Category: Chronic Disease

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Chronic Disease Startups

Day 1519 and Steady

I am doing my best to remain steady. The world at large doesn’t make it easy. Every day we have a new crisis, impending doom and looming fascism.

I would be more inclined to reactivity if it didn’t seem much more important to pay attention to the actual problems over which I have some agency.

Some days that agency is used on frustratingly small things and others it’s the most fantastical science fiction come to life in our day to day reality. The indignities of human embodiment and the miracles of applying knowledge to problems exist in the same reality.

There is so much pretending and posturing in the process of pursuing any goal, it’s understandable that people mistake the symbols of things for the thing itself.

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Chronic Disease Media

Day 1509 and Wrapping My Arms Around The Problem

I am seeing some progress in my various home and health projects. I’ve been doing my best to remain optimistic even though I was not feeling well and the sheer amount of changes required was intimidating. But I’m seeing low progress.

An industrial hygienist is coming to do an arm test tomorrow on our basement as well as the rest of the house to confirm the extent of our mold problems. Our hope is that it’s contained to the bathroom in the basement.

If we have to do a bathroom remediation that presents an opportunity to do some renovations. While exciting that is also introducing more risk. But you can’t waste a crisis right?

Stuff I Read

The Agent Problem

CoinDesk reporting on the Libra scandal in Argentina

Politico: Voters Were Right About The Economy

Epsilon Theory “It Was Never Going to Be Me”

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1508 and Dorymaxxing

I am pushing myself to continue with the daily writing habit even as I am on a rollercoaster of health and home challenges that have put me well on the back foot.

I want to rage against the symptoms, the system that can’t solve anything, and even my own body for being tricky. But that won’t fix anything. I’m need to give the new protocols the space to work.

So it’s one foot in front of the other. Whatever is happening out there in the real world I just need to put one foot in front of the other. Or if you prefer a meme. Just keep swimming Dory.

Just keep swimming

I’m doing my best not to get it get me down. I’m afraid of the setbacks. I am afraid of the length of recovery and the potential for things to be worse. But I’ll Dorymaxx. It’s all I’ve got in me

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1506 and Breaking With Convention

I am in a challenging spot at the moment with our household mold issue and my attempts to accelerate changes in my care protocol for my autoimmune condition.

When things are challenging physically I find myself in tension. I want to share and be open in my experiment to write every single day. I am afraid that I’m doing nothing but share weakness by doing so.

I don’t want to telegraph only strain, illness, and struggle. Sure things are hard at the moment, but I am more than my current local minima conditions. Things are quite good.

Just because I feel too weak to articulate all the areas of strength doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just can’t put them front and center right now.

This frustrates and even angers me. Large long term projects and investments are thriving and rather than focus on those I am curling into the fetal position and wishing I could disappear until I’m able to advocate loudly and proudly for my wins.

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1504 and Dead of Winter

For as exciting as the last few weeks have been it’s hard to feel like as it’s the dead of winter. I’ve not gone outside in several days as we are in -20 land which probably contributes to fatigue. Thankfully it’s bright and sunny.

I don’t have anything useful to say as being in the middle of multiple health projects is a time suck. Any excess energy goes to work as there really is no way of stopping progress. I wish I could keep up as it’s exciting.

Partially because things are so “out of bounds” I can feel more comfortable prioritizing long term gains and changes. I think I can achieve a health level up and fixing it now prepares me for strain later.

I take this approach on everything now. The short term has been set by decisions in the past and the medium term is highly uncertain. Steer correctly now so future you is set up to succeed.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1502 and Always Something

When we first moved to Montana we did a pretty thorough home inspection. My husband flew in a friend who is residential contractor.

We didn’t need much remediation work. A bit of radon and we installed a state of the art water filtering system but otherwise everything from foundations to soil quality were looking good. But you can never be too sure things stay that way.

We’ve done some repairs and installations over the past two years and it would appear somewhere in there we must have had some water damage. We ran some mold tests and the reports are not good.

As we’d done so much testing before moving in we’d not done thorough assessment. It hadn’t seemed necessary. But as part of the new year’s rigorous “get a grip on autoimmune” push we did an ERMI test (done via dust collection) through an independent lab EnviroBiomics.

The Environmental Relative Moldiness Index (ERMI) test is a DNA-based method developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess indoor mold contamination by analyzing settled dust in homes.

It uses mold-specific quantitative polymerase chain reaction (MSqPCR) to identify and quantify 36 mold species, which are divided into two categories: Group 1 (associated with water-damaged homes) and Group 2 (common indoor molds not linked to water damage).

The ERMI score is calculated by subtracting the log-transformed sum of Group 2 molds from Group 1 molds, providing a single numerical value to indicate the relative moldiness of a house.

Welp. Seems like we may have some water damage somewhere. We’ve got some theories from the last two years.

ERMI Score 18.3:
Places this bedroom in the higher range of mold contamination. Typically, an ERMI above 5 is already considered higher than average. A score of 18.3 signals a strong likelihood of hidden moisture issues or longstanding mold growth.

We also ran a HERTSMI-2 test on which we scored 20. That test is a bit more salient for my autoimmune conditions. And its results were not encouraging. Running that through ChatGPT’s new Deep Research.

This test is used to gauge risk for mold-sensitive or chronically ill individuals. A value over 15 strongly suggests that the environment may be unsafe for those with mold-related illnesses or sensitivities. Re-occupancy should be delayed until remediation and follow-up testing confirm substantially reduced mold levels.

We have to do remediation of some sort though we think it’s limited to the basement. But I’ll be staying upstairs for a while if this conclusion is sound. It’s always something.

Conclusion: The contamination is significant and poses a tangible health risk. Addressing it thoroughly is crucial, particularly given your household’s health concerns.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1491 and Snappy

I am a bit snappy at the moment. Everything hurts and too much is happening. Despite my endless horizon of opportunity my circumstances tightens to the pinprick focal point of pain.

Once you get angry enough that you quote Kierkegaard in public settings it’s probably a sign to knock it off.

I don’t have much of utility to say here except any problem that comes down to information acquisition is an excellent opportunity to make use of new tools so both myself and my husband have been deep in model comparison of different reasoning chains as we try to untangle IL-17 inhibitors vs 23.

It’s a weird feeling to be watching the crisis of institutional confidence in medicine play out over the most incredible extension of knowledge and capacity in my lifetime. PubMed spelunking? Pffft nah we got Sherlock Holmes mode for free.

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Chronic Disease Politics

Day 1490 and Healthcare’s Sin Eaters

I went to see a rheumatologist today. I had the baffling experience of them wanting to actually get to know me. Which was surprisingly unhelpful in the moment but really nails vibe we’ve got with healthcare in America.

I kvetched on Twitter that I spent my week defending hot girls and open source software while I deride Big Pharma and public employee unions. That’s more of a humble brag about my priorities. But I felt bad that I picked on pharmaceuticals. I got replies. Why harsh on pharmaceuticals? And actually fair.

Drug companies are the least bad of some very bad actors. For all its faults, drug companies are not just existing to be parasitic like pharmacy benefit managers or generate wealth through regulatory capture like Epic.

If anything pharma is the sad scapegoat in healthcare. We pick one drug a decade to laud & then like clockwork do a hard reversal on it in a decade or two. Patients get hurt and doctors did their best. We saw with statins, SSRIs, opioids, adderall, and I’m sure soon GLP-1s will be next to have Netflix documentaries. Someone is always to blame and it’s usually the drug companies.

Some category is designated a sin eater for the system’s horrors. Which isn’t at all fair as all those drugs serve real needs. Sorry Oxycodone you remain a villain. But why is American in so much pain?

Which gets back to my surprise as having a doctor who wanted to get to know me. We came in with a typed up diagnostics sheet with a timeline of treatments, protocols and medications and the bastard has the audacity to ask me about the quality of my life.

I hesitate to say “well shit” because I am Protestant from Scandinavians stock because we pride ourselves on being “oh just fine”

And of course I’m the asshole who quotes Kierkegaard at my doctor. Sickness unto death right Doctor? Which I guess is a bit of a downer.

The man actually asked me if I’d consider managing my pain more aggressively. I am absolutely mogged by the audacity of the sentiment that I could suffer less.

Apparently no one scans you for drug seeking behavior when you chuckle and kneel before what God has decided for you. So that’s a good trick I guess for the less sincere.

You can really see how public perception of RFK Jr is so different from what elite narratives would like to see. People are with RFK’s righteous indignation. Why are so many suffering?

The cranks and the crazies are here because America is mostly gaslit by a nest of bad incentives. Doctors don’t want any of this. Neither do the drug companies. But someone has to be blamed and it’s usually the guys with the money. But they are trying as hard as anyone to actually come up with solutions.

Maybe no one deserves to have a righteous Kennedy come after them. But everyone feels a little bit crazy with how the system works now.

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Chronic Disease Politics

Day 1486 and Odds and Ends and Migraines

It was a busy week. I felt physically well through most of it, but yesterday and today I am struggling. I’m in bed with a migraine that I think I accidentally kicked off by enjoying a quiet walk on sunny snowpack.

Amusing that people think we don’t get enough sun for solar power

While I prefer to have illness strike on a weekend, I feel irritated that I often get my personal time used up by health issues. I very much prioritize using my good hours for work.

Which on that note, I’d love for folks to check out a bill in Montana to secure a right to compute. What started as an idea has now officially been introduced into the legislative process. It’s a big victory to have this under consideration.

I was also in the New York Times this week in a column by James Pogue. It’s my second time being interviewed by him and I think quite highly of his reporting.

A few quotes in the New York Times on the tech right, the H1B debate, and a general sense of getting back to business

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Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1483 and Trending Up

I let myself get a little shook up by some poor health news early in the month. I’ve been pushing it physically all through 2024 as let’s be real it’s an exciting time. To fully capitalize on that acceleration we are all more focused on improving our health.

I’m taking action and optimistic about where we are headed with improvements in healthcare. I was able to rapidly iterate through options and set up surprisingly effective new treatments.

As we’ve work through the significant impact of the pandemic on our understanding of post viral illness and autoimmunity, we’ve had a more systems driven approach to testing interventions beyond pharmaceuticals reach more people.

Not that all pharmaceutical interventions are bad obviously as I’m lucky to have interleukin inhibitors in my life. I was able to find a new option with my doctor thanks to help from Claude and Perplexity.

And this progress is happening across all areas of medicine. I am also incredibly bullish on the benefits of GLP-1 inhibitors and their next generations. Inflammation and metabolism are intertwined in ways we can control barely articulate beyond “mind body connection” and yet we are developing the vocabulary.

I enjoy strange adventures in the future now. I am going to be experimenting on my body as it helps me understand not only myself but the evolving opportunities in investing. Even science fiction is excited about biotechnology.

The problems I am solving for myself teach me how we will allocate resources across many industries. The energy required to power artificial intelligence and the chips required to run those models will be pulled forward by our desire for solutions to living healthy lives