My 16-month theanine self-experiment

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.

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

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

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.