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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#181

Post by tomalbrc »

mg wrote: post #167
kortilla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

What a weird take, in 99.999% of cases you don’t have such a black/white contrast

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#182

Post by [deleted] »

mg wrote: post #167
kortilla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

[deleted]

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#183

Post by meindnoch »

loufe wrote: post #180

There's a great podcast by Andrew Huberman on dopamine I listened to last week where he discusses theanine at the end. It's a fantastic (but 3 hour long) primer[0] for anyone wanting to learn more. [0] https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/controlling-your-dopamin...

Ah, the Joe Rogan of medicine.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#184

Post by mg »

kqr wrote: post #175
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_…

> So what does it mean? What was the goal of collecting the data? What would the interpretation have been if the data would show a significant positive effect of Theanine? I think what the author is saying is that for them to bother with theanine on a permanent basis, it would have to have shown an effect large enough to be apparent just from plotting. In other words, they mean technical significance as opposed to cl…

    an effect large enough to be
    apparent just from plotting
And how large is that? Without putting a number on it, how do we come to the conclusion that the effect is not large enough? That it didn't show in their sample of data points could have been just random chance.

But before we take the measured effects at face value, I think it's important think about them more. They report significant p values of their success in predicting if the capsule holds Theanine and also for the effect of the capsule when it holds Theanine. Both negative correlations. My first thought reading this is that the Placebo tasted more like Theanine and thinking they took Theanine had a positive effect on the outcome.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#185

Post by FollowingTheDao »

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…

I have asthma triggered by Volatile Organic Compounds. I good activated charcoal room air filter did wonders for me.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#186

Post by kubb »

Kiro wrote: post #166
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.

Im on the other side of the spectrum. With a small dose of caffeine I get really wired, my blood pressure rises, my head hurts, I feel stressed, anxious and I can’t sleep at night even if the coffee was in the morning. With matcha it’s a similar effect but it’s less anxiety and more headache.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#187

Post by mg »

tomalbrc wrote: post #181
mg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

What a weird take, in 99.999% of cases you don’t have such a black/white contrast

Sure. But even when you add noise to the described experiment, you get useful data.

That is the point I am making: Experiments of a single person can be useful.

The critics of single person experiments usually come up with examples vastly different than the Theanine experiment described here. With long term experiments which are only conducted once. But the Theanine experiment was looking for a short term effect and can be conducted many times. The hammer experiment I made up would be an extreme example of this type of experiment which leads itself well to be conducted by a single person.

What I am trying to point out is that if you are a skeptic, it would be better to try and find weaknesses in the experiment at hand. Not making up completely different experiments.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#188

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

Thanks for this idea. Can you recommend a particular model? A quick search found mostly just vacs. I have a vac(s). Perhaps I just get in the habit of treating my bed with UV?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#189

Post by FollowingTheDao »

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.

I am the same way. I cannot even eat chocolate before bed or I am up all night.

I have Bipolar Disorder with an Anxiety Disorder and drinking coffee triggers a lot of paranoid manic thoughts as well.

But Tea is even worse for me, because, I think, of the theanine. I think I am very sesitive to Glutamate and really glad the blogger talks about it. It is one of the most under utilized neurotransmitters in psychiatry.

Also, cutting out foods with some certain additives helped me as well. Like isolated pea protein, autolyzed yeast extract, and malted barley flour to name a few. Theyare all flavor enhancers that contain glutamate.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#190

Post by chiefalchemist »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #157
wenc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I jumped on the idea but then immediately came to the same conclusion. Now I’m thinking I stick with the vac(s) I have, but get a separate UV. And UV the bed while I’m working. Maybe?

Your thoughts?

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