Category: Biohacking

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1290 and Covid Experiment

I caught a case of Covid at the very end of May that took me down hard. I’d been struggling with “long” symptoms

So I tried an experiment. A pretty crazy one at that suggested by my osteopath and supervised by a doctor.

I am using going to use a 7mg slow release nicotine patch (of the type made for smoking cessation) for the next 3-5 days to see if it impacts my over-stayed their welcome Covid symptoms. I started my experiment at 9am Saturday July 6th

Day 1283 Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs)

The principle was pretty simple but not proven yet in clinical trials.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) have been proposed as potential therapeutic targets for COVID-19. Research suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may interact with nAChRs, potentially influencing the disease’s pathophysiology[1].

Nicotine and other nAChR agonists could modulate inflammation and the immune response, offering therapeutic benefits

Please do go read the original post with lots of caveats as nicotine is an addictive substance and this is not something to try without consulting your doctor.

I was unable to do the full 7mg but cut the patches down to 3.5 to 5mg over the five days. The side effects included headaches for the first day or so and a persistent queasiness.

Within a day I was lifted out of my exhaustion (which you’d expect from something modestly stimulative even though it was a low slow release dose). By the end of the second day my persistent coughing lifted entirely. I’d been struggling with congestion and coughing after even modest exertion like a walk outside.

I was functional on the fourth and fifth day like I hadn’t been since I got Covid. You can see me go into the red on my first day (my HRV dropped significantly but my RHR was only up by a few BPM). I slowly felt better and saw better recoveries even while taking on a little bit more exertion. I pushed a little too hard and found myself back in the red on my last day.

My Whoop recovery and strain chart for the five days of experiment beginning on the 6th and ending on the 11th of July

I was really relieved to stop the patch by the end. The last day of treatment I had overextended myself so I was in the red and feeling it even as the nicotine pushed my system up. I wanted to rip it off and did eventually cave at the end of the day instead of doing it all night.

My symptoms seem to be at bay. I feel decent enough so days after wrapping even as I began menstruation this morning. I hate to report that it also improved my usually debilitating PMS which typically includes intense migraines.

I would do it again if I got Covid. I cannot imagine ever using a nicotine patch consistently. I didn’t not enjoy the extra push of energy except insofar as it got me out of the exhaustion of the illness. I feel like it would be too much if I were otherwise feeling healthy. I have no cravings or side effects after.

Honestly I’m still wrapping my head around how well this worked. A part of me is confused, indignant and angry that a substance I was taught to fear has therapeutic benefit. Updating your mental models around long held beliefs is an uncomfortable process. But it’s a heck of a lot better than long covid symptoms.

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Biohacking

Day 1284 and The Average Person

I am in the middle of a “don’t try this at home” biohacking experiment in which I am using a low dose nicotine patch to treat my week seven Covid malingering. A quick overview of the method of action.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) have been proposed as potential therapeutic targets for COVID-19. Research suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may interact with nAChRs, potentially influencing the disease’s pathophysiology.

nAChRs

I am doing alright with it. I was wary of keeping the patch on all night long (I am very sensitive to stimulants such that I won’t drink caffeine past 10am) so I removed it at about 5pm. That may have been a mistake.

Yesterday my Whoop recorded physiological stress. I wasn’t coughing, I had more capacity for exertion, and I felt generally less exhausted.

But I didn’t come down easily for sleep. I ended up taking a number of anti-inflammatory medications as well as an Ambien. My heart rate was stable but I felt “up” which I don’t care for at night.

And I did not wake up to good news. My HRV absolutely tanked. There are lots of confounding variables here in that I got good restorative sleep (medicine induced surely) but some strain has clearly been too much. 40% down isn’t a rousing endorsement.

I am also noticing a lot of chatter around addiction and whether or not it’s responsible to discuss these things. The fear that the average person is in fact prone so addiction and will have adverse affects. Which I’m sure is true. I don’t think normal people should take unnecessary risks and it’s good to have the minimum viable dose be none at all.

It’s wise to remember that I am not at all living in average circumstances nor do I have average medical conditions so I am not necessarily who you should be looking to for health advice. You should do the basics like eat more protein, lift heavy things, sleep an adequate amount, be in the sun and move around, and manage your baseline health metrics first.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1283 and nAChRs

Never one to take things laying down, I started a crazy “n of 1” experiment today. My family doctor prioritizes keeping up on literature. We’d chat about anti-inflammatory research in reputable journals.

But I am on week seven of Covid symptoms simply not clearing. I’ve been coughing when under stress or exertion, my seasonal allergies exacerbated the issue, my reconditioning of my cardiovascular system wasn’t going great and I was exhausted.

At a visit with my osteopath who helps with my chronic autoimmune issues in my spine (I’ve been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis) I mentioned my ribs felt tender and constricted from Covid coughing.

She asked me if I was familiar with the research coming out about Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and Covid-19 treatments. She’s casual like that.

Now I am a child of the internet so I’m passingly familiar with Gwen’s work documenting scientific literature on nicotine but I had not ever thought I’d try it myself.

In a joking “don’t try this at home” way my osteopath said she’d seen folks use nicotine patches for a week to shorten their Covid symptoms to some success.

Now for some caveats. In any type of crazy self treatment it’s important to consider your risks and consult a professional. Don’t do anything without your doctor’s input. Every medicinal treatment has risk and side effects.

I am using going to use a 7mg slow release nicotine patch (of the type made for smoking cessation) for the next 3-5 days to see if it impacts my over-stayed their welcome Covid symptoms. I started my experiment at 9am Saturday July 6th.

I am treating this as a “kitchen table” science experiment in which I am clearly an N of 1 from which you can only take anecdotal evidence. But maybe one data point becomes many and with the network effects of social media maybe we push forward other experiments.

Here is what I know so far thanks to searches from perplexity AI but I encountered some of the papers through mutuals on Twitter, some on forums, others I’d discussed with physicians, some were just raw dogging Google Scholar.

The AI synopsis I’m sharing isn’t meant to be conclusive just to give interested parties a starting place to see why I believe this is an experiment I’m comfortable running on myself.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) have been proposed as potential therapeutic targets for COVID-19. Research suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may interact with nAChRs, potentially influencing the disease’s pathophysiology[1].

Nicotine and other nAChR agonists could modulate inflammation and the immune response, offering therapeutic benefits[2][3].

Sources
[1] Simulations support the interaction of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
[2] Disorders of the Cholinergic System in COVID-19 Era—A Review of
[3] SARS-CoV-2 spike ectodomain targets α7 nicotinic acetylcholine …

Given that I’m working with inflammation as my primary issue which is not modulated even without Covid, I was obviously quite curious to learn about this cholinergic system and potential for up regulation. I’d seen discussions as early as 2020 about the curious fact that smokers had experienced some protection from Covid infections.

This all clicked in my head as being testable on my own without significant risk. Gwern had significantly reduced my concern about nicotine usage where previously as a child of the drug wars I’d put smoking nicotine in basically the same category of dangers as injecting heroin. It is not.

It seems it is possible we’ve got an explanation for why smokers didn’t catch covid at the rates you’d expect and they did better with the infections. We may even have things to learn from it to improve treatments.

Nicotine agonists could potentially be used to prevent inflammation in COVID-19 patients by modulating the immune response. Nicotine, a cholinergic agonist, has been shown to inhibit the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which could help mitigate the cytokine storm associated with severe COVID-19[1][2][3].

The cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, activated by nicotine, suppresses maladaptive inflammatory responses, suggesting that nicotine or similar agonists might offer therapeutic benefits in managing COVID-19-induced inflammation[3][4][5].

Sources via PerplexityAI.
[1] Nicotine and Covid
[2] Can nicotine alleviate the dysregulated inflammation in COVID-19? L
[3] Medicinal nicotine in COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome
[4] Nicotine and the nicotinic cholinergic system in COVID‐19 – PMC
[5] Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS) and Nicotine in COVID-19

Stopping a maladaptive inflammatory response is one of my top goals. If I can test it out with a cheap over the counter substance well I’m interested.

Andre Watson the CEO of Ligandal (not an investor just a fan) an AI discovery platform for precision targeting of therapies suggested a method of action for nicotine’s effect.

Nicotine and quercetin were some of the earliest predicted compounds to reduce the binding affinity of the spike protein to ACE2 — which in turn, we described the MOA of here: biorxiv.org/
TL;DR is that reducing the affinity may increase neutralizing immune response.

I do want to reinforce that I am aware nicotine is addictive. I’ve had to take drugs that form chemical dependencies in the past. I’ve used Prednisone in the less controlled phases of my spinal condition and tittering off that steroid is a nightmare. But it can be done. It is doable with a plan, careful monitoring, and supervision.

All evidence suggests this experiment isn’t long enough for me to develop a dependency let alone an addiction. I am thankfully free from any genetic predisposition to addiction in my family.

I plan to do a B3 Niacin flush at the end which is meant to help tittering. I will also be monitoring my heart rate as Nicotine has a tendency to raise your BPM so if I don’t like what I see I’ll lower dosage or stop usage.

With all that said, let’s see if it helps me out. I’ll post because it is in my nature.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1271 and Documenting Practices

The winding roads of spiritual practice often cross paths with the more practical minded subcultures interested in practicalities.

Doing a thing can be more enjoyable than documenting a thing but documenting turns out to be quite helpful in helping others learn to do things.

As we knit together our individual experiences our capacity to measure and systematize improves which in turn scales access if you are inclined to experiment. Getting a look at more than our personal n of 1 enables us to practice kitchen table science in areas prone being illegible or inscrutable.

I believe we are accelerating a number of types of revivalism thanks to the network effects of the internet colliding with religious and spiritual traditions.

One area where I am tracking this has been Silicon Valley’s exploration of meditative practices and mindfulness. I read a wonderful piece by Jake Eaton today about his experiences with jhana practices. If you are interested in learning the practicalities of this type of practice Nadia Asparouva has documented it extensively as well.

There has been a rising interest in codification of various mindful and meditative practices in a number of my syncretic cultures. Engineering dharma bum connective mental map mindfulness seems to be an archetype doing the work of documenting.

Handing people what was once hidden knowledge naturally makes some people skeptical. We’ve gone from sharing breathing practices to documenting achieving spiritual ecstasy.

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1269 and Reconditioning

I feel as if I lost a lot of ground to a gnarly case of Covid over the past couple of weeks. I had two weeks of clear infection symptoms and then a week of simply being exhausted and unable to get out of bed.

The benefit of keeping trace of one’s biometrics that I at least have some visibility into the misery. Of course, the downside is that I have visibility into how much misery. An extremely both sides of the bus meme situation.

I have a lot of reconditioning in front of me. Or at least my health data suggests that. It’s very discouraging to have health apps say you’ve had a 90% decrease in activity.

This week I slowly began the work of going back to life. I attended a policy gathering. I’ve been working on deals. I suppose I was doing that while I had symptoms too. It’s been hard as I want this to be better but I lost a lot of ground and relatively quickly.

I’m now doing all the little things one does help get your body back on track. Simply changed and reminders are most effective if you have injuries or are chronically ill.

I have little routines where I get up and do body weight squats on the hour. I’ll make sure to walk 500 steps each time I get up. I’ll touch my toes and stretch.

All these things feel very hard at the moment and I get blaring warning signals from the trackers suggesting physiological strain when I do. The slog of not giving up is a permanent part of the human condition and I refuse to let entropy win. But I am discouraged by how much work it is to do the basics. You can’t ever escape that life is just chop wood and carry water

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1264 and Party’s Over

I am going on my third week of having Covid symptoms. I don’t know if it’s time to call it “Long Covid” but my autoimmune response to it feels like it’s being dragged out.

My family doctor (an absolute gem of a general practitioner with a concierge clinic if you are ever in need in Montana) helpfully reminded me of the basics of immune response.

The infection is cleared but my immune cells did not get this memo. I’m still coughing, I’ve got clear phlegm, and I am struggling with a high respiratory rate. I am exhausted.

Yesterday I went for a short 15-20 minute stroll to get sunshine and I found myself with a very heightened respiratory rate overnight.

Apparently even small stressors like pollen count or exertion are hard when your immune response is overactive. I’ve been living with an autoimmune condition for years so while rationally I know this, it helps to be reminded.

If one is inclined to a forced metaphor, the party is over and the guests have left but the host hasn’t figured out it’s time to turn off the stereo, lock up and pick up the trash.

Calming immune responses is a tricky business. Sometimes you succeed by waiting it out as your system slowly resets to a healthy baseline. Sometimes you use more interventionist approaches with either local or systemic steroids. I try to avoid this but sometimes the only approach is the brutal one.

It’s my hope that the party being over means I can simply manage the mop up but I hope my immune cells decide to chill and get back to baseline soon.

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Biohacking

Day 1258 and Relapse

I woke up feeling reasonably good this morning. I thought perhaps my prayers have been answered. I have been managing a case of Covid for over a week so I really wanted to be turning the corner on recovery.

It’s hard fully rest with an infection and this case overlapped with a lot of big things for my portfolio companies. That excitement made it even harder to stay away from working. I was joyfully working all weekend for multiple deadlines.

I’ve not been the best behaved patient though I have stayed in bed. I thought I’d at least maintained the appropriate protocols for sleep, nutrition, supplements and medication.

What I really wanted was to go outside and enjoy the weather. June in Montana is heaven. Cool bright mornings turn into sunny dry days.

I thought that a short walk in this type of environment would be healthy. I walked the property and down our dirt road. I wasn’t out for more than twenty minutes.

Walking by our little pond fed by a creek.

It was too much. By early afternoon I was exhausted, feverish and coughing. I slept but it was the fitful half conscious sleep of the sick.

I am disappointed as I want this to be over. The pushback from supposedly health giving activity like strolling in the morning sun was immediate. It isn’t over and I’ve been punished for joyful nativity. But damn it’s a beautiful day to be alive.

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1251 and Summer Covid

I don’t know why this didn’t occur anyone earlier but this morning as I went about my news review the New York Times surfaced a piece on handling a rise in summer covid cases. My brain went huh so I took a Covid and as it turns out this viral thing is in fact just fucking Covid.

Whomp whomp.

A blast from the past. A positive Covid test!

If anyone wants to make some jokes about how I was just at a crypto convention I could use some throwback pandemic humor. I am certainly enjoying the irony.

As new variants of the coronavirus continue to gain traction, doctors and researchers are bracing for a potential rise in cases this summer. KP.2, one of these variants, now accounts for 28.5 percent of cases, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a small increase in Covid-related emergency room visits and positive tests

Summer 2024 Covid

I am naturally not thrilled. I know no one takes covid seriously anymore so protocols are lax but I’ve got an overactive immune system. I don’t want to give myself any chance at post-viral nonsense nor do I want to put anyone around me at any additional risk.

For what it’s worth I hate being sick in public so only my husband Alex has been in particular close proximity to me as my symptoms got worse. I pulled back from the conference as soon as my symptoms really hit.

I will not be leaving bed until I’m sure I’ve got this absolutely licked. I am throwing all the usual suspects in the biohackers arsenal at this thing. If you’ve got suggestions for fending off post-viral nonsense send them my way.

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1229 and Hormones

I was pleased to wake up to a near perfect recovery score on my Whoop today. Because I manage a few chronic health issues I am a bit of a stereotypical biohacker type.

I happen to be rounding the corner into my best two weeks of the month and am seeing my biometrics improve.

While it’s fun to joke about moody women, I sometimes wonder if we’ve done ourselves a disservice by insisting that our hormonal rhythms be kept outside of polite conversation.

It’s not any fairer to men to keep discussions hormonal health quiet. Culture war nonsense aside, one of our major health systems surely deserves more public discussion and advancement.

As if the bounds of social propriety simply cannot accommodate anyone discussing say the follicular phase for women or what men can do to increase testosterone. Our fucked fertility deserves better than polite Victorian euphemisms.

If you aren’t sure about the state of your hormones and feel as if you could be in better health consider this permission to learn more about yourself. Your body deserves your self knowledge.

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Biohacking Media

Day 1204 and Moral Panics

I do not care for podcasts but I listen to a Bloomberg podcast called Odd Lots for entertainment. I’m an avid participant in the niche in-group you might have once called Financial Twitter. The hosts of the podcast Joe and Tracy are part of this community as well.

Usually I listen to it for the fun expert guests who come to do commentary on their corner of the markets. Today’s episode was titled how the American workforce got hooked on adderall. Which I personally think is a very provocative title.

Over the last few years, users of the popular ADHD drug Adderall have been frustrated by regular shortages in getting their prescriptions filled. Various regulatory and supply chain factors have contributed to the inability of producers to keep up with demand. But this raises the question: why is there so much demand in the first place? How did a significant chunk of the labor force — from tech workers to Wall Streeters — begin using the drug as an aid for their work and everyday lives? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Danielle Carr, an assistant professor at the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA, who studies the history of politics of neuroscience and psychology. We discuss the history of this medicine and related medicines, what it does for the people who take it, and how market forces opened the drug up to almost anyone.

Odd Lots “Hooked on Adderall”

My impression of Danielle Carr was of a nuanced thinker with a lot of historical insight who happened to have haplessly taken on some academic moralizing about whether the wrong class of person might be abusing stimulants. I’m perhaps the wrong class of person to be commenting as I don’t use any stimulants stronger than a cup of coffee in the morning.

I was struck how the narrative eventually came to demonizing market demands in contrast to the I’m sure completely neutral national health systems. The theory being we might keep better track of the vulnerable in such a system struck me as classist. Adderall may be an American healthcare market issue only because those poor London bankers have another go to black market stimulant. We just don’t mind because they make money.

Moral panics around pharmacological intervention seem to be a flavor of the decade sort of thing. Prohibitions catch on when the wrong kind of person gets themselves into trouble of abusing something that was otherwise contained to social sanctioned consumption.

Perhaps in less inclined to judge on these things because I don’t witness the abuse but I also think paternalism is the excuse schoolmarms and aristocrats love in equal measure.