We know more than we think!

One of the stoppers of consciously taking charge of our health, is feeling like we just don't have enough knowledge to fill that role. In truth we really do know more than we think we do.
For instance, I know I get a rash every time you eat watermelon. I know that I have heartburn if I eat too late at night. My left leg hurts if I walk more than a mile a day. Certain vitamins make me nauseated if I take them on an empty stomach. "Of course I know that stuff!" you exclaim with a grunt of disgust. I guess I should have said "What we know is more important than we think!". These seemingly "little" things are the stuff that the HCP uses to try to figure out what is going wrong with our health. Notice how the first thing they do is ask a lot of questions?
Thats right, you have it. They use the answers to these questions to come up with what they think might be the problem. What I am positing here is that, maybe we just need to ask ourselves more questions to come up with the answers ourselves. At the very least, if we ask ourself more questions, the more in-depth answers will be of great help to you HCP.
A big stumbling block when in search of "Just what is going on with my health?", is my own prejudices. Case in point: At one point I had been drink lots of diet pop. My treat to myself as I was on the Atkins Diet and was rewarding myself for "sticking to the diet". Gradually, my legs began to really ache and then hurt. The pain would fluctuate between a 3 and a 6 (you know, the ole pain scale that rates the worst pain you ever had at a 10?) As the days went on, I began thinking I had arthritis and that the fluctuation was the weather. I just couldn't figure it out. In fact I had begun to accept that I was going to be crippled and unable to walk without a walker by the time I was 60 or even younger as at the time I was in my mid 40's.
One of my co-workers did a lot of research (as I did) and suggested my problem just might be the aspartame in the diet pop I was drinking. My prejudice (I just loved that pop. In fact was addicted to it. How could I do without it?) So I kept on drinking the diet pop.
About the time I was beginning to think I already needed a walker to get around with, my co-worker given an information sheet about the side effects of aspartame. Begrudgingly,I decided,since aspartame is a neurotoxin, I should probably stop drinking the stuff anyway. But, hey, I am human and I wanted my fix. in order to prove that it wasn't the aspartame in the diet pop, I would have to stop drinking it for at least a week. After one week off diet pop, I was feeling much better so I thought as all rational people would think, "Oh, the weather has been better, it must have been the weather why I was feeling better!"
You guessed it, I had myself a big glass of diet pop. Oh how I had missed it. The convincer came that night. I was in agony. My legs hurt so bad, I shed tears. Since then, I have found that even gun with tiny amounts of hidden aspartame in it causes my legs to hurt. Yep, I am now convinced, I'd best not touch the stuff.
Until later,
Healthbug