My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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!

The title says "my experiment", it couldn't be any clearer and open it's about a single person's experience.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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).

> The post makes it clear that it just not working on the author is a possibility,

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.

It may have something to do with what we say to ourselves inside our heads. If we say something to ourselves it is kind of believing. We believe what we think, we believe what we say. We can of course change our thoughts later. Like when you started feeling sick but when there was no more need for the symptoms, you could say "I'm no longer sick at all" :-)