Luck based medicine: my resentful story of becoming a medical miracle

I've heard that because of insufficient microscopy, psychology is stuck at alchemy levels of understanding.

> Boswelia, which helped this author, is frankincense

The author very narrowly cites BosPro,[1] which is a gum extract of Boswellia serrata, or Indian frankincense. Specifically, it claims to have high levels of AKBA (Acetyl-11-Keto-β-Boswellic Acid),[2] an antioxidant with vascular remodeling properties.[3]

It probably came up in Dr. Spray-n-pray's treatments because of studies that suggested AKBA could bind to SARS-CoV-2 proteins, but were inconclusive on whether they were effective treatments.[4]

The author dismisses the inspecific "inflammation" response from that doctor, but considering that the inflammations AKBA seems to often be found effective as a potential treatment are often related to either severe cardiac issues or neurological inflammation - including MS - I'm naively, but more than a little, concerned for the author.

The doctors might have understandably been focused on the author's digestive/GI health, but as noted in the article the brain/GI connection goes very deep. Early-onset symptoms of MS are often digestive in nature.[5]

1: https://www.euromedicausa.com/products/bospro/

2: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Acetyl-11-keto-bet...

3: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39809

4: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ardp.202100160

5: https://www.ms.pitt.edu/symptoms/stomach-and-intestinal-issu...

Over the last two years I've gotten into gardening in a serious way. I have about a hundred species of plants growing now, and another three hundred fifty or so waiting for Spring.

Coming from a sciencey computer nerd background I have to say, plants are incredible. For one thing, they are very intelligent and adaptable. They have senses we don't fully understand. Together with fungi and microbes in soil they form LANs that administer large areas of the Earth and adjust environmental conditions to suit themselves. Seriously, look at living things as nanotechnology and you realize we are in (and of) a kind of living fractal cathedral of information and life.

Anyway, before I get too lyrical, my point is that plants produce myriad chemical substances that have effects on your metabolism. We are all familiar (if only by reputation) with the heavy hitters: Coffee, Coca, Cacao, Cannabis, (lotta C's) Tobacco, etc. But there are thousands of species of plants that produce innumerable substances that are essentially medicines: chemicals that have a stereotypical effect on metabolism.

It's entirely reasonable and unsurprising that some plant, such as Boswellia sacra, the sap of which is the source of frankincense, could have such an effect.

A well-stocked garden/forest is a medicine cabinet.

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As the author points out, it behooves us to "do science to it", eh?

When FitBit-style wearable medical monitoring devices become commonplace we're going to have a wealth of data to correlate, at least in theory.

> I've been lucky in that two of my doctors treated my rare conditions as mysteries, puzzles to be solved. Not much like House MD, which requires an explicit explanation. But more like "Hmmm. That didn't work. Let's try this other thing I've been reading about." Instead of summarily dismissing my experience because there was not "hit" in their knowledge base.

My current goal in life is to save up enough that I can afford paying a private doctor to treat my chronic condition in exactly this way. Possibly in India or another place where it won't run into many hundreds of thousands of dollars. I still have no idea how I'm going to try and find one but your description has put it into words so aptly that I'm going to take it a8nnd run with it.

My condition has left me unable to use any kind of keyboard-like device except for MacBooks and any kind of mouse-like device with physical buttons (i.e. not trackpad). Using anything else hurts both my finger joints and wrist to the point that within minutes I need to stop using them. Yet with all the doctors I've seen here it's the same; 1. Do the scans and test 2. "Well we can see some inflammation in the wrist, you need to rest more. Here, we'll prescribe some NSAIDs.". Completely ignoring the absurdity of the suggestions given that it happens within minutes and having tried resetting things completely by disavowing keyboards/mouses for a few months to little effect when resuming usage.

> FWIW, in the USA, at least, the combo of fee-for-service and compensation model discourages sleuthing. (But does encourage more testing, ironically.) IMHO.

While that may be the case, I think you're still more likely to find a doctor willing to sleuth in the US than anywhere else. The cultural factor having an even bigger impact than the profit model. Having spent many years in both East-Asia and Western-Europe, each of them have cultural factors working very strongly against it even if their compensation models should be more favorable. For the former, a big aversion against debate/answer searching in general and particularly questioning an authority while doctors are as big as an authority as you can get, ranked at the very top of the hierarchy. For the latter, a big distrust of patients and high degree of expected "self-reliance".