My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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.

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/

>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.