Awhile back, I had some odd thing going on.
It made me feel entirely too much like Keith Moon. Mad; mad as a hatter; mad as an Afghani outhouse rat.
I had tight muscles around the neck and jaw, was feeling flu-like and absolutely positive the major arteries in my neck had all been circulating pure, uncut, lab-grade hydraulic concrete.
So, thought I: it’s probably Lockjaw, Scarlet Fever, Malaria or something else curmudgeonly, but not immediately fatal.
And instead of going straight to the doctor, I should just play Human Guinea-Pig!
Again!
So: I trotted trudged down to my local vitamin store and got a few bottles of the Immune-Boosters mentioned in the headline.
I bought 1 box of GermMD EZ-Swallow Rapid Tabs Ultra-Convenient Immune Health Formula, 1 bottle of 500mg Garlic Caps, a bottle of 2004-VITY-Award-Winning Source Naturals Wellness Formula Herbal Defense Complex , and eventually, begrudgingly, 1 bottle of 250mg AHCC caps.
And here are the anecdotal results of my suffering, all for you; and your edification:
I took both the GermMD, the Garlic and some Echinacea I had sitting around on their full dosage schedule for just over 3 days. I may have had the odd splash of OJ during that time, too.
Result: Some mild weirdness reduction, but nothing I’d call significant; at best ~7% improvement.
With that providing less of a change than I’d hoped, I swapped out the GermMD for the Wellness Formula for the next ~day and a half. It Smelled Worse, so I thought it must surely Work Better.
Result: A small improvement again on their Maintenance Dosage of 1-2 tabs per day.
With that added change encouraging me a little, I decided to move up to the full, “I-Think-I’ve-Got-Ebola”-Dose of 3 Tabs every 3 Hours in addition to the 3 caps/day I’d been taking of Garlic and then backing off the previous Echinacea, since the WF has it in the formula.
Result: Surprisingly enough, over about 3-4 days, I can say I felt Noticeably better; with about a 30%+ Improvement.
At this point though, I was still not completely better.
And I was beginning to panic.
It must surely be Yellow Fever,
Ghost-Cat Toxoplasmosis-Gondii,
And Scrapie.
-Probably the early stages of Pneumonic Plague in there, too.
So, I tried the odd 1 or 2 doses of AHCC of 4 capsules before a meal 1x daily.
Despairingly however, AHCC is a little bit CRAZY Expensive where I live, -even store brand.
And despite the promises of one of the local herb dudes saying that when antibiotics or the like fail at hospitals,
People come to them and start taking the top-secret, cold-extruded, ion-exchange, lepton-doped, underground CERN lab brand of AHCC,
Which always sells out in 2 days and somehow does what the Antis can’t,
Killing the buggies and leaving you feeling pleasantly mushroomy, like the afterglow following a nice Fall/Winter soup appetizer or light lunch.
…If you’re into that kind of thing.
And as the recommended “I-Just-Know-I’ve-Got-Dengue-Fever”-Dosage of AHCC is a Wallet-Draining 12 caps/day (250mg), I was just not in for that as an experiment of any duration.
=>At which point, I Chickened-Out and went up town to see my local Witch Doctor, who said I was definitely dying imminently, and I should make out my will right there in the office, but first go down to CVS and get some of these tactical-nuke antibiotics before signing it.
And so, at least in my case, for the IB tabs effectiveness on whatever Dread-Mahocus I had, the answer is:
KINDA.
JUMP BONUS, SICKOS!!!: An interesting point. Or, in-fact, THE point.
… On a hidden camera commercial, we’ve secretly replaced this man’s Campbell Soup with Progresso, let’s see..
OK, OK! -A short while before I’d decided to go all poultry, I stopped taking the supplements. -Especially because there are So Very Many ingredients in the Source Naturals and AHCC was nomming my wallet. And something interesting happened…
The man liked Progresso -BETTER- than Campbell’s!!! TAKE THAT, OLD SCHOOL!
-OK, OK, OK! Look, I’m just trying to get as much mileage out of this as I can, see. OK, anyway:
I GOT VERY NOTICEABLY WORSE.
Yup. It was clear to a Cyberchondriac like me, that I was clearly in even deeper Lockjaw than I’d been before. About twice as bad from the night I stopped to the next day.
So there you have it: The improvements(s) may have been slow or inscrutable over the +/-week, and the regimen I followed may not have been as Medicated, Regular, Long or Mushroomy as it should be, BUT:
The Immune Boosters WERE clearly helping out very noticeably.
+Confirmed TWICE, just like a Land-Speed-Record Bugatti on Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien proving grounds in the old DMZ.
[… but the Antibiotics are what finally cleared it up in the end]
And I’m still alive;
Until the next outbreak…
nobody at HT was compensated in any way, hook, crook, frontkick or kickback, by any of the manufacturers mentioned in this highly-informal experiment; no testing samples, nada.
Photo Credits:
“Miracles”, by Insane Clown Posse
“Dramatic Chipmunk”
“Season greeting from the cemetery…”, by Dimitri Castrique, thebend.be/personal/
“Chanterelles”, by Paweł Zawistowski, milionporad.pl
“Bugatti Veyron Super Sport”, by Bugatti, bugatti.com
Links:
Source Naturals Wellness Formula
Know Your Meme-F***ing Magnets, How Do They Work
Leave a Reply