N-of-1 experiments

An N-of-1 experiment is a personal test: change one thing, keep the rest roughly stable, and see how it affects a metric you care about. North's experiments engine helps you design, run, and interpret these tests using your own Rune 1 data.

This is not clinical research. It is a structured way to answer questions like "Does late dinner hurt my deep sleep?" or "Does a cold shower in the morning raise my HRV?" for you, in your normal routine.

How it works

1. Pick an intervention. This is the thing you will change. Examples: magnesium at 8 PM, no screens after 9 PM, a 20-minute walk after lunch, caffeine cutoff at noon.
2. Pick an outcome. This is the metric you will watch. Examples: next-night deep sleep, morning readiness, Body Battery peak, HRV the following day.
3. Set a duration. Most experiments need at least 7-14 days to show a meaningful signal, though North can comment on early direction.
4. Log consistently. North uses the days you follow the intervention and the days you do not. The cleaner the split, the clearer the result.
5. Review the result. North reports what it sees in your data, how confident the signal looks, and what other factors might be involved.

Correlation engine

North's correlation engine scans your lifestyle factors and health outcomes for relationships that appear in your own history. It might notice that your readiness score tends to be higher on days after a 9 PM wind-down, or that your skin temperature runs warmer after late meals.

The engine reports associations, not causes. North will say things like:

• "On days you logged a wind-down routine, your sleep quality score averaged 8 points higher."
• "There is a moderate association between late caffeine and lower deep sleep in your data."

It will not claim the intervention caused the outcome. Many things affect sleep and recovery, and your personal context matters.

Good experiment design

• Change one thing at a time. If you start a new workout plan, a new diet, and a new supplement together, you will not know what moved the needle.
• Keep a baseline period. Run 7-10 days normally before starting the change. North needs a comparison.
• Log exceptions. If you miss a day, mark it. Missing data is fine; pretending every day followed the plan is not.
• Pick outcomes that settle quickly. Sleep and recovery metrics usually show signals within days. Fitness changes take weeks.

Example experiments

What North will not do

North will not diagnose a medical condition, prescribe a treatment, or claim that a habit caused an outcome. It surfaces patterns and helps you decide whether a change is worth keeping. For medical concerns, talk to a qualified professional.