Feeling nauseous is no fun. The same can be said for vomiting.

Unrelenting hiccuping — the type so persistent you have trouble eating and sleeping — is no day at the beach either.

But whether there’s sand between your toes or not, these three unpleasantries are all too often part of your days if you’ve been diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder. NMOSD’s not only a mouthful, but it’s also a diagnosis you should dread, for these symptoms are not nearly the worst of it.

The disorder can lead to vision loss; immunity-related conditions like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and myasthenia gravis; difficulty walking; paralysis; and shorten your lifespan.

While all that’s certainly scary, don’t misplace your fear.

There’s only about a 1 in 100,000 chance of a doctor ever telling you have NMOSD, according to the National Organization of Rare Disorders. In other words, you’re seven times more likely to get hit by lightning.

So why are you now reading about such a rarity instead of ways to get healthier?

It’s not, repeat not, because a study presented at the 150th Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association this September found what a Newswise article calls “a powerful connection between gut hormones and brain inflammation” even though that connection could lead to the development of “new, more targeted treatments for patients with NMOSD.” While that’s great news for disease suffers, it’s information you can’t really use.

It’s because this Newswise article is typical of the dozens of articles sent to you if you do what so many of us now do: subscribe to health-and-fitness newsletters as a way to enhance our health. That makes this article about NMOSD a suitable example to introduce another affliction far more likely to have befallen you.

Information overload.

That’s because it can occur any time you seek an answer to a problem or potential one by using your laptop or smartphone — and instead of getting a single answer you get 17 of them.

Which generally produces that same feeling NMOSD sufferers feel.

Luckily, there’s a one-question antidote, not for the nausea but IO in general. It’s the one question you must ask yourself anytime you’re reading anything health-related and will greatly reduce all types of health-related hiccups.

How do I differ from the people in the article?

That’s the question that’s essential to ask, and it’s essentially mine, though it only came to me after hearing “The Peter Attia Drive” podcast that dropped on Oct. 13. In it, Attia and his guest, Dr. David Allison, address what’s behind the recent “demonizing” of protein.

Just in case information overload has not etched this number in your memory, the RDA for protein ingestion is 0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight, meaning a 150-pound male or female needs about 55 grams of protein per day. Both Attia and Allison feel that amount is far too low for active individuals hoping to remain active and maintain good health.

Many other human-performance experts agree. Doctors Stuart Phillips and Layne Norton, for instance, suggest those who seriously work out ingest double that amount, while Attia tells all his clients regardless of their workout goals to shoot for nearly triple, 2.2 grams per kilogram per day.

An amount the Mayo Clinic calls “excessive.”

But as Allison points out, “no one [has] proved, demonstrated, or even claimed” that the established RDA for protein was the upper limit or best amount. What science has shown us, he says, is that we need protein to survive, that the RDA insures that, and that a 1928 Polish study first demonstrated this.

The six-month experiment had one healthy man and one healthy woman eat — except for a scant bit of fruit to avoid vitamin deficiencies and some fat to cook the potatoes — nothing but potatoes for that entire time. Potatoes are a poor source of protein, albeit a complete one, and by eating nothing but potatoes, the two subjects got about 0.8 grams of it for every kilogram they weighed.

Yet every time their nitrogen levels were assessed, the two were found to be in nitrogen balance.

Attia adds that later USDA-based studies corroborated the Polish study, finding 50 or so grams of protein per day did indeed keep the participants in nitrogen balance, but “if my memory serves correctly,” the participants were “lean, inactive, sedentary young men” with an average weight of 150 pounds.

Does that sound like you? I didn’t think so.

That’s why I think you have to keep asking yourself How do I differ from the people in the article? As you read any sort of study about health, nutrition, or exercising.

One last clarification: Attia expresses essentially the same opinion though he’ll advise you to “be careful what patient population you’re looking at in any study and make sure it applies to you.” While I’m going to stress that studies are rarely going to directly apply to you, so you’re goal is to glean from them what you can and then self-experiment.

And you best glean from them by frequently asking yourself — you guessed it — the above question twice highlighted in italics.