As you are supposed to ask your doctor about supplements, I just asked my primary care doctor about taking glycine and N-acetylcysteine.I had a lot more infections in the last two years and I’m doing some fascia work that could increase collagen turnover, so there’s reasoning in that time frame that would be a causal explanation for increased glycine usage for collagen generation and less leftover for glutathione production. My doctor just said, she doesn’t know of any evidence for either supplement helping with immune function.Should I fault her for not knowing about De Flora et al 1997 finding that N-acetylcysteine helps prophylactically to prevent influenza from becoming symptomatic? Should I fault her for not knowing that chicken bone broth soup has been shown in the last evidence review to be helpful for reducing the length of acute respiratory tract infections, and its glycine content being a prime causal explanation?Should I fault her for not knowing that much about glutathione, as it doesn’t come up that much in her daily practice?Are you supposed to have the papers printed out to hand them to your doctor, or what are you supposed to do in a situation like that? If you are doing are thinking about taking any non-standard interventions that are far away from the normal practice of medicine, why would you assume that the average doctor can tell you about the merit of the intervention?Chatbots aren’t perfect but they have access to a lot more information and if you talk to them about specific studies they can easily engage with you. You can push back. You can continue a conversation over multiple days when you first conversation made you more aware of other symptoms. You can ask another chatbot to check the work of the first one.Discuss Read More
The Problem with Asking your Doctor
As you are supposed to ask your doctor about supplements, I just asked my primary care doctor about taking glycine and N-acetylcysteine.I had a lot more infections in the last two years and I’m doing some fascia work that could increase collagen turnover, so there’s reasoning in that time frame that would be a causal explanation for increased glycine usage for collagen generation and less leftover for glutathione production. My doctor just said, she doesn’t know of any evidence for either supplement helping with immune function.Should I fault her for not knowing about De Flora et al 1997 finding that N-acetylcysteine helps prophylactically to prevent influenza from becoming symptomatic? Should I fault her for not knowing that chicken bone broth soup has been shown in the last evidence review to be helpful for reducing the length of acute respiratory tract infections, and its glycine content being a prime causal explanation?Should I fault her for not knowing that much about glutathione, as it doesn’t come up that much in her daily practice?Are you supposed to have the papers printed out to hand them to your doctor, or what are you supposed to do in a situation like that? If you are doing are thinking about taking any non-standard interventions that are far away from the normal practice of medicine, why would you assume that the average doctor can tell you about the merit of the intervention?Chatbots aren’t perfect but they have access to a lot more information and if you talk to them about specific studies they can easily engage with you. You can push back. You can continue a conversation over multiple days when you first conversation made you more aware of other symptoms. You can ask another chatbot to check the work of the first one.Discuss Read More
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