Interesting and well-done. I think the probability of "it works, just not on me" is a bit higher than he suggests: there are some types of supplements for which the difference between responders...
Interesting and well-done. I think the probability of "it works, just not on me" is a bit higher than he suggests: there are some types of supplements for which the difference between responders and non-responders can be really stark and the group of responders may be quite small because they all have some tiny metabolic issue causing something like reduced bioavailabililty and in time defficiency. Amino acids tend to be in this group because a slight deficiency can be caused by stress in some cases or by a gut microbiome dysfunction, and unlike genetic issues related to amino acids this doesn't tend to cause big issues that one would be aware of. edit: Forgot to add, since the responder to non-responder ratio is rather small, it tends to produce inconclusive or even negative study results unless closely examined, which would fit here.
Still, it doesn't seem super likely. Anecdotally I also used to get calming effects from high quality green teas and did not feel anything similar from an entirely non-blinded test of theanine.
I do think a lot of the people who experience a calming effect from things like tea underestimate how much of the effect comes from the experience and ritual of making the tea and sipping a tasty...
I do think a lot of the people who experience a calming effect from things like tea underestimate how much of the effect comes from the experience and ritual of making the tea and sipping a tasty warm beverage, as opposed to being the effects of a specific chemical. But then I have ADHD so I often get calmed down by even caffeiene, so I'm not exactly baseline.
I don't believe that's all there is because I experienced a consistent difference between different teas and it also tended to only happen after second or third steeping of the leaves, when most...
I do think a lot of the people who experience a calming effect from things like tea underestimate how much of the effect comes from the experience and ritual of making the tea and sipping a tasty warm beverage, as opposed to being the effects of a specific chemical.
I don't believe that's all there is because I experienced a consistent difference between different teas and it also tended to only happen after second or third steeping of the leaves, when most caffeine is flushed out. It only happened with relatively expensive high quality green teas, but not with all of them, it was not a function of price.
After all there are other active chemicals in tea than just theanine, and this could also be the effect of some interactions between them. It's been some time since I read anything about this, but iirc for example gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is present in teas in various quantities, may or may not have a small calming effect on its own, but it likely somewhat reduces the effect of caffeine itself and reduces "caffeine crash".
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily saying that there's no benefit from some chemicals in the tea itself. I just think that many people underrate how much other parts of the tea drinking...
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily saying that there's no benefit from some chemicals in the tea itself. I just think that many people underrate how much other parts of the tea drinking experience can be contributing to any sort of calming or stress-reducing effect, in addition to but independently of any chemicals in the tea.
I challenge whether one can truly self administer a blinded study, but assuming you can the results are not surprising. Iirc, glutamate is the excitatory neurotransmitter, not regulatory. That...
I challenge whether one can truly self administer a blinded study, but assuming you can the results are not surprising.
Iirc, glutamate is the excitatory neurotransmitter, not regulatory. That means that probably the only condition that theanine (or straight glutamate, which i believe you can get in a supplement) is one in which the brain does not have enough glutamate and knows it. I emphasize the and knows it part, because if the brain thinks it has enough, adding more will just cause it to downregulate its own production, leading to the same basic concentration and no measurable effect.
This is fake science. No point reading past the description of how stress was "measured". This is not scientific; you cannot do statistics on made up numbers. Plotting made up numbers gives a...
This is fake science. No point reading past the description of how stress was "measured". This is not scientific; you cannot do statistics on made up numbers. Plotting made up numbers gives a misleading picture that the author is doing an experiment, when they are not.
The authors heart is in the right spot, but they should actually do real measurements - record heart rate, body temperature, hormone levels etc. Any sort of objective measurement would be better than guessing numbers.
I don't know, I could go either way on this. It's obviously good when you have objective numbers to do analysis on. That makes your data more reliable and reproducible, because you can specify how...
I don't know, I could go either way on this.
It's obviously good when you have objective numbers to do analysis on. That makes your data more reliable and reproducible, because you can specify how you measured things and other people can both try the same measurements and point out flaws in your methods, which is kind of science's whole thing.
But also, sometimes the dependent variable you want to measure really is subjective. If the hypothesis you are trying to test is "doing this makes me subjectively feel a certain way", looking for objective proxy variables that are probably correlated with the subjective feeling via a complex series of biochemistry causations is just adding more uncertainty for the feeling of objectivity, when you could just measure the subjective feeling that you actually wanted to measure in the first place.
Self report is one of the only ways to establish how someone feels about something. Especially with mental health, because a lot of that isn't easily mapped to more measurable items. Anxiety is a...
Self report is one of the only ways to establish how someone feels about something. Especially with mental health, because a lot of that isn't easily mapped to more measurable items. Anxiety is a bit more so, but not totally.
For what it is this was interesting. Should it be published in a peer reviewed journal? No, but that wasn't the goal afaict.
This is more akin to the doctor that cracked the knuckles only on one of his hands for 50 years to determine if arthritis correlated to knuckle cracking. (It didn't!)
Moreover, the fact that this wasn't the sort of study that could get into a peer-reviewed journal has nothing to do with the fact that the dependent variable is a subjective assessment of one's...
Moreover, the fact that this wasn't the sort of study that could get into a peer-reviewed journal has nothing to do with the fact that the dependent variable is a subjective assessment of one's feelings. There are plenty of high-quality scientific studies in peer reviewed journals that measure such things. There are other reasons this obviously can't be as rigorous as an actual study, but "it's fake science to measure a participants' subjective feelings" is not one of them.
Yeah, prime reasons for this being unpublishable is self-study (which opens the door for various biases that are easier avoided than cleaned up), questions about blinding, and what's technically...
Yeah, prime reasons for this being unpublishable is self-study (which opens the door for various biases that are easier avoided than cleaned up), questions about blinding, and what's technically called "a sample size of bullshit".
Even for the simple task of randomizing/blinding I think I could've come up with something slightly better with the help of one reliable assistant for some one-time menial set up work: Repackage the pills, and give them a random ID in the process. Assistant records the ID-group mapping (i.e. #1 is control, #2 is intervention, ..) and holds on to the mapping for later analysis. Principal Investigator and today's D-class subject of the day in personal union then proceeds to grab a random packaged pill, records the ID and proceeds with any other recorded variables.
Similar for the issue of deliberately sampling low-mood points, which the author later addressed by sticking to a schedule.
That said, the analysis of the result is fairly decent. Not that I'm in the relevant field, but if I were reviewing this work in the right venue, I'd actually not be completely put off. That said, if you're committing to a 16 month study, and you want to publish it, better make sure your methodology is cromulent before you start, ideally with the help of the kind of people who'd end up reviewing your work.
I don't think this necessarily needs to be held to the same standards as a published study anyway, but honestly even on that front it's not nearly as bad as I worried when I saw the title. The...
I don't think this necessarily needs to be held to the same standards as a published study anyway, but honestly even on that front it's not nearly as bad as I worried when I saw the title. The author clearly put a lot of thought into how to test this for themselves and looked at existing research ahead of time. If this were being published in an actual academic venue there would definitely need to be changes to the study design, ideally made prior to the study, but I don't think the author has any illusions about that and they did a good job recognizing (and in some cases correcting) issues in the design. I think for something that directly affects only their personal choice to use a certain supplement, with the results and methodology published in a blog post, it exceeds expectations.
It can always be worse. I've joked that with a psych and counseling degree I should not have kids, because I'd a) want twins and b) immediately do twin studies on them. So at least the author...
It can always be worse. I've joked that with a psych and counseling degree I should not have kids, because I'd a) want twins and b) immediately do twin studies on them.
So at least the author didn't have kids solely for the purpose of psychological experimentation
When I was in linguistics, there was some joking that you could tell when a given academic had kids because they'd suddenly start writing about language acquisition. I definitely feel the draw to...
When I was in linguistics, there was some joking that you could tell when a given academic had kids because they'd suddenly start writing about language acquisition. I definitely feel the draw to experiment if/when I have kids. Maybe I'll become like the one guy who tried to teach his son Klingon.
I have been trying to wrap my head around this statement and failed. Is the author just saying that Xanax is very effective, so it's impossible for theanine to be more effective without having...
One study they review found that theanine worked better than alprazolam (xanax) for acute anxiety. The correct response would be, “That’s impossible, and the fact that normal scientific practices could lead to such a conclusion casts doubt on everything.” But the review sort of takes it at value and moves on.
I have been trying to wrap my head around this statement and failed. Is the author just saying that Xanax is very effective, so it's impossible for theanine to be more effective without having seen the effect clearly?
When I switched off soda a few years ago, I found strong black tea to give me a much mellower "up" feeling than coffee. But both black tea and coffee are high in oxalates, which are a no-no for me (kidney stones). So I ended up drinking seltzer water (the fizz still scratches the old soda itch) and taking capsules that are 100mg caffeine+200mg L-theanine. (I also cleared this practice with my urologist).
The main reason for using the caffeine+theanine was that I could buy it from a reputable supplement supplier in the pandemic. It makes me wonder about trying caffeine only, but I am hesitant to mess with an arrangement that is working.
One of the biggest benefits I've found is separating hydration from caffeination. I can drink as much seltzer water as I want when I feel thirsty, so I end up drinking 3-4 l of water a day. Being better hydrated has been a big improvement, and has almost eliminated a lot of stress-related IBS problems I used to struggle with.
I'm down to taking one caffeine/theanine pill in the morning. In rare circumstances where I'm really dragging at lunch or we have a pate event in the evening, I can choose to take another one. I also don't have to go "find coffee" with the desperation I see in others. It's easy to carry a few pills with me. I do end up transporting a lot of seltzer water when I'm away from my soda stream at home, but that is a matter-of-course thing, so I am pretty used to it.
Yes, for acute anxiety it’s ludicrous to think that you could be more effective than Xanax without theonine having an extremely powerful and clearly measurable effect. Taking a dose of Xanax is...
Yes, for acute anxiety it’s ludicrous to think that you could be more effective than Xanax without theonine having an extremely powerful and clearly measurable effect. Taking a dose of Xanax is unmistakeable, and can literally kill you by overdose. There is no need for double blinded experiments to determine whether it has an effect, whereas with theonine it’s disputable whether there is a measurable effect at all.
L-theanine (even as an isolated supplement) has helped me from time to time in the past with anxiety. Noticeable difference when using it when I was in bad call center jobs. Mixed with caffeine it...
L-theanine (even as an isolated supplement) has helped me from time to time in the past with anxiety. Noticeable difference when using it when I was in bad call center jobs. Mixed with caffeine it worked well as an alert-but-calm kind of experience, but most of my early use of it was on its own, specifically to take the edge off of nerves/stress. Not an extremely sizeable effect, but enough to notice and feel some relief.
I would say, as a drinker of a wide array of loose leaf teas, I've felt it from green and other teas (knowing that teas grown in some amount of shade, like a number of Japanese green teas have increased L-Theanine levels), but most tea is a calming experience for me anyway because of the process surrounding it, so often it's probably the ritual of making it, and it being a hot beverage, that is calming. Though tbf there are some teas that are almost never calming for me so I guess those are the exception to the rule.
However, strangely, and I've seen this anecdotally reported elsewhere but nothing ultra conclusive- I've stopped taking L-Theanine for a long while now, except when in tea or very rare circumstances in supplemental form by itself, because for some reason it is often, and repeatedly, a headache trigger for me. Especially caffeine + L-Theanine together. Caffeine on its own- I'm fine, caffeine + L-theanine has repeatedly given me headaches, no idea why.
Interesting and well-done. I think the probability of "it works, just not on me" is a bit higher than he suggests: there are some types of supplements for which the difference between responders and non-responders can be really stark and the group of responders may be quite small because they all have some tiny metabolic issue causing something like reduced bioavailabililty and in time defficiency. Amino acids tend to be in this group because a slight deficiency can be caused by stress in some cases or by a gut microbiome dysfunction, and unlike genetic issues related to amino acids this doesn't tend to cause big issues that one would be aware of. edit: Forgot to add, since the responder to non-responder ratio is rather small, it tends to produce inconclusive or even negative study results unless closely examined, which would fit here.
Still, it doesn't seem super likely. Anecdotally I also used to get calming effects from high quality green teas and did not feel anything similar from an entirely non-blinded test of theanine.
I do think a lot of the people who experience a calming effect from things like tea underestimate how much of the effect comes from the experience and ritual of making the tea and sipping a tasty warm beverage, as opposed to being the effects of a specific chemical. But then I have ADHD so I often get calmed down by even caffeiene, so I'm not exactly baseline.
I don't believe that's all there is because I experienced a consistent difference between different teas and it also tended to only happen after second or third steeping of the leaves, when most caffeine is flushed out. It only happened with relatively expensive high quality green teas, but not with all of them, it was not a function of price.
After all there are other active chemicals in tea than just theanine, and this could also be the effect of some interactions between them. It's been some time since I read anything about this, but iirc for example gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is present in teas in various quantities, may or may not have a small calming effect on its own, but it likely somewhat reduces the effect of caffeine itself and reduces "caffeine crash".
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily saying that there's no benefit from some chemicals in the tea itself. I just think that many people underrate how much other parts of the tea drinking experience can be contributing to any sort of calming or stress-reducing effect, in addition to but independently of any chemicals in the tea.
I challenge whether one can truly self administer a blinded study, but assuming you can the results are not surprising.
Iirc, glutamate is the excitatory neurotransmitter, not regulatory. That means that probably the only condition that theanine (or straight glutamate, which i believe you can get in a supplement) is one in which the brain does not have enough glutamate and knows it. I emphasize the and knows it part, because if the brain thinks it has enough, adding more will just cause it to downregulate its own production, leading to the same basic concentration and no measurable effect.
This is fake science. No point reading past the description of how stress was "measured". This is not scientific; you cannot do statistics on made up numbers. Plotting made up numbers gives a misleading picture that the author is doing an experiment, when they are not.
The authors heart is in the right spot, but they should actually do real measurements - record heart rate, body temperature, hormone levels etc. Any sort of objective measurement would be better than guessing numbers.
I don't know, I could go either way on this.
It's obviously good when you have objective numbers to do analysis on. That makes your data more reliable and reproducible, because you can specify how you measured things and other people can both try the same measurements and point out flaws in your methods, which is kind of science's whole thing.
But also, sometimes the dependent variable you want to measure really is subjective. If the hypothesis you are trying to test is "doing this makes me subjectively feel a certain way", looking for objective proxy variables that are probably correlated with the subjective feeling via a complex series of biochemistry causations is just adding more uncertainty for the feeling of objectivity, when you could just measure the subjective feeling that you actually wanted to measure in the first place.
Self report is one of the only ways to establish how someone feels about something. Especially with mental health, because a lot of that isn't easily mapped to more measurable items. Anxiety is a bit more so, but not totally.
For what it is this was interesting. Should it be published in a peer reviewed journal? No, but that wasn't the goal afaict.
This is more akin to the doctor that cracked the knuckles only on one of his hands for 50 years to determine if arthritis correlated to knuckle cracking. (It didn't!)
Moreover, the fact that this wasn't the sort of study that could get into a peer-reviewed journal has nothing to do with the fact that the dependent variable is a subjective assessment of one's feelings. There are plenty of high-quality scientific studies in peer reviewed journals that measure such things. There are other reasons this obviously can't be as rigorous as an actual study, but "it's fake science to measure a participants' subjective feelings" is not one of them.
Yeah, prime reasons for this being unpublishable is self-study (which opens the door for various biases that are easier avoided than cleaned up), questions about blinding, and what's technically called "a sample size of bullshit".
Even for the simple task of randomizing/blinding I think I could've come up with something slightly better with the help of one reliable assistant for some one-time menial set up work: Repackage the pills, and give them a random ID in the process. Assistant records the ID-group mapping (i.e. #1 is control, #2 is intervention, ..) and holds on to the mapping for later analysis. Principal Investigator and today's D-class subject of the day in personal union then proceeds to grab a random packaged pill, records the ID and proceeds with any other recorded variables.
Similar for the issue of deliberately sampling low-mood points, which the author later addressed by sticking to a schedule.
That said, the analysis of the result is fairly decent. Not that I'm in the relevant field, but if I were reviewing this work in the right venue, I'd actually not be completely put off. That said, if you're committing to a 16 month study, and you want to publish it, better make sure your methodology is cromulent before you start, ideally with the help of the kind of people who'd end up reviewing your work.
I don't think this necessarily needs to be held to the same standards as a published study anyway, but honestly even on that front it's not nearly as bad as I worried when I saw the title. The author clearly put a lot of thought into how to test this for themselves and looked at existing research ahead of time. If this were being published in an actual academic venue there would definitely need to be changes to the study design, ideally made prior to the study, but I don't think the author has any illusions about that and they did a good job recognizing (and in some cases correcting) issues in the design. I think for something that directly affects only their personal choice to use a certain supplement, with the results and methodology published in a blog post, it exceeds expectations.
It can always be worse. I've joked that with a psych and counseling degree I should not have kids, because I'd a) want twins and b) immediately do twin studies on them.
So at least the author didn't have kids solely for the purpose of psychological experimentation
When I was in linguistics, there was some joking that you could tell when a given academic had kids because they'd suddenly start writing about language acquisition. I definitely feel the draw to experiment if/when I have kids. Maybe I'll become like the one guy who tried to teach his son Klingon.
I have been trying to wrap my head around this statement and failed. Is the author just saying that Xanax is very effective, so it's impossible for theanine to be more effective without having seen the effect clearly?
When I switched off soda a few years ago, I found strong black tea to give me a much mellower "up" feeling than coffee. But both black tea and coffee are high in oxalates, which are a no-no for me (kidney stones). So I ended up drinking seltzer water (the fizz still scratches the old soda itch) and taking capsules that are 100mg caffeine+200mg L-theanine. (I also cleared this practice with my urologist).
The main reason for using the caffeine+theanine was that I could buy it from a reputable supplement supplier in the pandemic. It makes me wonder about trying caffeine only, but I am hesitant to mess with an arrangement that is working.
One of the biggest benefits I've found is separating hydration from caffeination. I can drink as much seltzer water as I want when I feel thirsty, so I end up drinking 3-4 l of water a day. Being better hydrated has been a big improvement, and has almost eliminated a lot of stress-related IBS problems I used to struggle with.
I'm down to taking one caffeine/theanine pill in the morning. In rare circumstances where I'm really dragging at lunch or we have a pate event in the evening, I can choose to take another one. I also don't have to go "find coffee" with the desperation I see in others. It's easy to carry a few pills with me. I do end up transporting a lot of seltzer water when I'm away from my soda stream at home, but that is a matter-of-course thing, so I am pretty used to it.
Yes, for acute anxiety it’s ludicrous to think that you could be more effective than Xanax without theonine having an extremely powerful and clearly measurable effect. Taking a dose of Xanax is unmistakeable, and can literally kill you by overdose. There is no need for double blinded experiments to determine whether it has an effect, whereas with theonine it’s disputable whether there is a measurable effect at all.
L-theanine (even as an isolated supplement) has helped me from time to time in the past with anxiety. Noticeable difference when using it when I was in bad call center jobs. Mixed with caffeine it worked well as an alert-but-calm kind of experience, but most of my early use of it was on its own, specifically to take the edge off of nerves/stress. Not an extremely sizeable effect, but enough to notice and feel some relief.
I would say, as a drinker of a wide array of loose leaf teas, I've felt it from green and other teas (knowing that teas grown in some amount of shade, like a number of Japanese green teas have increased L-Theanine levels), but most tea is a calming experience for me anyway because of the process surrounding it, so often it's probably the ritual of making it, and it being a hot beverage, that is calming. Though tbf there are some teas that are almost never calming for me so I guess those are the exception to the rule.
However, strangely, and I've seen this anecdotally reported elsewhere but nothing ultra conclusive- I've stopped taking L-Theanine for a long while now, except when in tea or very rare circumstances in supplemental form by itself, because for some reason it is often, and repeatedly, a headache trigger for me. Especially caffeine + L-Theanine together. Caffeine on its own- I'm fine, caffeine + L-theanine has repeatedly given me headaches, no idea why.