## A Self Experimentation Protocol ### A Self Experimentation Protocol  #### Metadata * Author: [[source:]] * Full Title: A Self Experimentation Protocol * Category: #articles * URL: <https://nikhilthota.com/notes/self-experimentation/?cmdid=W1XCXFU72P93QS> #### Highlights * A problem innate to health & nutrition research is that the human body is finicky, and what benefits one person will not necessarily benefit another. This is why I champion personal experimentation through self-administered n-of-1 trials in which you determine for yourself whether a treatment jives with your particular biology. However, even with self-experimentation, it's difficult to extract meaningful insight without a rigorous and well-designed protocol. * Creating a placebo algae will be tough. One option would be to use a kind of algae with no proven health benefits as the control group and a mishmash of "healthy" micro-algae as the test group. The health benefits of algae take roughly ~1 week to kick in, so we can collect data from the ~1 week after this initial loading phase. Thus, I'll need to create a set of test & control algae baggies with 14 globs in each. At the beginning of a 2-week window, I will randomly pick a baggie and take the algae daily until I run out, while collecting data for the latter 7 days. During this data collection period, I'll measure a broad swath of health factors like sleep through Oura, general aerobic and athletic performance through my Apple Watch, level of focus during the day through Rize, and subjective levels of well-being and energy. # A Self Experimentation Protocol  ## Metadata - Author: [[source:]] - Full Title: A Self Experimentation Protocol - Category: #articles - URL: https://nikhilthota.com/notes/self-experimentation/?cmdid=W1XCXFU72P93QS ## Highlights - A problem innate to health & nutrition research is that the human body is finicky, and what benefits one person will not necessarily benefit another. This is why I champion personal experimentation through self-administered n-of-1 trials in which you determine for yourself whether a treatment jives with your particular biology. However, even with self-experimentation, it’s difficult to extract meaningful insight without a rigorous and well-designed protocol. - Tags: [[favorite]] - Creating a placebo algae will be tough. One option would be to use a kind of algae with no proven health benefits as the control group and a mishmash of “healthy” micro-algae as the test group. The health benefits of algae take roughly ~1 week to kick in, so we can collect data from the ~1 week after this initial loading phase. Thus, I’ll need to create a set of test & control algae baggies with 14 globs in each. At the beginning of a 2-week window, I will randomly pick a baggie and take the algae daily until I run out, while collecting data for the latter 7 days. During this data collection period, I’ll measure a broad swath of health factors like sleep through Oura, general aerobic and athletic performance through my Apple Watch, level of focus during the day through Rize, and subjective levels of well-being and energy.