I'm like that, too. I've heard that one must be "scientific" and try one thing at a time, so that if anything gets better or changes, you can tell what thing is doing it. If you do a whole bunch of things at once, how can you tell which thing helped you? So far it's been a purely hypothetical problem, though, because nothing HAS helped so I don't have to worry about which thing it was. The acid-alkaline thing makes so much sense to me. I like its elegance, and eating alkaline isn't like buying a product and trusting that it is a magic miracle medicine. I know that if I'm not even alkaline, NOTHING can function in my body as it should. All my enzymes can't fire off properly and have all their enzymatic reactions, the way they need to do if I am to think right, breathe right, move right, digest right, perceive and sense right. And an acid body is a de-mineralized body, and mineral deficiency is the door that allows a full range of diseases and dysfunctions in. You can't be acid AND have a body with all the minerals it needs to be healthy, right? I think it's impossible. About giving up: it's funny, I don't think it could be an option. I think about this a lot and wonder if there are any people battling anything - addictions, alcoholism, other diseases - who actually one day do stop trying, and never try again - people who just succumb to their illnesses and unhappiness and go down into the pit. I don't think there's ever been a full day where I've given up. There's certainly been lots of days where I haven't done what I'm trying to do - I've binged on solid food when I'm trying to fast, I've drunk beer when I'm trying to alkalize, just the other day I shoved 20 DATES in my mouth when I was trying to follow a no-sugar dietary. And there have been many moments of despair when I've LONGED to give up, give up trying to fight, certainly give up living. But generally in the morning, I wake and just think, "OK, what's next? What's the new plan? What should I TRY to do today?" I'm not even sure it's a good thing. I couldn't give up if I wanted to, and I often do want to, when it gets too bad and there's been too much failure of something I've put my trust and heart and soul in - a juice fast, for example. But I guess I won't give up until the moment I die, whenever that is, whatever it's from. Don't you give up either, Hilli. I will try to find something that works and is really truly great, so that I can tell you about it and you can have it work for you, too. I hope the paradophilus arrives today - the "next" big thing! I'll keep up the MMS and DMSO, though. I hope it's something I can give to you: "Hilli, try paradophilus. It really works." But it's just a probiotic. I'm skeptical. I've read candida experts who say that you're just wasting your money taking expensive probiotics when you still have parasites/candida - the parasites/candida will just eat it up and make it useless. These people say that one must wait UNTIL quite a bit of one's microbial overload has already been killed before one replenishes the area with friendly bacteria. These same people, however, promote a "super-powerful" probiotic called Ultra Blend that, in sufficient huge dosage, itself kills the yeast. So I spend a thousand dollars a month to find out if that were true! And it wasn't. Still, I'm so gullible and desperate and stupid that today I'm ignoring all I know and all I've heard about that, and I'm thinking, "Maybe paradophilus is different. Maybe it will be a different sort of thing." Hilli, I've been reading a lot of books on exploration recently. It was never an area of history that interested me in particular, but suddenly I am alive to the huge parallels between us and the sort of people who were driven to get to the South Pole or be the first to climb the Matterhorn. They had a spirit of resilience, of never giving up - they might fail time and time again, but as long as they lived, it was always back at the mountain, trying to climb it, until they succeeded, or died in the attempt. They were pioneers doing things that were uncharted and experimental, that weren't well-trod by lots of people before them, things that most people doubted COULD be done. They had to figure it all out for themselves AND under hard conditions. Conditions of being exhausted, of having limited food, of being in pain, often excruciating, unbelievable pain, of being solitary and self-sufficient, of being frigidly violently cold or scaldingly hot, of having to keep going because if they stopped somewhere on the mountain or in the desert, they would die there. Keeping going was their only chance to stay alive. And in fact some of them were so tired that they did just sit down on the mountain and let the avalanche freeze them to death, it was easier than getting up and climbing on, it felt good to rest, they didn't - couldn't - care any longer. They were already dead before they were dead. But there WERE also others who felt like that but had something inside them that got them to their feet again and got them out of the desert, or got them down the mountain and home again. I'm rather impressed when I read those things. It reminds me of us, don't you think? When things get tough, I think of the people who suffered a hundred degrees Fahrenheit below zero with broken legs and afflicted lungs, alone on a mountain they still had to climb (or die). And they did! It should make it a bit easier - to know just how much the spirit and body can take and still survive, and to know that at least (for now) we have shelter and some form of temperature control (although my house is 47 degree Fahrenheit as I write this, not exactly toasty warm!) and we even have food, even if it's very limited kinds and amounts. And, for now, our heads haven't just been hit by a huge Alpine boulder (or has yours? sorry!) so that's one kind of pain we're not dealing with along with all the other kinds and along with the challenges we're trying to deal with. So it's fun, reading that stuff. Love and good luck to you today.