Unsolicited medical advice is not appropriate. It suggests that the people suffering from the condition in question have put literally zero effort into solving their problem, when in reality they likely have already heard about and tried every "trick" or "alternative treatment" you're going to suggest.
Other common scenarios:
* Telling a chronic pain sufferer to "just try cannabis, it works better than pharmaceutical pain killers!"
* Suggesting [common behavioral quirk] is a very obvious sign of ADHD, and encouraging them to take Adderall.
* A whole host of "x supplement fixes y chronic condition" suggestions.
Let's not conflate "medical advice" with the suggestion on HN that you might want to look into a dietary change. That seems like a form of catastrophization.
If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem? Just because it relates to your health or body doesn't mean it's medical.
I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap.
If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not.
> If you can fix a problem by changing your diet, is it really a medical problem?
Yes, without doubt.
Scurvy is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include vitamin C.
Beriberi is a medical problem (very often) fixed by changing your diet to include more thiamine.
Quite a few people have allergic reactions to the content of their food, like celiac disease due to an allergic reaction to gluten, which is resolved by switching to a diet without that component.
Some young children got lead poisoning because they would eat paint chips which tasted sweet due to the lead content. Their medical problem is helped by switching to a non-lead paint diet, often by removing the old paint from where they live and repainting, or by moving somewhere without lead paint.
> I know people who have made this diet change and it has changed their lives. They don't snore anymore. They don't need cpap.
Snoring does not mean someone needs a CPAP machine. How were they diagnosed? How severe was it?
Was the food actually low in histamines? How low was it? Did it affect histamine levels in the blood? As I pointed out elsewhere here, the histamine variability in foods is quite high, and hard even for nutrition professionals to get right.
Is there a response curve between the amount of histamine and the amount of obstructive sleep apnea?
How do you know the cause was due to low histamine vs some other dietary change? For example, it seems excluding citrus fruits is part of a low histamine diet even though they do not contain histamine because they are thought to "trigger the release of endogenous histamine" (quoting that paper). But perhaps there is something else in the citrus - the acid content, for example - which causes the problem.
How does an low histamine diet compare to taking anti-histamines? Why should we expect the former to work if the latter does not? What is the proposed method of action?
We have only to look at the history of scurvy and vitamin C treatment to learn how important it is to understand the details of why a treatment works!
How long does it take for the change in diet to affect people? 1 day? 1 month? 1 year?
Does it work for everyone with obstructive sleep apena or only a sub-population?
> If you're curious, look into it. If you're not, you're not.
I was curious. I looked into it. There appears to be no substance behind the idea.
Unsolicited medical advice is not appropriate. It suggests that the people suffering from the condition in question have put literally zero effort into solving their problem, when in reality they likely have already heard about and tried every "trick" or "alternative treatment" you're going to suggest.
Other common scenarios:
* Telling a chronic pain sufferer to "just try cannabis, it works better than pharmaceutical pain killers!"
* Suggesting [common behavioral quirk] is a very obvious sign of ADHD, and encouraging them to take Adderall.
* A whole host of "x supplement fixes y chronic condition" suggestions.