Tag: Quantified Self

Request for Requests: What do you want to see me test?

I was hoping to post the results from my bread testing today, but due to a bunch of shipping delays, the last 3 breads didn’t come in time (last one arrives Tuesday). I want to report out a thorough data set, so I’m delaying the report one more week.

In the meantime, I’ve been getting some really great recommendations for low-carb foods and ingredients to try from my previous posts (tortillas, cereal, ice-cream) and on Reddit. I’ve been testing a few and some seem really promising. The top recommendations, Mr. Tortilla tortillas and Nick’s Ice Cream* have been the lowest BG impact in their categories.

Based on this, I’m going to do a “Commenter requests” study where I measure the BG impact of foods & ingredients requested in the comments or by PM.

Here’s what I have so far:

  • Tortillas
    • Mr. Tortilla 1 net carb tortillas
    • A La Madre Low Carb Corn Tortillas
    • Regular (not low carb) flour tortilla for comparison
  • Ice Cream
    • So Delicious No Sugar Added Coconut Milk Ice Cream
    • Nick’s Swedish Style Lite Ice Cream
    • Regular (not low carb) ice cream for comparison
  • Breads
    • Chompies Bread
    • Carb0naut
    • Unbun UnBread
    • Julian Bakery bread
  • Chocolate
    • Lily’s
    • Choc Zero

If you have any low-carb foods, ingredients, or anything else you’d like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

I’ll test all the requests over the next couple weeks and post the results.


– QD

* Be careful on the Nick’s ice cream. The nutrition info on the website doesn’t match what I and others found in the store. I’m not sure if they have multiple version under the same name, but I’d carefully check the nutrition info on the physical container. That said, the blood sugar impact I measured matched that reported on the physical container and was the lowest of any ice cream I’ve tested. It was also soft & scoopable straight out of the freezer.

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Weekly Health Statistics: 7/11 – 7/17/21

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For those checking the dates, I post these with a 1-week lag. 

Summary:

What I’m tracking

  • Sleep: 
    • Metrics: total time, heart rate variability, pulse (sleeping vs. waking)
    • Method: Apple watch + Autosleep app
    • Frequency: daily
  • Blood glucose:
    • Metrics: fasting BG, Avg. BG, coefficient of variation, time 70-140 mg/dL, time <60 mg/dL
    • Method: Dexcom G6 CGM
    • Frequency: continuous
  • Body:
    • Metrics: weight, waist circumference, BMI, waist/height
    • Method: scale + Renpho tape measure
    • Frequency: weekly
  • Other blood:
    • Metrics: hemoglobin, cholesterol, blood pressure, pulse
    • Method: Hemocue 801, Cardiocheck PA, Omron 10
    • Frequency: weekly for blood pressure & pulse, every 2 weeks for hemoglobin & cholesterol

Observations

  • Sleep:
    • This was the first week of my sleep experiment, so in addition to the metrics automatically tracked by my watch, I’m noting down any time I wake up in the middle of the night.
    • Despite the fact that all the auto-tracked metrics looked good, I was waking up much more frequently in the middle of the night and feeling more tired. This suggests the auto-tracked metrics are not a great measure of overall sleep quality.
    • I need to do a more detailed analysis to figure out what’s going on here…
  • Blood glucose:
    • All stats back to normal after last week’s travel. 
    • Time 70-140 mg/dL still could be a bit better. Will continue to cut back on insulin at meals.
  • Body:
    • Still seeing steady drop in weight and waistline. I’m very happy with my progress here. 
  • Blood:
    • Switching to every other week measurement for cholesterol and hemoglobin to reduce tracking burden. Will increase frequency if I’m doing any experiments that might cause them to change.
    • Blood pressure was much higher than normal this week. I ate an unusual dinner last night and had higher than normal BG, so might just be an outlier. Will keep an eye on this and see if it persists.

Active & Planned Experiments

  • Comprehensive bloodwork:
    • Goal: Establish baseline for a broad range of biomarkers and check overall health
    • Approach: WellnessFX Premium panel
    • Status: Got the results, need to analyze and write up.
  • Testing methods of sleeping longer:
    • Goals:
      • To determine if taking melatonin supplements in the evening extends the duration of my time asleep and subjective fatigue given a consistent bedtime.
      • To determine if taking melatonin supplement and/or sleeping longer affects subjective fatigue, blood glucose, heart rate variability, or pulse
    • Approach: here
    • Status: Week 1 complete

Data:

Blood

Body

Sleep

Methods:

Measurements: See summary section above

Data Processing & Visualization. Data was visualized using Tableau.

Data: here


– QD

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Weekly Health Statistics: 7/4 – 7/10/21

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For those checking the dates, I’m posting these with a 1-week lag. 

Summary:

What I’m tracking

  • Sleep: 
    • Method: Apple watch + Autosleep app
    • Metrics: total time, heart rate variability, pulse (sleeping vs. waking)
  • Blood glucose:
    • Method: Dexcom G6 CGM
    • Metrics: fasting BG, Avg. BG, coefficient of variation, time 70-140 mg/dL, time <60 mg/dL
  • Body:
  • Other blood:
  • Urine:
    • Method: Vessel
    • Metrics: biotin, ketones, pH, vitamin C, magnesium, hydration, & cortisol

Observations

  • Sleep:
    • Sleep improved again this week, despite traveling Monday-Wednesday and I continue to feel much better/less tired than before I started going to bed at a consistent time.
    • Still noticing that I’m waking up earlier than preferred, though it’s not always showing up in the data (probably b/c I stay in bed trying to go back to sleep). I’m starting an experiment this week to test ways to stay asleep longer, so I’ll need to make sure I measure wake-up time correctly.
  • Blood glucose:
    • Fasting BG spiked up this week, likely due to travel Monday-Wednesday. I ate much later those days (8p vs. normally 5p), which led to a higher fasting BG. 
    • Rest of BG stats were ok, but not great, again likely related to traveling and less controlled meals.
  • Body:
    • Still seeing steady drop in weight and waistline. I’m very happy with my progress here. 
  • Blood:
    • Hemoglobin in dead center of normal. Starting to look like those high points were anomalies.
    • Cholesterol (total, LDL, and HDL) looks like it’s holding steady. Numbers are decent, but could be better. I may target this for intervention after my sleep study.
    • Blood pressure seems to be trending down. Will keep an eye on.
  • Urine:
    • Nothing interesting in this data. My values for biotin, pH, & Vitamin C are outside of the “normal” range, but I haven’t been able to find any literature indicating that this is even correlated with medical issues I would be concerned about.
    • In 6 tests, I’ve only gotten a reading on cortisol three times. That measurements seems to be extremely unreliable.
    • All-in-all, I’m not getting much value out of the vessel tests. I’ve finished out the pack I bought and won’t be continuing these stop.

Active & Planned Experiments

  • Comprehensive bloodwork:
    • Goal: Establish baseline for a broad range of biomarkers and check overall health
    • Approach: WellnessFX Premium panel
    • Status: Got the results, need to analyze and write up.
  • Testing methods of sleeping longer:
    • Goal: Determine interventions that will enable me to stay asleep longer
    • Approach: Melatonin?, will ask in several forums to get suggestions
    • Status: posting in forums this week

Data:

Urine

Blood

Body

Sleep

Methods:

Measurements: 

Data Processing & Visualization. Data was visualized using Tableau.

Data: here


– QD

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Melatonin to Stay Asleep Longer: Protocol & Pre-registered Analyses

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Summary

I’m trying to sleep longer, but am waking up too early in the morning. I’m going to test if melatonin can help me sleep longer. Based on suggestions solicited from the ACX open thread, I’m going to try a 30 day, blinded, randomized trial of 0.3 & 3 mg melatonin, both regular and extended release. If I see anything promising from this initial test, I’ll repeat the trial with the best condition to confirm and get a better measure of effect size.

Details

Purpose

  • To determine if taking melatonin supplements in the evening extends the duration of my time asleep and subjective fatigue given a consistent bedtime.
  • To determine if taking melatonin supplement and/or sleeping longer affects subjective fatigue, blood glucose, heart rate variability, or pulse

Background

Over the past 5 weeks, I’ve been making an effort to get more sleep. I’ve been able to hit an average time asleep of ~7h and, qualitatively, I’ve been feeling a lot less tired and have been able to concentrate better in the afternoons.  

I’d like to see if sleeping even longer will result in further improvement. However, over the last week I’ve noticed that I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier (before my morning alarm). I stay in bed (eyes closed) until the alarm, but can’t go back to sleep.

Based on my data so far, there’s no clear correlation with time I fell asleep or total time asleep. Might be a correlation with heart rate variability, but I need more data to be sure.

I’d like to test some interventions to sleep longer. I already exercise in the evenings and for as long as I’m willing to do (~30 min. high intensity, 5-10 min. stretching), my last meal is 4h before going to bed, and my CGM does not show a consistent rise in blood sugar before waking up.

Given that, my next thought was to try melatonin. It’s typically used to control when you go to sleep, but it last long enough in the bloodstream that it might impact time asleep as well. Based on suggestions solicited from the ACX open thread, I’m going to try a 30 day, blinded, randomized trial of 0.3 & 3 mg melatonin, both regular and extended release. If I see anything promising from this initial test, I’ll repeat the trial with the best condition to confirm and get a better measure of effect size.

Methods

Materials

Blinding

  • Melatonin was placed in opaque, size 000 gel capsules (6 per type).
  • Dosages were randomly assigned to days using the excel random number generator and placed into a coded pill container by a second person (not me). 
  • Data will be unblinded after the completion of the experiment.

Procedure

  • At 9pm, I will take that days gel capsule with minimal water.
  • At 9:30pm, I will turn lights off and attempt to go to sleep.
  • I will record:
    • If I wake up during the night
    • Subjective tiredness (1-3 scale) upon arising and at 3p
    • If any other unusual events occur

Measurements

Analysis

  • Sleep time, wake time, total time asleep, number of times waking up before alarm, fasting blood glucose, time of morning blood glucose rise, pulse, and HRV will be plotted vs. dose and release type. 
  • p-values will be calculated for each comparison and corrected for multiple-comparison
  • Additional exploratory analysis may be done based on the data, but will be noted as such

Data Processing & Visualization

Data was exported from Autosleep, reformatted using a custom python script, and visualized using Tableau. Wake times were corrected manually using contemporaneous notes (see measurements, above).

Data

All data will be posted after it is unblinded.

Results & Discussion

Results will be posted and discussed after the data is unblinded and analyzed.

Conclusions & Next Experiments

Conclusions & next experiments will be posted after the data is unblinded and analyzed.


– QD

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Weekly Health Statistics: 6/27 – 7/3/21

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For those checking the dates, I’m posting these with a 1-week lag. 

Summary:

What I’m tracking

  • Sleep: 
    • Method: Apple watch + Autosleep app
    • Metrics: total time, heart rate variability, pulse (sleeping vs. waking)
  • Blood glucose:
    • Method: Dexcom G6 CGM
    • Metrics: fasting BG, Avg. BG, coefficient of variation, time 70-140 mg/dL, time <60 mg/dL
  • Body:
  • Other blood:
  • Urine:
    • Method: Vessel
    • Metrics: biotin, ketones, pH, vitamin C, magnesium, hydration, & cortisol

Observations

  • Sleep:
    • With my family back home, my sleep came right back up to normal. I’ll have to tell my wife she’s not allowed to go on trips anymore 🙂
    • I’m feeling much better/less tired during the day now that I’m going to bed at a consistent time. However, over the last week, I noticed I’m waking up earlier and earlier (total change ~30 min.) despite going to bed at the same time. I’d like to test out some interventions to see if I can stay asleep longer.
  • Blood glucose:
    • Fasting BG & average BG continue to improve and CV% is holding steady at ~13% (very good). 
    • TIR is low again, due to spending too much time below 70 mg/dL. I suspect this is due to increased insulin sensitivity from losing weight, so I’m going to try backing off on my insulin doses.
  • Body:
    • Still seeing steady drop in weight and waistline. I’m very happy with my progress here. 
  • Blood:
    • Hemoglobin continues to be on the high end of normal range. Still doesn’t matter.
    • Slight trend down in cholesterol (total, LDL, and HDL). Will keep an eye on.
    • Cardiocheck PA continues to give reliable readings (and matched Quest blood work). 
    • Blood pressure continues to run slightly high. Need to check against the Dr’s at my next appointment
  • Urine:
    • Nothing interesting in this data. My values for biotin, pH, & Vitamin C are outside of the “normal” range, but I haven’t been able to find any literature indicating that this is even correlated with medical issues I would be concerned about.
    • In 5 tests, I’ve only gotten a reading on cortisol twice. That measurements seems to be extremely unreliable.
    • All-in-all, I’m not getting much value out of the vessel tests. I will finish out the pack I bought and then stop.

Active & Planned Experiments

  • Comprehensive bloodwork:
    • Goal: Establish baseline for a broad range of biomarkers and check overall health
    • Approach: WellnessFX Premium panel
    • Status: Got the results, need to analyze and write up.
  • Testing methods of sleeping longer:
    • Goal: Determine interventions that will enable me to stay asleep longer
    • Approach: Melatonin?, will ask in several forums to get suggestions
    • Status: posting in forums this week

Data:

Urine

Blood

Body

Sleep

Methods:

Measurements: 

Data Processing & Visualization. Data was visualized using Tableau.

Data: here


– QD

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