💾 Archived View for junkserv.net › ~arachnid › gemlog › 2022-04-24Potions.gmi captured on 2022-04-28 at 18:06:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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How, in the year of our lord CurrentYear, are there still no medications that treat hot flashes?
Because hot flashes suck. They wake me up more nights than not and at least once per day I suddenly flush and overheat. It's largely a hormonal thing, I get it. But you'd think there would be SOMETHING to treat the symptom when the cause can't be addressed. There is only one (1) medication approved to treat it... a prescription only SSRI. No thank you.
Enter: Mysterious Potions.
They're not mysterious. They're not even a they. But *it*--this one tincture I have made--is definitely a potion!
I found an herbal handbook that investigates different claims for scientific evidence and sorts out what claims are folklore and what show promise, on a sliding scale of "a few small studies that may not mean anything" to "good solid evidence". It's approximately six hundred pages of dense text covering many many herbs.
Naturally, almost everything to treat a hot flash is folklore. Almost everything said to treat anything is folklore. There just isn't a lot of scientific study on a lot of this stuff. Even the herb I picked only has a small amount of evidence pointing to its use for hot flas ADJACENT things.
But nothing else helps, either, so what do I have to lose?
I've never made a tincture before. I felt like a wizard. The process literally just involved weighing dry ingredient (black cohosh in this case), calculating how much alcohol to use to get the appropriate strength for the dosage needed, and letting it macerate for a few weeks. But it made me feel like a wizard.
And now it's done. Just over 3/4 cup of Potion.
It smells disgusting. Previously I tried making it as a tea, which is less involved, but the volume per dose I had to drink was much higher and I literally could not do it because of how awful it tasted. I couldn't choke it down. Now I only need to take a half teaspoon.
Here's hoping it does literally anything.