“My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle”
lesswrong.com
lesswrong.com
I don't think this is the way it should work either but since this method solves 98+% of issues brought before them there's no reason to change.
Finding a research scientist who's interested and paid to study your problem would be the best bet, but a group of 1 funding becomes and issue. The total group suffering from such issues may be larger but how many have just managed the symptoms and accepted it as their life. Self-assessment is also plagued with biases which all doctors know so unwinding your notes is tedious and they can't bill for it.
I would suspect that your case is related to the gut biome especially since pills reducing histamine response help the problem. Gut biome is still kinda of a new thing but I'm surprised it wasn't a direction that was reviewed.
Doctors, for the most part, are fucking idiots who couldn't solve a moderately complicated puzzle if their own lives depended on it. I say this because I have been a patient, because I have taught doctors, and because I have worked with their peers. It is true.
The reason the medical system works at all is because you do not, typically, actually demand much from your doctor. For example, if your surgeon is dumb as a box of rocks but has great dexterity, well, that usually works out. Even the doctor who looks at you, sees you're depressed, and randomly prescribes some antidepressant works out, because it's often not really possible to do much better!
Of course, sometimes you do need better. The article author needed better. I've needed better. So when you find a doctor or other practitioner (do not look down on ARNPs!) who listens and actually thinks about your problem, even if they have some faults in other areas, hold on to that person. They do exist, they are possible to get a hold of (not that it's easy to do, or even deterministic), and they can make all the difference.
I'm saying that even if you do that, many are going to be worthless.
Look, I've actually gotten one fired before. And blocked at least one premed from reaching med school at all. Plenty of doctors are great people. Many... are not.
I would assume the author was talking about H2 receptor antagonists. Those H2 antihistamines reduce stomach acid production. Just like the proton pump inhibitors he was taking before ("stomach acid pills stopped working"). Both are rather insidious as tolerance and SEVERE rebound can develop, especially with the PPI. Many people taking PPI for a month have a very hard time ever getting off of them.
Besides that, PPI are just plain dangerous and cause "fatal cardiovascular disease, stomach cancer and chronic kidney disease":
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/cause-of-ppi-death...
I don't understand why the author is surprised that Boswellia helped their digestion though -Boswellia is very well known and proven to aid inflammatory diseases, especially inflammatory bowel diseases.
They do mention gut biome in response to one of the comments there:
> I'm pretty sure gut biome renovations were somewhere between pointless and insufficient for me but agree that they should be very high on the list of things to try for many problems.