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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#311

Post by ryandrake »

brothrock wrote: post #297
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…

N=1 is addressed, see outcome predictions. N=1 comes with caveats, of course, but a study like this, with a proven harmless supplement, should be welcomed and praised. It is clearly a step forward from what you can watch about theanine on YouTube or TikTok. I consider this a work of citizen science. While it should not be taken for more than it is, it’s a great example of how someone can experiment without a high bur…

That's a pretty low bar though. OK, it's one step up from a monetized YouTube video that boils down to "It works--Trust me, bro." I still wouldn't really call it citizen science.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#312

Post by ryandrake »

malfist wrote: post #227
episteme wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right. The only N that you can draw any conclusions about is the author himself. So, why even publish it? The "results" are not applicable to anyone reading it. This is the health version of the software industry's "It works on my system!"

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#313

Post by ovalanche »

Aurornis wrote: post #287

Gwern has a large collection of blinded self-experiments. The only reason I suspect it’s not a more valued resource is that his results often contradict the popular wisdom in supplement communities. His experiments with magnesium showed negative results: https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium#experiment-1 He tried LSD microdosing when the internet was convinced it was a miracle, but found no benefit and some concernin…

This site, Gwern, is really fascinating but I found it initially rather difficult to navigate and understand.

I do wish the author had provided a clear, layperson conclusion/results portion for each nootropic. For example, having read the section on fish oil, I still haven’t grasped whether the author observed positive results or not. Perhaps he is being rightfully cautious in drawing conclusions?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#314

Post by x86x87 »

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…

there is more in coffee than caffeine? maybe another substance?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#315

Post by grvbck »

While this may not be a perfectly executed study, the "N=1 trial" part is not the problem.

There have been numerous medical and scientific studies with N=1, known as N-of-1 trials. These trials are very useful in chronic conditions where symptoms are stable and measurable, allowing for multiple crossover periods to assess treatment effects accurately.

Also…don't forget all the medical discoveries based on self-experimentation:

Werner Forssmann performed the first heart catheterization on himself. He got the Nobel prize.

Barry Marshal injected himself with heliobacter pylori to prove that it causes stomach ulcers. Also got the Nobel prize.

Jessie Lazear allowed himself to be bitten by mosquitoes infected with yellow fever to prove his hypothesis that mosquitoes were the vector for transmission. No Nobel prize, but he did contract the disease, thus proving his hypothesis…before dying from yellow fever two weeks later.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#316

Post by robwwilliams »

jrootabega wrote: post #290
robwwilliams wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If he said unblinded at some point, it could have been because the study author looked into the cup to determine which substance had been taken too soon. The subject should have had no knowledge of what was taken until the entire 16-month trial was over. We should avoid extreme polarization of our judgments in general. The study deserves some amount of praise for things it did somewhat well (like the method of blindi…

And that is exactly the point made in the target post by the author. He explicitly raised that criticism himself. Double kudos for self-criticism. You will not find many conventional science publications pointing out: “Shucks, we could have done this a better”.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#317

Post by strontian »

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…

nice! I recently got dust mites out of my home completely, and it was a miraculous upgrade to my health, including several symptoms that are outside the definitions of allergic asthma/eczema/rhinitis.

One important thing people are missing about dust mite allergy is the many ways in which they directly damage your immune system and body, outside of the usual frame of "allergies" which is based on type 2 hypersensitivity.

This article is a great introduction to the harms they cause at the molecular level: https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(18)30848-0/ful...

I also wrote a free guide to help people get dust mites out of their house:

https://dustmiteguide.com

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#318

Post by jrootabega »

robwwilliams wrote: post #316
jrootabega wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he said unblinded at some point, it could have been because the study author looked into the cup to determine which substance had been taken too soon. The subject should have had no knowledge of what was taken until the entire 16-month trial was over. We should avoid extreme polarization of our judgments in general. The study deserves some amount of praise for things it did somewhat well (like the method of blindi…

And that is exactly the point made in the target post by the author. He explicitly raised that criticism himself. Double kudos for self-criticism. You will not find many conventional science publications pointing out: “Shucks, we could have done this a better”.

The ancestor post is neither a "Complete injustice" nor "derision" nor an "insult", and it doesn't warrant a hostile mocking reply. Its tone could have been gentler, but it wasn't that bad. And the study doesn't really deserve "accolades", it deserves to be recognized for whatever it does well. Such polarization of tone and vocabulary doesn't accomplish much, and I'll even propose that it actually prevents good things from happening. It is good that the author is aware of, and acknowledges, the problems in the study. What other studies and journals have done wrong doesn't make the author or study more deserving of praise.

Also, you asked why he said "unblinded", and I think you now have the answer to that.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#319

Post by smohare »

derlvative wrote: post #272
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…

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

It’s not about elitism. It’s that there are so many confounding factors that even a well-informed approach makes such a study comtain very little of value

Comments like yours expose a particularly distasteful amount of hubris.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#320

Post by gwern »

danielbln wrote: post #305
Aurornis wrote: post #287

Gwern has a large collection of blinded self-experiments. The only reason I suspect it’s not a more valued resource is that his results often contradict the popular wisdom in supplement communities. His experiments with magnesium showed negative results: https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium#experiment-1 He tried LSD microdosing when the internet was convinced it was a miracle, but found no benefit and some concernin…

Their microdosing experimentation was questionable. Not methodically, it was quite thorough, but iirc they used unknown strength street blotters and derived all further experimentation from that.

As I always point out, all of the anecdotes claiming microdosing works are usually using street blotters as well, including the research papers which draw on crowdsourcing to circumvent the obvious problems with using schedule I psychedelics; and the research papers which do use better-validated dosages... don't usually turn up anything more than I did. Plus, it's 2025. If LSD microdosing really worked, after all this interest over the past 15+ years, why is there still so little good evidence?
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