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by jodrellblank 1957 days ago
(I didn't downvote). For comparison, imagine you signed up with the username "Oracle" and posted "Fellow data storage sufferer here. I understand and share your pain. There isn't any magic pill yet but until someone invents it I can tell you I've found great comfort using the Oracle database" and a link to a "purchase Oracle" page.

You might be a well-meaning person, but you're hard to distinguish from a bot pushing a fad diet with online courses, a for-pay app, a shop, "find a dietician" services, certifications, etc. Preying on offering hope to the sick and desperate is common and people are cynical and wary of it, and even genuine well-meaning people are prone to sharing dubious alternative medicine suggestions which they honestly believe help but aren't proven to do anything more than the placebo effect. If you were a long-standing HN commentor, you'd probably get more benefit of the doubt; signing up as "fodmap" to link to an apparently for-profit fodmap service with an emotional message makes it easy to assume bad faith astroturfing at a glance - focused username, commercial link, fringe/alternative/woo treatment, claims of health cure for incurable condition, SEO style message ("As a fellow sufferer, believe me, I know, I've been there, trust me, just one easy credit card payment").

[I wrote this for your deleted comment;]

2 comments

I agree with your overall message but in this case I would like to point out one thing - a lot of fad diets were first adopted by people and then researched to see if they are helpful where as Fodmap has been specifically researched for the gut and only after it has been shown to be helpful, its now being recommended by doctors.

Obviously you should talk to your doctor before adopting the diet. It may not provide all of the nutrients that your body needs and its normally only recommended for 3 to ~6 months. Its may also not work well for some variants of IBS / IBD / other gut issues and may even be a detriment - so talk to your doctor.

Personally its been helpful for me. A lot of people also may not need to do fodmap and instead just do a elimination diet. For example you may not know it but may be suffering from lactose intolerance or gluten intolerance and so on. Probably easier to try that first as well.

I don't have an "overall message"; they asked why they were being downvoted for sharing a genuine opinion, and I explained how much the comment looks like an advert. I am already convinced that gut microbiome affects people and diet affects people.
I did remove my question because I understood that it didn't add up anything interesting to the discussion.

Thank you for answering anyway. Your comment helps me to see why my post could be seen as not well intentioned.