TBC: the client is interested scaleable software that people intuitively find useful for experimenting on themselves and can combine selfishly motivated individual data into useful aggregate data. But there’s a point here I want to argue.
I’m not sure if it makes sense to try multiple pills at once. Balancing the possibility that you stumble upon an effective treatment faster is the possibility that an effective treatment is disguished by a drug interaction, as well as the possibility that the average user just struggles to manage the added complexity, gets confused, and quits.
It seems like you’re assuming all drug interactions are bad. What if you need three things in combination to see the effect, and then it works really well?
That’s entirely possible. However, it introduces a level of risk that isn’t as present when you take one at a time. It’s unlikely that a given supplement will kill you at normal doses. Such a severe side effect would have been detected and the supplement most likely wouldn’t be sold.
But it’s not impossible that certain rare combinations of drugs might have lethal side effects in combination, and that you might stumble across such a combination by chance. The risk of this happening seems in my judgment to outweigh the potential benefit of finding the right drug for a chronic condition faster.
I’m not certain if it’s plausible an interaction between supplements could kill you in a few days. Even the examples here seem to take a while to work. The only potentially instantly lethal drugs I’ve seen are things like alcohol and heroine. But I would shy away from taking combinations—that’s just where my risk budget is at. I could be persuaded otherwise.
If you’re concerned about supplement interactions, you should be concerned about supplements effects at all. People should seek based on possible luck, but should know (and be able to tell doctors) what they’re putting into their bodies, and take contextual advice from relatives, friends, and community.
Collecting individuals susceptible to effective treatment with intervention X and having them ready for researchers to talk to, test more directly—is this already done? I suppose around individual notable conditions: celiac disease and gluten intolerance, or n=1 genetic issue self-diagnosis.
Some conditions have an intermittency, that makes it hard to assess interventions with unknown timing.
Perhaps blinded timing studies, self-studies, after something is found to work. Perhaps helping people to log and journal symptoms and effects during the blinded periods, as well as analyze, interpret, and share them—especially in ways that make it easier for others to trust.
TBC: the client is interested scaleable software that people intuitively find useful for experimenting on themselves and can combine selfishly motivated individual data into useful aggregate data. But there’s a point here I want to argue.
It seems like you’re assuming all drug interactions are bad. What if you need three things in combination to see the effect, and then it works really well?
That’s entirely possible. However, it introduces a level of risk that isn’t as present when you take one at a time. It’s unlikely that a given supplement will kill you at normal doses. Such a severe side effect would have been detected and the supplement most likely wouldn’t be sold.
But it’s not impossible that certain rare combinations of drugs might have lethal side effects in combination, and that you might stumble across such a combination by chance. The risk of this happening seems in my judgment to outweigh the potential benefit of finding the right drug for a chronic condition faster.
Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news24.com/amp/health24/medical/backache/news/7-medication-combinations-that-could-be-deadly-20160829
I’m not certain if it’s plausible an interaction between supplements could kill you in a few days. Even the examples here seem to take a while to work. The only potentially instantly lethal drugs I’ve seen are things like alcohol and heroine. But I would shy away from taking combinations—that’s just where my risk budget is at. I could be persuaded otherwise.
The blinded aspect is hard.
If you’re concerned about supplement interactions, you should be concerned about supplements effects at all. People should seek based on possible luck, but should know (and be able to tell doctors) what they’re putting into their bodies, and take contextual advice from relatives, friends, and community.
Collecting individuals susceptible to effective treatment with intervention X and having them ready for researchers to talk to, test more directly—is this already done? I suppose around individual notable conditions: celiac disease and gluten intolerance, or n=1 genetic issue self-diagnosis.
Some conditions have an intermittency, that makes it hard to assess interventions with unknown timing.
Perhaps blinded timing studies, self-studies, after something is found to work. Perhaps helping people to log and journal symptoms and effects during the blinded periods, as well as analyze, interpret, and share them—especially in ways that make it easier for others to trust.