Welcome to the alternative health
triage center for the Internet. If you know what is wrong with your health,
then you should proceed to a group whose focus is on your particular illness.
However, if you have symptoms but no diagnosis, or have multiple illnesses
that you suspect might have a common cause, or what would seem to have been
the appropriate group(s) have been unable to help you, then you have probably
come to the right place.
To easiest way to reach the alt.health USENET group is to first log onto your
gmail spam account (see Spam section below), and
then click on:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.health/topics
Our primary goal here is to refer
you on to other groups, forums, and providers who are best qualified to help
you. Our secondary goal is to actually help you solve your problems, but
only if you stick to our one simple rule:
You MUST obey our one simple
rule for subject line composition, or everyone will probably just ignore your
posting. Subject lines MUST be formatted like:
Re:
[alt.health] KEYWORD description
Replies should have a single
Re: at the beginning of the subject
line. This is inserted automatically by most USENET and email clients. [alt.health] is important for those who forward
USENET postings to their email clients. The keyword can be any word you select
to help quickly identify which experts should attend to your posting.
Good Examples:
[alt.health] THYROID My meds
make me sick
Re:
[alt.health] THYROID My
meds make me sick
Bad Examples:
My
meds make me sick {missing [alt.health] THYROID}
Re:
[alt.health] THYROID Re: My meds make me sick {dual Re:}
Off
Topic postings should look like this:
[alt.health] OT Supersize yourself at McDonald’s
Strong opposing opinions often
collide in triage situations. Just present your case regarding a posting.
If you feel an irrational compulsion to speak out against another posting,
then do so briefly, succinctly, and respectfully like a professional provider
would be expected to do. Flamers (those who post defamatory postings) will
be ignored as the demented idiots that their postings show them to be.
As a participant here, it is
important to NOT “feed the trolls”. In other words, if someone says something
inflammatory, defamatory, breaks the rules, etc., then do NOT argue with them
on the forum, as flames just beget more flames. Instead, send polite off-group
emails directly to them, and inquire about their motivations. Remember, some
postings for the wrong reasons are serious criminal offenses capable of earning
them years in prison, so if you get an incriminating reply, please let us
know so that we can help you take appropriate action.
Some spammers collect email addresses from USENET postings, so if you post using your genuine email address, then you can expect lots of spam in return. The easiest way to avoid this is to setup a special gmail spam box to receive the incoming spam, and then post using that address. Don't forget to include your mangled email address in your posting. For example, you might see a posting from AltDotHealth.SPAM@gmail.com which I setup on gmail. Of course I ignore and periodically delete all email arriving there, so if you want me to see your email, then simply omit the “.spam” from the posting address to reach my real email inbox. I might also include a mangled link to myself, like AltDotHealth at gmail dot com.