). https://www.amazon.com/JIGOO-Vacuum-Cleaner-Dust-Sensor/dp/B... I was surprised how much dust this thing picked up (my sheets get washed often, but it’s hard to clean the mattress itself). Back in the day people used to sun dry their mattresses but no one does that these days. This dust mite…

Vacuuming one's bed makes complete sense to me, but what is special about the model you linked to that makes it specifically a 'mattress' vacuum cleaner? Many canister vacuum cleaners are more powerful and can be used elsewhere in the home too (with a different attachment for hygiene, of course). There's the UV light, but I can't see how this is effective when used only for short periods of time. The dust won't be removed with it and the mites will withstand it too.

Not wanting to make you feel bad about your purchase, but is there something unique about this kind of device that gives it an edge over conventional vacuum cleaners?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#158

Post by [deleted] »

JackMorgan wrote: post #156
pazimzadeh wrote: post #48

> I’ve long found that tea makes me much less nervous than coffee, even with equal caffeine. Many people have suggested theanine as the explanation, but I’m skeptical. Most tea only has ~5 mg of theanine per cup, while when people supplement, they take 100-400 mg. Apparently grassy shade-grown Japanese teas are particularly high in theanine. And I do find those teas particularly calming. But they still only manage ~2…

About ten years ago both my wife and I had to switch to extremely low caffeine coffee because we would get panic attacks. It still happens now, just this week we were accidentally served caffeinated coffee at breakfast diner and both were having panic attacks by 4pm. It's absolutely wild that I can drink a mug of a beverage that everyone else drinks by the liter but be crippled with anxiety. Brain chemistry is weird.

[deleted]

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#159

Post by akoboldfrying »

mathgeek wrote: post #136
walthamstow wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Don't those effects cancel with the effects on those participants who take the same 2 treatments but in the reverse order?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#160

Post by kortilla »

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_…

Well the issue is that an experiment with 1 person can’t prove much because you can’t have a control group.

Too much other stuff is changing in a single persons life that could account for all observed side effects.

You also have latent side effect issues. A person could smoke for 10 years, not smoke for another 10, and then conclude that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. Then they get lung cancer 20 years later.

Excellent data and statistics is not sufficient for a good experiment

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