What is Self-Experimentation?
Self-Experimentation is the unique act of single-subject
scientific experimentation where the experimenter hypothesizes and
performs the experiment on him or herself. In this article I want
to show the value of self-experimentation as a tool to improve your
life, without sacrificing your safety. One of my long-term goals is
to level the playing field of well-funded modern research and speed
up the time it takes the average person to get cutting-edge
information that will meaningfully impact their lives.
Story Time
Take John Paul Stapp. He was known by many as the fastest man on
earth. When John started his research back in 1947, most physicians
believed that the body could withstand 18g of thrust before
suffering fatal trauma. John Stapp shattered this belief and proved
the body could withstand 40g of thrust--in one daring
test.
How did he do it? Like any reasonable man would. Jumped in a
rocket sled, revved it up to 421 mph, and preceded to slam on the
brakes! (Johnny Knoxville would have been proud!) Remarkably, he
survived and through his continued testing and research he suffered
two broken wrists, retinal hemorrhaging, and broken ribs. Was he
sent to the loony bin? No. He changed his field and helped science
understand how the body reacts to extreme forces--research that has
undoubtedly saved human lives.
Human history is full of these jaw-dropping stories with
everything from a doctor catheterizing his own right arm to men
creating their own vaccines against snakebites by injecting
themselves with pure venom from several species of mambas and
cobras. While those examples are of the extreme variety, and I
highly disapprove you trying those sorts of things, you don't in
fact need to put your life on the line to self-experiment and
improve your life. There are many examples, including my own, where
you don't necessarily accept the 'status quo' and decide to modify
things in a responsible, yet fun way.
My Experience
I was in middle school the first time I came home to my Mom
complaining of horrible stomach aches. She thought I had a 'bug'
and asked how long I had been having them. I replied, "for a
while." Not one to settle for a vague answer from her children, Mom
repeated, "How long is a while?" With a shrug I replied, "a couple
months?" The answer caught her off-guard as she tried to hide her
shocked face by going to the fridge to flatten some ginger ale, the
only thing that seemed to settle my stomach those days. (I hated
soda, so flat was the only way it was going down).
My mom, fortunately for my future career, was ahead of her time
as far as nutritional awareness goes. Instead of giving me the
nasty pink stomach syrup or chalky antacids or the usual modern
medicine band-aid approach, she brainstormed much like any natural
doctor would, "Why do you think that's happening?" "Are any of your
friends getting sick?" "Did you eat something different?" The
answers weren't so clear at first and thus a few weeks went by.
Given it was around 10 years ago, I couldn't recall how Mom
arrived at the conclusion that I might be lactose intolerant. I
think it was because I used to tell her I loved getting
cheeseburgers for my school lunches! See, somehow she must have
noticed a correlation between when she packed my lunch (no dairy /
no stomach complaints) and when she gave me a special treat (let me
buy school lunch / stomach aches). Sherlock Holmes would have been
proud!
Given the nutritional status of school lunches (horrendous) we
could not completely show I was lactose intolerant from that
finding in my 'history.' Plus, when I went to my pediatrician he
said it was normal to have stomach aches (whaaat?) and I was
probably just working through a bug. (For months??)
Alas, there was only one thing left to do! Self-experiment! I
cut out dairy (with help from mom of course) and any source of
lactose from my diet and noticed an IMMEDIATE reduction in stomach
aches from an average of once daily to once every other week. Not a
perfect cure, but then again (when mom wasn't looking) my diet
wasn't exactly perfect either! That, my friends, was my first
real-life experience in how foods can affect human performance, and
more importantly, taught me the valuable lesson of "you are what
you eat."
I quietly fostered a level of curiosity about the human body for
years while tracking and completing self-experiments on noticeable
changes in my weight, muscle, acne, sleep cycles, gallstones,
digestive issues, energy levels, and immunity to name a few. I
mainly did it by challenging commonly held belief systems and
modified and attempted to optimize everything in my diet,
lifestyle, sleeping habits, supplements, detoxing, etc.
While I've had plenty of setbacks--thinking whole grains were
good for me (they're not), and believing multi-week juice fasting
was the cure for anything (I turned orange for 2 days!)--I've also
had plenty of successes (gained 20 lbs of muscle in 30 days,
cleared most of my acne naturally, eliminated my gallstones without
surgery, no longer have stomach aches, went a year without getting
a cold).
Enjoying part of the
weekend with NUHS friends.
Parting Words
My journey is still developing and while the story has a much
longer (and sometimes comical) tale I will leave you with this: If
there is something in your life that you'd like to
change/improve/eliminate, I encourage you to do some research. The
internet has allowed for the transaction of information in ways
never known to the human race and has leveled the playing field for
the average Joes unable to afford 'personal coaches,' 'expensive
treatments' and the like. If you have a problem, there's always a
solution, and usually someone has already figured it out. Find
like-minded people and figure out how they got their results. You
might just learn a neat trick that will help you change your body
(and your life) for the better!
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make
the better." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cheers,
Christian