I Hate People Like Me

As someone who has been known to occasionally consider himself an expert on one topic or another, there are really few things quite as annoying to an actual expert as someone who Googles a topic, finds some total crackpot website making some completely outrageous claim (did you know that it's a proven fact that the milk they sell in grocery stores actually comes from diseased, half-rotten cows that are only kept alive using respiratory machinery?), then repeats it to their doctor, or whoever. Then, when the doc tries to respond using some form of rational conversation, the person just assumes that the doc is just another part of the conspiracy, cashing checks from the Milk Lobby and laughing all the way to the morgue to identify yet another one of his or her patients, just another innocent victim in the Lactose War.

But, nonetheless, here I am, Googling 'salicylate nasal polyp' and seeing what comes of it. The only thing that makes me feel a touch better about myself for doing this is that the sites which say something along the lines of "you're right, the doc is completely overreacting. There's no reason whatsoever to make such drastic change in your diet based on such limited evidence" seem much more reasonable, including an actual peer-reviewed journal article from 2002. See here and here for representative examples (the second link is the journal article.)

The short version of the argument is that there is, absolutely, a condition called aspirin-sensitive asthma (ASA). ASA is often correlated with rhinosinusitis, like what I have. But there's no real reason to assume that someone with rhinosinusitis, who otherwise shows no symptoms of ASA, has it. Additionally, according to the journal article, scientific studies show no positive link between reduction of salicylates in the diet and reduction in ASA symptoms, although it does leave open the possibility that this is due to poor compliance in the diet, rather than actual ineffectiveness of the strategy.

Whereas, the kind of sites which talk about the link between other asymptomatic polyps and salicylates are like this one, low production-value sites with no apparent medical connection whatsoever.

Now, maybe this is all a big conspiracy from the Salicylate Lobby, and the last site is just the few truthspeakers fighting the power, but if so, they're doing a bad job of conspiratorializing, since my very vanilla-seeming doctor tried to get me on this completely crazy diet.

So, Daisy, I'm sorry to say that I will be keeping possession of the homebrew for the moment. Good try, though...