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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#211

Post by wenc »

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…

You can use a conventional vacuum if it has enough suction (most of these dust mite vacuums are rated at 13 kPa, a sweet spot for extraction without damaging fabric), and if you don’t mind using the same vacuum attachment on other surfaces. These also have rotating polyurethane fins that go close to the surface which helps in agitation — most vacuum attachments have plastic brushes which I suppose will do the job but possibly slightly less effectively.

It’s not a mattress vacuum so much as a dust mite vacuum that can be used on couches, fabric chairs etc. It’s also handheld and is specialized for the job, so it’s more ergonomic to hold.

The UV I can’t really vouch for but can’t hurt. I personally would not run a conventional vacuum on my mattress because I use the same vacuum on less hygienic surfaces, but if you have a dedicated attachment why not — I feel it would be less effective (because in my experience, the suction is often diminished when you use an attachment) but have no data. If you have a high end vacuum this is less of a factor, but most low end vacuums like Hoovers aren’t designed to deliver full suction with attachments.

I’m happy with my purchase because I feel that given it’s small size, I’m more likely to vacuum more frequently. I’m less likely to want to bust out the big vacuum.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#212

Post by davidanekstein »

If anyone is interested in running their own self guided experiments, I made an app for this called Reflect [1]. You can run self guided experiments for anything you can model as a metric in the app. We got in the top 3 on ProductHunt not too long ago [2], and I just wrote about an experiment I did with nootropic coffee [3].

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...

[2] https://www.producthunt.com/products/reflect-c052fea3-a982-4...

[3] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-wit...

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#213

Post by matthewdgreen »

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_…

This is an N=1 trial. Dressing your N=1 trial up with lots of pseudo controls and pseudo blinding and data collection does not make it better. In fact: putting this much effort into any medication trial makes it much more likely that you’re going to be incentivized to find effects that don’t exist. I think it’s nice that the author admits that they found nothing, but statistically, worthless drugs show effects in much better-designed trials than this one: it’s basically a coin toss.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#214

Post by robwwilliams »

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_…

“Technically” here could imply “not corrected for multiple tests”. But the typical qualifier I use is “nominally significant” when I don’t apply an correction for multiple tests.

Or “not using a one-way t test”.

The most appropriate null hypothesis in this lovely study is “does theanine REDUCE anxiety”, not “does theanine change anxiety either up or down”.

What impressed me most is the suggestion for an improved experimental design to remove his temporal drift by using 100 pre-loaded envelopes and only decoding the results at the end.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#215

Post by wenc »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #194
chiefalchemist wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Get a mattress encasement, it's like a HEPA filter bag for the mattress (cuts off the mites food supply and preventing allergens becoming airborne). Skips the whole trying to clean porous foam problem.

Just a data point. I have a mattress encasement which has never been removed (I got it to protect against bedbugs). Dust (dead human skin) still accumulates on the surface. It might not go into the mattress, but it will be on the surface. Since the encasements are never meant to be removed, vacuuming the mattress (with encasement on) still makes sense.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#216

Post by arthurofbabylon »

I appreciate the high agency and citizen science here. However, I think 1) theanine should not be isolated but ingested in context (via a nice pot of tea) 2) there should be a little bit more respect for statistical methods.

While those two points appear to be contradictory (the first appears to inject noise/variability, the second is intended to reduce noise), I believe they each produce a superior result. Regarding the first point (drinking tea instead of ingesting a capsule), theanine does not operate in isolation, but instead interacts significantly with other compounds. Regarding the second point, statistics are the lifeblood of these kinds of trials, what is the purpose of a series of trials without a correct analysis? (I believe it should be standard to devote a huge chunk of time to getting the math right during the analysis, even though it is hard/unintuitive.)

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#217

Post by azalemeth »

robwwilliams wrote: post #214
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_…

“Technically” here could imply “not corrected for multiple tests”. But the typical qualifier I use is “nominally significant” when I don’t apply an correction for multiple tests. Or “not using a one-way t test”. The most appropriate null hypothesis in this lovely study is “does theanine REDUCE anxiety”, not “does theanine change anxiety either up or down”. What impressed me most is the suggestion for an improved expe…

> The most appropriate null hypothesis in this lovely study is “does theanine REDUCE anxiety”, not “does theanine change anxiety either up or down”.

I disagree with this. You have a prior belief that theanine might reduce anxiety; if you wanted to you could codify that subjective belief and perform some variety of Bayesian hypothesis test [1] and compute a Bayes factor. The main reason that one-sided tests are advocated for is power; that is often the same as having a prior belief in disguise. Why not quantify it?

However, scientifically, if the data conclusively show that "theanine increases anxiety" that is a meaningful, non-artefactual result: it is hugely important to be sensitive to the answer 'you are wrong' and may well ironically spur development in a direction to help understand what is going on. I personally think that one sided tests are best avoided except in the case where it is physically impossible to have an effect in the other direction. Examples of this are rare, but they do occasionally exist.

[1] https://mspeekenbrink.github.io/sdam-book/ch-Bayes-factors.h...

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#218

Post by chkgk »

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…

A problem I see is that you can never be sure that it also works for other people. Just because one person reacts to a specific treatment does not mean that people on average react to the treatment in the same way. That’s the problem of having a sample size of 1. In other words: We cannot say much about whether the effect generalizes to a larger population from knowing that it has an affect on just one person.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#219

Post by bbstats »

davidanekstein wrote: post #212

If anyone is interested in running their own self guided experiments, I made an app for this called Reflect [1]. You can run self guided experiments for anything you can model as a metric in the app. We got in the top 3 on ProductHunt not too long ago [2], and I just wrote about an experiment I did with nootropic coffee [3]. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638... [2] https://www.producthu…

Android app?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#220

Post by episteme »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #213
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_…

This is an N=1 trial. Dressing your N=1 trial up with lots of pseudo controls and pseudo blinding and data collection does not make it better. In fact: putting this much effort into any medication trial makes it much more likely that you’re going to be incentivized to find effects that don’t exist. I think it’s nice that the author admits that they found nothing, but statistically, worthless drugs show effects in muc…

You could argue that this N is the only N that matters though.
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