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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#221

Post by robwwilliams »

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…

Complete injustice to this lovely study. Why do you say unblinded? Why do you insult a time series study as “dressing up with lots of data”? Would you rather see less data? Or are you volunteering to be test subject #2? Show us how to do it right Dr. M.!

In my opinion this is an exemplary N=1 study that is well designed and thoughtfully executed. Deserve accolades, not derision. And the author even recognizes possible improvements.

Unlike most large high N clinical trials this is a high resolution longitudinal trial, and it is perfectly “controlled” for genetic difference (none), well controlled for environment, and there is only one evaluator.

Compare this to the messy and mostly useless massive studies of human depression reviewed by Jonathan Flint.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36702864/

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#222

Post by amelius »

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).

Yeah, even watching the news can make your stress levels go up.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#223

Post by cardanome »

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.

Do you have ADHD?

Most neurotypical people seem to experience jittery effects and being extremely alert while for people with ADHD it can actually make them sleepy.

Of course everyone's brain is different, it is just a correlation with many exceptions. So yeah, caffeine works differently on different people.

Personally, as someone with ADHD, I have a crazy caffeine tolerance. It helps me somewhat with focus but I don't get jittery.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#224

Post by MaKey »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #149
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…

Got to say after figuring this out I am tempted to ditch the western style mattress and replace it with something like a Japanese futon. I assume it'd be much easier to wash. In the meantime I need to purchase a mattress encasement, I put one on my pillow and that alone helped a bunch. Long term maybe desensitization is an option but I'm too lazy for that atm.

I did a desensitization and it helped a little bit. Despite the regular washing and using a dust mite vacuum I'm still having a hard time getting good sleep though. At least my nose isn't bloody in the morning anymore, so I guess that's something.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#225

Post by K0balt »

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_…

Citizens science used to be much more common and there were several publications initially built around the concept. Unfortunately, the idea has all but been obliterated by inadequate public education and the chronic lack of time that now embattles the middle classes.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#226

Post by Aaronmacaron »

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…

This sounds exactly like what I want! Alas, no Android app it seems, anyone aware of apps that do the same and are available for web or Android?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#227

Post by malfist »

episteme wrote: post #220
matthewdgreen wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not too me though. Especially not to me if I'm trying to decide to supplement l-theanine

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#228

Post by ck2 »

Buy supplements in POWDER FORM when possible if you don't need enteric capsule, etc.

It eliminates other contaminant/padding, no capsule materials to worry about.

You can then also vary the dose size to see if there is a tipping point where it works.

For all we know the author was overweight and the mg of Theanine vs KG of weight was not enough for any effect.

And Theanine DEFINITELY "works for me". Not even a question of doubt.

I always take a 1/4 teaspoon before bed. If I forget on rare occasion I find myself wondering why I can't fall asleep until I remember.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#229

Post by vanderZwan »

dylan604 wrote: post #67
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…

I would also look at other ingredients in teas as a knock on effect vs straight supplement extracts. Sometimes the extract as a supplement isn’t the same once separated from the rest of the plant it’s found.

One proven property of tea (especially green tea prepared at a slightly lower temperature) is that it increases arterial flexibility. Contrast that with coffee, which increases blood pressure. I wouldn't be surprised if the effects on the cardiovascular system plays a large role in the calming effect of teas, and the anxiety-increasing effect of coffee.

Which leads to my other point: these experiments always focus so much on the brain without taking into account that the state of the body has a profound impact on the brain too.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#230

Post by gatopingado »

Cool experiment!

Once the author started taking pills independently of their stress level, the variance of differences diminished a lot. I'd wager this supports the mean reversion hypothesis.

Also, while I agree with their general conclusion that theanine probably doesn't reduce stress, I'd give assign more probability to the hypothesis that theanine does work, but in other design settings. For example: drinking tea instead of taking pills, or measuring stress levels after a day instead of an hour, or evaluating the difference across time instead of in time chunks.

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