Please Stay Safe
I'm actually more concerned with people staying safe than with people Staying Legal.
That's actually why I write.
I have a diagnosis of atypical Cystic Fibrosis and was diagnosed at age thirty-five after a lifetime of being treated like a hypochondriac while desperately trying to not end up hospitalized for fear physicians would prevent me from pursuing essential self care and thereby maim or kill me.
Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an orphan disease, which means we aren't really getting adequate solutions for our needs. The Internet says:
An orphan disease is a rare condition that affects a very small population and receives little or no research or commercial investment, often due to limited financial incentives for drug development.
Atypical CF is a relatively mild, relatively recently identified form of an extremely deadly, debilitating condition classified as a Dread Disease. You can search for the legal definition online if you want to know how that term gets used for insurance purposes.
I typically describe it as something you probably wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, much less your own child because CF is genetic and that plays an important role in how much this illness fucks up your headspace and negatively impacts in crazy making ways the most stupid seemingly minor things, like "Should I flirt back with that guy whose ethnicity suggests he's at greater risk than average for being capable of giving me another child with this SHIT condition????"
So CF just scares the HELL out of people who have it and any family members of theirs and that means I was met with a Niagara Falls of open hatred on CF lists for two things:
1. Describing my condition as relatively mild for CF.
2. Trying to talk about diet and lifestyle as a means to manage it.
These are people who were typically very, very sick from birth and everyone has been screaming in their face since their earliest memories that if you make a mistake, you can DIE.
They don't WANT ANYONE for ANY reason to in ANY way imply "Oh, it's not all that serious." So calling my condition mild CF to try to explain and acknowledge the differences between what I deal with and classical CF just got my head repeatedly bit off: There is NO SUCH THING as MILD CF!
And many people in the CF community do not want to try ANYTHING that isn't FDA approved and prescribed by a physician and they see people WITH CF engaging in conversation with other people with CF as dangerous and disturbing behavior that must be shut the fuck DOWN immediately, you evil BITCH, you.
I was nearly thirty-six when I was diagnosed. I managed my condition myself for a lot of years without a diagnosis and I'm fairly well read and educated and I was reading stuff about CF that just doesn't make sense. It neither makes logical sense nor jibes with my firsthand experience of how my body works.
On the whole, the CF community is TERRIFIED of having any meaty discussions for fear someone will DIE as a consequence.
And at the same time, when I was participating in the CF community online, they were tearing their HAIR out about things like mannitol being denied FDA approval because some children with CF got lung bleeds, which is why in spite of all the hatred I got, I kept my homemade similar thing online:
They were screaming about "You people (the FDA) are worried about symptoms I MIGHT have five years down the line and I'm worried I probably won't make it another five years!!! Give me those five years I otherwise don't have NOW and worry about side effects later!!!"
And also also, people with CF who have made it to adulthood are typically well versed in CF pathology, more so than most General Practitioner physicians or most physicians who aren't CF Specialists. So a subset of the community routinely just pursues self care they know works, usually without being as controversial as I was.
People who are trans have a big problem and are at higher than average risk of committing suicide because of their situation while the general public argues about bullshit like which bathroom you are allowed to use. My Moral Position is that doing nothing because the current political climate is challenging or whatever is akin to helping planet Earth commit murder by suicide.
So that's WHY I write AT ALL.
But I'm keenly aware that within ANY demographic for x issue, some people can and do safely DIY it and some people really will do amazingly dumb and dangerous things because they lack the medical and scientific background.
This is a HEALTH site.
If you are in a situation where family, friends and the law where you live are all your enemy and you have absolutely no choice but to DIY it, please READ until it MAKES SENSE and err on the side of caution.
Start a health journal. Read both my health sites -- this one and the one linked to in the previous sentence -- in their entirety. Look up medical terms you don't understand.
If you are in a better situation than that and don't feel completely confident about successfully DIYing it, consider speaking to a medical professional about my writing and asking their opinion about whether or not I'm just NUTS and whether or not they think this makes sense and if they feel comfortable supporting you in implementing this approach to whatever health issue you have and are reading about on any of my sites.