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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#161

Post by walthamstow »

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).

I agree it's not perfect, you're right to cite the Hawthorne effect. The vitamin D one for example would be affected by weather and seasonality. But I still think it would be really cool and a good product.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#162

Post by mg »

brodo wrote: post #155
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?

I write into a text file on my phone. And later move those lines into the file on my computer.

It's a bit cumbersome, but not too much. But yeah, I look forward to when I finally get around to writing an app for it.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#163

Post by kortilla »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #159
mathgeek wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That’s why you need multiple participants and why this idea for doing experiments on just yourself doesn’t work well

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#164

Post by justlikereddit »

Following in the trend of the guy who tried LSD microdosing and concluded with cocksure fanfare it does nothing.

Which throws a veil of doubt over these kind of studies. Something is open to be defective in structure or presentation.

"Daily intravenous heroin use - a placebo controlled self-administration study" "It does absolutely nothing"

Would we all jump to the occasion of believing it, if the writeup is polished enough?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#165

Post by fredgrott »

I take L-theanine for ADHD

1. Theanine is an analog for Glutamate and Glutamine. 2. Due to indirect relationships to ADHD, Depression, etc. no one take Theanine by itself...I do not. 3. When drugs are created we often have incomplete pictures, for example SSSrIs for depression...we now know its both low levels in serotonin and GABA combined...bias yes I take Theanine, GABA and Glutamine for depression and it does work.

One experiment on oneself means very little...I know as I spent 36 months finding the combo that works for my depression and ADHD.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#166

Post by Kiro »

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.

I don't understand what people refer to when they say "jittery effects". I don't feel anything when taking caffeine, no matter the dose. Or I want to think it helps me wake up but the effect is so small that I can't be sure. It's basically just a ritual for me.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#167

Post by mg »

kortilla wrote: post #160
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. Excelle…

An experiment of 1 person can very well produce useful data.

It depends on the setup of the experiment.

Imagine an experiment where a person's thumb gets randomly hit with either a hammer or a feather once per day. And they then subjectively rate the experience. After 1000 days of collecting data, I doubt that we would wrongly come to the conclusion that the hammer treatment leads to the nicer outcome.

The setup of the Theanine experiment which is the basis of this thread looks good on first sight. I have the feeling that the interpretation could use more thought though.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#168

Post by teekert »

Jolter wrote: post #142
teekert wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But for me sometimes when I’m stressed (usually related to some lack of control) I may get very precise about how the dishwasher is organized among others. It’s annoying for people around me, but at least it’s not hard drugs.

That doesn’t sound like OCD at all to me. It sounds like you have a personality that values order and control over details. Annoying perhaps, but normal. If it’s getting to the point where it impedes your social life, you could see a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure the diagnosis wouldn’t be OCD. OCD is characterized by strong feelings of anxiety which can only be temporarily subdued by compulsive, repeated behavior…

Ok yeah I understand that it must be annoying to people with real OCD to read stuff like my comment. Apologies.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#169

Post by devonsolomon »

Great experiment! It’s important to highlight that even in rigorously blinded studies which find a drug ineffective on average, there can still be genuine responders—this is known scientifically as “heterogeneous treatment effects.” Essentially, individuals vary in genetics, metabolism, and neurochemistry, which can cause meaningful differences in drug responsiveness. Thus, an N=1 trial, like yours, might indeed reveal real personal benefits that wouldn’t appear in a population-level analysis.

However, systematically performing robust N=1 trials individually across multiple substances can be impractical—too laborious and time-consuming for most people. An interesting business model might be a startup that facilitates personalized N=1 experiments at scale: providing users with high-quality compounds, matched placebos, structured dosing schedules, and data-tracking tools. This could empower more individuals to accurately assess personal efficacy across a wide variety of substances, potentially offering valuable, personalized insights that large-scale clinical trials can’t capture.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#170

Post by calmoo »

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.

Do you not think it’s interesting that if affects both of you the same way, as far as to cause panic attacks in both of you? For an individual I could just about accept that it’s just how you react to caffeine, but the fact both you and your partner have the same result suggests some sort of influence on each other?
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