I think I know how you feel, and thank you very much for your posts. It's very hard for us amateurs to really get down to causation from correlation in this area. I have explored the ideas about how science becomes knowledge as part of my Philosophy PhD dissertation on the justification for valid scientific statements. That made me even more skeptical than the skeptic I already was. Can't watch those TV ads!

I'm trying to find my way much like you are.

Your statement "remember everything is a rule-out hypothesis until you find something(s) that work(s), or your condition resolves at the same time that you're trying something" really isn't even tough enough in my view. Temporal correlation is still correlation. For me the question is "what is the cause of my symptoms in my particular case?" Not "what causes these types of symptoms?" The former is way harder, but I'm a lot more likely to trust it.

TTYL