Ask HN: How do you design experiments on yourself? (health, energy, learning)

13 points by vicek22 4 years ago | 6 comments

How do you design, track, and measure experiments you decide to do on yourself?

Examples of experiments: - Reduce my workouts from three 1h workouts to two 1.5h workouts. - Start taking magnesium supplements for better sleep. - Try intermittent fasting. - Start writing tests first (TDD).

I wonder whether there is a good resource or your anecdote about how to try the "scientific method" on yourself. It seems that some people are better at applying it than others. I think Tim Ferris has been the main person I would think about in this context.

knandraina 4 years ago |

Interesting topic. I started to track a lot of metrics from:

- number of calories ingested and the micro/macronutrients

- number of sleep hour

- monitor heart rate

- monitor heart rate variability

- number of hours doing sports

- blood test results

- waist size

- number of steps per day

- ...

It helps me to understand my body's reaction better. For example, I did around 9 hours of sport per week (strength, running, hiking) for the last couple of weeks. I didn't change my calories ingested. I feel hungrier, and I need to do more naps, even if I sleep 8 hours per night. Also, my heart rate variability is lower than usual. It might mean that I overtrain and I risk injury. My body does not adapt yet to this training intensity.

But sometimes, it's harder to understand what has driven the results. I started to take Omega 3. But at the same time, I also started to run more. We know that running more impacts your heart rate; it decreases bpm. But it's also the case with Omega 3. So in my case, it is complicated to know if sports have a more significant impact on my heart rate or if it is Omega 3. Both also take time to have effect.

netizen-936824 4 years ago |

First you need to start tracking all variable possible to get your baseline.

Keep in mind that this is not necessarily experimentally valid due to the small sample size of n = 1

This means tracking all nutrition including micro nutrients (such as magnesium), tracking sleep, tracking exercise with breaks load and warmup, tracking sleep and heart rate along with spo2

Literally track everything you can think of. After you have baseline data, start by making one small change at a time (while tracking it of course) and see what happens

eimrine 4 years ago |

> Reduce my workouts from three 1h workouts to two 1.5h workouts.

You need to set a goal for this and see if you goal has been reached. For example, do you really spend so much time going to gym and from gym that you are going to perform less (because of fatigue)? Or maybe vice versa - you do not like warming so much that you really need 1.5h instead of 1h but do not have an ability to spend 3*1.5h in gym.

> Start taking magnesium supplements for better sleep.

Define days or circumstances when you are doing this and see if you need your magnesium.

> I wonder whether there is a good resource or your anecdote about how to try the "scientific method" on yourself.

Maybe you need to read a definition of "experiment" for doing your lifestyle experiments more like real experiments from science.

fuzzfactor 4 years ago | |

You've got to think like a guinea pig first & foremost.

You're already expected to be a research program designer.

dieselgate 4 years ago |

Kind of an interesting post and makes me think of an Outdoor Magazine article I read years ago on different diets. The author tried a handful of different diet trends for maybe 4-6 weeks and tracked qualitative metrics (energy level, appetite etc) along with some quantitative (weight). This seemed to be sufficient for having article content but isn’t too scientific (low sample size etc). As other folks suggested just make sure you track data. This seems like a good personal application of OKRs (objective key result) in my opinion. But ultimately it’s just living life because we all do this albeit not always with the scientific method

bckr 4 years ago |

search terms:

"quantified self"

"n=1"

as a curiosity, "scientific illuminism"