Ask HN: Has anyone undergone stem cell treatment for auto-immune disease?

The point is, the OP is essentially saying, "I wish to discard the notion that statistical research is valid and may make medical decisions based on a study with N=1 or 2". I was worried people would show up and offer magical cures as they always do, and lo and behold, there are threads suggesting hypnosis and turmeric.

My main concern with this is that the OP may use a completely arbitrary "cure" and avoid speaking further to doctors about it, so any actual treatments that are developed might be overlooked.

I wasn't sure how effective it would be, but I have intense knee pain every so often at night that won't go away unless I take ibuprofen and wait half an hour. One night I had the knee pain and decided to test the 10 minute script on myself, so I put my headphones on and listened to the teacher recite the script, following along with the visualizations.

Then my knee pain was totally gone. It was a very eerie thing to have this unbearable knee pain disappear entirely without medicine.

Which made me wonder what would happen if I used a similar script and instead of targeting pain, targeted my psoriasis.

I took the original script and rewrote it to focus on my psoriasis, then went to fiver and found a voice-over artist to record the script (so it wouldn't be in my own voice). I stuck my headphones on and began to listen to this script once a day for two weeks.

After the two weeks, my psoriasis cleared up and I haven't struggled with it again since. About 4 years of embarrassing breakouts and flaking skin in public gone in a couple weeks. I had tried topical prescription medicine, pills, all sorts of lotions, scrubs, honey, witch hazel.. you name it, I tried it. Nothing worked until hypnosis for me.

[1] https://thearrowtechnique.com/

I was diagnosed with AS as a teenager and recall spending months at a time on crutches with swollen ankles and knees (having a fluid drained and replaced with cortisone injections), at times it affected my finger joints, and in my twenties and early thirties my lower back. Throughout most of these years, particularly early on, Naprosyn was my goto solution.

Up until about 2 years ago, I couldn't imagine getting a solid night sleep without some kind of lower back pain waking me, and putting my socks/shoes on of a morning generally involved sitting or laying on a bed and straining to pull my feet up to reach them.

I'm not big on swimming, but in the past couple of years have taken up regular Yoga and this has had huge benefits for my lower back (and state of mind).

Even more fundamental to this, I believe is my change of diet. Over the past couple of years I've (gradually) reduced my sugar, dairy and meat intake and adopted a more planted based diet. I didn't dive in at the deep end, but I'm now at the put where the only dairy I now indulge in is the occasional cheese, I eat virtually no red or processed meats, might eat chicken/fish once a week at most, and sooth my sweet tongue naturally with fruits, honey, etc.

My lower back hasn't bothered me for about 18 months, I can now put my socks on while standing and I rarely, if ever, suffer joint pain elsewhere. I feel more energetic, have taken up running (ran my first 5k recently) which is something I always thought would be something beyond my reach.

I don't like to preach or say any one particular thing (if anything) is going to change your particular situation. I can only say the improvement in my quality of life over the past couple of years has been significant since changing my diet and introducing some regular movement.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation