When Self-Experimentation Is Inappropriate

Urgent first

If you have chest pain, fainting, trouble breathing, confusion or any sudden severe symptom, stop what you are doing and get emergency care. In the US call 911. If you may have swallowed or been exposed to something harmful, US Poison Help is 1-800-222-1222 (see poison help by country). If you are in emotional distress in the US, call 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Quick answer

Changing a gentle habit and watching what happens can be reasonable for many healthy adults. Self-experimentation becomes inappropriate when the risk is serious, hard to reverse, hidden, or when it could delay care. This page lists those situations and the reasons. It is information only, and it cannot tell you whether something is safe for you. This library does not provide protocols for any of the practices below.

Do not self-experiment with these

Prescription medicines. Do not change, stop, add or test a prescribed medicine on your own. Talk with the prescriber first. A tracker reading is not a reason to change a medicine.

Injected, implanted or unapproved products. Examples include self-injection, do-it-yourself gene therapy kits and implanted chips. The FDA says gene therapy products intended for self-administration and do-it-yourself kits are being made available to the public, that the sale of these products is against the law, and that it is concerned about the safety risks. [1] Hand surgeons describe chip implants outside a medical setting that can cause complications such as infection and tendon attrition, with safety implications not extensively studied. [2] See DIY implants and body modification.

Supplements alongside medicines or conditions. Dietary supplements may interact with medications or pose risks if you have certain medical problems or are going to have surgery. [3] Supplement profiles are in the supplements section; ask a pharmacist or prescriber before combining anything.

Extreme practices. Prolonged fasting, dehydration, breath-holding, oxygen manipulation or intense heat and cold are outside what this library treats as suitable for home experiments. It describes risks only and gives no instructions. See cold and heat exposure and experimental approaches and self-experimentation.

Check with a clinician first if you

• Are pregnant, planning pregnancy, breastfeeding, or deciding for a child. Many dietary supplements have not been tested in pregnant women, nursing mothers or children. [3]
• Have a heart condition. A scoping review of 110 publications on wearables in cardiovascular patients described health anxiety, alert-related worry and reassurance seeking, and excessive self-monitoring and device dependence. [4]
• Take insulin or other diabetes medicines, blood thinners or psychiatric medicines.
• Have an eating disorder, are in recovery, or have a history of one. In a study of 386 Australian women, diet app users and those using both diet and fitness apps had greater disordered eating than fitness-app users and non-users, and the authors concluded app use is linked to disordered eating symptoms. [5] See eating disorders and obsessive tracking and eating disorders and disordered eating.

When a new or worsening symptom is present

A self-experiment should not stand in for a diagnosis. The FDA describes an indirect risk when a product may keep someone away from proven, sometimes essential, medical treatment. [6] The same applies to any experiment that delays seeing a clinician about a symptom. Consumer sleep technologies cannot be used for diagnosis or treatment of sleep disorders at this time, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. [7] See delayed medical assessment from wearable reassurance.

When tracking itself becomes the problem

Clinicians have described a growing number of patients seeking treatment for self-diagnosed sleep disturbances based on tracker data, and a perfectionistic quest for ideal sleep. [8] Stop and speak with a clinician if an experiment makes you more anxious, makes you avoid food or normal activity, or disrupts sleep. See tracking anxiety and compulsive measurement.

Evidence labels used here

Established means supported by consistent, good-quality research. Evidence of harm means studies or regulators report harm. Mixed means findings differ. The risks of unapproved injectables and implants rest on regulator statements and expert review, not on trials, so we label them as regulator warnings. The link between tracking and psychological effects is mixed: many people track without trouble, and the studies above describe specific groups.

Safer alternatives

Low-tech, reversible habits are the place to start; see low-tech habits vs high-tech products. A fuller list of who should check first is in when not to experiment.