Check this the hell out. Internet browsing plus real data making a positive change in my life. tl;dr: I used to get canker sores a lot, then I started taking B12 daily, and now they are much less bad.

Long version: since I’ve been a kid, I got canker sores in my mouth pretty often. They are painful. One day last year I started tracking them. Then one day this year I was browsing the internet and saw this great infographic about supplements. I noticed there’s a study about vitamin B12 helping canker sores. So I bought some B12 and kept tracking.

Every day I recorded how bad my sores were, from 0 (no sores) to 10 (terrible). Here’s a graph:

Darker red = worse. Also, if it’s light gray, that means I recorded data and I had no sores; if it’s white, I didn’t record data. Got lazy a bit. Y’know. The day I started taking B12 was June 14 2014, so in the bottom row, about midway through.

Then I compared average badness per day. In 2013 it was 1.8. In early 2014 (pre-B12) it was 3.4. After I started B12, it was 0.9. T-tested pre-B12 vs post-B12, and it was y’know significant P < .0000 etc but that’s kind of BS because for so many reasons I can’t use a T-test here (data’s not normal).

Also, there are many data sins of different magnitudes here: collecting data on arbitrary periods each year (both starting with a sore), ignoring seasonality, using colors that we probably don’t perceive linearly, scoring differently at the ends (e.g. 2 means I have a tender spot but no sore, so I really don’t mind) etc.

But! There’s theoretical backing too: I asked my dentist if B12 should help canker sores. He said, oh yeah, whole B complex is great for that kind of thing. Well dang, why didn’t anyone tell me? But anyway, now I know, and now you know too. At least for me, seems to be working.

Comments:

AbleTasman - Nov 6, 2014

This is so cool. I can’t believe you took a scientific approach to your health. Fantastic. My mom always said I got such things because I was ornery, which is true. So I’ll have to track my orneriness to see.
I use a Vitamin B Complex; think that’s the same thing.
Good onya!

h - Jan 1, 2015

This is some pretty impressive stuff.
On a *very* related note, I had a rather chronic condition that was semi-undiagnosable, but landed me in doctors' offices and on antibiotics for *years*. It was at the point where I was taking prophylactic antibiotics so I wouldn’t need more antibiotics (yay, medicine?). Needless to say, I became a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Aaaaanyways, it was a series of “People who bought this also bought…” Amazon.com jumps (plus review-reading) that got me to a supplement that has somehow solved my problem. I think I’ve been on antibiotics once in the past two years. (It turns out, if I had gone to a naturopathic doctor, they could’ve pointed me to it almost immediately, just like you and your dentist).

Now I sound like some weirdo spam reviewer, but you know me and I’m not making this stuff up. The Internet is an amazing place.

Dan - Jan 1, 2015

Internet, it’s true, Iris is a real person. (or at least a spammer with the same haircut.)

Dang! Glad that you eventually found it. Weird, huh, how you just need one bit of information, and then life gets wayyy better. But, I mean, we have all this information all the time, why is it so hard to get the right info?

Well, y’know, I’m sure someone somewhere is working on it. I hope, anyway.