How I Got Fancy Footnotes Working Using Bigfoot.js on SquareSpace

I respect a good footnote because I value referencing the original material.These fancy footnotes on PainScience.com and Wait But Why are helpful because they don’t pull you away from the narrative. So I just had to have similar footnotes on my SquareSpace blog. Despite many setbacks, here’s how I got them working using Bigfoot.js.

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Autism Spectrum Disorder - Research Paper

This quarter I'm in a pediatrics class. I chose autism spectrum disorder for our written research project. Autism is controversial, especially with respects to the alternative medicine therapies. Many chiropractors, nutritionists, and medical doctors make fantastic claims about what can treat autism. I have been curious to know more about the research behind these claims and was glad to finally have a legitimate excuse to really read the journal articles more deeply. I wrote it pretty quickly (so it isn't as polished as I'd like) and I had to limit it to 4-5 pages even though there are many more topics I wanted to discuss. Here's the final paper in blog form.

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Evidence-based Boulevard

Just like the book of love, the road to evidence-based medicine is long and boring. The following is an excerpt from an article on the use of black cohosh as a botanical treatment for menopause and dysmenorrhea. It illustrates the tedious process of coming to a reliable conclusion on not only whether a drug works, but exactly how much is necessary.

In clinical studies before 1996, the dose was […] equivalent to 48–140 mg of black cohosh extract per day. A recent clinical trial comparing two different dosages of Remifemin® (40 mg vs. 127 mg daily), for six months, in 116 women with menopausal complaints, found similar safety and efficacy profiles for both doses (Liske et al., 2002). Based upon the results of this trial, a recommended dose equivalent to 40 mg of black cohosh (dried root) daily is currently recommended (Liske, 1998).

Treating asthma with coffee

There was an older movie/TV show in which two unexperienced thieves inadvertently kidnapped a young girl. She experienced an asthma attack during the ordeal, and one of the robbers decided to give her a sip of coffee, which calmed her down. I brought this up during my Wilderness First Responder training as we were discussing asthma, and my instructor who is an experienced EMT, was skeptical, suggesting that it would take more coffee than was practical to have an effect. I set out to see whether he was right.

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