Stuff that it's pointless to Google

[marydell]

1. is there a connection between allergies and weight gain (I've been having a massive metabolic slowdown for a couple of years that has recently improved)?  Results: zillions of quacks promoting magic weight loss solutions and/or magic allergy remedies.  Better results gotten by googling specific medicines and weight gain, since about 50% of all medicines genuinely cause weight gain (including, apparently, Zyrtec for me).

2. what are the symptoms of an overabundance of estrogen?  Now that I'm on DP I don't have this problem so much, but endometriosis can cause an imbalance where the body makes extra estrogen. Results: single doctor promoting--all over the place--natural progestin solution to "estrogen dominance syndrome" which is an ailment discovered and defined by him, and treated by his product and only his product.  Normal living can cause this syndrome, HBC can cause this syndrome, chemical progestins also cause syndrome! Only his natural progestin product will do.  This one is particularly annoying because I think there is probably a real ailment in there somewhere, (that in my case is vastly improved by chemical progestin) but he is masking any useful results for it.

3. I have located the majority of my college buddies on FB or via Google, except my old housemate Amber Stout.  Results: beer, beer, beer.

Comments

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

How about the White Pages for Amber? http://www.whitepages.com/search/FindPerson?firstname_begins_with=1&firstname=Amber&name=Stout&where=

If you have an idea of her state or names of relations, that should help you narrow down the list...

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I've found a couple of possibles that way, but unlike google, whitepage searches just give you the option to actually get in touch with someone directly, rather than sort of seeing what they're up to and what they're into before deciding whether it's a good idea to get back in touch. With google you can find out all kinds of interesting things, if a person has a unique name and any public presence. I discovered that an old neighbor of mine had participated in an academic study of contact with deceased spirits, for example (the neighbor being among the non-deceased participants).

[carbonel]

I don't know if there's any connection, but it might be worth googling on both PCOS and metabolic syndrome.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I have the body shape that's characteristic of both of those, but not the underlying conditions. PCOS produces excess androgen and also causes infertility so it's similar to Endometriosis but with different chemicals.

The basic cycle of estrogen production in endometriosis is described in the first paragraph of this, (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/473018) but pretty much all of the lit on endo focuses on pain management or fertility, without talking much about the totally whacko hormone imbalance that it causes and what the effects of that might be. I started wondering when I went on DP (synthetic progestin) and suddenly my moods became weirdly stable.

[unhappytriad.livejournal.com]

Google Scholar is your friend. It searches only scholarly publications; this won't, of course, weed out all the crap, but it does weed out all the amateur crap. It has useful search parameters such as "only look for stuff where I can get the full text of the paper" and "only things published since (year)". From the Google home page, click on "more" in the menu across the top, and Scholar is one of the drop-downs.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I had no idea this existed; thank you!

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I have similar frustrations trying to find out ANYTHING about MS symptoms/treatments/prognosis.

I am glad you posted what you did about Zyrtec, btw. This might be the answer to a puzzle I've been trying to sort out.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I imagine MS is one of those things that attracts hucksters selling cures...bleah.

Zyrtec may have also been contributing to a gradual weight gain, or at any rate since going off it I seem to be losing weight without having changed my eating. There may be other factors though--I'm on 6 drugs regularly, plus food allergy restrictions, so I'm still puzzling it out. But that's another data point, in case that's useful. Also it was giving me fatigue like whoa, which I didn't really notice til I went off it, because I got used to fatigue in my pre-DP days.

Unfortunately it works better than anything else, so I'm inconveniently sniffly since going off it, but that beats having the woe.