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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#331

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

ovalanche wrote: post #329
strontian wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hypersensitiv…

I’m really glad to see this side discussion on dust mite allergy happening here. I’ve had dust mite allergy since childhood, and I even had adenoid removal surgery at age ~7 to address it. Nothing seems to help. I think dust mite allergy imitates some of the symptoms of sleep apnea, because your nasal passage gets blocked at night, waking you in a similar way to choking. I’ve reached my mid-30s, largely ignoring the…

There's an interesting "subcategory" of sleep apnea under the moniker of UARS. I'm pretty confident that a big chunk of folks in that community actually have allergenic rhinitis (or structural issues).

I actually had a home sleep study done before I figured out it was allergies. Came back negative for OSA but my RIP [1] band data showed a lot of paradoxical breathing and flow limitation indicating significant respiratory effort. So more or less struggling to breathe all night long.

The poor sleep quality really destroys your quality of life.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_inductance_plethys...

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#332

Post by CamperBob2 »

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

These smug pilots have lost touch with the down-to-earth lives and concerns of ordinary passengers like us. Let's see a show of hands: who thinks I should fly the plane?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#333

Post by me-vs-cat »

grvbck wrote: post #315

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-experi…

Nobel candidates cannot be deceased.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#334

Post by azeirah »

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…

Any experiment you perform on yourself has N=1. Self-science isn't as robust as gold standard double blind blablabla PhD trials, but come on.

How else are you going to find out whether a particular diet or medication works for you specifically? It's ALWAYS N=1.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#335

Post by hartator »

azeirah wrote: post #334
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…

Any experiment you perform on yourself has N=1. Self-science isn't as robust as gold standard double blind blablabla PhD trials, but come on. How else are you going to find out whether a particular diet or medication works for you specifically? It's ALWAYS N=1.

And a honest n=1 is better than a double blind n=1000 but outcome-interested study. It’s so easy to make data tell the story you want.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#337

Post by bayindirh »

As a person who drinks tea for 30+ year old in a country which is top 3 in world tea consumption, I can say that theanine works. The biggest advantage of it when compared to caffeine, it doesn't create that tension in the body. You just work and concentrate. While it's not as powerful as caffeine, it allows one to work very efficiently and for long hours, if they choose to do so.

Also, against the popular myth, black tea / theanine doesn't affect iron absorption that much (if any), if it was, the whole country would be anemic, and we are not.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#338

Post by davidanekstein »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #306
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…

Does your app make you randomize the when you do the intervention you’re tracking? If not then almost everything you track is just a proxy for something else like how someone might only take melatonin on nights they knew they were going to sleep badly, or read in bed on nights they were already feeling good, not stressed. Or they only take their meme supplements on days they aren’t stressed out by other things in lif…

Yes, you can choose a random intervention schedule and also ABAB schedules with configurable number of phases and phase length.

Reflect integrates with Whoop and so can act as an augmented or relacement Whoop diary feature.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#339

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

cluckindan wrote: post #255
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "a LOT"? the only estimate I can find says there's 210mcg/L of beta-carbolines. Mainly harman and norharman, which have a binding affinity for MAO-A of 220nM and 2200nM respectively(lower is more potent). Not earth-shatteringly potent. These compounds have a fairly short half-life and they're reversible. Doesn't seem to be anywhere close to the potency of MAO inhibition used in psychiatric or entheo…

If by short you mean multiple weeks? It is known they have a significant effect when consumed together with a weak stimulant, like caffeine or nicotine. Tobacco smoke is another significant source in the human diet.

Where do you get multiple weeks? From what I can find, harman and norharman both have elimination half-lives shorter than half an hour.

If it was weeks, they would accumulate to very toxic levels in anyone who smokes or has a few cups of coffee a day.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#340

Post by twalla »

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 enjoy caffeine but also take some medications that exacerbate the feelings of irritability/jitteriness when combined with caffeine - anecdotally, extended release theanine taken with my coffee alleviates it.
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