The husband and wife team I had been seeing knew their stuff.   I was actually feeling good some of the time.  I had not felt this well in seven or eight years.  I also noticed that I did not feel good sometimes.  At times I felt as bad as I did before I started seeing the naturopath / homeopath team.  What was going on?  Was is simply a random swing associated with getting better or was there a pattern? 

 

From taking psychology classes in collage I knew it was possible to find out.  One of the most basic forms of isolating a variable is the ABAB style of experiment.  In this case if I suspected something of having a negative impact on how I felt I would expose myself to it, then take it away, then reintroduce it, take it away again.  After doing this a few times it is possible to find out what things cause me to not feel so good.  So the question is what caused me to feel bad?  It is food?  Places?  People?  Things? 

 

A big clue came when I housemate of mine moved in a new carpet for his bedroom.  I had been feeling mostly good for a while until the day he brought home a roll of old carpet.  I got home from work that day and suddenly felt awful.  The next day I went off to work and felt much better, and again I felt terrible when I got home.  The carpet did not seem to affect my other housemates.  After a little coaxing I talked him into trying a little experiment with me, we put the carpet out in the carport for the night.  About an hour later I felt better again, in two hours I felt as good as I had a few days before.  To me this was both exciting and puzzling.  Carpet had never made me feel bad before and the carpet did not seem to affect anyone else.   Were there other things out there that also effected the way I felt?  If so, where to begin?

 

I started with what I felt was the most likely candidates, food.  I Did an ABAB style experiment with the most probable contestants; wheat, soy, corn and dairy.  No effect (well, maybe a little for wheat but I'll get to that later).  I tried a few other food related items, reading labels for a cluster for food preservatives, and found little to no effect.  Next, I focused on clothing.  I a very short time I was surprised at how much of a difference clothing seemed to make.  Some of my favorite items made things mush worse while others had little to no effect.  Quickly a pattern seemed to emerge, natural fabrics good, artificial fibers bad.  The next logical set seemed to be personal care products.  I started with deodorant, I tied scented vs. unscented and found a big difference. Toothpastes had no effect.  The Shampoo I had was bad and the conditioner was worse.  I then went down to the local natural market and bought an all-natural unscented shampoo and tried it again.  Much, much better this time.  I then went and got a short haircut and have never touched conditioner again. 

 

The overall pattern that was beginning to emerge was this: I did not react well to man made stuff, things that were all natural had a much better chance of working well.  I wanted more control of my environment after this and decided to move out on my own.