[HN Gopher] My 16-month theanine self-experiment
___________________________________________________________________
My 16-month theanine self-experiment
Author : dynm
Score : 686 points
Date : 2025-03-09 03:08 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| What does gwern or guzey think of this? I only trust them
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| 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.
| postpawl wrote:
| 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.
| petesergeant wrote:
| This is good. If anyone wants to do a follow-up I'd like to see a
| higher dosage used, and I'd like to see the effect of weekly
| supplementation, eg each week you fill your pill-box either with
| vit-d or l-theanine and rate the week as a whole (with some
| blinding process). Finally interested in populations with high
| caffeine use.
|
| If I had billg money, I'd divert some of it into just running
| high quality tests of all these "maybe" supplements.
| ggm wrote:
| TL;DR single test at best inconclusive but broadly said no
| evident benefit. Good randomisation but so many variables.
|
| I am convinced the author is in a persisting out of body state.
|
| Also, placebo is great!! I have reverse white coat syndrome,
| paying my GP attendance fee to have a nice doctor measure my BP
| consistently shows it better than when I do it at home.
| brianpan wrote:
| Do you measure it in a chair similar to your doctor's office? I
| thought my couch was similar and I was careful to have my feet
| flat on the floor. But I "lowered by BP" by 10-15 by moving to
| the dining room table.
| ggm wrote:
| This is a self reported anecdata over many years. I do
| measure mainly on a couch, yes. Odd that reclining would be
| higher than sitting but I will try some variation. You'd
| think being more corpse like was net beneficial to BP
| noduerme wrote:
| Placebo is a fantastic treatment for hypochondria.
| ggm wrote:
| Definitely cured my leprosy and phantom pregnancy. Hasn't
| reduced my PSA yet.
| noduerme wrote:
| But have you got your fingers back?
| instagib wrote:
| I finished one bottle of Theanine for occasional use and went to
| order a different combo as it was unavailable. It is Theanine
| Serene with Relora which also includes Magnesium, GABA, Taurine,
| and Holy basil in two large tablets. Helps relax and ease falling
| asleep.
|
| Another option may be a pain/stomach relief/sleep aid concoction
| we found :
|
| 1tsp ginger
|
| 1tsp turmeric
|
| 1tsp cinnamon
|
| 1tsp fine black pepper
|
| 500ml milk
|
| Boil for 10 minutes. Drink one cup warm and save the other for
| another day.
| energy123 wrote:
| If you're not careful and diligent, this is a recipe for liver
| damage from coumarin and heavy metal toxicity. You can take all
| those things safely but it requires knowledge and care.
| TylerE wrote:
| And that's making the huge assumption that what you had what
| it claims to.
| vazma wrote:
| Hey, ok I get it for coumarin but just out of curiosity, what
| can introduce heavy metals in this mix?
| astrange wrote:
| Turmeric, but I think it's only some suppliers?
| adrianN wrote:
| Some people add yellow lead salts to turmeric to increase
| profit margins.
| energy123 wrote:
| Turmeric and cinnamon are both notorious for lead
| contamination.
|
| In many locations it's legal to sell consumables that have
| disgustingly high ppm of heavy metals as long as the
| recommended daily dose is small so that the absolute amount
| of heavy metals stays below a fixed threshold. Also many
| companies just flagrantly violate the regulatory levels.
|
| Getting clean turmeric extract is possible by knowing which
| brand to trust. Natural Factors is trustworthy, they are
| transparent with heavy metal testing and have third-party
| validation in academic studies and by consumerlab.com. But
| even if it's clean, you would still need to manage this
| risk: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548561
|
| For cinnamon, avoiding coumarin is possible by making sure
| it's ceylon cinnamon. But I don't know of any brand selling
| ceylon cinnamon that I would also trust to have low heavy
| metal levels. The intersection of reliable brands and
| ceylon cinnamon sellers is a very sparse set.
| genewitch wrote:
| Yeah, be careful, curry will poison you, that's why there's
| billions of people that eat curry on the planet regularly and
| they all died from liver poisoning.
| instagib wrote:
| Appreciate the response. I took the turmeric combo a couple
| of times and had to stop due to stomach irritation from the
| pepper. Can't edit my comment.
|
| Were any of the downvotes and responses related to the
| Theanine with relora pill for stress relief?
| ein0p wrote:
| Weren't the "beneficial effects" of turmeric (or to curcumin,
| to be more exact) found to be based on fake research? The
| researcher who started the whole thing about turmeric, Bharat
| Aggarwal, had to retract 30 (!) of his papers, in which he
| falsified the images.
| AequitasOmnibus wrote:
| 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.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Correct, this is why tea and especially ground tea leaves like
| matcha induce the feeling of focus for longer, they already
| naturally have higher levels of L-theanine with caffeine.
| disqard wrote:
| While reading, I was wondering about matcha, and then I saw
| your comment -- which jives with my personal experience too!
| Thanks for chiming in :)
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| The theanine stimulates the NMDA receptors so it is possible
| that the glutamate you get from the Caffiene is not enough to
| stimulate your NMDA receptor. It might be that you are a fast
| metabolizer of Caffeine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMDA_receptor
| ctrlp wrote:
| This has been my experience with it as well. It appears to
| regulate the spike of caffeine from coffee. I recall reading it
| had to do with an enzyme that helped the body process caffeine
| so it attentuates the effect of the stimulant. Whether that's
| true, I often take one with coffee. I've also experienced
| similar effects chasing my morning coffee with green tea.
| TimByte wrote:
| Would've been interesting if OP had tested that combo
| specifically, maybe comparing theanine + caffeine to just
| caffeine alone in a blinded setup
| Jolter wrote:
| The author was apparently not interested in that hypothesis.
| Why don't you do a little self-experiment, now that a method
| has been laid out?
|
| (Personally, I think the existing literature by itself should
| be more than enough to convince anyone that orally taken
| theanine most likely has no effect. The reason more scientists
| don't explore theanine is probably because they don't think
| it's likely to produce an interesting result.)
| herbst wrote:
| It's not only the jittery but caffeine also tends to make
| people more anxiety, l-theanine mostly takes that away.
| Kiro wrote:
| I don't understand what people refer to when they say "jittery
| effects". I don't feel anything when taking caffeine, no matter
| the dose. Or I want to think it helps me wake up but the effect
| is so small that I can't be sure. It's basically just a ritual
| for me.
| kubb wrote:
| Im on the other side of the spectrum. With a small dose of
| caffeine I get really wired, my blood pressure rises, my head
| hurts, I feel stressed, anxious and I can't sleep at night
| even if the coffee was in the morning. With matcha it's a
| similar effect but it's less anxiety and more headache.
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| Same story here - few sips of coffee and my heart starts
| pounding and I can't sleep at all. I have found a plant /
| drink called yerba mate to give me the beneficial effects
| without the anxiety though. No headache either. It's higher
| in caffeine than tea but lower than coffee. Everyone is
| different but for anyone else out there who gets acute
| anxiety from most caffeine but wants the focus boost I
| would recommend giving it a try.
| maccard wrote:
| have you tried a pre-workout style dose (it's about 8-10
| coffees in one)? The first time should give you a pretty good
| idea of what the "jittery" feeling is.
| Novosell wrote:
| I googled some pre-workout and it seems to be about 200mg
| of caffeine, same as a can of Monster. I've drank 2 cans of
| Monster back-to-back a few times in my life and still not
| felt jittery.
|
| I largely share experience with Kiro, I don't feel like
| caffeine makes me perk up at all really. I just drink
| Monster cause I love the flavor of some of them.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I'm the same. I've taken caffeine pills and not noticed
| it. I can also just drink tea/coffee and then sleep.
| cardanome wrote:
| Do you have ADHD?
|
| Most neurotypical people seem to experience jittery effects
| and being extremely alert while for people with ADHD it can
| actually make them sleepy.
|
| Of course everyone's brain is different, it is just a
| correlation with many exceptions. So yeah, caffeine works
| differently on different people.
|
| Personally, as someone with ADHD, I have a crazy caffeine
| tolerance. It helps me somewhat with focus but I don't get
| jittery.
| not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
| I do.
|
| I think there's another dimension of temporal tolerance to
| consider.
|
| There have been times in my life where I consumed a lot of
| caffeine, and it brought on the paradoxical sleepy effect.
|
| And other times where I tried to eliminate caffeine, and a
| fallen-off-the-wagon strong dose gets me jittery, but
| acclimation happens in 24-48 hours.
| cassepipe wrote:
| My feeling is it either does nothing at a low does but does
| make me feel anxious when drinking, an uneasy feeling in my
| chest.
|
| I don't have that problem with energy drinks (even it is the
| caffeine equivalent of something like 8 espressos) and tea
| (hasn't happened ever and I drink a lot of tea)
| tiborsaas wrote:
| 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.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Part of that is probably withdrawal, I would think.
| drilbo wrote:
| experiencing withdrawal symptoms seems to me quite
| different than regular use having a positive benefit
| justlikereddit wrote:
| "The journalist effect" is at play here.
|
| When you're a professional in a field or having deep insight of
| something, and then a journalist comes by, does a 5 minute
| write-up or it and misses almost every point of it but have
| such a cocksure presentation, backed by a big corporate media
| name, that a hundred year later an urban myth will persist
| based on the journalists hatchetjob, while ignoring every
| significant facet that enthusiasts spent lifetimes on
| refining.(Okay it's a little bit tempered by the length and
| efforts of the experiment, but for an n=1 monostudy I feel this
| presents itself with more certainty than it should)
|
| So henceforth in all realms of the web, Theanin will be an
| inert compound.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| That one's been tested. It's why it is in a lot of energy
| drinks. The stuff isn't cheap, you wouldn't add it for no or
| unsure benefit.
| twalla wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| The author had caffeine "90% of the time", see this comment:
| https://dynomight.substack.com/p/theanine/comment/98488776
| Murfalo wrote:
| Glutamate is fascinating! The latest and greatest hypothesis for
| mood, learning, etc. hot off the press. Suddenly everything
| targets NMDA/AMPA receptors and increases plasticity
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Be very careful targeting NMDAr/AMPAr directly. I made this
| mistake. Those receptors are extremely prone to causing
| permanent damage due to excitotoxicity.
| freedomben wrote:
| If you are willing to share more about your story, I'd love
| to hear it. Did you cause permanent damage? What were you
| using and how much? What are the symptoms like now?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Yes, it 100% caused permanent damage in me due to an
| interaction of the agonist with an unrelated stimulant.
| After years, I ultimately stumbled upon the combination of
| memantine+telmisartan which successfully reversed much of
| the damage. I still have issues with things that I cannot
| physically tolerate due to the leftover damage. Also, I
| tried other things like valproate that failed to fully
| reverse the damage, but caused significant _permanent_
| problems of their own. To make a long story short, use
| gentle safe indirect promoters for NMDA /AMPA like
| L-glutamine and at most phosphatidylserine, but nothing
| stronger or more low-level. Leave the direct agonism for
| the rodent studies.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| 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]
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| > 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.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Vitamin D3 is not a placebo at all. It 100% promotes energy
| quite quickly even though it takes much longer for the body
| to convert it to the active form. Also, its mental effect is
| distinctly different from that of L-theanine, like day and
| night. For these reasons, it's not a great candidate for
| comparison with L-theanine.
| genewitch wrote:
| Unless it's the active D vitamin, it takes _weeks_ to
| convert it into reserves.
|
| Taking vitamin D once, right before bed will do nothing.
| Our bodies don't use it that way.
|
| Cholecalciferol = weeks
|
| calcidiol = hours
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The conversion period strongly depends on the input dose
| and on available cofactors. Numerous people have reported
| that 5000 IU of vitamin D3 can produce energy benefits in
| just a few hours if one has been skipping taking it. If
| one is low on cofactors, or takes a low dose of D3, then
| I imagine it taking days or even longer as you noted.
| genewitch wrote:
| > After ingestion, cholecalciferol is first converted to
| calcidiol in the liver, which can take several hours.
| Then, calcidiol is further converted to calcitriol, the
| active form, in the kidneys, which may take additional
| time.
|
| read as _if you 're perfectly healthy_, at minimum it's
| 24 hours. What you're talking about is probably placebo
| effect. For reserves to start building up to the point
| where your body has "enough" calcitriol, it takes _weeks_
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Imagine the following variables:
|
| * Calcitrol: float
|
| * CalcitrolReserveCapacity: float
|
| * Is_Energetic: bool
|
| Imagine the following equation:
|
| * Is_Energetic: bool = Calcitrol > 90% of
| CalcitrolReserveCapacity
|
| For most people, it will take days, weeks, or even months
| to come above 90%. But for those who have dipped just
| below 90%, such as to 89%, if they're optimally healthy
| in other ways, they will see a rapid rise in energy by
| high dose D3. If it's not this, then there is something
| else going on physiologically to explain the subjective
| effect.
| 7839284023 wrote:
| 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.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| What side effects? It promotes energy in just a few hours,
| so take it early in the day. Your link is not loading.
| Ensure you have sufficient calcium and magnesium as
| cofactors.
| steele wrote:
| Now Foods sponsored pill post
| baby wrote:
| 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.
| abraxas wrote:
| My issue with dosing shrooms (micro or otherwise) is that I
| find myself building up tolerance extremely fast. Literally
| within a couple of days my tolerance of psilocybin shoots up so
| much that even doubled doses seem to have little effect. I then
| need to stop taking it for weeks or months before my tolerance
| drops back to baseline.
|
| Does anyone else have this issue with shrooms? FWIW I believe
| I'm generally quite resistant to psychoactive substances having
| been treated with benzos for anxiety and depression and finding
| they did almost nothing to allieviate any symptoms. The curious
| thing was that despite being warned against their "incredible
| addictiveness" I was able to increase my dosage way beyond
| prescribed levels only to find out they still did nothing and
| then quit them cold turkey with no effect whatsoever. It was
| almost like swallowing sugar pills.
| minitoar wrote:
| Yes this sort of tolerance building is the norm. There's
| somewhat reduced cross-tolerance so you might alternate lsd
| and psilocybin.
| secunit wrote:
| L-Theanine has a noticeable effect when I drink my morning
| coffee, it totally eliminates the jittery effects and smooths
| it out.
|
| I've tried a lot of CBD products and some work VERY well
| (Feals, Soul) and some might as well be gummy bears (Cornbread
| Hemp). I generally disbelieve "internet" PR claims as well, but
| the two I mentioned are legit.
|
| I'll eat 3 Feals gummies or 1 Soul "Out of Office" quad, and it
| rocks me. (M, 40's, 6', 170lbs).
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > L-Theanine has a noticeable effect when I drink my morning
| coffee, it totally eliminates the jittery effects and smooths
| it out.
|
| FWIW, the research on L-Theanine in conjunction with caffeine
| is the only research I've seen that seems convincing that
| L-Theanine has any effect. I've not seen any convincing
| evidence that it does anything in the absence of caffeine.
| ac29 wrote:
| > I'll eat 3 Feals gummies or 1 Soul "Out of Office" quad,
| and it rocks me
|
| I imagine you know this, but you do realize both of those
| products have THC, right?
|
| Calling them "CBD products" is a bit misleading, even though
| they do also have CBD.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| 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 exercise, it becomes
| clear that exercise massively effects mood.
| d--b wrote:
| Yeah I tried CBD as well. After a few days of being frustrated
| with the recommended doses, I gobbled the whole bottle (100EUR
| or so worth of CBD), and absolutely nothing happened.
| sph wrote:
| 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.
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| Try Hericium (also called Lion's Mane). It's a mushroom with
| nootropic effects without the psychoactive ones. Supplement
| pills are freely available.
| amluto wrote:
| I was surprised that the author's conclusion didn't mention
| another model that looked consistent with the data: that theanine
| works slowly -- over the course of a few days, not hours.
|
| (I have no idea whether it would work like this. A placebo effect
| only is also consistent with the data.)
| energy123 wrote:
| There's no need to invoke a placebo effect as an explanation
| for any of the results. He took it in response to acute stress,
| which is a local maximum in stress. The decrease in stress
| afterwards is to be expected.
| amluto wrote:
| Take a look at the stress vs day graph, though: it sure looks
| like stress was lower during that period. But maybe this is
| because the measurements were at a different time of day?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| He talks about this mean-reversion effect.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| According to my doctor, Vitamin-D can be taken once a week or
| daily have the same long term effect. This matches up with 15
| years of blood tests. (N=1)
| bawolff wrote:
| > This hacker news thread is full of positive reports,
|
| Hacker news always has the most insane takes when it comes to
| medical/biological things.
| genewitch wrote:
| Gell-Mann says: "yes, but just medicine"
| dmix wrote:
| Most of this stuff is just takes from random people, not
| medical research. For example, the article links to 5-month old
| HN thread where the first comment says:
|
| > And you do not want to mess with the 5-HTP and alcohol at the
| same time
|
| so I googled it
|
| > Internet forums are full of horror stories of people
| vomiting, blacking out or having seizures after drinking while
| on 5-HTP. It's impossible to know if the stories are reliable,
| but there is little other evidence of known interactions
| between 5-HTP and alcohol.
|
| https://www.drugrehab.com/addiction/alcohol/risks-of-mixing-...
| johnmaguire wrote:
| 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 to drink alcohol while on
| the drugs. If you shouldn't drink with antidepressants, you
| probably shouldn't drink with 5-HTP.
|
| > The effects of mixing 5-HTP and alcohol on serotonin levels
| are not fully understood. However, both substances alter
| serotonin levels, which may increase the risk of developing
| serotonin syndrome. This life-threatening condition is caused
| by the accumulation of too much serotonin in the body.
| Serotonin syndrome can cause confusion, agitation, sweating,
| coordination loss, fever and seizure.
| card_zero wrote:
| 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 them over. Often
| though we just end up testing for statistical correlation
| without any better theory than "these two things go
| together". In that case, the plural of anecdote is bad
| methodology. The best thing I can say about anecdotes is
| that they might give you _ideas._
|
| Edit: found it, it's due to one Ray Wolfinger, behavioral
| political scientist: _When a student once categorized one
| of Wolfinger's claims as "just anecdotal," he paused for an
| expectant second, dropping a copy of Robert Dahl's "Who
| Governs" onto his seminar table as he replied, "The plural
| of anecdote is data." His quip, emphasizing that statistics
| represent human stories, would become a well-known aphorism
| throughout the field._ Well this probably shouldn 't be
| taken literally and I suspect the criticism of his claim
| was fair.
| kqr wrote:
| > 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?
|
| It is standard Bayesian reasoning[1]. But it requires
| independence between observations, which many people
| forget!
|
| [1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/bayes-rule-odds-form
| card_zero wrote:
| The things people say aren't truly independent, even when
| they are. Like when Charles Sheffield and Arthur C.
| Clarke wrote novels with the same plots at the same time,
| they were working independently, but they weren't
| culturally independent.
|
| Besides, even if several people independently assert
| "tying a ribbon to a wishing tree cured my warts", that's
| not an explanation of what actually took place. If
| repeated observations with unbiased instruments confirm
| this, then there's something wrong with the instruments
| (or _something_ ), until you have an explanation.
|
| (But saying things like that usually prompts people to
| bring up cosmology or particle physics or other fields
| where we really do have to resort to saying "the
| measurements say it's happening, we'll have to assume
| it's happening" without understanding much.)
| strken wrote:
| Most of social media and most of real life have absolutely
| insane takes on health-related stuff. Ask someone at random
| about, say, keto, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get an
| opinion without any data behind it.
|
| I think that part of this is because the effect sizes are so
| small. Grabbing some arbitrary sources, if you look at the
| average disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost to
| colorectal cancer as a result of red meat consumption in
| France[0] and put them into per-person terms, it averages out
| to a grand total of...less than 2 hours per person (presumably
| other causes also contribute). Meanwhile, for alcohol
| consumption and everything it causes, the average Australian is
| losing a little under 20 hours (and I assume most of HN lives
| in a country where this is similar).
|
| These are pretty small numbers! I'm honestly not sure whether
| it's even worth worrying about them. No wonder people have
| trouble telling what's true in a field where many of the papers
| and most of the personal experience is just noise in the data.
|
| [0]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption
| Starlevel004 wrote:
| 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
| fatbird wrote:
| The whole site should have this as a tagline.
| biophysboy wrote:
| I don't understand why they used another supplement hypothesized
| to mitigate stress as a control.
| ggm wrote:
| D's effect on mood is well known so yea. They said slow acting
| but.. well I dunno. Felt like a bad pick. They should have got
| empty caps and filled them with chalk.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yeah. Like yes vitamin d is slow acting, but still when you can
| pick literally any substance in the world...
| ein0p wrote:
| 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 protein, creatine, and
| ZMA (Zinc/Magnesium/B6). I did waste quite a bit of money as well
| until I looked at the actual evidence.
| briHass wrote:
| 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.
| ein0p wrote:
| Yeah. But I never took any of the steroid stuff. I only
| compete with my former self. Not being able to throw 400lbs
| overhead is fine. I also want to be able to walk when I'm
| old.
| Frederation wrote:
| Boy, that hits diff these days. Just let me walk without
| major assistance.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > 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.
| andsoitis wrote:
| That doesn't invalidate the idea, because we'd see it
| happening in countries like the US, but we don't.
| havaloc wrote:
| Ironically Now Foods L-theanine used to be a variant of a special
| extraction method named Suntheanine but that's no longer the
| case, probably due to cost.
|
| I've had good luck with the Suntheanine brands. GNC brand has
| been effective for me. YMMV.
| jaggederest wrote:
| 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 convenient to run
| multiple at once if that's possible.
|
| I'm not interested in generalizing, I just want to know if (for
| example) taking Vitamin D every day at 1000 iu is enough, or
| whether I should be taking more or less. I can get labs done on
| this, of course, but again I'm more interested in subjective
| wellbeing than blood levels beyond avoiding deficiency or
| hypervitaminosis.
|
| Maybe such an app exists and I simply don't know about it.
| dmix wrote:
| While not exactly the same https://examine.com/ is doing this
| sort business and seems to be popular. They aggregate and meta
| analyze research for pills like L-Theanine and people pay
| $30/month to access it
|
| https://examine.com/supplements/theanine/?show_conditions=tr...
| fragmede wrote:
| you want a service to: mail out a 30-pack of daily pills,
| there's an app where you record your mood/whatever, and then at
| the end of it, reveal which days were VitD and which was
| collagen?
|
| how much would you pay for this?
| djfivyvusn wrote:
| Skip the pills. Make the app.
| fragmede wrote:
| how do you blind the contents of the pills unless someone
| else does it?
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Put them in numbered containers at the start of the
| experiment.
| simion314 wrote:
| >how do you blind the contents of the pills unless
| someone else does it?
|
| My idea ( you need to adapt the numbers)
|
| 1 you build say 30 paper small bags
|
| 2 you then get 15 pills of vitamins/drug you test and 15
| of placebo , you need them to be similar in shape/color
|
| 3 you put the pills in bags and make two piles, say on
| left side you have the vitamin and right side you have
| the placebo
|
| 4 you make a script to generate 30 long code numbers ,
| you print the codes and stick them on the bags(or use a
| pen), my idea is that even if you now see that the code
| you are sticking on the bag, since it will be some long
| code you should forget it, or have someone else stick the
| codes . You save the code nubmers in a file, the first 15
| codes are the medicine the last 15 the placebo
|
| 5 each day you take a bag, open, take the pill and record
| the code on the bag
| alexthehurst wrote:
| This would work! QR codes would be even more opaque.
| cyberax wrote:
| A device that randomly distributes pills into two chutes.
| adt wrote:
| Skip the app. Make the pills.
| jeanofthedead wrote:
| I use Bevel for this. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bevel-
| health-performance/id645...
| walthamstow wrote:
| That's not blinded though right, you'd know if you were
| taking Vit D or not and that would corrupt the experiment
| npunt wrote:
| I've been thinking the same thing! The app should have protocol
| templates for whatever intervention I'm testing, what outcomes
| I should track, and what confounds might be. And if it isn't
| part of the templates, help me develop the protocol, including
| being able to set what level of confidence I want. It should
| tell me what actions I should take to improve confidence (e.g.
| bloodwork). It should hide the results from me until the
| overall intervention is complete.
|
| All the other health apps and tracking systems I've seen are
| operating at one level of abstraction too low (just the data
| itself and its direct insights), or try to find patterns from
| p-hacking passive signals (it looks like when you work out you
| sleep better, did you know your HRV is 1.1 higher when you do
| [unrelated thing]). There's no buy-in or sense of direction in
| these products, no pushing me to do more to acquire data, no
| laser focus on a targeted test / intervention.
| davidanekstein wrote:
| I made an app for this called Reflect [1]. There aren't
| templates yet but you can run self guided experiments for
| anything you can model as a metric in the app. I just wrote
| about an experiment I did with nootropic coffee [2]. I think
| you have a point about sense of direction and premade
| templates being targeted and useful. Reflect is very much
| generic and untargeted.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-
| anything/id64638...
|
| [2] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-
| wit...
| walthamstow wrote:
| I think this is an awesome idea. You get two boxes of daily
| pills labelled A and B, you take A for a month then take B for
| a month, and log your feelings throughout. At the end the
| service reveals which month was Vit D (or whatever) and which
| wasn't.
|
| I guess you could get your partner or a friend or family member
| to do it for you?
| mathgeek wrote:
| While this is a wonderful idea in theory, a key reason it's
| often not used for experiments is that there are just too
| many variables to control for (including, for example, the
| ongoing effects of spending a month wondering if you're
| taking something that's affecting you... which affects you in
| and of itself).
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Don't those effects cancel with the effects on those
| participants who take the same 2 treatments but in the
| reverse order?
| kortilla wrote:
| That's why you need multiple participants and why this
| idea for doing experiments on just yourself doesn't work
| well
| walthamstow wrote:
| I agree it's not perfect, you're right to cite the
| Hawthorne effect. The vitamin D one for example would be
| affected by weather and seasonality. But I still think it
| would be really cool and a good product.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, even watching the news can make your stress levels go
| up.
| 1penny42cents wrote:
| I'm actually working on this now, starting with sleep quality
| and cognitive performance (memory/attention/fluency) as
| dependent variables.
|
| The vision is to have an index of protocols that people can try
| for themselves and see whether and how broader claims apply to
| their own minds and bodies.
|
| If you or anyone else is interested, please send me an email at
| camhashemi (at) gmail.com. I'm looking for early adopters!
| davidanekstein wrote:
| I made this, it's a lot less than $25/mo. Happy to take
| suggestions. It's called Reflect.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| > I've long found that tea makes me much less nervous than
| coffee, even with equal caffeine. Many people have suggested
| theanine as the explanation, but I'm skeptical. Most tea only has
| ~5 mg of theanine per cup, while when people supplement, they
| take 100-400 mg. Apparently grassy shade-grown Japanese teas are
| particularly high in theanine. And I do find those teas
| particularly calming. But they still only manage ~25 mg per cup
|
| It's not uncommon for a substance to have different, even
| opposite effects at different doses. For example high dose
| melatonin can keep you up, and stress you out, whereas in most
| people you only need up to 1 mg to promote sleep.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
| dylan604 wrote:
| I would also look at other ingredients in teas as a knock on
| effect vs straight supplement extracts. Sometimes the extract
| as a supplement isn't the same once separated from the rest of
| the plant it's found.
| cluckindan wrote:
| How about other ingredients in coffee?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| That's certainly an interesting thing I wish we knew more
| about. My qualitative experience is that coffee gives me
| more anxiety than any other form of caffeine I've tried,
| including ones that don't contain L-theanine.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Coffee is a significant source of beta-carbolines.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Polyphenols...
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8601035/
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| One obvious one to consider is the diterpenes in filtered
| vs unfiltered brewing methods. Filtered methods will remove
| most of these. Diterpenes will help reduce inflammation and
| may enhance the flavor of the coffee for some, but the ones
| in coffee are unfortunately also linked to increased LDL
| (bad cholesterol), so as a drug choice, there's not a clear
| winner in whether filtered or unfiltered coffee (as in
| French press, for example), will result in a better black
| coffee.
|
| From my own anecdotal experience, lower inflammation has a
| wide variety of cognitive benefits, regardless of the
| means, while things that increase my inflammatory response
| (for example, allergies), make it much harder to think
| clearly.
|
| Side notes: I don't drink milk so can't speak to the lipids
| that might further influence intake. But even the heat of
| coffee will have an effect: if it's scalding hot, some of
| the caffeine will be absorbed in the mouth, and if it's
| very cold, it'll wind its way further through your system
| before being absorbed.
|
| I'm just a coffee drinker, so take all of this information
| with a grain of salt, unless your sodium is too high?
| Caveat emptor
| vanderZwan wrote:
| One proven property of tea (especially green tea prepared at
| a slightly lower temperature) is that it increases arterial
| flexibility. Contrast that with coffee, which increases blood
| pressure. I wouldn't be surprised if the effects on the
| cardiovascular system plays a large role in the calming
| effect of teas, and the anxiety-increasing effect of coffee.
|
| Which leads to my other point: these experiments always focus
| so much on the _brain_ without taking into account that the
| state of the _body_ has a profound impact on the brain too.
| TimByte wrote:
| That's a great point. Dose-response relationships can be really
| weird
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I have a strange relationship with psilocybin where
| microdoses reliably give me an almost unbearable headache,
| but a large dose will reliably get rid of a headache (even a
| migraine in one case).
|
| I haven't tested it in many years (boring parent mode
| engaged) but that was my first experience with bizarre dose
| response relationships where one effect was very acutely
| inverted.
|
| It took me months to figure out the source of headaches. I
| felt certain it couldn't be the psilocybin because it was so
| good at fixing my headaches prior to that. Sure enough, I
| could turn the headaches on and off like a switch by taking a
| tiny dose or not taking it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| This reminds me of hydrogen sulfide that at low levels
| smells awful but at little higher doesn't smell at all,
| because it just fries receptors.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| About ten years ago both my wife and I had to switch to
| extremely low caffeine coffee because we would get panic
| attacks. It still happens now, just this week we were
| accidentally served caffeinated coffee at breakfast diner and
| both were having panic attacks by 4pm.
|
| It's absolutely wild that I can drink a mug of a beverage that
| everyone else drinks by the liter but be crippled with anxiety.
| Brain chemistry is weird.
| calmoo wrote:
| Do you not think it's interesting that if affects both of you
| the same way, as far as to cause panic attacks in both of
| you? For an individual I could just about accept that it's
| just how you react to caffeine, but the fact both you and
| your partner have the same result suggests some sort of
| influence on each other?
| kqr wrote:
| Assortative mating. Partners' genetics are not independent.
| rapfaria wrote:
| Even more crazy than caffeine interaction.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I am the same way. I cannot even eat chocolate before bed or
| I am up all night.
|
| I have Bipolar Disorder with an Anxiety Disorder and drinking
| coffee triggers a lot of paranoid manic thoughts as well.
|
| But Tea is even worse for me, because, I think, of the
| theanine. I think I am very sesitive to Glutamate and really
| glad the blogger talks about it. It is one of the most under
| utilized neurotransmitters in psychiatry.
|
| Also, cutting out foods with some certain additives helped me
| as well. Like isolated pea protein, autolyzed yeast extract,
| and malted barley flour to name a few. Theyare all flavor
| enhancers that contain glutamate.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Coffee and tea are very interesting. I can drink caffeinated
| tea without any issues. But for some reason caffeinated coffee
| will trigger an acne break out several days later. It took a
| long time for me to connect this link.
| quintushoratius wrote:
| Are you sure it's the caffeine and not another substance in
| coffee?
| ibaikov wrote:
| I read a study about athletes given either a strong coffee,
| placebo, or a caffeine in capsule form. The study suggested
| that even if coffee had less caffeine than athletes got
| directly in a capsule (and measured in their blood) strong
| coffee boosted their performance more. This suggests that we
| might be getting a boost from sensing strong flavor by our
| receptors. Not sure how else to interpret it, but I really wish
| there would be more studies on this.
| mgfist wrote:
| Anecdotally I feel way more productive while I'm sipping
| coffee than I am once I've finished my cup. This is true even
| after my first sips.
|
| I think we humans just really really like ritualistic
| practices.
| x86x87 wrote:
| there is more in coffee than caffeine? maybe another
| substance?
| ajb wrote:
| That's true, but melatonin is probably not a very
| representative example, (unless you're only talking about
| sleep) as its mechanism is really idiosyncratic.
|
| It seems (from [1]) that the body has a day-clock which is
| synchronised to the actual day by the release of melatonin.
| Taking melatonin (at the right time) reinforces the signal;
| taking too much swamps it completely. It seems unlikely that
| many other body chemicals are part of the signal chain of a
| biological PLL (phase-locked loop).
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-
| th...
| cogogo wrote:
| My high school chemistry teacher claimed that tea and coffee
| each have different isomers of caffeine and people may be
| sensitive to one both or none. This was pre internet and some
| quick googling seems to debunk this claim in that caffeine has
| no isomers. Though the same searching seems to indicate that
| there is a likelihood other compounds mitigate or exacerbate
| its effects.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Good article. It demonstrates the necessity of rigorous clinical
| trials for therapeutic approval. It's a very long and arduous
| process to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a new drug is
| effective.
| woosik1204 wrote:
| 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
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >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.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| > when you read studies, giving people 400 mg of caffeine (~4
| cups of coffee) delays sleep by 30 minutes or so.
|
| I'll need to see those studies. I'm finding the reverse:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805807/
|
| > One study examining the sleep effects of 400 mg caffeine
| administered 30 minutes before bedtime demonstrated both severe
| sleep disruption as well as important cardiovascular effects
| during sleep likely related to increased sympathetic activity.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| You can go down to the Table 2 of the study you linked and
| see that's pretty much exactly the data they got
| (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805807/table/T2/)
|
| Going from 7.8 to 7 hours and taking 50 instead of 20 minutes
| to fall asleep is significant for the purposes of this study,
| but that's not what insomniacs and anxiety patients talk
| about. Insomniacs who lie awake until 4 in the morning and
| get 3 hours of sleep routinely because they're so worried by
| the cup of coffee they had or the supplement they forgot
| don't do so because they have a physiological reaction to
| some caffeine, it's a mental problem.
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| Caffeine sensitivity varies widely, as does sensitivity to most
| substances.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| AFAIK studies on caffeine effects can be "polluted" by the fact
| that many humans (e.g. ~32% of europeans) have a variation on
| the CYP1A2 enzyme expression which makes them metabolize
| caffeine much slower (about 1/4th the speed) than the rest
| (allele C vs AA carriers).
|
| So the reason for lying awake at night can also be affected by
| your genetics I guess?
| wraptile wrote:
| 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.
| mastax wrote:
| Not to put too fine a point on it but if there are blind trials
| showing no effect and non-blind trials showing an effect, my
| conclusion would be the effect is a placebo.
| brandonasuncion wrote:
| I've tried different L-Theanine supplements, and there's
| definitely a difference in quality across companies... which
| could help explain the variance in experiences.
|
| Unfortunately, there isn't much regulation for supplements in
| general. Some companies do 3rd party purity testing, though
| it's not always the case.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > I've tried different L-Theanine supplements, and there's
| definitely a difference in quality across companies...
|
| This could also be explained by placebo effects.
| esperent wrote:
| That's a reasonable take but still depends on the trials.
| E.G. if the blind trial was 20 college age Americans males,
| and the non-blind trial was 1000 people from various ages and
| countries, I'd probably lean towards trusting the non-blind
| trials (unless I happened to be a college age American male).
|
| Or if all the available trials are n<=20, I'll probably lean
| towards trusting the anecdotes, at least enough to try the
| supplement for myself.
|
| When it comes to cheap-to-produce supplements, very limited
| trial data is the norm, unfortunately. There's no money for
| running large trials.
| chesterche wrote:
| It's almost as if this post is attempting to gaslight the world
| into thinking that L-Theanine doesn't work. It's the exact
| equivalent of saying "Look at the data, LSD does not make you
| hallucinate, it's just conjecture. Look at my data and
| numbers."
|
| This entire post makes me think there is either an ulterior
| motive for writing it to try and discredit the obvious impact
| L-Theanine has on people, or, the write up is simply an
| irresponsible take on trying to show that one used data to
| prove something as false which is unequivocally true, at least
| for some.
|
| Nonetheless, L-Theanine profoundly impacts some people and
| others it has no effect on. This post should have language that
| makes it clear that the results are from one single person who
| has one single experience which is extremely divergent relative
| to others who have experienced the life changing effects of
| L-Theanine.
|
| Without such qualifying language this post seems grossly
| irresponsible and misleads the reader into thinking there is no
| effect that L-Theanine has.
|
| That's my interpretation, at least!
| rplnt wrote:
| The title says "my experiment", it couldn't be any clearer
| and open it's about a single person's experience.
| chesterche wrote:
| That's fair, however the overall gist of the post seems to
| imply that the numbers data and numbers produced somehow
| groundbreakingly prove that everyone who has proclaimed it
| works is wrong and the data and numbers in the post prove
| that.
|
| Happy to be told I'm wrong, but that's how I read it.
| padjo wrote:
| Very little if anything is ever proven to be absolutely
| true in all circumstances. The author did a decent job of
| controlling variables and blinding so their evidence for
| a lack of effect is substantially more robust than any
| number of personal anecdotes claiming an effect.
|
| We've known for centuries now that people are absolutely
| terrible at knowing if medical interventions work beyond
| placebo unless you use rigorous protocols to remove bias
| and account for reversion to the mean. Yet it seems the
| message just doesn't get through to vast swathes of
| otherwise intelligent people.
| drakonka wrote:
| What makes you think it is trying to gaslight anyone? The
| post makes it clear that it just not working on the author is
| a possibility, but also fairly points out that there are
| other studies with more participants that weren't really
| promising either. It then suggests that those who do really
| believe it works on them also replicate a blinded self-
| experiment, which seems pretty fair to me - because then
| surely they'd be able to show results, if they're one of the
| (apparently many many) people whom it works for.
|
| I also think/thought L-Theanine works for me, and since it's
| not harmful I'll keep taking it, but at this point I accept
| that it's likely just placebo effect until shown otherwise.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| 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?
| padjo wrote:
| Placebo only works on self perception though. If there
| are objective markers of disease they don't tend to
| respond to placebo effects at all.
| drakonka wrote:
| 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 motivation to do
| so at this point).
| TimByte wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people mention theanine for relaxation, but
| combining it with 5-HTP for deeper sleep and vivid dreams is a
| new one for me
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > 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 becasue
| I am sensitive to glutamate and I have Bipolar Disorder.
| Drinking tea give me paranoia and the "fun sleep" you have I
| have every night.
| cluckindan wrote:
| "I've long found that tea makes me much less nervous than coffee,
| even with equal caffeine."
|
| Well, of course you are less nervous when you avoid taking
| coffee: it contains a LOT of beta-carbolines which act as MAO-A
| inhibitors. MAO-A inhibition directly prevents adrenalines from
| being inactivated by oxidation.
| cubefox wrote:
| Or maybe it doesn't actually make him less nervous, in which
| case the beta-carbolines are irrelevant.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Of course. MAO A/B producing gene variants (including high-
| and low-activity VNTRs and even complete deletion) are some
| of the most varied in humans.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| In spite of the confidence you're stating this with, it sounds
| like a serious over-simplification of a very complex dynamic.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Occam's razor. These compounds do exactly what I've
| described, which directly increases feelings of anxiety.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| 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 entheogenic contexts. I'd be
| reluctant to attribute too many noticable effects to them.
| cluckindan wrote:
| 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.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| 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.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| It's a bit disappointing that Vitamin D was used as a control,
| since based on my research, Vitamin D does seem to have very
| significant effects on mood. Author says:
|
| > Vitamin D might have some effects on mood, but no one seems to
| claim that they're _acute_ , that you'd feel them within an hour.
|
| As far as I remember, this is correct, which is to say, I've
| never read anything that claimed the effects of vitamin D were
| acute. However, this seems like it still leaves a pretty big gap
| to me: you're taking a known mood-altering substance and
| basically hoping that the effects aren't acute because nobody has
| bothered to test whether they are or not.
|
| That said, this is a minor complaint, and this test is far more
| scientific than the vast majority of self-experiments.
| discodonkey wrote:
| For a community that prides itself on critical thinking, I'm
| always surprised to see HN lap this sort of pseudoscientific
| witch-doctor stuff up.
|
| This poorly-controlled, N=1 experiment tells you nothing, not
| even about the author.
|
| There's absolutely no reason to consider these novice self-
| experiments when professional scientific experiments are
| available (unless you're hunting for a specific result).
| defen wrote:
| The author directly quoted the European Food Safety Authority,
| who found the same thing he did. There's a rich history of
| self-experimentation in medicine and nutrition, I don't think
| you need to be so negative.
| discodonkey wrote:
| My point was that no data gleaned from this experiment
| would've been meaningful, regardless of the result, because
| it was not conducted very rigourously.and on a sufficiently
| large scale.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| It's the contrary. Science, see European Food Safety Authority
| and examine.com, shows lots of data that it doesn't work.
|
| Yet people have been saying all over the internet it's working.
|
| The burden of the proof is on those who claim the opposite of
| the vast majority of scientist studies.
|
| Beside, N=1 studies is still better than some nobody on the
| internet claiming it works when he did nothing to negate the
| placebo effect.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Oh come on! Studies about supplements over time are almost
| always "poorly controlled" because you have to ask people to do
| something while living their lives.
|
| Also, N=1 experiments can absolutely be interesting and give us
| ideas for further study, even if they don't say anything about
| a population.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Arent all humans different and therefore N=1 actually ok in
| this scenario??
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Uh, I think the article itself is fine. Not the most rigorous
| science, but not too bad for an amateur.
|
| But the comments on HN, on the other hand... Every single post
| about medicine or disease is full of anecdote upon anecdote and
| pseudoscience. It's really hard to tell the difference between
| HN and Reddit in this regard.
|
| The most insane part is that people here are so eager to jump
| on the train and recommend random treatments to others when
| they've only vaguely described their problem. I never
| understand this.
| ellen364 wrote:
| People invented and discovered remarkable things before modern
| statistics and RCTs (work on puerperal fever, antisepsis and
| germ theory stand out for me). Humans can make surprising
| progress with only small scale experimentation and observation.
|
| I prefer the results of large studies. I think modern methods
| are better than methods from the Scientific Revolution. But
| people can't always afford to wait a decade or two for solidly
| replicated results.
| d--b wrote:
| I suspect that the placebo effect can be very strong in anxiety
| situations.
|
| And on top of pure placebo. The whole rite of going to the
| kitchen and prepare your little pill has a calming effect in
| itself.
|
| And maybe matcha is the same. Its preparation is slow and
| requires attention.
|
| Much like smoking, it's difficult to know how much of the calm it
| provides come nicotin or from slower/deeper breathing, just going
| outside and talking to strangers.
|
| I have chronic insomnia that is turning severe, so I really want
| to believe these things work, but so far, they're all very pricey
| and completely useless on sleep.
| teekert wrote:
| This is nice. I love that people can be so rigorous and honest as
| well.
|
| I just want to add that what brings my stress down (although I
| didn't research it so thoroughly) is small rituals. Things to
| focus on, to do well, to "take a moment". For me it's making
| morning coffee. Making/baking bread, filling the dishwasher.
|
| Maybe I'm borderline OCD. But maybe many people are and just the
| rituals of taking pills (actually) relieves some stress. It seems
| so based on the study.
|
| Edit Fwiw, being about 20 years into my scientific career I've
| also come to prefer just looking at the data.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| I know what you mean here, but valuing small rituals is normal
| and not anywhere in the same ballpark as OCD.
| teekert wrote:
| True. But for me sometimes when I'm stressed (usually related
| to some lack of control) I may get very precise about how the
| dishwasher is organized among others. It's annoying for
| people around me, but at least it's not hard drugs.
| Jolter wrote:
| That doesn't sound like OCD at all to me. It sounds like
| you have a personality that values order and control over
| details. Annoying perhaps, but normal.
|
| If it's getting to the point where it impedes your social
| life, you could see a psychiatrist, but I'm pretty sure the
| diagnosis wouldn't be OCD.
|
| OCD is characterized by strong feelings of anxiety which
| can only be temporarily subdued by compulsive, repeated
| behavior. The classic example is "can't leave the house
| without washing hands 20 times, sometimes 40". The anxiety
| is still there but slightly dampened by the compulsive
| ritual. If you don't have crippling anxiety, you don't have
| OCD.
| teekert wrote:
| Ok yeah I understand that it must be annoying to people
| with real OCD to read stuff like my comment. Apologies.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| > It seems so based on the study.
|
| I would argue that it does not, as we have no "no pill"
| baseline.
|
| All it shows is that if the author is stressed, chances are he
| is less stressed one hour later.
| teekert wrote:
| Hmm indeed. But the no-pill is very hard to placebo.
| maccard wrote:
| I have a sensitive stomach, and I've found peppermint oil to be
| a fairly good supplement to help. I've also noticed that my
| stomach is more irritated when I'm anxious and stressed. The
| act of taking the peppermint oil, whether my stomach is acting
| up or not seems to be one of the biggest anxiety relievers to
| me.
| sph wrote:
| I love theanine as a low-level anxiolytic. My recommendation:
|
| * Try a lower dosage first. 400mg made me irritable. 100mg works
| great for me.
|
| * Effect seems to lessen if taken consecutive days; in fact it
| might have the opposite effect of making one more irritable than
| calmer.
|
| A few nights ago I was tossing and turning because I had too much
| coffee before bed. A theanine pill and sleep was restored. It
| doesn't do much more than that, but it's good to have for one of
| _those_ days that you just want to punch a wall.
| TimByte wrote:
| The biggest takeaway for me is how unreliable our subjective
| sense of "this works" can be without proper controls. Also, the
| way placebo + regression to the mean can make almost anything
| seem effective in the moment
| rwyinuse wrote:
| I tried 200mg L-theanine pills for some days. I noticed a
| slightly calming effect, but after the supposed effect wore off,
| I suffered from unusually high level of anxiety. So I guess it
| can give you withdrawal symptoms. CBD worked much better for me
| in that regard.
| TimByte wrote:
| Did you find CBD helped consistently, or did you have to
| experiment with doses and timing to get the right balance?
| rwyinuse wrote:
| 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 concentration.
| naruhodo wrote:
| I started taking 1 x 50mg CBD gummy in the morning about 2
| months ago and I can confirm that it is better than L-theanine.
| My analysis-paralysis is gone. I am moving forward with my life
| better than I have in 15 years.
|
| I was one of the commenters in the HN thread linked by the blog
| post, and I do find that L-theanine reduces my coffee jitters.
| mg wrote:
| 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_for_self-tracking
|
| I also built a bunch of tooling to analyze the data.
|
| I think that mankind could greatly benefit from more people doing
| randomized studies on their own. Especially if we find a way to
| collectively interpret the data.
|
| So I really applaud the author for conducting this and especially
| for providing the raw data.
|
| Reading through the article and the comments here on HN, I wish
| there was more focus on the interpretation of the experiment.
| Pretty much all comments here seem to be anecdotal.
|
| Let's look at the author's interpretation. Personally, I find
| that part a bit short.
|
| They calculated 4 p-values and write:
| Technically, I did find two significant results.
|
| I wonder what "Technically" means here. Are there "significant
| results" that are "better" than just "technically significant
| results"?
|
| Then they continue: Of course, I don't think
| this means I've proven theanine is harmful.
|
| So what does it mean? What was the goal of collecting the data?
| What would the interpretation have been if the data would show a
| significant positive effect of Theanine?
|
| It's great that they offer the raw data. I look forward to taking
| a look at it later today.
| aszantu wrote:
| I found, I take Abt. 4 days to react to stuff. Except for those
| cheap cooking oils, I get migraines within a time-frame of
| about 3 hrs.
| brodo wrote:
| Your self-tracking syntax looks neat. How do you track if you
| are not in front of a computer?
| mg wrote:
| I write into a text file on my phone. And later move those
| lines into the file on my computer.
|
| It's a bit cumbersome, but not too much. But yeah, I look
| forward to when I finally get around to writing an app for
| it.
| bosie wrote:
| do you use an app and shortcuts (or something similar) to
| speed this up?
| mg wrote:
| On the phone I don't.
|
| In Vim, I use multiple shortcuts that I made for this use
| case.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| You _can_ use vim via termux, which is nice when you
| already have things in version control.
|
| Alternatively, may I suggest the DailyLog app in F-Droid?
| kortilla wrote:
| 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.
|
| Excellent data and statistics is not sufficient for a good
| experiment
| mg wrote:
| An experiment of 1 person can very well produce useful data.
|
| It depends on the setup of the experiment.
|
| Imagine an experiment where a person's thumb gets randomly
| hit with either a hammer or a feather once per day. And they
| then subjectively rate the experience. After 1000 days of
| collecting data, I doubt that we would wrongly come to the
| conclusion that the hammer treatment leads to the nicer
| outcome.
|
| The setup of the Theanine experiment which is the basis of
| this thread looks good on first sight. I have the feeling
| that the interpretation could use more thought though.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| What a weird take, in 99.999% of cases you don't have such
| a black/white contrast
| mg wrote:
| Sure. But even when you add noise to the described
| experiment, you get useful data.
|
| That is the point I am making: Experiments of a single
| person _can_ be useful.
|
| The critics of single person experiments usually come up
| with examples vastly different than the Theanine
| experiment described here. With long term experiments
| which are only conducted once. But the Theanine
| experiment was looking for a short term effect and can be
| conducted many times. The hammer experiment I made up
| would be an extreme example of this type of experiment
| which leads itself well to be conducted by a single
| person.
|
| What I am trying to point out is that if you are a
| skeptic, it would be better to try and find weaknesses in
| the experiment at hand. Not making up completely
| different experiments.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Then you find {imagining scenarios} that the bruising
| causes some effect that 'inoculates' against heart disease,
| or the feather carries a pathogen that later induces
| dementia??
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Yes and no. The issue with a self-administered experiment
| is that becomes part of the experiment. Does the self-
| administration and the associated thoughts and beliefs
| affect the results? It's not like the experimentor can
| issue a placebo to themselves.
| dublinben wrote:
| >It's not like the experimentor can issue a placebo to
| themselves.
|
| TFA describes a protocol for doing just that. The author
| randomly selected between the treatment dose and placebo.
| They didn't reveal the choice until after the effect
| should be complete so they could record the results.
| chkgk wrote:
| A problem I see is that you can never be sure that it also
| works for other people. Just because one person reacts to a
| specific treatment does not mean that people on average
| react to the treatment in the same way. That's the problem
| of having a sample size of 1. In other words: We cannot say
| much about whether the effect generalizes to a larger
| population from knowing that it has an affect on just one
| person.
| yimby2001 wrote:
| It's very possible that some things can be good for one
| person and not for another. Should we only ever have
| drugs that can help everyone?
| VerdisQuo5678 wrote:
| i hope your 1 person isn't a masochist
| Zak wrote:
| The experiment answers a useful question: does theanine have
| a strong, acute anti-stress effect on the experimenter?
|
| Effect size is the key element of this question. If the
| substance was alprazolam (Xanax) instead of theanine, we
| would almost certainly see a strong effect here. The same
| would be true for heroin, ethanol, or cocaine.
|
| It's not trying to test whether there might be a strong
| effect for most people or whether there are any side effects.
| Other experiments have been done with theanine seeking to
| answer those questions; the answers appear to be no and no.
| kqr wrote:
| > So what does it mean? What was the goal of collecting the
| data? What would the interpretation have been if the data would
| show a significant positive effect of Theanine?
|
| I think what the author is saying is that for them to bother
| with theanine on a permanent basis, it would have to have shown
| an effect large enough to be apparent just from plotting.
|
| In other words, they mean _technical_ significance as opposed
| to _clinical_ significance. A small effect can be statistically
| verifiable without being meaningful in practice.
| mg wrote:
| an effect large enough to be apparent just from
| plotting
|
| And how large is that? Without putting a number on it, how do
| we come to the conclusion that the effect is _not_ large
| enough? That it didn 't show in their sample of data points
| could have been just random chance.
|
| But before we take the measured effects at face value, I
| think it's important think about them more. They report
| significant p values of their success in predicting if the
| capsule holds Theanine and also for the effect of the capsule
| when it holds Theanine. Both negative correlations. My first
| thought reading this is that the Placebo tasted more like
| Theanine and thinking they took Theanine had a positive
| effect on the outcome.
| stevage wrote:
| They were looking for a clear effect. they did not find one.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| 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 much better-
| designed trials than this one: it's basically a coin toss.
| episteme wrote:
| You could argue that this N is the only N that matters
| though.
| malfist wrote:
| Not too me though. Especially not to me if I'm trying to
| decide to supplement l-theanine
| ryandrake wrote:
| Right. The only N that you can draw any conclusions about
| is the author himself. So, why even publish it? The
| "results" are not applicable to anyone reading it. This
| is the health version of the software industry's "It
| works on my system!"
| episteme wrote:
| Publish it is quite a loaded word here. Almost every blog
| or post you read is from the point of view of a single
| person. There's nothing wrong with him putting his
| experience out into the world.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| 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 possible
| improvements.
|
| Unlike most large high N clinical trials this is a high
| resolution longitudinal trial, and it is perfectly
| "controlled" for genetic difference (none), well controlled
| for environment, and there is only one evaluator.
|
| Compare this to the messy and mostly useless massive studies
| of human depression reviewed by Jonathan Flint.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36702864/
| grafmax wrote:
| I think social media discussions of science would be better
| informed by the concept of a 'hierarchy of evidence'.
|
| Anecdotal data, n=1 trials of varying quality, correlations
| studies, double blind studies (with small and large
| cohorts), studies without attempted replication and studies
| with heavy replication - they are all provide evidence of
| varying quality and can inform the holistic scientific
| picture. They can all serve a purpose such as inspiring
| further research, providing fodder for meta analyses, etc.
| It simply isn't true that gathered evidence ought to be
| casually discarded if it doesn't attain the highest levels
| of the hierarchy of evidence. Neither is it true that some
| small study showing (or not showing) some supposed effect
| should drastically change all our lifestyle habits. The
| truth lies somewhere in the middle. The concept of a
| hierarchy of evidence can help us navigate these apparently
| mixed signals so prevalent in popular science discussions.
| abirch wrote:
| Here's a relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/882/ For the
| small sample
| jrootabega wrote:
| If he said unblinded at some point, it could have been
| because the study author looked into the cup to determine
| which substance had been taken too soon. The subject should
| have had no knowledge of what was taken until the entire
| 16-month trial was over.
|
| We should avoid extreme polarization of our judgments in
| general. The study deserves some amount of praise for
| things it did somewhat well (like the method of blinding
| which is clever, but not applicable to everyone), and
| criticism for things it did not do well, such as designing
| your own study methodology for your own mood. That alone
| will affect the results. Simply RUNNING an experiment can
| affect your mood because it's interesting (or even maybe
| frustrating). The subject probably felt pride and
| satisfaction whenever they used their pill selection
| technique, which could improve mood on its own. Neither
| accolades nor complete derision are appropriate, although
| trying to claim too strong a result from this study is
| kinda deserving of derision if you claim to be science-
| minded.
|
| The study was well-meaning and displayed cleverness.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| And that is exactly the point made in the target post by
| the author. He explicitly raised that criticism himself.
| Double kudos for self-criticism. You will not find many
| conventional science publications pointing out: "Shucks,
| we could have done this a better".
| jrootabega wrote:
| The ancestor post is neither a "Complete injustice" nor
| "derision" nor an "insult", and it doesn't warrant a
| hostile mocking reply. Its tone could have been gentler,
| but it wasn't that bad. And the study doesn't really
| deserve "accolades", it deserves to be recognized for
| whatever it does well. Such polarization of tone and
| vocabulary doesn't accomplish much, and I'll even propose
| that it actually prevents good things from happening. It
| is good that the author is aware of, and acknowledges,
| the problems in the study. What other studies and
| journals have done wrong doesn't make the author or study
| more deserving of praise.
|
| Also, you asked why he said "unblinded", and I think you
| now have the answer to that.
| levocardia wrote:
| 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
| sgc wrote:
| 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), etc into account, the data
| seems useless.
|
| As a note, I have no idea why he bothered trying to guess
| what he had taken. What possible value could that have in
| this type of experiment?
|
| Perhaps the correct course of action would be to ask for
| feedback in the design phase of an N=1 trial, especially
| a longer one, to avoid some basic mistakes.
| kqr wrote:
| > As a note, I have no idea why he bothered trying to
| guess what he had taken. What possible value could that
| have in this type of experiment?
|
| It gives a hint of how well the blinding worked.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Why do you say unblinded?_
|
| It's unblinded because the subject is preparing the
| concoction under study. There is no way they can create a
| blind experiment if they're the ones preparing the control.
| The placebo effect is nothing if not pernicious and
| cunning, able to exploit even the most subtle psychological
| signal - like minuscule differences in the amount of powder
| in a capsule.
|
| Blinded studies have independent doctors prepare and
| dispense the candidate drug so they know whether its the
| real thing or a placebo, but their patients dont. In double
| blinded studies, neither the doctor nor the patient have
| any idea about what they're getting because a third party
| prepares the drugs.
| wslh wrote:
| In science, an n=1 experiment isn't discarded; instead, it
| adds information that can guide future experiments.
| derlvative wrote:
| Noooooo you can't just run independent experiments you need
| institutions and phds and bureaucracy and gold plating nooooo
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 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?
| altcognito wrote:
| Why do you say pseudo blinding, it seems like it is blind in
| that the author doesn't know if he is taking the test or not.
|
| Now you can argue that there isn't enough time between
| samples, or he needs more subjects but he was blind to
| whether he was taking it that day or not.
| jrootabega wrote:
| If the author felt good on a particular day for whatever
| reason, and then learned they had taken the active
| substance, their reports are contaminated forever. It works
| the other way, too. It works any way you slice it.
| brothrock wrote:
| N=1 is addressed, see outcome predictions. N=1 comes with
| caveats, of course, but a study like this, with a proven
| harmless supplement, should be welcomed and praised.
|
| It is clearly a step forward from what you can watch about
| theanine on YouTube or TikTok. I consider this a work of
| citizen science. While it should not be taken for more than
| it is, it's a great example of how someone can experiment
| without a high burden.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's a pretty low bar though. OK, it's one step up from a
| monetized YouTube video that boils down to "It works--Trust
| me, bro." I still wouldn't really call it citizen science.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| N=1 studies aren't evil. They're just pretty close to the
| entire history of pre-modern medicine that led us to bad
| evidence. My concern here is not that someone is sharing
| their opinions, it's the fact that the person doing this
| explicitly heaps derision on the "placebo people" (or some
| other phrasing) and then heaps praise on other people doing
| N=1 studies and proceeds to do one. This stuff all needs to
| be treated with humor, good faith, and then extreme
| skepticism about any result it produces.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Hell, I'd say it's an 0<=N<1 because it involves subjective
| mood reporting, and there was no participant who was not
| contaminated by flaws in the methodology.
| tomrod wrote:
| Aye. Completely agree. Path dependence matters, which is why
| you can't just look at pre/post action.
| azeirah wrote:
| 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.
| hartator wrote:
| 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.
| cortesoft wrote:
| N=1 trial is great if you are trying to figure out what works
| for you as an individual
| robwwilliams wrote:
| "Technically" here could imply "not corrected for multiple
| tests". But the typical qualifier I use is "nominally
| significant" when I don't apply an correction for multiple
| tests.
|
| Or "not using a one-way t test".
|
| The most appropriate null hypothesis in this lovely study is
| "does theanine REDUCE anxiety", not "does theanine change
| anxiety either up or down".
|
| What impressed me most is the suggestion for an improved
| experimental design to remove his temporal drift by using 100
| pre-loaded envelopes and only decoding the results at the end.
| azalemeth wrote:
| > The most appropriate null hypothesis in this lovely study
| is "does theanine REDUCE anxiety", not "does theanine change
| anxiety either up or down".
|
| I disagree with this. You have a prior belief that theanine
| might reduce anxiety; if you wanted to you could codify that
| subjective belief and perform some variety of Bayesian
| hypothesis test [1] and compute a Bayes factor. The main
| reason that one-sided tests are advocated for is power; that
| is often the same as having a prior belief in disguise. Why
| not quantify it?
|
| However, scientifically, if the data conclusively show that
| "theanine increases anxiety" that is a meaningful, non-
| artefactual result: it is hugely important to be sensitive to
| the answer 'you are wrong' and may well ironically spur
| development in a direction to help understand what is going
| on. I personally think that one sided tests are best avoided
| except in the case where it is _physically impossible_ to
| have an effect in the other direction. Examples of this are
| rare, but they do occasionally exist.
|
| [1] https://mspeekenbrink.github.io/sdam-book/ch-Bayes-
| factors.h...
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Sure. I can see your point, but the most reasonable
| posterior probability of the null given the biohacker
| community's belief is one-tailed. This also gives more
| power to reject the null.
| ac29 wrote:
| > The most appropriate null hypothesis in this lovely study
| is "does theanine REDUCE anxiety", not "does theanine change
| anxiety either up or down".
|
| Neither of those is a hypothesis, which require a prediction
| not just a question.
|
| The null hypothesis for this experiment would be "Theanine
| has no effect on stress".
| K0balt wrote:
| Citizens science used to be much more common and there were
| several publications initially built around the concept.
| Unfortunately, the idea has all but been obliterated by
| inadequate public education and the chronic lack of time that
| now embattles the middle classes.
| luqtas wrote:
| 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?
| luqtas wrote:
| couldn't edit but here it's how science measure stress:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8434839/
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I think is great that folk self observe, and that is a key to a
| lot, everyone ought to find what works for themselves, however
| there is a tendency to want to fix things with pills. There is
| a fundamental error there, if successful you might damp your
| symptoms but then you start a Whac-A-Mole (whac-a-symptom) but
| you are not looking at the root. The problem will come in
| another form. Have you consider that the symptom is a defence
| mechanism ?What about Taichi, mindfulness ness practices, yoga
| why not a study on that? It is definitely more work... than
| taking some pills. No I am not against taking supplements. But
| ultimately is a workaround you are not fixing the bug
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is your intention, but I take issue with
| the implication that "pills" (aka "medication" and
| "medicine," "pills" has a generally negative connotation)
| aren't often the solution to the root problem.
|
| It is great if you can solve things with diet, mindfulness,
| etc. But sometimes you need medical intervention and yes
| sometimes that means you need to take medication in the form
| of pills. There are millions of people who need that
| regardless of how they change their lifestyle or regulate
| their emotions/mental health without them.
|
| Basically I don't like the idea that you are implying
| medication is a bandaid and not ever the actual solution. If
| I misreading your comment my apologies
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| This is good point, thank you, lot of people needs
| medicine, and i am glad they are accesible. My point goes
| more towards this: Imagine someone runs a marathon
| everyday, after a couple of months, start experiencing pain
| and inflammation. Do they need painkillers or do they need
| to ask themselves why they are running a marathon everyday?
| I am not against taking some painkillers as long as you
| also ask yourself the question. Do i really need to run a
| marathon everyday? I do not want to cure disease with yoga,
| no, but you should give it a go, whatever works for you,
| self observe, train a bit, walk in the forest, surf,
| meditate. Wellbeing cannot be achieved only with medicine.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Fair point! Thanks for clearing that up for me
| Jerrrrrry wrote:
| The strawman sentiment of "no medication ever" is a pretty
| easy take to herald against.
|
| The nuanced truth is that our medical industry is flawed;
| since most illnesses are defined by their set of apparent
| symptoms (with most root causes not fully understood) the
| standard approach is to treat "symptoms" with medicines
| with sides effects rivaling the original ailment!
|
| What if the lack of proper diet ('proper' varies wildly
| with populations), drugs/alcohol, sleep, stress, and
| exercise were the originating cause? Rushing to the
| medication treatment without fixing those vitals first
| eliminates the opportunity.
|
| Our bodies have much more adaptive self-healing resilience
| properties innate to our species development than our own
| species hubris seems to acknowledge. And most people
| severely underestimate the importance big four.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Really fantastic.
|
| I've been using theanine for a long time, but never for any of
| these purported benefits. And the benefits I do use it for
| would be near impossible to measure. I just use it to make a
| over-caffinated monkey brain state tend toward a "lock-in"
| mental state. That's super hard to measure, and just as likely
| the theanine is a trigger for a mental deep dive that could
| just as well be sugar. But the ritual works, and that's what's
| important to me. It just took the intial "It helps mellow out
| caffeine for deep focus" idea to establish the ritual.
|
| Science? No. Effective? Yeah, I think so.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| >Pretty much all comments here seem to be anecdotal.
|
| The entire blog post was anecdotal.
| aszantu wrote:
| Can for myself just say I took the anime for a while but don't
| think it did anything. Way higher effect was switching to decaf
| and then drink mushroom coffee for alertness. There are different
| mixes out there, I just went with a random one from Amazon when I
| enjoyed some test-packages from chi-coffee. I'm also mixing with
| cocos cream and cows milk.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I wish people can pay for trials on products. e.g. In subreddits
| for hairfall, people cite all sort of very badly done research
| that shows some chemical in expensive product as effective, for
| which the only research is sponsored by the company making it. If
| 1000 people in that subreddit pays $100, it might be enough for a
| good trial and knowing the active people there, they would likely
| pay even more. Same for multivitamins, the research on that is so
| important yet so bad and biased, and getting million dollar
| crowdfunding should be possible.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| 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.
|
| Been using antihistamines, and a dehumidifier for several months
| now and sleeping better than I have in years. Given how extremely
| common mite allergies are there's got to be a lot of folks with
| undiagnosed issues here.
| IlPeach wrote:
| Thanks, but I'm still missing how I would properly diagnose
| myself. These symptoms might be all too common ... Anything
| more reliable?
| collin128 wrote:
| An allergy clinic can run these tests for you.
|
| Been doing immunotherapy for allergies for 3 years and it is
| a complete game changer. Last year was the first year I could
| breathe through my nose for the entire year. No more stuffy
| months.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| You can always go to an allergist for a skin prick test.
|
| I'd say hallmark symptom would be chronic night time
| congestion worsening while in bed (an area of the house that
| has a very high density of mite allergen).
|
| But running a bit of differential diagnosis on this,
|
| * Inflammatory & Allergic Conditions (allergic/non-allergic
| rhinitis, chronic rhinosinusitis, turbinate hypertrophy,
| nasal polyps).
|
| * Obstructive Sleep Apnea (do a STOP-BANG).
|
| * Structural Blockages & Airway Obstructions (deviated
| septum, adenoid/tonsil hypertrophy, nasal valve collapse,
| turbinate hypertrophy).
|
| * Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD/LPR).
| wenc wrote:
| You should consider a dust mite vacuum with UV. I bought one on
| Amazon (this one but you can check YouTube reviews for others).
|
| https://www.amazon.com/JIGOO-Vacuum-Cleaner-Dust-Sensor/dp/B...
|
| I was surprised how much dust this thing picked up (my sheets
| get washed often, but it's hard to clean the mattress itself).
| Back in the day people used to sun dry their mattresses but no
| one does that these days.
|
| This dust mite vacuum picked up half a canister of gunk from my
| dead skin and environmental dust that has accumulated over the
| years (and it has a light scattering sensor that tells you how
| much dust is being sucked up). My nose was clear after sleeping
| on a vacuumed bed. I now vacuum my bed once a week, and it has
| really helped.
|
| Vacuuming your bed and other fabric surfaces also feels
| therapeutic. For me, it's like watching one of those
| powerwashing videos. You feel cleansed after.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Got to say after figuring this out I am tempted to ditch the
| western style mattress and replace it with something like a
| Japanese futon. I assume it'd be much easier to wash.
|
| In the meantime I need to purchase a mattress encasement, I
| put one on my pillow and that alone helped a bunch.
|
| Long term maybe desensitization is an option but I'm too lazy
| for that atm.
| MaKey wrote:
| I did a desensitization and it helped a little bit. Despite
| the regular washing and using a dust mite vacuum I'm still
| having a hard time getting good sleep though. At least my
| nose isn't bloody in the morning anymore, so I guess that's
| something.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| 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 removed with it and the mites will withstand it too.
|
| Not wanting to make you feel bad about your purchase, but is
| there something unique about this kind of device that gives
| it an edge over conventional vacuum cleaners?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 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?
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Get a mattress encasement, it's like a HEPA filter bag
| for the mattress (cuts off the mites food supply and
| preventing allergens becoming airborne).
|
| Skips the whole trying to clean porous foam problem.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I read that mites can't survive temperatures above 60C,
| and wondered then about just a big plastic bag around the
| item then fill it from a hot air source (hair dryer, fan
| heater)?
|
| I think the problem would be temperature control, as you
| don't want to damage the item, but need to maintain an
| even, specific air temperature, you'd need turbulence.
| Then vacuum clean afterwards.
|
| Maybe a wallpaper remover style device with a hot air
| source instead of steam??
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Yeh I've thought about whether it'd be possible/safe to
| use something like an "overclocked" electric blanket to
| sterilize the mattress daily.
|
| They also need humidity (~50% RH), hence why I got the
| dehumidifer, which has definitely knocked them back.
| qiine wrote:
| I got the exact same idea sadly most electric blanket i
| could find on amazon where kinda small and had
| disappointingly low heating power...
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Pretty much my conclusion as-well.
|
| I guess they just don't want folks giving themselves
| burns during sleep.
|
| AliExpress as always is tempting [1], but you'd have to
| be incredibly careful about regulating temperature [2]
| and adding safety interlocks that'd make falling asleep
| with it active, or forgetting to turn it off impossible.
|
| 1. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007963462500.html
|
| 2. Don't blame me when your house burns down, I warned
| you.
| mkatx wrote:
| Look into something like flexwatt tape. Maybe run it
| during the day when your not sleeping. In my mind, they
| probably use something similar inside heated blankets
| with some kind of limiter/thermostat.
|
| Do your research though!! I'm not sure if flexwatt tape
| could ignite your mattress, but you would definitely want
| to know for sure yourself beforehand!
|
| There are ways to control heat though; I'm familiar with
| using flexwatt tape with reptile enclosures, hooked up to
| a thermostat with a probe in the habitat for temp
| control. Maybe some math, like desired_temp =
| watts_supplied * feet_of_fw_tape, where the
| watts_supplied is the independent variable you adjust
| based on the required feet_of_fw_tape for your mattress
| to get the dependent variable desired_temp. Probably
| include a fail safe, but I'm no electrician, proceed at
| your own risk.
|
| They do sell self contained fire extinguishers you can
| hang on your ceiling that deploy automatically at a
| certain temperature, ideally putting out fire sources
| they are hung above. Nice to have around for things like
| this.
| wenc wrote:
| Just a data point. I have a mattress encasement which has
| never been removed (I got it to protect against bedbugs).
| Dust (dead human skin) still accumulates on the surface.
| It might not go into the mattress, but it will be on the
| surface. Since the encasements are never meant to be
| removed, vacuuming the mattress (with encasement on)
| still makes sense.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I asked above as well, but since you have direct
| experience, what do you have between the plastic and you?
| Aside from the fitted sheet? Wouldn't a regular mattress
| cover just attract mites as well?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Ok. What do you put between the plastic and the sheets? A
| standard mattress cover? Won't the mites just go there as
| that's where the dead skin, etc will be?
|
| The plastic would also trap heat between me and it.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| As someone who uses a plastic mattress cover I can answer
| your question: yes, if you let dust build up, mites can
| and do start to live on the fitted sheet that you put
| around the mattress cover. However, it is of course
| easier to wash just the fitted sheet than to remove dust
| from within a mattress, so I think that a cover is still
| beneficial.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by trapping heat - once there
| are two normal cotton fitted sheets around it, I don't
| feel the plastic mattress cover at all.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Obviously there are different species of dust mites, but
| the ones I'm familiar with are nearly invincible. They
| are able to cling onto smooth surfaces even with a vacuum
| cleaner right over them. I've noticed that they are
| 'directional' in their grip though: when the vacuum
| cleaner is behind their direction of travel, they'll hold
| fast, but if you move the vacuum in front of them they'll
| be sucked up. Thus, drawing the vacuum nozzle back and
| forth repeatedly seems to me to be essential for reliably
| getting rid of them.
|
| As for UV, I have no idea. They seem to survive on
| surfaces that get exposed to sunlight though windows, but
| apparently glass blocks most UV radiation. You'll have to
| make a new post with your results if you try it :)
| wenc wrote:
| You can use a conventional vacuum if it has enough suction
| (most of these dust mite vacuums are rated at 13 kPa, a
| sweet spot for extraction without damaging fabric), and if
| you don't mind using the same vacuum attachment on other
| surfaces. These also have rotating polyurethane fins that
| go close to the surface which helps in agitation -- most
| vacuum attachments have plastic brushes which I suppose
| will do the job but possibly slightly less effectively.
|
| It's not a mattress vacuum so much as a dust mite vacuum
| that can be used on couches, fabric chairs etc. It's also
| handheld and is specialized for the job, so it's more
| ergonomic to hold.
|
| The UV I can't really vouch for but can't hurt. I
| personally would not run a conventional vacuum on my
| mattress because I use the same vacuum on less hygienic
| surfaces, but if you have a dedicated attachment why not --
| I feel it would be less effective (because in my
| experience, the suction is often diminished when you use an
| attachment) but have no data. If you have a high end vacuum
| this is less of a factor, but most low end vacuums like
| Hoovers aren't designed to deliver full suction with
| attachments.
|
| I'm happy with my purchase because I feel that given it's
| small size, I'm more likely to vacuum more frequently. I'm
| less likely to want to bust out the big vacuum.
| cassepipe wrote:
| It's just a vacuum with an HEPA filter, correct ?
|
| I had the same experience, it just occurred to me that I
| could vaccum the mattress with the for-textile head and was
| really surprised with the amount of dust and its texture
| (transparent dust holder is satisfying hehe)
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Is there a reason to get this over a waterproof bed bug
| protector? Which you can wash.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I have asthma triggered by Volatile Organic Compounds. I good
| activated charcoal room air filter did wonders for me.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Indoor air quality these days is particularly awful.
|
| Was reading that house dust is actually a major source of
| microplastics aswell.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Incidentally, the author made an (counter-)review of air
| purifiers : https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/
|
| I got the IKEA purifier with the activated charcoal filter
| after reading that
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Thanks for this idea. Can you recommend a particular model? A
| quick search found mostly just vacs. I have a vac(s). Perhaps I
| just get in the habit of treating my bed with UV?
| vharish wrote:
| Wouldn't changing the matress help? Also, if you using a
| pillow, consider keep them under the sun every few days. You
| can even keep the matress under the sun, maybe on the terrace
| if you have access to it. Pillows can also be washed as well.
|
| Telling you from my own experience. It could work for you if
| you haven't tried already.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| There's sweet FA sun for six months out of the year here in
| central europe so not a viable option.
| riedel wrote:
| 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...
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| I find the steroids even more effective but they seem to
| exacerbate my anxiety after a few days though. Still haven't
| figured that out.
|
| With regular use antihistamines quite quickly lose their
| drowsiness effects. But it's definitely a nice side effect
| for sleeping challenged folks. Azelastine is a second
| generation antihistamine so not particularly drowsiness
| inducing.
|
| One of the interesting Azelastine quirks, is it's apparently
| somewhat antiviral [1].
|
| 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38140540
| piombisallow wrote:
| Cortisone is the main stress hormone, of course it makes
| you anxious
| amelius wrote:
| > 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, while other studies have found no risk. And
| all the studies are inherently flawed.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Only Anticholinergic drugs appear to be associated dementia
| (but as noted the evidence is very weak).
|
| Older first generation antihistamines such as
| Diphenhydramine (Benadryl), Doxylamine (Nyquil) have
| substantial Anticholinergic activity.
|
| A lot of the second generation antihistamines have no
| significant Anticholinergic activity, eg. Azelastine.
|
| Benadryl and Nyquil are terrible drugs. Why they haven't
| been phased out is beyond me. At least Azelastine is now
| OTC in the USA.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, desloratadine won't pass the BBB
| so I guess it shouldn't cause dementia
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Would wake up with a stuffy nose and very dry mouth
|
| I would suggest people look for this symptom first before
| jumping onto nasal corticosteroids.
|
| Fluticasone and others have low systemic absorption and low
| side effects in theory, but there are several studies that
| found some suppression of the HPA axis similar to taking small
| doses of oral corticosteroids like prednisone. The effect is
| small, but I wouldn't suggest trying it out as a 1-month
| experiment unless you have specific symptoms of stuffy nose in
| the mornings.
| hammock wrote:
| "Before trying a basic mineral with no side effects, try a
| corticosteroid for a whole month"
|
| ??? You have that backwards.
| strontian wrote:
| 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 hypersensitivity.
|
| This article is a great introduction to the harms they cause at
| the molecular level:
| https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(18)30848-0/ful...
|
| I also wrote a free guide to help people get dust mites out of
| their house:
|
| https://dustmiteguide.com
| ovalanche wrote:
| 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 symptoms, but
| over the past few months I've been experiencing a truly
| terrible bout of insomnia.
|
| I think it's time to take the allergy seriously again. I'll
| follow your guide and make some changes. If I could suggest
| an improvement to your guide: it may be useful to have a
| section (perhaps chapter 5?) on symptom relief. I've had
| friends say that a neti pot works wonders, for example.
|
| Either way thanks for posting!
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| 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_ple
| thys...
| yard2010 wrote:
| I have to write this here it might help someone: I had the
| worst case of mite allergy since childhood - no smells let
| alone no breathing from my nose. 5 years ago I started
| immunotherapy - my good dr basically injected me with the
| allergen every week for 1-2 years. After that, I got a
| monthly injection with the max dosage for like a year. I
| haven't had this allergy ever since. I can smell again and
| breathe from my nose. My dr has healed this awful disease.
|
| Modern medicine sometimes works like magic. If you have this
| disease know that you don't have to suffer this bs. Try to
| fix it with the help of your dr.
| natdempk wrote:
| Appreciate the resource -- I think my biggest question from
| reading it: How can you actually tell if you have dust mite
| problems? How can you tell if they've gotten better or not?
| How can I tell if I've hit a point where things are about as
| good as they're going to get? etc.
| OuterVale wrote:
| Since reading Gwern's essay on nootropics [1] I've wanted to
| experiment with theanine. Caffeine is obviously a fantastic
| stimulant, and I take care not to consume it too frequently (I
| try to limit my intake to no more than three times a week based
| on the research of Michael Dickens [2]).
|
| As such, I have next to no tolerance. As great as having no
| tolerance is for the productivity benefits, it does have
| undesirable side effects. A single cup of coffee can get me
| twitchy and slightly shaky, and a cup of tea past noon can impact
| my ability to fall asleep.
|
| A gripe I have is the lack of good research into the combination
| of theanine _and_ caffeine, and I think I 'd be a good candidate
| for a blinded test looking into it. I would like to carry one out
| but really do lack experience in tests of this nature.
|
| Does anyone know any good resources for someone interested in
| learning how to conduct a self-study such as this, including
| details regarding common pitfalls?
|
| [1]: https://gwern.net/nootropic/nootropics [2]:
| https://mdickens.me/2024/04/11/caffeine_self_experiment/
| carlsborg wrote:
| From a biology perspective base amino acids (such as theanine) on
| their own are not generally major modulators of human function.
| You want to experiment with small molecules, something that binds
| with proteins such as enzymes which in turn modulate pathways and
| cell functions.
|
| Binders need a energy configuration and 3 dimensional structures
| that "fits" into such proteins, and individual amino acids dont
| really cut it. Also the amino acids get rapidly used for protein
| construction so they dont stick around long.
|
| PhDs in the subject can please correct me I am wrong here.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I am shocked, _shocked_ that he published this without IRB
| approval. Where are the ethical standards?
| toonalfrink wrote:
| Or maybe the stress-reducing effect carries over to the next day?
|
| Stress has a habit of not being randomly reset to the default
| value every morning when you wake up
| metalman wrote:
| I like this work a lot.It seems like the sort of thing that if
| done by thousands of like minded people would build a knowlege
| base that cuts through the very very messy reality of life, and
| gets us closer to rules of thumb that might help. chinese
| medicine with techno characteristics? cyber herbal8sm :) we need
| an app for this
|
| But... data eh?
|
| the ONLY repository of data, is genes.vast, tested in deep time,
| with countless trilions of runs.now running on quintillions of
| test units. we have access to a tiny portion of the data, but are
| at the stage of? do you read the text from the right?left? top?
| bottom?, but of course its read as a gestalt, and so outside of
| our capacity.
|
| What may be accessable, is our enzimatic relationships with the
| substances in our environment, and how those balances are
| specific to groups and individuals, but it wont be easy to
| unravel, records plus actual chemical testing of anything,
| anywhere, anytime which boils down to "light" sensors, that are
| capable of seeing and diferentiating the exicitation of molecules
| under ambiant conditions.
|
| what is dismissed by so called science, are the indivuals who
| survive and thrive under exactly the same conditions that
| decimate there peers, and how "science" is perfectly happy to
| call something "luck" and then move towards monitising "bad luck"
| .....scientificly.....rather that work towards understanding the
| framework that governs everything
| justlikereddit wrote:
| Following in the trend of the guy who tried LSD microdosing and
| concluded with cocksure fanfare it does nothing.
|
| Which throws a veil of doubt over these kind of studies.
| Something is open to be defective in structure or presentation.
|
| "Daily intravenous heroin use - a placebo controlled self-
| administration study" "It does absolutely nothing"
|
| Would we all jump to the occasion of believing it, if the writeup
| is polished enough?
| fredgrott wrote:
| I take L-theanine for ADHD
|
| 1. Theanine is an analog for Glutamate and Glutamine. 2. Due to
| indirect relationships to ADHD, Depression, etc. no one take
| Theanine by itself...I do not. 3. When drugs are created we often
| have incomplete pictures, for example SSSrIs for depression...we
| now know its both low levels in serotonin and GABA
| combined...bias yes I take Theanine, GABA and Glutamine for
| depression and it does work.
|
| One experiment on oneself means very little...I know as I spent
| 36 months finding the combo that works for my depression and
| ADHD.
| devonsolomon wrote:
| Great experiment! It's important to highlight that even in
| rigorously blinded studies which find a drug ineffective on
| average, there can still be genuine responders--this is known
| scientifically as "heterogeneous treatment effects." Essentially,
| individuals vary in genetics, metabolism, and neurochemistry,
| which can cause meaningful differences in drug responsiveness.
| Thus, an N=1 trial, like yours, might indeed reveal real personal
| benefits that wouldn't appear in a population-level analysis.
|
| However, systematically performing robust N=1 trials individually
| across multiple substances can be impractical--too laborious and
| time-consuming for most people. An interesting business model
| might be a startup that facilitates personalized N=1 experiments
| at scale: providing users with high-quality compounds, matched
| placebos, structured dosing schedules, and data-tracking tools.
| This could empower more individuals to accurately assess personal
| efficacy across a wide variety of substances, potentially
| offering valuable, personalized insights that large-scale
| clinical trials can't capture.
| kqr wrote:
| I like this idea! To build on it, the schedules could be non-
| random (systematic with random offset) and test combinations of
| substances in a way that maximises information both in the
| cases where substances are independent and when they have
| suspected interactions.
| devonsolomon wrote:
| Hard to pull off! But I imagine the wave of Bryan Johnson
| fans would be game.
| davidanekstein wrote:
| 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. I just wrote about an experiment I did with nootropic
| coffee [2].
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-
| anything/id64638...
|
| [2] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-
| wit...
| devonsolomon wrote:
| Love it - Great work. I'm gonna give it a go.
| re-lre-l wrote:
| I've been conducting a self-experiment on the effects of various
| substances (all legal and easily accessible) on sleep for about
| four months, following a similar approach to the author. Using
| two different sleep trackers, I rely solely on absolute,
| measurable values, avoiding subjective impressions. It's fun but
| requires time and patience--sometimes I have to restart cycles
| from scratch. So far, I've gathered datasets for Phenibut,
| Theanine, Piracetam, and Baclofen. The experiment is still
| ongoing.
| Havoc wrote:
| Got pretty powerful anxiety effect from it after taking it a
| while. Definitely not for me.
| loufe wrote:
| There's a great podcast by Andrew Huberman on dopamine I listened
| to last week where he discusses theanine at the end. It's a
| fantastic (but 3 hour long) primer[0] for anyone wanting to learn
| more.
|
| [0] https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/controlling-your-
| dopamin...
| meindnoch wrote:
| Ah, the Joe Rogan of medicine.
| davidanekstein wrote:
| 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.producthunt.com/products/reflect-c052fea3-a982-4...
|
| [3] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-
| wit...
| bbstats wrote:
| Android app?
| davidanekstein wrote:
| Android is on the roadmap, but we haven't started yet. Please
| comment on and upvote the issue!
|
| https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-
| version-o...
| Aaronmacaron wrote:
| This sounds exactly like what I want! Alas, no Android app it
| seems, anyone aware of apps that do the same and are available
| for web or Android?
| davidanekstein wrote:
| What is the feature set you're looking for? There are
| symptom-specific apps and track anything apps, but I'm
| unaware of any that combines both into a generic solution. We
| have a roadmap item to implement things on Android.
| https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-
| version-o...
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| 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 life that make you neglect
| yourself, so the meme pills always correlate with good things.
|
| It's a major problem with Whoop's insights feature. It needs a
| way to make you coin flip an intervention to be useful.
| davidanekstein wrote:
| 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.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| I appreciate the high agency and citizen science here. However, I
| think 1) theanine should not be isolated but ingested in context
| (via a nice pot of tea) 2) there should be a little bit more
| respect for statistical methods.
|
| While those two points appear to be contradictory (the first
| appears to inject noise/variability, the second is intended to
| reduce noise), I believe they each produce a superior result.
| Regarding the first point (drinking tea instead of ingesting a
| capsule), theanine does not operate in isolation, but instead
| interacts significantly with other compounds. Regarding the
| second point, statistics are the lifeblood of these kinds of
| trials, what is the purpose of a series of trials without a
| correct analysis? (I believe it should be standard to devote a
| huge chunk of time to getting the math right during the analysis,
| even though it is hard/unintuitive.)
| ck2 wrote:
| Buy supplements in POWDER FORM when possible if you don't need
| enteric capsule, etc.
|
| It eliminates other contaminant/padding, no capsule materials to
| worry about.
|
| You can then also vary the dose size to see if there is a tipping
| point where it works.
|
| For all we know the author was overweight and the mg of Theanine
| vs KG of weight was not enough for any effect.
|
| And Theanine DEFINITELY "works for me". Not even a question of
| doubt.
|
| I always take a 1/4 teaspoon before bed. If I forget on rare
| occasion I find myself wondering why I can't fall asleep until I
| remember.
| gatopingado wrote:
| Cool experiment!
|
| Once the author started taking pills independently of their
| stress level, the variance of differences diminished a lot. I'd
| wager this supports the mean reversion hypothesis.
|
| Also, while I agree with their general conclusion that theanine
| probably doesn't reduce stress, I'd give assign more probability
| to the hypothesis that theanine does work, but in other design
| settings. For example: drinking tea instead of taking pills, or
| measuring stress levels after a day instead of an hour, or
| evaluating the difference across time instead of in time chunks.
| daneel_w wrote:
| This is the first time I've seen a self-study with l-theanine in
| the context of stress relief. In fact, somehow, it's the first
| time I've ever seen stress relief mentioned on the topic. For me
| it has always been about providing a small cognitive boost. The
| result is clear: for this particular individual, and the specific
| goal of stress relief, l-theanine does not work.
|
| My anecdote: I used l-theanine supplement for about a year
| straight. To me, the noticable effect was similar to that of a
| cup of coffee but with practically none of the jitters.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I absolutely love how committed this author is to the science to
| the point where they managed to remain so objective.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| By giving these things to random people, we don't do a very good
| job of evaluating their effects. If something works on 10% of the
| population, randomly selecting participants in an experiment will
| never give a significant result. If something is generally safe,
| it seems better to experiment on yourself.
|
| The problem this solves is that some things work on some people.
| Neurotransmitters are blunt instruments that do many things- and
| are subject to adaptation effects where you get an effect for a
| while then the system adjusts to the new baseline. Maybe someone
| out there has a deficiency and adding more helps them for a bit,
| other people don't have a deficiency and get no results. Other
| people have a deficiency, something works for a little bit, then
| the brain adjusts to the new levels and the effect slowly
| disappears.
|
| Until we can measure the level of the physiological effect we are
| targeting, the n=1 experiment seems like the only real way to see
| what group you fall into.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| The bbb works the same way in everyone, and prevents it from
| working. If it did work in 10%, you would see a positive
| result.
| dostick wrote:
| What a waste of opportunity and time. All for nothing because
| author was too lazy to make blank capsules and used Vit D, which
| of course may have effect. You can buy capsules easily and have
| true blind test.
| pnm45678 wrote:
| > I think these are the possibilities:
|
| > Theanine works, but I got fake theanine. <...>
|
| I'd add one more possibility: "Theanine works but I need a higher
| dosage to feel the effect."
|
| FWIW my purely anecdotal findings are that supplier does matter.
| Natural Factors Suntheanine gave me a noticeable effect. Nature's
| way L-Theanine did not.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| OP took 200 mg. Tea contains 5-20 mg and people commonly report
| beneficial effects from tea. If 5 mg is enough for some people
| then surely 200 mg would be enough for anyone?
| Arch485 wrote:
| Not necessarily, there are a lot of drugs that have reduced
| or no effect for certain individuals. Think caffeine or
| alcohol tolerance.
| slama wrote:
| I thought I was crazy/imagining things, but I had a similar
| experience. Maybe I should try Suntheanine again
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've found that theanine radically increases the
| vividness and memorability of my dreams.
|
| Of course that might be be a great effect depending on the
| content of my dreams.
|
| That could mean deeper sleep, but I've not really measured that.
| davedx wrote:
| Sure it does.
|
| Did you read the article?
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| I did.
|
| The article makes no claims about dreams or the relationship
| between dreams and sleep quality.
| tudorconstantin wrote:
| A bit unrelated, but try having l theanine after a night of
| drinking: it makes you wake up fresh and without a hangover
| because it speeds up alcohol processing and it metabolites by the
| liver and also prevents alcoholic liver damage. Me and all my
| friends who tried it say "i wake up totally fresh after
| theanine". There's also a study confirming this:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16141543/
| Aurornis wrote:
| Gwern has a large collection of blinded self-experiments. The
| only reason I suspect it's not a more valued resource is that his
| results often contradict the popular wisdom in supplement
| communities.
|
| His experiments with magnesium showed negative results:
| https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium#experiment-1
|
| He tried LSD microdosing when the internet was convinced it was a
| miracle, but found no benefit and some concerning negative
| effects: https://gwern.net/nootropic/nootropics#lsd-microdosing
|
| Contrast those results with some of the unbelievably positive
| anecdotes you read about magnesium, fish oil, B-vitamins, or even
| LSD micro dosing causing life changing positive effects.
|
| It's well known that placebo effect is a strong driver of
| perceived effects of most supplements. The placebo effect becomes
| much stronger when people are primed to expect large effects. Not
| coincidentally, the people who report the most dramatic effects
| are often those who consume large amounts of podcasts, YouTube
| videos, or social media influencer content about those
| supplements. If someone listens to a 3-hour Huberman Lab episode
| where he explains how a "protocol" or supplement will do amazing
| things while using (and frequently misusing) lots of
| neurotransmitter names and underpowered mouse studies, that
| person might become so primed to expect those effects that
| they're nearly guaranteed to happen. In a weird way, that means
| it does actually _work_ for them, but it's not necessarily
| because the supplant is producing the outcome. It's because
| they're so deeply primed to expect the outcome (e.g. feeling more
| energy, relaxing to fall asleep) that they placebo themselves
| into making it happen.
| danielbln wrote:
| Their microdosing experimentation was questionable. Not
| methodically, it was quite thorough, but iirc they used unknown
| strength street blotters and derived all further
| experimentation from that.
| gwern wrote:
| As I always point out, all of the anecdotes claiming
| microdosing works are usually using street blotters as well,
| including the research papers which draw on crowdsourcing to
| circumvent the obvious problems with using schedule I
| psychedelics; and the research papers which do use better-
| validated dosages... don't usually turn up anything more than
| I did. Plus, it's 2025. If LSD microdosing really worked,
| after all this interest over the past 15+ years, why is there
| still so little good evidence?
| danielbln wrote:
| I can't tell you why, but the fact that LSD is a schedule 1
| drug with a strong stigma and that it's a drug that can't
| be patented will severely hamper any study efforts.
|
| Some current theories re: microdosing efficacy that I've
| seen are that people who report benefits from microdosing
| (beyond placebo) are inadvertently self medicating ADHD
| symptoms, which seems plausible, given LSDs stimulant
| effect and 5HT2A affinity.
| ovalanche wrote:
| This site, Gwern, is really fascinating but I found it
| initially rather difficult to navigate and understand.
|
| I do wish the author had provided a clear, layperson
| conclusion/results portion for each nootropic. For example,
| having read the section on fish oil, I still haven't grasped
| whether the author observed positive results or not. Perhaps he
| is being rightfully cautious in drawing conclusions?
| floatrock wrote:
| After reading a few paragraphs about theanine and dopamine and
| all the other amino acids, anyone else get to
|
| > Examine is an independent website that's respected for
| summarizing the scientific literature on health and supplements
|
| and read that website name as "exa-meen"?
| grvbck wrote:
| 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-
| experimentation:
|
| Werner Forssmann performed the first heart catheterization on
| himself. He got the Nobel prize.
|
| Barry Marshal injected himself with heliobacter pylori to prove
| that it causes stomach ulcers. Also got the Nobel prize.
|
| Jessie Lazear allowed himself to be bitten by mosquitoes infected
| with yellow fever to prove his hypothesis that mosquitoes were
| the vector for transmission. No Nobel prize, but he did contract
| the disease, thus proving his hypothesis...before dying from
| yellow fever two weeks later.
| me-vs-cat wrote:
| Nobel candidates cannot be deceased.
| gs17 wrote:
| >Werner Forssmann performed the first heart catheterization on
| himself. He got the Nobel prize.
|
| In case anyone else was confused how it would be possible to
| perform heart surgery on yourself, he did it through a vein in
| his arm, which is still incredibly impressive:
|
| >In 1929, he put himself under local anesthesia and inserted a
| catheter into a vein of his arm. Not knowing if the catheter
| might pierce a vein, he put his life at risk. Forssmann was
| nevertheless successful; he safely passed the catheter into his
| heart.
|
| He also had to trick the operating-room nurse into thinking he
| was operating on her.
| pjot wrote:
| Through the arm, I believe, is still the way it's performed
| today!
| ppetty wrote:
| I'm not sure, but seems like there should be a difference between
| someone conducting research while testing theanine versus someone
| just consuming theanine to battle anxiety. That's probably been
| said in other comments in a more scientific way. But it also
| seems like consuming yummy hot tea that happen to have theanine
| would be another relevant method for comparison. Maybe placebo,
| theanine pill, and tea drink (or other naturally occurring food
| source)? It just seems like the tea or act of drinking tea and
| the time it takes might be relaxing??
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think the experiment is based on a fundamentally flawed
| assumption the time to metabolize medication is identical to time
| for the body to return to baseline.
|
| Regular Vitamin-D supplements can taken once a week or daily and
| have the same long term effect.
|
| And for a sample of N=1: The L-theanine side effects of one dose
| last several days. Taking it daily makes the side effects
| significantly worse.
| wbharding wrote:
| Wish more people would report their placebo experiments. I have
| periodically run them on myself, and am consistently surprised
| how I have been unable to differentiate substances I thought were
| helpful (adderall, kratom) end up indistinguishable from placebo
| over 20+ trials. I guess that my main takeaway was that it is
| hard to pinpoint when subtle drugs work. My second takeaway was
| that the data I generated would prob be useful to share, but with
| no examples anyone cared I opted against. This story inspires me
| to potentially revisit some of my past placebo tests and show my
| data.
| trashface wrote:
| I have taken a lot at times, up to 1-2g per day in powder form. I
| mix it with my tea, which also has theanine.
|
| However I can't say it really helped with anxiety. TFA says some
| people claim its more effective than xanax. Maybe it works like
| that for some people, but not for me - it doesn't even put a dent
| in my anxiety - which can be pretty bad (struggling to leave the
| house). I've never taken xanax either, although my doc once gave
| me 10 pills of lorezepam for acute anxiety situations. Those
| basically had no effect on me too.
|
| Theanine does reduce caffeine jitters although I usually only
| have that problem with coffee. These days I take 200mg most days
| mostly out of habit.
| egberts1 wrote:
| N is the way.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| andix wrote:
| In my experience most pharmaceuticals and nutrients are rather
| well researched, and the results of scientific studies can be
| trusted most of the times.
|
| So if most studies don't show a significant improvement, the
| substance just doesn't work. It's even the opposite, just because
| a study showed some improvement over a bigger population, it
| doesn't mean it works for you, or the improvement is noticeable
| to you.
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