Hi everyone I'm Monica Reinagle, the nutrition diva, here with your quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

And this week's podcast topic is N of one experiments, what they are and why you might want to do one.

When researchers write about their studies, the number of subjects in the study is often described as

n equals 24 or n equals 500 or however many people the study involved. The bigger the N, the more

confidence you can have in the results. Researchers will often do a pilot study using a very small n because it's a lot cheaper

and then if the results of that small study are promising they can invest in a

larger trial to test and strengthen their findings.

So an N of 1 experiment is the smallest study you could possibly do, one that involves just

a single subject. Now lately this term has become a bit of a buzzword

with so-called biohackers. These are folks who like to experiment with different

diet or lifestyle regiments to see what works best for them.

How valid are these N-of-one experiments?

Well, they're not very helpful in predicting how someone else might respond to the same

regimen.

In order to do that, you'd need to test your intervention

on lots of people.

Some of those folks would have positive results,

some will have negative results,

and some will have no result whatsoever.

And the percentage of people who have a certain result

suggests how likely it is that another person would have that same outcome.

Why is it all so fuzzy? Why can't we just say

...