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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#431

Post by fc417fc802 »

sgc wrote: post #430
fc417fc802 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He has 94 data points. Not nearly enough to average out so many potentially confounding variables, and there is no way to know they would. That will be the case in almost all N=1 experiments. Perhaps he takes the pill at the onset of stress, and stress almost always tends to build afterwards. This would be a probable case for many people trying to use theanine in this way. I could never accept that we should presume…

> Perhaps he takes the pill at the onset of stress, and stress almost always tends to build afterwards.

That would not be a problem regarding the averaging I referred to, although it could well pose a problem for measurement depending on how it interacted with the selected metrics.

Note that the averaging I refer to is not regarding all possible values of some metric, but rather any discrepancy in the distribution of metrics which we expected to follow the same distribution between the sample and the control.

I think maybe there's a misunderstanding? It seems that we both agree that a variety of additional variable should be logged. I was not suggesting to omit them, but rather to use discrepancies in them to detect fundamental issues with the data or study design. I would also expect larger studies to do the same where possible.

At 94 data points it is entirely possible that there would be outliers that would have averaged out for a larger N but did not. In such a scenario the presence of such outliers should then be taken to indicate a problem with the data (ie the more discrepancies you observe, the less you should trust the data).

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#432

Post by jrgoff »

strontian wrote: post #317
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 hypersensitiv…

I tried to send a message to your the feedback email address on your dustmite guide site but gmail told me it was undeliverable because the address was not found.

What I emailed about was asking what you meant by biweekly for washing bedding - is that twice a week or every other week?

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#433

Post by shellfishgene »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #190
seabass-labrax wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vacuuming one's bed makes complete sense to me, but what is special about the model you linked to that makes it specifically a 'mattress' vacuum cleaner? Many canister vacuum cleaners are more powerful and can be used elsewhere in the home too (with a different attachment for hygiene, of course). There's the UV light, but I can't see how this is effective when used only for short periods of time. The dust won't be re…

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?

I doubt a bit of UV on a vacuum does anything to a mite. They're kinda like spiders with a hard shell after all. One study [1] found you need one hour of hard UV-C exposure to kill most mites. That would probably also degrade the textiles and foam of your mattress, and probably does not even reach most mites/eggs in between threads and foam pores.

1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3609379/

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#434

Post by sgc »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #431
sgc wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has 94 data points. Not nearly enough to average out so many potentially confounding variables, and there is no way to know they would. That will be the case in almost all N=1 experiments. Perhaps he takes the pill at the onset of stress, and stress almost always tends to build afterwards. This would be a probable case for many people trying to use theanine in this way. I could never accept that we should presume…

> Perhaps he takes the pill at the onset of stress, and stress almost always tends to build afterwards. That would not be a problem regarding the averaging I referred to, although it could well pose a problem for measurement depending on how it interacted with the selected metrics. Note that the averaging I refer to is not regarding all possible values of some metric, but rather any discrepancy in the distribution of…

I was mainly saying I don't understand why you were indicating we should presume or expect they would average out in an N=1 experiment. Even in much larger experiments that is not reliably the case. Science would be relatively easy if there were not a lot of noise in the real world. So, to be clear, my concern is mainly one of scale - the experiment is far too restricted to overlook this: the smaller the experiment, the more important this type of information. Perhaps you were not saying that such averaging might be possible in an N=1 experiment and I misread, since it seems that you comment here indicates a different point.

I of course agree that logging them is basic scientific methodology - in order to detect issues with the experiment, and even hopefully to see the signal through the noise.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#435

Post by silent_cal »

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_…

From what I've seen, most scientists don't even publish their raw data.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#436

Post by reverendsteveii »

>One study they review found that theanine worked better than alprazolam (xanax) for acute anxiety. The correct response would be, “That’s impossible, and the fact that normal scientific practices could lead to such a conclusion casts doubt on everything.” But the review sort of takes it at value and moves on.

“That’s impossible, and the fact that normal scientific practices could lead to such a conclusion reveals why we don't use single studies to draw conclusions as it's not only possible but expected that some percentage of study results are going to be well outside 2 standard deviations from the mean.”

I just wanna nitpick that because one of my pet peeves is people not realizing that you can follow the scientific method really well and still end up with outlier data.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#437

Post by strontian »

jrgoff wrote: post #432
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 tried to send a message to your the feedback email address on your dustmite guide site but gmail told me it was undeliverable because the address was not found. What I emailed about was asking what you meant by biweekly for washing bedding - is that twice a week or every other week?

thanks for letting me know my email fwding is not working. Twice a week. Be sure to wash as hot as your machine can do. I found that the highest setting on my front loading LG washer does 158f and is more effective than the next hottest setting.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#438

Post by strontian »

jrgoff wrote: post #432
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 tried to send a message to your the feedback email address on your dustmite guide site but gmail told me it was undeliverable because the address was not found. What I emailed about was asking what you meant by biweekly for washing bedding - is that twice a week or every other week?

In the early days, populations of eggs and protonymphs are high and perhaps you haven't learned to control humidity in different weather conditions, washing 2x a week will be effective imho.

But if you can maintain low humidity for a longer periods, the dust mite populations in your home will go down and frequent washing will be less important.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#439

Post by kerkeslager »

baby wrote: post #415
kerkeslager wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Who said they were negligible? I didn't. I said you might not have measured the effects effectively. That doesn't mean they're negligible.

Anxiolytics generally have the problem that people notice/remember when they're anxious, but don't notice/remember when they're not anxious. As a result, when you track someone's anxiety attacks who is on an anxiolyitic, you might see, say, a 80% reduction in frequency, but that that person won't remember all the times they didn't have anxiety attacks, they remember the times they had anxiety attacks, and they may conclude that the anxiolytic didn't work if they weren't actually tracking carefully. Notably, there's a growing body of actual scientific research that CBD is effective for treating anxiety, but the effect you report, "It didn't do anything" is almost universal from people who try it.

Non-scientific "experimentation" with CBD is that a lot of people take it hoping to get high, and when it doesn't get them high, they conclude it has no effect. But in fact CBD does have effects, it just doesn't have the effects the self-experimenter was looking for.

Psychedelics have the opposite research problem: they very much do get you high. So people take it for some pretense like treating anxiety, and then when it gets them high, they believe it treated their anxiety whether it did or not, because at least it did something obvious.

I'm not saying psychedelics don't treat anxiety, I'm simply saying that self-experiments which don't attempt to control for these problems generally aren't very good proof of anything.

If you want my personal opinion, I think the evidence for CBD as an effective anxiolytic is stronger than the evidence for psilocybin as an anxiolytic, although I think both need more research to be conclusive.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#440

Post by TimByte »

rwyinuse wrote: post #146
TimByte wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you find CBD helped consistently, or did you have to experiment with doses and timing to get the right balance?

I only used it occasionally, took it about 1 hours before going to sleep. I can't really comment on daily use or dosage. I just bought whatever CBD oil a local market was selling. It contains 10% broad spectrum CBD isolate (rest being hemp oil) if the label is to be believed. At least in my country these things aren't well regulated, so experiences will probably vary between vendors, as you can't be sure of exact CBD…

That makes sense, especially with the lack of regulation
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