The Problem

Medical professionals rarely have the time to look at all of your issues and then research interactions and the latest treatment options. Medical professionals usually run off a cookbook of medical recipes. This reality includes alternative practitioners.

Self-Treatment

In dealing with health issues, where you are forced to self-treat, you need to be systematic and scientific (science means knowledge).

My experience/practise is to not be impatient (an attitude that often leads to failure with a large dose of frustration!). You need to take notes and have patience as a patient.

Often you may need to “Control-Alt-Delete” or reboot your treatment. This means simply, stopping all supplements, probiotics, etc and returning to a “normal” diet to the degree possible.

The next step is to gather up your symptoms and then rank-order them. Which one would you want to improve first….  pick ONE thing.

If you have any notes (ideal) or memory (which often can be faulty) of something that really helped that one item…. then after a 4-7 day washout period, resume with it. After 4 days, if you can see a definite improvement then write down the improvement (note taking is essential!!!), if not sure, keep going on to day 7.

• You need to be aware the positive effects will often fade at 6-8 weeks.
• Take at least a two week break then. Try to find an objective way of measuring if there is a relapse.

Before going on, we need to look at measurements.

Objective Measurements

This is often the failure point. Why? Often your improvement may be caused by a placebo effect. It’s a real improvement — but not because of what you are taking but because your belief lowered your stress levels. Stress alters the microbiome (example). Reducing stress will also alter your microbiome.

Today, I use a variety of tools, often $20-$30 smart watches from China (Example A, Example B) . These watches can do the following things automatically (depending on model):

• Take your body surface temperature every 20 minutes/hour
• Take your Oxygen Saturation level every 20 minutes/hour
• Take your blood pressure every hour
• Take your pulse every 20 minutes/hour
• Count the number of steps done in a day
• Amount of deep and light sleep every day

The measurements are not medical grade, but they can show a trend. For example, I saw a 10 ml drop in average blood pressure over 3 weeks from taking the supplements in this post. I did not feel any different in obvious ways — if anything, I was a little less energetic/”amp” and slept more. I keep an ongoing monitoring. If I stop them, my blood pressure slowly starts to climb over the weeks.

Monitoring Mental Activities

This is a little more subjective. There are many games that you can play but you need to track your time and the score. In theory, after a week, your time and score should stabilize. If taking somethings like piracetam, grape seed extract or ginko improves you score or reduce your time then you have evidence of effect.

There are also free online tests, like this one for short term memory and more here. Again, you need to record and track.

Bowel Movements

There are a variety of applications for that, see this list.

Back to Self Treatment

I have a cardinal rule — never trust shared information on the internet — especially that from support groups. It may have worked for one person, but with the microbiome model, everyone is different.

I will and have often taken a report and then go over to PubMed to see if there has been any studies on it for a specific condition. BE WARY of people reasoning out that something may help – the human body (and the microbiome) is extremely complex with lots of interactions. People will often oversimplify the issues involved because the full set of interactions is just too complex.

Always work from studies on humans with your specific condition showing positive results. Ideally, you will assemble a list of studies and can rank order the results from biggest impact to lowest statistically significant results.

Unfortunately, the above is time consuming and often people do not have sufficient education of the right type to do it.

A poor blind man’s walk

The following is what I would suggest for items that may produce improvement in 1-2 weeks after starting. Other items (like significant daily doses of Vitamin D) may take months to produce results.

• Herbs/Spices – Remember ONE at a time for at least 4-7 days before adding more
  1. Triphala — an Indian Herb Mixture with a long history of use
  2. Wormwood / Artemisia 
  3. Tulsi – another Indian Herb
  4. Olive Leaf
  5. Neem – another Indian Herb
• Probiotics
  1. SymbioFlor-2 – because it takes up residency, stop taking once a single bottle is used.
  2. SymbioFlor-1 – because it takes up residency, stop taking once a single bottle is used. Make sure you follow the directions!
  3. Miyarisan (Clostridium butyricum)
• Supplements
  • Magnesium
  • B-Vitamins (which ones vary by condition)
  • Grape seed extract / Ginko
• Lactobacillus Plantarum (200-400 BCFU/day)

Walk in some light instead

I would much prefer to work from symptoms and microbiome for suggestions. I have built an artificial intelligence engine to handle over a million separate facts to come up with better suggestions. I do not try to come up with my own suggestions — because the results using AI have worked well for me and some others. There is no way that I can remember all of the data nor reason thru the interactions…. the AI can and does.

With each microbiome sample and updated symptoms, the AI alters its suggestions.