No sites this week or last. We're vastly changing up my supplements, so the fewer interfering factors, the easier it is to tell what's changing which organs.
Previously I'd been using a small dosage of melatonin at night, with some magnesium, and my multivitamin pill (Meijer brand). During the winter, I also took some vitamin D to offset the lack of sunshine. That was it.
My LENS-doctor took one look at my vitamin D level and said, "Let's double your dosage for now, and switch you to something better when you run out." Apparently what merely looks "low" in the standard medical range is "hilariously low" in the functional range used by nutritionists. And hey, one of the side effects of vitamin D deficiency is fatigue. Fancy that. She tells me it'll take half a year to get my blood levels up to a normal range of vitamin D. After about a week of taking double dosage, I've been feeling less revoltingly tired in the morning. Surprisingly, this is regardless of whether I got enough sleep. So there's that.
I also finally ran out of the Meijer version of Once-A-Day multivitamin pills. Which meant I've switched to the medical grade broad-base vitamin pill I bought awhile back. It's a lot more expensive, but I'll actually be able to absorb everything in it, so unfortunately it's worth the price. Also unfortunately, it doesn't have everything that was in the Meijer pills. So in the next couple weeks I get to add a zinc supplement (also low in my blood) and an iron supplement, too.
Lastly for the supplement changes, I am once again on probiotics. I had a bad stint with eating lots of sugar, and my guts never really returned to where they'd been after the last time I had to take probiotics... so this time we're doing two kinds, alternating, and that has definitely had effects. My guts have definitely shifted their habits in a hurry. So I'm now adjusting to that... but my period came and threw off my observations, so it might be a bit until I get a handle on what all the good bacteria is doing. In the meantime, I'm trying to eat better to keep their population up. Not much point in introducing them if I'm not going to keep them alive with good eating habits.
There's a final wrinkle to all this. Chris was offered a free consultation and examination at a chiropractor office around here, and that offer extended to me. So we both went, albeit somewhat suspiciously. Because of course if they're offering something for free, they're going to want to recoup costs by roping you into getting their services.
So they ran a couple tests (but not an x-ray 'til the second visit) and pronounced us in need of help. Of course. They talked our ears off both visits about how they're a different kind of chiropractor, how important it is to catch back problems sooner rather than later, and how treating the root cause of a problem (which is of course your back and spinal cord) is better than treating the symptoms. Etc, etc. Little alarm bells kept going off in my head about the place, which rarely abated. It just... the arguments are good. The philosophy, as explained, seems to be good. But things just kept rubbing me the wrong way. It's like they had a corrupt psychologist tell them exactly how to rope people into buying their services. Their very expensive services, even at their prices.
It's things like quoting statistics without any citations, and listing studies without enough information for a practical layperson to find them. Things like relying very heavily upon personal testimony (which is a powerful, but statistically worthless, data source). Asking the staff pointed questions about whether the therapy would help with sensory issues resulted in a "err... no, wait, yeah, totally will... not explaining how..." kind of answer. In short, the place struck me as a very well polished con.
We shelled out the $126 for five x-rays anyway, because the way they'd set up the thing, you had to discuss whether you wanted to do the x-rays after already finding out there was stuff wrong with you, and with the assistant sitting there listening to you talk. In other words, it was basically set up so you would always say yes. Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way.
I have a suspicious nature. I'm aware of this, and it could well be that this place is legitimate, and simply has a marketing department and enough money to pay it to tell them how to rope business in as efficiently as possible. Their business model depends on it, because they keep their costs low by treating as many people as possible. But then you're down to trusting them to not abuse that power, and I've yet to see a responsible use of psychology in general business. Maybe this will be the first.
In the meantime, my suspicious nature tends to keep me out of trouble.
Previously I'd been using a small dosage of melatonin at night, with some magnesium, and my multivitamin pill (Meijer brand). During the winter, I also took some vitamin D to offset the lack of sunshine. That was it.
My LENS-doctor took one look at my vitamin D level and said, "Let's double your dosage for now, and switch you to something better when you run out." Apparently what merely looks "low" in the standard medical range is "hilariously low" in the functional range used by nutritionists. And hey, one of the side effects of vitamin D deficiency is fatigue. Fancy that. She tells me it'll take half a year to get my blood levels up to a normal range of vitamin D. After about a week of taking double dosage, I've been feeling less revoltingly tired in the morning. Surprisingly, this is regardless of whether I got enough sleep. So there's that.
I also finally ran out of the Meijer version of Once-A-Day multivitamin pills. Which meant I've switched to the medical grade broad-base vitamin pill I bought awhile back. It's a lot more expensive, but I'll actually be able to absorb everything in it, so unfortunately it's worth the price. Also unfortunately, it doesn't have everything that was in the Meijer pills. So in the next couple weeks I get to add a zinc supplement (also low in my blood) and an iron supplement, too.
Lastly for the supplement changes, I am once again on probiotics. I had a bad stint with eating lots of sugar, and my guts never really returned to where they'd been after the last time I had to take probiotics... so this time we're doing two kinds, alternating, and that has definitely had effects. My guts have definitely shifted their habits in a hurry. So I'm now adjusting to that... but my period came and threw off my observations, so it might be a bit until I get a handle on what all the good bacteria is doing. In the meantime, I'm trying to eat better to keep their population up. Not much point in introducing them if I'm not going to keep them alive with good eating habits.
There's a final wrinkle to all this. Chris was offered a free consultation and examination at a chiropractor office around here, and that offer extended to me. So we both went, albeit somewhat suspiciously. Because of course if they're offering something for free, they're going to want to recoup costs by roping you into getting their services.
So they ran a couple tests (but not an x-ray 'til the second visit) and pronounced us in need of help. Of course. They talked our ears off both visits about how they're a different kind of chiropractor, how important it is to catch back problems sooner rather than later, and how treating the root cause of a problem (which is of course your back and spinal cord) is better than treating the symptoms. Etc, etc. Little alarm bells kept going off in my head about the place, which rarely abated. It just... the arguments are good. The philosophy, as explained, seems to be good. But things just kept rubbing me the wrong way. It's like they had a corrupt psychologist tell them exactly how to rope people into buying their services. Their very expensive services, even at their prices.
It's things like quoting statistics without any citations, and listing studies without enough information for a practical layperson to find them. Things like relying very heavily upon personal testimony (which is a powerful, but statistically worthless, data source). Asking the staff pointed questions about whether the therapy would help with sensory issues resulted in a "err... no, wait, yeah, totally will... not explaining how..." kind of answer. In short, the place struck me as a very well polished con.
We shelled out the $126 for five x-rays anyway, because the way they'd set up the thing, you had to discuss whether you wanted to do the x-rays after already finding out there was stuff wrong with you, and with the assistant sitting there listening to you talk. In other words, it was basically set up so you would always say yes. Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way.
I have a suspicious nature. I'm aware of this, and it could well be that this place is legitimate, and simply has a marketing department and enough money to pay it to tell them how to rope business in as efficiently as possible. Their business model depends on it, because they keep their costs low by treating as many people as possible. But then you're down to trusting them to not abuse that power, and I've yet to see a responsible use of psychology in general business. Maybe this will be the first.
In the meantime, my suspicious nature tends to keep me out of trouble.
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