I have written several Boing Boing posts about people with serious health problems who figured out how to cure themselves.
- Restless Legs Syndrome (title: Restless Legs Syndrome, Niacin, and Web Search). Co-written with Gary Wolf. Dennis Mangan figured out that his mother, who had Restless Legs Syndrome, might have a niacin deficiency.
- Frequent Migraines (title: Finding the Source of Migraines — and Fifty Useless Migraine Drugs). A woman greatly reduced her migraines by avoiding household cleaning products. Alexandra Carmichael benefited from this story.
- Crohn’s Disease (title: Grandmother Knows Best About Crohn’s Disease). Reid Kimball greatly reduced his symptoms by following the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
- Should your child have a tonsillectomy? (title: Tonsillectomy Confidential: doctors ignore polio epidemics and high school biology). After her doctor recommended that her son have a tonsillectomy, a woman, looking into research about them, learned they have little benefit. Your tonsils are part of your immune system and cutting them off because you have too many infections makes as much sense as cutting out part of the brain because you have memory problems.
- Gluten intolerance (title: Daughter Knows Best About Kidney Disease and Gluten Intolerance). A daughter figures out that her mother’s kidney problems may be due to gluten intolerance.
- Acne (title: Searching For the Cause of Acne). Martha Rotter used a process of elimination to find out that cow dairy was causing her acne.