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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#391

Post by wraptile »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #200
wraptile wrote: post #59

I've been using L-Theanine for a over a year now and then and it definitely has effects! I use it mostly for sleep 100-150mg in combination of 5HTP which I found it to be an incredible sleep cocktail. I generally don't have trouble sleeping but this cocktail gives me great dreams and increase the quality of my sleep where 6-7 hours is very much enough for me compared to the usual 8-9. Unsurprisingly, l-theanine is po…

> t this cocktail gives me great dreams and increase the quality of my sleep where 6-7 hours is very much enough for me compared to the usual 8-9. You take it for sleep but you sleep less? I think you mean you take it for "fun sleep". Theanine is excitatory, that is wht it acts like ritalin for you, which is also excitatory. Period. Which is why at higher doses your mind races. Theanine brings me into psychois becasu…

When it comes to sleep quality is as important as quantity. Higher quality 6 hours is better than 8 hours of mid sleep.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#392

Post by fc417fc802 »

sgc wrote: post #356
levocardia wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because.... >While I was blinded during each trial, I saw the theanine/D result when I wrote it down. Over time I couldn’t help but notice that my stress dropped even when I took vitamin D, and that I was terrible at predicting what I’d taken That is not blinding

I would have taken a well-calibrated photo of the cup each time without looking, maybe with a color card in the bottom, and only entered results at the end of the trial. Given that there is no documentation of whether the events during the hour of test time were more or less stressful than those before it, and no taking the time of day, diet and exercise, sleep, location (quiet island or next to a construction site),…

If your sample is blinded yet you consistently guess correctly, then presumably either 1. you failed at blinding or 2. there is a strong and discernible effect, regardless of what your other metrics might say (your other metrics could always be flawed after all).

> no documentation of whether the events during the hour of test time were more or less stressful than those before it, and no taking the time of day, diet and exercise, sleep, location

Assuming the blinded samples are uniformly randomly distributed, and assuming the study goes on long enough, then you'd expect that stuff to average out.

But I agree, it should be recorded nonetheless. That way you can verify at the end that it did, in fact, average out as you expected. If it didn't then your data is invalid.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#393

Post by luqtas »

K0balt wrote: post #383
luqtas wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fortunately* citzen science was replaced by solid methods... this is a long fancy self reported post on a metric that is easily figured out by biomarkers (stress levels). what's the consequences if the author decided to make some claim about a substance?

I think you are ignoring the fact that citizen science was alive and very well up into the 1980s. It was never a replacement for professional science, but rather citizen scientists often observed things that were deemed worth of follow-up by academic researchers. Citizens scientists rarely post “facts” but rather interesting avenues for research or further investigation. Part of being an educated citizen scientist is…

i think anyone researching whatever in their home is doing 'science'

but this isn't the case! i linked in an answer to my post what science knows when measuring stress... it's far away from a self-reported subjective question

i think the problem is whatever you post on the internet is politic. it may have a huge reach, and so far so good people trying far from lethal doses of theanine. now, what if an influencer wants to make their stuff look intellectual and go buy pure caffeine? how about the people coming after wards?

one thing is a 3D-print project at your garage on keyboards ergonomics, home automation, another is rock-climbing gear and another is substances with reachable lethal doses where the masses can buy (not the case here but again, i cited caffeine but there's much more). the author has a stellar presentation but they seriously researched what science does when measuring stress? they didn't even considered The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which is used on professional research. i stand against public posts with badly methods (or the complete lack of research) suppressed by fancy graphics on substance use/abuse. i also bet isn't that hard to buy empty pills with opaque color

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#394

Post by tiborsaas »

drilbo wrote: post #347
tiborsaas wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my teeth whitened and I was forbidden to drink coffee for a week or so. I thought the same that coffee was just a ritual for me, but apparently I got really weird (moody, annoyed easily) when going cold turkey, so I had to go to the pharmacy and buy caffeine tablets :) That settled it for me, that coffee does have and effect on me despite not feeling these "jittery effects" as well.

experiencing withdrawal symptoms seems to me quite different than regular use having a positive benefit

I would say it's both. "booting up" and starting to be a productive human in the morning happens smoothly as I have my coffee :)

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#395

Post by eru »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #332
derlvative wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You should link to the source of your quote.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#396

Post by eru »

kortilla wrote: post #160
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_…

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…

> 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.

But that's not the actual experiment here. Your criticism is invalid. The author randomised every day which supplement to take.

That's pretty close to a blocked design.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#397

Post by eth0up »

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…

If you ever wonder why some folks with a fair amount of potential and something to offer keep to themselves, this isn't the worst example.

I think most people could criticize the carbon out of a corpse if they themselves weren't being criticized into one.

If we devolved from apes, maybe apes devolved from piranhas.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#398

Post by Projectiboga »

amelius wrote: post #282
riedel wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antihistamines could even work without any allergy since they are typically used as mild sleeping aids. They are also used often off-label for stress reduction. [0] [0] https://fherehab.com/learning/surprising-antihistamine-anxie...

> Prolonged use can lead to increased tolerance, reduced effectiveness, and potential side effects. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/should-i-worry-... > Theoretically, these drugs might increase the risk of dementia by blocking a particular brain neurotransmitter or increasing brain inflammation. In the past decade, several studies have suggested that these pills might increase the risk of dementia, whil…

I think that was Diphenhydramine (benadryl) that may have that long term risk via being an Anticholinergic.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#399

Post by galaxyLogic »

drakonka wrote: post #134
galaxyLogic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placebo is such a curious thing. If you can prove to yourself that your effects are placebo-effects, then those effects should disappear, because you no longer believe in them. So if it's working for you, you probabaly should NOT start a study to find out if it works or not. It might stop working (for you). What good would that do?

I am hoping my level of self-delusion would be strong enough. When I was a kid and wanted to play sick to get out of school, I'd always quickly develop an actual low-grade fever and begin feeling legitimately sick. Even after I noticed the pattern, it still happened. I'm hoping I can use this power of deception against myself with L-Theanine if I were to run this kind of study (but, maybe fortunately, have no motivat…

It may have something to do with what we say to ourselves inside our heads. If we say something to ourselves it is kind of believing. We believe what we think, we believe what we say. We can of course change our thoughts later. Like when you started feeling sick but when there was no more need for the symptoms, you could say "I'm no longer sick at all" :-)

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#400

Post by CamperBob2 »

eru wrote: post #395
CamperBob2 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You should link to the source of your quote.

Arguably so, but all I can find are other plagiarized copies. :-P

The New Yorker's paywall has successfully obscured the origin of the joke, so that's on them, as far as I'm concerned.

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