I take a number of medicines for my depression, but it was Wellbutrin that made the difference. My psychiatrist wanted to try me reducing my dosage, but when I did, I got much worse. I’m currently recovering from this (not all there, yet), so I think Wellbutrin is instrumental in my well-being. Good luck with yours..

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I grew up in an evangelical church that was very far away from church planting: They had one pastor who had gone to seminary. Everyone at the church had grown up in a church. They did very little outreach to the community. The sermons were lengthy lectures on the technical details of translation or the more obscure books of the bible, not feel good stories about Jesus. They were part of a denomination. There were some younger people who were having kids, but much of the church were the elderly or older adults who already had kids. They sang hymns, not praise music. They primarily sponsored missionaries overseas, not in the US. A church like this is on net shrinking, not growing the American evangelical population.

That was just one example, but there are many out there that are evangelical in belief but don’t really line up with the type of Christianity doing church planting. So if evangelicalism is made out of churches like these plus church plant type churches, the church plants can still be net positive even though evangelicalism is losing ground as a whole.

I suppose that the analogy to startups here could be that startups can be growing even if the economy as a whole is shrinking, because there are plenty of legacy companies out there that are shrinking over time.

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Alas yes

There are several areas that can trip us up when trying this kind of self study with nutrition. Dose size, dose frequency, nutrient type, nutrient interaction, testing accuracy.

Dose size – if you’re seriously depleted then just taking the rda won’t touch the sides. It’s like a thimbleful of water for someone who’s been lost in the desert for days. Also the rdas themselves are contested. For example, Dr Mildred Seelig did a lot to argue the rda for magnesium should 2-3x the current recommendation, and double that for people who are deficient. Or there are some interesting videos by Dr Jorge Flechas on youtube arguing that our boron and silica intake should be much higher. As for taking supplements sublingually, there’s a lot of interesting discussion on phoenixrising.me about it’s efficacy with b12, often centered around a user called Freddd. Theoretically many argue it shouldn’t work, but plenty of users observe powerful effects that never arose from regular tablets.

Dose frequency – we can only absorb limited amounts of some nutrients. Not all – eg, electrolytes as salts are absorbed incredibly easy. But zinc is limited to about 6mg at a time, and I think b2/riboflavin is limited to around 25mg. So if you’re trying to take more than that, you need to space our your doses.

Nutrient type – nutrients come in many forms (eg, b6 as pyridoxine hcl vs p-5-p, zinc glycinate vs zinc oxide, etc). Not only the bioavailability, but also the benefits can vary a lot from this. For example, magnesium oxide is much more poorly absorbed the magnesium chloride, or b6 as pyridoxine hcl is more likely to cause overdose issues than p5p.

Nutrient interaction – some nutrients, particularly minerals, can interfere with each others absorptions.

Testing accuracy – blood tests are better than nothing, but can vary a lot. Your body tries very hard to maintain electrolytes equilibrium in your blood – if it fails, you need emergency care pretty rapidly. It can do this by deprioritising electrolytes elsewhere, so the blood test shows “healthy range” of calcium even as your bones are weakening.

When these factors combine with testing so many nutrients at once, it’s not surprising that there aren’t any clear results to pick up.

It’s obvious from your blog that you’re serious about testing and improving your health this way. Really wish you good luck with it.