My 16-month theanine self-experiment
dynomight.net
dynomight.net
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.
Then they continue:
Of course, I don’t think this
means I’ve proven theanine is harmful.
It's great that they offer the raw data. I look forward to taking a look at it later today.
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.
In Vim, I use multiple shortcuts that I made for this use case.
Alternatively, may I suggest the DailyLog app in F-Droid?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> You also have latent side effect issues. A person could smoke for 10 years, not smoke for another 10, and then conclude that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. Then they get lung cancer 20 years later.
But that's not the actual experiment here. Your criticism is invalid. The author randomised every day which supplement to take.
That's pretty close to a blocked design.
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.
an effect large enough to be
apparent just from plotting
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, you asked why he said "unblinded", and I think you now have the answer to that.
Re-reading such a negative critique of a solid home-brew experiment is unwarranted. There are several word here worth red flags.
>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.
>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
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.
It gives a hint of how well the blinding worked.
> no documentation of whether the events during the hour of test time were more or less stressful than those before it, and no taking the time of day, diet and exercise, sleep, location
Assuming the blinded samples are uniformly randomly distributed, and assuming the study goes on long enough, then you'd expect that stuff to average out.
But I agree, it should be recorded nonetheless. That way you can verify at the end that it did, in fact, average out as you expected. If it didn't then your data is invalid.
That would not be a problem regarding the averaging I referred to, although it could well pose a problem for measurement depending on how it interacted with the selected metrics.
Note that the averaging I refer to is not regarding all possible values of some metric, but rather any discrepancy in the distribution of metrics which we expected to follow the same distribution between the sample and the control.
I think maybe there's a misunderstanding? It seems that we both agree that a variety of additional variable should be logged. I was not suggesting to omit them, but rather to use discrepancies in them to detect fundamental issues with the data or study design. I would also expect larger studies to do the same where possible.
At 94 data points it is entirely possible that there would be outliers that would have averaged out for a larger N but did not. In such a scenario the presence of such outliers should then be taken to indicate a problem with the data (ie the more discrepancies you observe, the less you should trust the data).
I of course agree that logging them is basic scientific methodology - in order to detect issues with the experiment, and even hopefully to see the signal through the noise.
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.
I think most people could criticize the carbon out of a corpse if they themselves weren't being criticized into one.
If we devolved from apes, maybe apes devolved from piranhas.
Comments like yours expose a particularly distasteful amount of hubris.
The New Yorker's paywall has successfully obscured the origin of the joke, so that's on them, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, instead of an actual web link, you could just mention that it's from the New Yorker.
(From a vaguely-remembered 1990s-era ad campaign that I thought was excruciatingly self-indulgent at the time, but which evidently worked.)
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.
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.
How else are you going to find out whether a particular diet or medication works for you specifically? It's ALWAYS N=1.
Sure, OP addressed that and said it would be especially useful more people did it and "if we find a way to collectively interpret the data".
This is only an appropriate criticism in so far as you want to make conclusions about theanine as an intervention in the broader population.
It is however, perhaps much BETTER than large N trials if the author wishes to draw conclusions about how theanine affects THEM.
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.
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...
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".
Citizens scientists rarely post “facts” but rather interesting avenues for research or further investigation. Part of being an educated citizen scientist is to understand the limitations of your knowledge, data, and methods.
Quacks and cranks, on the other hand, are always making grand new “discoveries” lol.
Anyone who has a decent education can make observations apply the scientific method. I say this coming from a family of actual scientists from molecular biology to particle physics, who will tell you the same, and also give credit to the multitude of citizen scientists who have done just that.
As for myself, I’ll stick to engineering.
but this isn't the case! i linked in an answer to my post what science knows when measuring stress... it's far away from a self-reported subjective question
i think the problem is whatever you post on the internet is politic. it may have a huge reach, and so far so good people trying far from lethal doses of theanine. now, what if an influencer wants to make their stuff look intellectual and go buy pure caffeine? how about the people coming after wards?
one thing is a 3D-print project at your garage on keyboards ergonomics, home automation, another is rock-climbing gear and another is substances with reachable lethal doses where the masses can buy (not the case here but again, i cited caffeine but there's much more). the author has a stellar presentation but they seriously researched what science does when measuring stress? they didn't even considered The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which is used on professional research. i stand against public posts with badly methods (or the complete lack of research) suppressed by fancy graphics on substance use/abuse. i also bet isn't that hard to buy empty pills with opaque color
Some version of that still exists among people with a naturalist bent recording observations of reptiles, birds, plants, etc. But yeah, we don't really have backyard chemists analyzing things anymore.
Another interesting aspect of citizen science is replication of existing scientific research, Often with experimental modifications that make the experiment much more approachable for amateurs. Sometimes this even leads to process improvements that facilitate industrial application.
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
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.
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.
The entire blog post was anecdotal.
The problem is that he is comparing two very different things, the level when he took the pill and the level one hour after that. So it's not surprising that they are different. Let's imagine a very very very stupid experiment, where the problem is more obvious.
Does Coca Cola or Pepsi improve luck? N=1000000, double blind randomized controlled trial.
1) Each subject flips a coin. tail=0, head=1.
2) They drink a glas of soda, 50% Coke or 50% Pepsi, that is served in a hidden place and nor the subject or the experimenter know which one.
3) They roll a dice (an usual one, D6)
Results:
* Average before Coke = 0.5002
* Average after Coke = 3.5005
* Average before Pepsi = 0.5004
* Average after Pepsi = 3.5003
So the conclusion is that Coke improves the average (p<1E-a-lot) and Pepsi improves the average (p<1E-a-lot). Both are "technically" statistically significant (but it's caused by a horrible experiment design).
Unsurprisingly, the difference in the average after drinking Coke or Pepsi is not statistically significant (p<.something).
(I'm too lazy to run a simulation now, but it's not difficult to get realistic averages and p values.)
In conclusion, the useful result is the comparison of the anxiety after taking both drugs, not the difference of before and after taking them.
As the article says:
>> So I propose a new rule: Blind trial or GTFO.
Loved reading this as I have been on a similar self tracking journey of my own.
I am curious about your thoughts on mobile support? Specifically, have you implemented anything to make adding/editing events while away from your computer easier? Or perhaps you feel it is not important for your use case?
Personally, I've found that being able to log an event in an instant, or just on a whim, is invaluable for capturing the sort of data I care about tracking the most (like what I just ate or my mood), and I find too much friction causes many events simply go unlogged as they almost always feel too unimportant or mundane in retrospect to keep a mental note of and track later.
I started out with a text file system similar to yours but I've since begrudgingly resorted to google forms for most of my tracking needs. It's nice that I can arbitrarily add and remove fields while still keeping everything relatively structured and parseable, and it does have (albeit inferior) revision history. But I dislike not having ownership and control over where my data is stored and absolutely *dread* waiting for the form to load every time I want to log an event, especially on mobile.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
Your thoughts?
Skips the whole trying to clean porous foam problem.
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??
They also need humidity (~50% RH), hence why I got the dehumidifer, which has definitely knocked them back.
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.
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.
People do something similar to kill bedbugs, I think they make specialized equipment to do so, but it might just be something like an off the shelf heat gun.
The encasement I have is actually not a plastic wrap but a zippered tight weave synthetic fabric (polyester).
It’s suppose to prevent bedbugs and others from setting up shop inside the mattress but the surface is fair game. The idea being it’s easier to clean the surface than the insides.
I have had the encasement for years. No problems with humidity but I also live in a less humid area (41-45% rh all year round).
So a dust mite vaccuum still makes sense.
Also interesting fact: dust mites themselves are harmless to humans. It’s their fecal matter (after digesting our dead skin) that are allergens.
The plastic would also trap heat between me and it.
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.
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 :)
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.
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)
Was reading that house dust is actually a major source of microplastics aswell.
I got the IKEA purifier with the activated charcoal filter after reading that
Telling you from my own experience. It could work for you if you haven't tried already.
[0] https://fherehab.com/learning/surprising-antihistamine-anxie...
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].
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.
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.
But it is one of the more anticholinergic second gen antihistamines, make of that what you will, still miles behind something like Benadryl. Fexofenadine is apparently a less anticholinergic alternative.
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.
??? You have that backwards.
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:
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!
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_plethys...
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.
Regarding whether or not your health issues are caused by dust mites, if you have any of the allergic disease, or if you have a tested dust mite allergy, it is likely they are causing problems. Disease severity is also associated with dust mite exposure.
Basically, the worse you have allergies, the more likely it's dust mites.
It's an almost certainty you home has dust mites and their allergens, unless you live in a very dry climate.
My advice is to create conditions in your house in which dust mites cannot thrive, which is relatively easy to verify with hygrometers. Over time, this will lead to lead to lower allergen levels, particularly if you are proactive about removing the ones that are currently there.
What I emailed about was asking what you meant by biweekly for washing bedding - is that twice a week or every other week?
But if you can maintain low humidity for a longer periods, the dust mite populations in your home will go down and frequent washing will be less important.
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.
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.
I wish the author had spent time addressing that theory specifically.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
The narrative that 'stimulants calm down people with ADHD but make neurotypicals wired' never sat well with me. But I totally believe that it makes you and many other people calmer without any friction.
There must be a wide range of physiological causes and behavioral circumstances that lead to an ADHD diagnosis, such that people like me take a baby dose of methylphenidate or else I get paradoxically overstimulated and distractible and physically uncomfortable.
Or maybe my stimulant tolerance is unrelated to the ADHD and it's just enzymes. I think I had a flag for one of those SNPs that makes me sensitive to caffeine...
There are people with ADHD for whom meds don't work at all, some for who it works in very low doses, some that need very high doses, everyone is different. Same with reactions to coffein.
Diversity is the norm in nature when talking about individuals. ADHD is super complex and how stimulants work is also super complex and the interactions, well we barely have any idea. It doesn't really say anything about your ADHD that you are more or less sensitive to stimulants other than that your are more and less sensitive to stimulants.
Like you wrote, it could be just some enzymes or whatever. Humans are just crazy complex. It is still useful to talk about fact that a statistically significant subset of people with ADHD react differently to caffeine than most neurotypicals.
For what it is worth, I envy you a lot being more sensitives. I can kill five, six, seven cups of coffee and not feel anything. It sucks.
How do you treat your ADHD then?
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think we humans just really really like ritualistic practices.
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...
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.
https://examine.com/supplements/theanine/?show_conditions=tr...
how much would you pay for this?
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
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.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
[2] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-wit...
I guess you could get your partner or a friend or family member to do it for you?
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!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
[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...
https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-version-o...
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.
Reflect integrates with Whoop and so can act as an augmented or relacement Whoop diary feature.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Unfortunately, there isn't much regulation for supplements in general. Some companies do 3rd party purity testing, though it's not always the case.
This could also be explained by placebo effects.
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.
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!
Happy to be told I’m wrong, but that’s how I read it.
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.
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.
So if it's working for you, you probabaly should NOT start a study to find out if it works or not. It might stop working (for you). What good would that do?
I'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).
This is my hypothesis. I'm very confident it worked for me, but I'm guessing that there's a certain combination of symptoms and traits that it's effective. If it was a placebo for me, it would be literally a miracle: likely the cheapest thing I've tried and had the biggest effect without requiring me to make a habit out of taking it.
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.
(I have no idea whether it would work like this. A placebo effect only is also consistent with the data.)
This was my experience. I'm not sure if that's "typical", although I've never really tried to take it like that.
> 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.
Suntheanine was consistently effective and most of the other brands were seemingly inactive or unnoticable. I've always had to order online as all of the brands I've bought in store seem to be bunk.
Even still I found tolerance to rise quickly with daily theanine use.
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.
Unless you lived in a normal country where marketing pharmaceuticals direct to consumers is -- of course -- banned.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
I've never met anyone who think exercise doesn't make them feel good on the other hand
Who said they were negligible? I didn't. I said you might not have measured the effects effectively. That doesn't mean they're negligible.
Anxiolytics generally have the problem that people notice/remember when they're anxious, but don't notice/remember when they're not anxious. As a result, when you track someone's anxiety attacks who is on an anxiolyitic, you might see, say, a 80% reduction in frequency, but that that person won't remember all the times they didn't have anxiety attacks, they remember the times they had anxiety attacks, and they may conclude that the anxiolytic didn't work if they weren't actually tracking carefully. Notably, there's a growing body of actual scientific research that CBD is effective for treating anxiety, but the effect you report, "It didn't do anything" is almost universal from people who try it.
Non-scientific "experimentation" with CBD is that a lot of people take it hoping to get high, and when it doesn't get them high, they conclude it has no effect. But in fact CBD does have effects, it just doesn't have the effects the self-experimenter was looking for.
Psychedelics have the opposite research problem: they very much do get you high. So people take it for some pretense like treating anxiety, and then when it gets them high, they believe it treated their anxiety whether it did or not, because at least it did something obvious.
I'm not saying psychedelics don't treat anxiety, I'm simply saying that self-experiments which don't attempt to control for these problems generally aren't very good proof of anything.
If you want my personal opinion, I think the evidence for CBD as an effective anxiolytic is stronger than the evidence for psilocybin as an anxiolytic, although I think both need more research to be conclusive.
For sake of experiment, I recently acquired and vaped a good amount of CBD herb, and I was definitely high as a kite, though in a much different way than if it had been loaded with THC.
I would assume that you got high from the THC
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.
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/
[0] https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/controlling-your-dopamin...
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]
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.
Taking vitamin D once, right before bed will do nothing. Our bodies don't use it that way.
Cholecalciferol = weeks
calcidiol = hours
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
* CalcitrolLevel: float
* CalcitrolReserveCapacity: float
* Is_Energetic: bool
Imagine the following equation:
* Is_Energetic = CalcitrolLevel > 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.
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'll just live with my low blood Vitamin D levels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So the reason for lying awake at night can also be affected by your genetics I guess?
I’ve had good luck with the Suntheanine brands. GNC brand has been effective for me. YMMV.
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.
If I had billg money, I’d divert some of it into just running high quality tests of all these “maybe” supplements.
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.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
[2] https://open.substack.com/pub/reflectapp/p/my-experience-wit...
“That’s impossible, and the fact that normal scientific practices could lead to such a conclusion reveals why we don't use single studies to draw conclusions as it's not only possible but expected that some percentage of study results are going to be well outside 2 standard deviations from the mean.”
I just wanna nitpick that because one of my pet peeves is people not realizing that you can follow the scientific method really well and still end up with outlier data.
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.)
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.
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.
> 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"?
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.
It seems like this would be closer to taking the tea in your mouth and savoring it over multiple sips across a few minutes, and could explain the smaller apparent dose having an effect (some of the Theanine goes straight into the bloodstream and bypasses the digestive tract).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
I'd never heard of that.
All my life I've drank enormous amounts of tea. To the point that I've had withdrawal symptoms from physical caffeine addiction. But I'm only recognizing more ADHD symptoms the more I read about it. (Not a controlled experiment; I'm aware of that.)
I am pretty relaxed, though.
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?
Coffee contains several ingredients that act as opioid receptor antagonists, which can be unpleasant (as in "reverse the pleasant / calming effects of endogenic opioids"). Some people seem to be more affected than others, kinda like with the intensive gastrin release / coffee induced instapoop.
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.
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.
Did you read the article?
The article makes no claims about dreams or the relationship between dreams and sleep quality.
Hacker news always has the most insane takes when it comes to medical/biological things.
> 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-...
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.
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.
It is standard Bayesian reasoning[1]. But it requires independence between observations, which many people forget!
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.)
Oftentimes we (humans) use imperfect, but well-known, figures of speech to convey common ideas.
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...
Stress has a habit of not being randomly reset to the default value every morning when you wake up
> 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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If it was weeks, they would accumulate to very toxic levels in anyone who smokes or has a few cups of coffee a day.
Your second point is spot on.
Coupled with frequency of coffee intake and accounting for storage in adipose tissue, levels in vivo could easily exceed binding affinities after just days or weeks of coffee use.
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.
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.
idiosyncratic means they don't know why (because they're idios?), but it happens to some people for unknown reasons. The chances are very slim that you'll have whatever pre-condition to be affected by this.
Were any of the downvotes and responses related to the Theanine with relora pill for stress relief?
but regarding theanine, i can't tell if it is useful for me, i bought it because of this thread's commentary. Sometimes it makes me jittery, and some times it doesn't, n=1, five trials so far ;-)
I bought the bottle so i'll take it. i really ought start writing down vibe/mood journals with a list of supplements i took that day, if any.
oh and i avoid taurine. I don't recall why, offhand; but i do, so i'll have to look into those other chemicals, i see "GABA" often - and you didn't specify what type of magnesium!