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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

dynomight.net

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#241

Post by robwwilliams »

azalemeth wrote: post #217
robwwilliams wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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 advoca…

Sure. I can see your point, but the most reasonable posterior probability of the null given the biohacker community’s belief is one-tailed. This also gives more power to reject the null.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#242

Post by quijoteuniv »

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_…

I think is great that folk self observe, and that is a key to a lot, everyone ought to find what works for themselves, however there is a tendency to want to fix things with pills. There is a fundamental error there, if successful you might damp your symptoms but then you start a Whac-A-Mole (whac-a-symptom) but you are not looking at the root. The problem will come in another form. Have you consider that the symptom is a defence mechanism ?What about Taichi, mindfulness ness practices, yoga why not a study on that? It is definitely more work… than taking some pills. No I am not against taking supplements. But ultimately is a workaround you are not fixing the bug

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#244

Post by Forgeties79 »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #242
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_…

I think is great that folk self observe, and that is a key to a lot, everyone ought to find what works for themselves, however there is a tendency to want to fix things with pills. There is a fundamental error there, if successful you might damp your symptoms but then you start a Whac-A-Mole (whac-a-symptom) but you are not looking at the root. The problem will come in another form. Have you consider that the symptom…

I’m not sure if this is your intention, but I take issue with the implication that “pills” (aka “medication” and “medicine,” “pills” has a generally negative connotation) aren’t often the solution to the root problem.

It is great if you can solve things with diet, mindfulness, etc. But sometimes you need medical intervention and yes sometimes that means you need to take medication in the form of pills. There are millions of people who need that regardless of how they change their lifestyle or regulate their emotions/mental health without them.

Basically I don’t like the idea that you are implying medication is a bandaid and not ever the actual solution. If I misreading your comment my apologies

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#245

Post by mattmaroon »

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.

That one's been tested. It's why it is in a lot of energy drinks. The stuff isn't cheap, you wouldn't add it for no or unsure benefit.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#246

Post by cassepipe »

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…

It's just a vacuum with an HEPA filter, correct ?

I had the same experience, it just occurred to me that I could vaccum the mattress with the for-textile head and was really surprised with the amount of dust and its texture (transparent dust holder is satisfying hehe)

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#247

Post by mattmcknight »

By giving these things to random people, we don't do a very good job of evaluating their effects. If something works on 10% of the population, randomly selecting participants in an experiment will never give a significant result. If something is generally safe, it seems better to experiment on yourself.

The problem this solves is that some things work on some people. Neurotransmitters are blunt instruments that do many things- and are subject to adaptation effects where you get an effect for a while then the system adjusts to the new baseline. Maybe someone out there has a deficiency and adding more helps them for a bit, other people don't have a deficiency and get no results. Other people have a deficiency, something works for a little bit, then the brain adjusts to the new levels and the effect slowly disappears.

Until we can measure the level of the physiological effect we are targeting, the n=1 experiment seems like the only real way to see what group you fall into.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#248

Post by cpncrunch »

mattmcknight wrote: post #247

By giving these things to random people, we don't do a very good job of evaluating their effects. If something works on 10% of the population, randomly selecting participants in an experiment will never give a significant result. If something is generally safe, it seems better to experiment on yourself. The problem this solves is that some things work on some people. Neurotransmitters are blunt instruments that do ma…

The bbb works the same way in everyone, and prevents it from working. If it did work in 10%, you would see a positive result.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#249

Post by cassepipe »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #185
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.

Incidentally, the author made an (counter-)review of air purifiers : https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/

I got the IKEA purifier with the activated charcoal filter after reading that

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