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My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#51

Post by petesergeant »

briHass wrote: post #21
ein0p wrote: post #20

Good to see such experimentation, especially when the person conducting the experiments takes the results with a grain of salt. I was first exposed to supplements when I started lifting seriously, a decade ago. Man oh man, some people go crazy on supplements in that space, literally wasting hundreds of dollars every month, for years. And in the end the only three things that seem to do anything for lifters are: whey…

And of course, the ones that come from the end of a needle. If most supplements actually worked, a pharma company would analyze it and reformulate it to get a patent, and then you'd hear about it on commercials.

> then you'd hear about it on commercials

Unless you lived in a normal country where marketing pharmaceuticals direct to consumers is -- of course -- banned.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#52

Post by jeanofthedead »

jaggederest wrote: post #46

This is actually a thing I wish existed, but I don't have time and energy to make it right now. I'd pay $25 a month or more. Basically it's an application that lets you do self-experiments like this, properly blinded and with good statistics. A challenge-dechallenge-rechallenge study is one of the ones I like, but if you want to do one you essentially have to design the study anew each time, and it would be convenien…

I use Bevel for this. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bevel-health-performance/id645...

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#54

Post by Starlevel004 »

bawolff wrote: post #16

> This hacker news thread is full of positive reports, Hacker news always has the most insane takes when it comes to medical/biological things.

It's what you get when you have a forum entirely made up of people who have never been told that they are actually wrong trying to apply knowledge to something that doesn't give clear, immediate, and universal results

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#56

Post by woosik1204 »

Love the methodology and the thoughtful analysis long term in-depth trial. I'm actually working on a project very similar to this. It's related to self testing and doing correlation analysis for all types of nutritional supplements. Thanks for sharing

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#57

Post by Barrin92 »

>Many people try theanine and report wow or great for ADHD or cured my (social) anxiety or changing my life [...] But does it really work?

As someone who has dealt with insomnia and anxiety disorder in the past, the answer to that is, no. If green tea cured anxiety you'd know by now and all of Asia would be anxiety free.

Insomniacs will usually do the reverse, they'll say manically monitor every bit of caffeine they consume, yet when you read studies, giving people 400 mg of caffeine (~4 cups of coffee) delays sleep by 30 minutes or so. That's not why you lay awake hours, likewise nothing you get over the counter fixes your anxiety.

These things are crutches and attachments people take (or avoid) to try to control anxiety, which makes it worse. The solution to this isn't turning yourself into a laboratory, which is very common behavior.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#58

Post by 7839284023 »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #30
OutOfHere wrote: post #9

It is strange to discuss L-theanine with vitamin D as one has nothing much to do with the other. It could've been better to compare L-theanine with a placebo (cellulose) which is how research conventionally works. L-theanine at 200-300 mg before bed is extremely useful for canceling excessive caffeine while trying to sleep at night. Add piperine to the mix for possible further cancelation of caffeine. [PMID 35684048]

> It is strange to discuss L-theanine with vitamin D as one has nothing much to do with the other. That's the idea, vitamin D was used as a placebo. They bought vitamin D supplements rather than cellulose because the supplier sold both L-theanine and vitamin D and the pills looked (nearly) identical.

Personal anecdote, Vitamin D is a horrible placebo.

I have been trying to increase my Vitamin D levels for 15 years now but I just can't tolerate this supplement.

  Lower dosage: ~1000 IE -> side effects come after around 3-4 days of daily intake.
  Higher dosage: ~5000 IE -> side effects after a few hours.
I tried following most advice over here in the past but it did not work: https://vitamindwiki.com/Vitamin+D+Cofactors+in+a+nutshell

I'll just live with my low blood Vitamin D levels.

Re: My 16-month theanine self-experiment

#59

Post by wraptile »

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 popular in lucid dreaming communities and while I have no particular interest lucid dreaming my dreams are definitely more vivid and most importantly instantly forgettable (like normal dreams are) which is the most desirable outcome imo.

250+mg does have my mind racing a bit and this dose will prevent me from falling asleep effectively (at body weight of 75kg), anything above 200mg seems too much imo for my body weight. So I think the effect is very much observable just through dose variability.

For day use I've tried l-theanine with caffeine in the morning and I'd say the effect is similar to mild adhd medication (I've been told it compares to like ~2mg of Ritallin or pinch of Kratom powder). Tho for me it always comes with side effects similar to a cup of too much coffee would have. I found that just like adhd medicine, it works best with a protein shake.

This is my unscientific anecdote, tho OP's post makes me want to record my own experiences.

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