My 16-month theanine self-experiment • Hacker News Board

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#271

Post by devonsolomon » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

davidanekstein wrote: post #207

devonsolomon wrote: post #169

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 reve…

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. I just wrote about an experiment I did with nootropic coffee [2]. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638... [2] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-wit...

Love it - Great work. I’m gonna give it a go.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#272

Post by derlvative » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

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…

Noooooo you can’t just run independent experiments you need institutions and phds and bureaucracy and gold plating nooooo

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#273

Post by jvanderbot » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

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_…

Really fantastic.

I've been using theanine for a long time, but never for any of these purported benefits. And the benefits I do use it for would be near impossible to measure. I just use it to make a over-caffinated monkey brain state tend toward a "lock-in" mental state. That's super hard to measure, and just as likely the theanine is a trigger for a mental deep dive that could just as well be sugar. But the ritual works, and that's what's important to me. It just took the intial "It helps mellow out caffeine for deep focus" idea to establish the ritual.

Science? No. Effective? Yeah, I think so.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#274

Post by chiefalchemist » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

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.

Ok. What do you put between the plastic and the sheets? A standard mattress cover? Won’t the mites just go there as that’s where the dead skin, etc will be?

The plastic would also trap heat between me and it.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#275

Post by mgfist » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

ibaikov wrote: post #268

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 read a study about athletes given either a strong coffee, placebo, or a caffeine in capsule form. The study suggested that even if coffee had less caffeine than athletes got directly in a capsule (and measured in their blood) strong coffee boosted their performance more. This suggests that we might be getting a boost from sensing strong flavor by our receptors. Not sure how else to interpret it, but I really wish t…

Anecdotally I feel way more productive while I'm sipping coffee than I am once I've finished my cup. This is true even after my first sips.

I think we humans just really really like ritualistic practices.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#276

Post by chiefalchemist » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #215

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I asked above as well, but since you have direct experience, what do you have between the plastic and you? Aside from the fitted sheet? Wouldn’t a regular mattress cover just attract mites as well?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#277

Post by VerdisQuo5678 » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

i hope your 1 person isn't a masochist

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#278

Post by ajb » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

That's true, but melatonin is probably not a very representative example, (unless you're only talking about sleep) as its mechanism is really idiosyncratic.

It seems (from [1]) that the body has a day-clock which is synchronised to the actual day by the release of melatonin. Taking melatonin (at the right time) reinforces the signal; taking too much swamps it completely. It seems unlikely that many other body chemicals are part of the signal chain of a biological PLL (phase-locked loop).

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#279

Post by OutOfHere » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

7839284023 wrote: post #58

MichaelDickens wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is strange to discuss L-theanine with vitamin D as one has nothing much to do with the other. That's the idea, vitamin D was used as a placebo. They bought vitamin D supplements rather than cellulose because the supplier sold both L-theanine and vitamin D and the pills looked (nearly) identical.

Personal anecdote, Vitamin D is a horrible placebo. I have been trying to increase my Vitamin D levels for 15 years now but I just can't tolerate this supplement. Lower dosage: ~1000 IE -> side effects come after around 3-4 days of daily intake. Higher dosage: ~5000 IE -> side effects after a few hours. I tried following most advice over here in the past but it did not work: https://vitamindwiki.com/Vitamin+D+Cofacto…

What side effects? It promotes energy in just a few hours, so take it early in the day. Your link is not loading. Ensure you have sufficient calcium and magnesium as cofactors.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#280

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

robwwilliams wrote: post #221

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…

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 possibl…

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