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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

dynomight.net

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#411

Post by derlvative »

smohare wrote: post #319
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

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.

You don’t like it you don’t have to read the blog article. I assure you are not the intended audience. For the rest of us it provided valuable insight.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#412

Post by gus_massa »

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_…

>> Technically, I did find two significant results.

The problem is that he is comparing two very different things, the level when he took the pill and the level one hour after that. So it's not surprising that they are different. Let's imagine a very very very stupid experiment, where the problem is more obvious.

Does Coca Cola or Pepsi improve luck? N=1000000, double blind randomized controlled trial.

1) Each subject flips a coin. tail=0, head=1.

2) They drink a glas of soda, 50% Coke or 50% Pepsi, that is served in a hidden place and nor the subject or the experimenter know which one.

3) They roll a dice (an usual one, D6)

Results:

* Average before Coke = 0.5002

* Average after Coke = 3.5005

* Average before Pepsi = 0.5004

* Average after Pepsi = 3.5003

So the conclusion is that Coke improves the average (pUnsurprisingly, the difference in the average after drinking Coke or Pepsi is not statistically significant (p(I'm too lazy to run a simulation now, but it's not difficult to get realistic averages and p values.)

In conclusion, the useful result is the comparison of the anxiety after taking both drugs, not the difference of before and after taking them.

As the article says:

>> So I propose a new rule: Blind trial or GTFO.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#413

Post by baby »

sph wrote: post #104
baby wrote: post #12

I tried it and it never did anything, I tried all sorts of CBD products as well (while in SF) and I never noticed a thing. The only thing that worked was microdosing shrooms which I've done twice in SF. I felt very calm and had a lot of novel ideas during these two days. Would recommend trying. Never microdosed LSD.

CBD works, but it needs to be high quality and if you're a stoner with crazy high tolerance probably you just won't feel it. For sake of experiment, I recently acquired and vaped a good amount of CBD herb, and I was definitely high as a kite, though in a much different way than if it had been loaded with THC.

I'm not a stoner and got some good quality product and tried a lot of it, zero effects

I would assume that you got high from the THC

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#414

Post by baby »

gloxkiqcza wrote: post #122
baby wrote: post #12

I tried it and it never did anything, I tried all sorts of CBD products as well (while in SF) and I never noticed a thing. The only thing that worked was microdosing shrooms which I've done twice in SF. I felt very calm and had a lot of novel ideas during these two days. Would recommend trying. Never microdosed LSD.

Try Hericium (also called Lion's Mane). It’s a mushroom with nootropic effects without the psychoactive ones. Supplement pills are freely available.

I tried the "thesis" nootropics that had these, zero effects. It's just a scam.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#415

Post by baby »

kerkeslager wrote: post #61
baby wrote: post #12

I tried it and it never did anything, I tried all sorts of CBD products as well (while in SF) and I never noticed a thing. The only thing that worked was microdosing shrooms which I've done twice in SF. I felt very calm and had a lot of novel ideas during these two days. Would recommend trying. Never microdosed LSD.

The thing is, if you're looking for an obvious effect like the classic psychedelics have, you're going to be disappointed with most mood treatments. That doesn't mean they don't work--it might be because you didn't measure whether it worked effectively. A lot of people (but not all people) say that exercise doesn't improve their mood, but when you ask them mood related questions when they aren't thinking about exerci…

If it has such a negligible effect then what's the difference with just taking a placebo? Might as well no?

I've never met anyone who think exercise doesn't make them feel good on the other hand

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#416

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

cluckindan wrote: post #401
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s in blood. Both are fat soluble and will get stored in brain fatty tissue where the half-life is multiple weeks. Your second point is spot on.

Interesting. Do you have a source on this? I can't seem to find any detailed data on this. Only some suggestions that since they're lipophilic, and are found in higher concentrations in brain tissue, they might accumulate there. I can't find any research analyzing whether they do accumulate in brain tissue and how long they stay there.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#417

Post by gocartStatue »

(Maybe it’s because tea is better than coffee?)

Coffee contains several ingredients that act as opioid receptor antagonists, which can be unpleasant (as in "reverse the pleasant / calming effects of endogenic opioids"). Some people seem to be more affected than others, kinda like with the intensive gastrin release / coffee induced instapoop.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#418

Post by radlad »

card_zero wrote: post #108
radlad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your main point, but the plural of anecdote is data. Phenomena exists before the related studies do. The link you provided goes on to say: > Antidepressants also affect the balance of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Popular antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors increase levels of serotonin in the brain. The labels of SSRIs such as Celexa and Prozac warn patients not…

Nah, the plural of anecdote is confirmation bias. Why do people keep trotting out this "plural of anecdote is data" line, is it a quote from some high-profile idiot? Of course data can also give you confirmation bias, maybe that's the point, maybe that's why people defend anecdotes. What you have to do to find out if something is really happening is reason about it, then test your theories by doing your best to knock…

You might be missing the forest for the trees. Anecdotal evidence does not make a proper study, but, to quote myself "phenomena exists before the related studies do."

Oftentimes we (humans) use imperfect, but well-known, figures of speech to convey common ideas.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#419

Post by mcv »

> Many people try theanine and report wow or great for ADHD or cured my (social) anxiety or changing my life.

I'd never heard of that.

All my life I've drank enormous amounts of tea. To the point that I've had withdrawal symptoms from physical caffeine addiction. But I'm only recognizing more ADHD symptoms the more I read about it. (Not a controlled experiment; I'm aware of that.)

I am pretty relaxed, though.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#420

Post by dynm »

postpawl wrote: post #62
MichaelDickens wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you determine that they were trustworthy? Whatever process you used to evaluate their trustworthiness, use the same process on this article, and then decide whether you trust this article.

This article seems not bad, but I’m skeptical of the Dynomight author because he previously downplayed the recent rise in homelessness as just returning to 2011 levels. Newer data from late 2024 shows homelessness actually surged 18% to a record high, driven by housing costs, migration, and ending pandemic support - so his earlier analysis missed important trends.

That post (https://dynomight.net/homeless/) uses HUD's counts from January 2023. There's a long delay with these—the counts are done each year in January but usually only published in December. The January 2024 counts are now available and do indeed show much higher levels: A total of 771k on Jan 2024 as opposed to 653k in Jan 2023 or 582k in 2022. But that post was done in July 2024, when that data wasn't available yet. (And was, I hope, clear that it was using the Jan 2023 counts.)
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