.

.

You are a part of this.

It’s a new kind of health book that puts real-world data before authority, and teaches you how to make better decisions for your health.

Inside, you’ll find 7 insight-filled sections to help you navigate your way through Back Pain.

Download your copy here, or read on for more details.
.

The Story

Health books are usually written by experts who offer authoritative information about conditions, symptoms and treatments – people who usually don’t live with the condition themselves, but nevertheless tell you what you should do because they know best.

This book is different. It’s based on the real-world experiences of patients. Our approach is not to tell you what to do, but to give you the hard data and the education to help you make your own decisions – to manage your own health. It’s not about doing it alone. It’s about taking control of the process and becoming the primary decision maker when it comes to your health.
.

What’s Inside

• Do You Have Chronic Back Pain? How To Find Out
• Getting Diagnosed – What Tests Are Available?
• Feeling Better – How To Find a Treatment That Works
• Taking Action – How To Run a Successful Self-Experiment
• Are You Biased? How To Make The Right Decisions
• The Numbers – What Patients Have Discovered About Back Pain
• Bleeding-Edge Research – Top 5 Breakthroughs From Scientists Around the World

Download your copy here. Happy reading!

For the interactive version of this infographic and some statistical geekery, click here.

Women walking around with no underwear?

No, this is not something from an adult site, it’s the treatment reported to be most effective in a live, online survey of 750 patients with vulvodynia (chronic vulvar pain) at CureTogether.

Yes, I also live with vulvodynia, like 18% of US women. And yes, I’ve definitely gone “free” on painful days – it’s not something a doctor ever told me, just something I found really helped.

So what are the 7 surprisingly simple treatments that patients have reported? From the infographic above:

no underwear, ice, physical therapy, “clitoral distraction”, rinsing with water after urination, going gluten-free, and doing Tai Chi

The top left quadrant shows treatments that not many people have tried but that have above-average effectiveness, so presumably if more people tried these, they would be helped (gluten-free diet, Tai Chi).

Treatments in the lower-right quadrant are ones that lots of people have tried but that have below-average effectiveness, so presumably if fewer people tried these, they would be free to find more effective treatments elsewhere (antibiotics, steroid cream).

Where did this data come from? CureTogether members have been anonymously sharing symptoms and treatments for almost 2 years now. We anonymized, analyzed, and visualized the data into infographic form to make it more accessible. To thank everyone for their contributions, we’re releasing this result back to the community for free.

This is the sixth in a series of infographics we’ll be publishing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please give your feedback or thoughts on this result in the comments below – or write to me at alexandra@curetogether.com.

Please tweet, blog, or pass this along to anyone who can benefit or is interested in Vulvodynia. Thank you!

For the interactive version of this infographic and some statistical geekery, click here.

When your back hurts, is your first thought, “Where’s the marijuana?”

I’m guessing not.

But Back Pain is the #2 condition at CureTogether, with 1188 people reporting their experiences, and this is their collective wisdom. If you look at the infographic above, the most popular and effective treatments reported are on the top right – hot packs, physical therapy, stretching, exercise, massage.

The top left quadrant shows below-average usage, but above-average effectiveness, so presumably if more people tried these, they would be helped (marijuana, Oxycodone, yoga, and Pilates).

Those in the lower-right quadrant have above-average usage but below-average effectiveness, so presumably if fewer people tried these, they would be free to find more effective treatments elsewhere (chiropractic adjustments, ice packs, Ibuprofen).

Where did this data come from? CureTogether members have been anonymously sharing symptoms and treatments for almost 2 years now. We anonymized, analyzed, and visualized the data into infographic form to make it more accessible. To thank everyone for their contributions, we’re releasing this result back to the community for free.

This is the fifth in a series of infographics we’ll be publishing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please give your feedback or thoughts on this result in the comments below – or write to me at alexandra@curetogether.com.

Please tweet, blog, or pass this along to anyone who can benefit or is interested in Back Pain. Thank you!

For the interactive version of this infographic, click here.

1,303 people have spoken. Anxiety is the biggest community at CureTogether, and here’s what these brave people have to say.

The top right square of the infographic above shows the most popular, most effective treatments for anxiety. Exercise, therapy, breathing, meditation, yoga, avoiding caffeine, relaxation, massage – the non-invasive, simple alternative answers seem to work very well.

Drugs such as Alprazolam and Lorazepam were also reported as effective, but not as many people had tried them.

If you have anxiety, does this agree with your experience?

Where did this data come from? CureTogether members have been anonymously sharing symptoms and treatments for almost 2 years now. To thank everyone for their contributions, we’re releasing this result back to the community for free.

This is the fourth in a series of infographics we’ll be publishing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please give your feedback or thoughts on this result in the comments below – or write to me at alexandra@curetogether.com.

Please tweet, blog, or pass this along to anyone who can benefit or is interested in Anxiety. Thank you!

For the interactive version of this infographic, click here.

What?

It’s true, folks. Masturbation is both popular and effective for treating insomnia. So say 849 patients who self-reported their Insomnia symptoms and treatments at CureTogether.

It doesn’t seem either scientific or appropriate to go into a personal story here, so I’ll spare you the details.

But it is interesting to note that for insomnia, some of the pharmaceutical options seem to be quite effective. We saw the opposite with Migraine and Depression, where natural alternatives beat drugs.

Where did this data come from? CureTogether members have been anonymously sharing symptoms and treatments for almost 2 years now. To thank everyone for their contributions, we’re releasing this result back to the community for free.

This is the third in a series of infographics we’ll be publishing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please give your feedback or thoughts on this result in the comments below – or write to me at alexandra@curetogether.com.

Please tweet, blog, or pass this along to anyone who can benefit or is interested in Insomnia. Thank you!

Wow, what a response.

Our depression infographic got so many tweets, blog posts, and comments that we decided to release another one.

This one is on Migraine, the condition with the most listed treatments at CureTogether. We took your excellent advice and developed an interactive version so you can click to see what all the other, unlabeled dots are.

Suffering from occasional migraines myself, I was interested to learn that sleep, darkness, and avoiding triggers like wine and MSG were reported to have the most positive effect. In terms of medications, my Tylenol bottle just doesn’t seem to cut it compared to Imitrex. Of course, I tend to just bite the bullet and wait the migraine out – no need to bother asking my doctor for a prescription.

Where did this data come from? CureTogether members have been sharing symptoms and treatments for almost 2 years now. For this infographic, information was anonymously analyzed from 941 people in our Migraine community.

To thank everyone for sharing with us, we’re releasing this result back to the community for free.

This is the second in a series of infographics we’ll be releasing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please give your feedback or thoughts on this result in the comments below – or write to me at alexandra@curetogether.com.

Please tweet, blog, or pass this along to anyone who can benefit or is interested in Migraine. Thank you!

This is how it happened.

When my amazing CureTogether co-founder Daniel Reda flipped his screen around to show me this infographic, my excitement at how beautiful it looked was quickly replaced by my curiosity for what it showed. I knew exercise, sleep, and therapy were popular and effective treatments for depression.

But a few things surprised me. Fish oil, also popular, showed up as much less effective than I expected. And light therapy, which not many people have tried, was quite effective. Take a look at it for yourself and see if anything surprises you.

Where did this data come from? CureTogether members have been sharing symptoms and treatments for almost 2 years now. For this infographic, information was anonymously analyzed from 944 people in our Depression community.

To thank everyone for sharing with us, we’re releasing this result back to the community for free.

This is the first of a line-up of infographics we’ll be releasing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please give your feedback or thoughts on this result in the comments below – or write to me at alexandra@curetogether.com. Please tweet, blog, or pass this along to anyone who can benefit or is interested in Depression. Thank you!

(NOTE: To address a question we got from Twitter, this data applies to our Depression community only, despite the testimonial from a Bipolar patient at the top of the page. Bipolar has its own community here – http://curetogether.com/Bipolar-Disorder/treatments/)

—————-

For people who want more details on the chart:
- x-axis (popularity) = the fraction of respondents who tried a given treatment
- y-axis (effectiveness) = the average rated effectiveness of a given treatment, Bayes-adjusted for the number of respondents
- Vertical grey line = the average fraction of respondents who tried each treatment
- Horizontal grey line = the average rated effectivenss of all treatments
- Quadrants – Treatments in the upper-left quadrant have below-average usage, but above-average effectiveness, so presumably more people would benefit by trying these. Those in the lower-right quadrant have above-average usage but below-average effectiveness, so presumably more people would benefit by avoiding these.

You are a part of this, too.

Just like for Anxiety, this crowdsourced guide to depression is based on input from 1000 CureTogether members with Depression.

Inside the book are insights about how to find out if you’re depressed, getting diagnosed, how to find a treatment that is most likely to work for you, running self-experiments, understanding cognitive bias in decision-making, and the latest discoveries from both patients and scientists around the world. The CureTogether Guide will help you navigate your way through Depression.

Download your copy here. We hope it helps!

.
You are a part of this.

It’s a new kind of health book that puts real-world data before authority, and teaches you how to make better decisions for your health.

Inside, you’ll find 7 insight-filled sections to help you navigate your way through Anxiety.

Download your copy here, or read on for the juicy details.
.

The Story

Health books are usually written by experts who offer authoritative information about conditions, symptoms and treatments – people who usually don’t live with the condition themselves, but nevertheless tell you what you should do because they know best.

This book is different. It’s based on the real-world experiences of patients. Our approach is not to tell you what to do, but to give you the hard data and the education to help you make your own decisions – to manage your own health. It’s not about doing it alone. It’s about taking control of the process and becoming the primary decision maker when it comes to your health.
.

What’s Inside

• Do You Have Anxiety? How To Find Out
• Getting Diagnosed – What Tests Are Available?
• Feeling Better – How To Find a Treatment That Works
• Taking Action – How To Run a Successful Self-Experiment
• Are You Biased? How To Make The Right Decisions
• The Numbers – What Patients Have Discovered About Anxiety
• Bleeding-Edge Research – Top 5 Breakthroughs From Scientists Around the World

Download your copy here. Happy reading!

Thousands of voices can create beautiful discoveries. (Photo: qthomasbower)

.
A huge thanks to the amazing CureTogether community! Sharing your health conditions, symptoms and treatments is leading to many new associations.

Many of you have been asking for more personalized recommendations, like what treatment will work best for me given my set of symptoms? I’m excited to say this is in the works! Our query masters are knee-deep in stats right now to find answers for you.

In the meantime, a gift – here are 13 more co-morbidities we found, with a significant 99% confidence interval. We hope this advances research into these conditions and sparks new questions and ideas.
.

Endometriosis – Infertility (757 people)

.

Eating Disorders – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (724 people)

Read the rest of this entry »