Category: Medical

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Internet Culture Medical

Day 1439 and Landshark’s Prophecy

I don’t like to write too much about developing news especially when it is an emotional topic like murder. The assassination of United Health Care insurance group CEO Brian Thompson last week was horrific. Today’s news that the manhunt found a person of interest Luigi Mangione is exploding into chaotic narratives.

The fog that surrounds violence leads to reactivity and it’s very easy to get things wrong. And the narratives surrounding this young man are both surprising and yet easily spun to cater to a number of simple biases.

One of those biases that I suspect will be warped across the news cycles is so easy to believe it’s making me suspicious.

The young man has easily accessible social media accounts some of which were still up when the news broke. I followed him on Twitter myself to see. What I found made me a little suspicious.

A centrist Penn shredded HuberBro Thiel tweeting TPOT moots futurism policy aesthetic gearporn guy adding maximum anarchy into the system as the UHC murderer does not feel right.

@almostmedia

His GoodReads account shows a man who read a lot of health optimizations literature including quite a bit on back pain and psychedelics. His follows on Twitter were almost uncomfortably midwit thoughtfluencer types but hardly any outside the Overton window.

The Twitter profile of the suspect.

Frankly if I wanted to make make a narrative about disgruntled dangers of TechBro philosophy I’d be trying to steer this conversation into an Uncle Ted speed run to reinforce hostility towards these ideas. It’s easy to see the dark side of the agency discourse & “just do things” set of values if someone kills.

If I found medical system skepticism and Silicon Valley threatening to my interests I’d be latching onto this story as fast as I could to explain why it’s dangerous craziness and the world view should be pitchforked.

There are also very already easy narrative explanations for how an attractive man with an elite institution set of credentials could have snapped. The suspect is so normie in background and so bleak in worldview and he had back surgery and took shrooms. An iconic tweet from Landshark about ayahuasca seems prescient

Categories
Medical Politics

Day 1411 and Fever Dreams

I’m not quite sure how I got a bug but I seem to be running a fever. It’s possible it’s passing and I’m on the mend but I still feel a little “delulu” as the kids says.

I was taking a constitutional walk Saturday after eating and my heart rate spiked to 180bpm. I wasn’t exerting myself in a way that would normally bring it above 90.

I have a habit of walking after meals as I feel it aids digesting. Nothing intense as it’s more of a habit than exercise. So I was surprised to find myself getting faint. I found myself on the ground.

I don’t take it particularly seriously. I blamed PMS and the stress of the last two weeks. But then I got a terrible night of sleep and my Whoop score matched how I felt.

I spent Sunday faffing about on the internet as watching reality television. I was definitely sick. What else was there to do but shitpoast and watch the price of Bitcoin go up.

Now that felt like a fever dream. If you are a crypto true believer you have experienced more than a few boom and bust cycles. Holding on tight is part of the game.

I suspect that we are in for more of a ride and I was not one to get too ahead in other bull runs. But I did let myself buy a bunch of cosmetics so I’d look for a recovery in LVMH stock if there are enough women who hold Bitcoin.

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 1375 and Titration

My joyful excitement over finally wearing a bathing suit I’d never worn? The peaceful swim in the salty sea ended in disaster within just a few days.

On Friday the allergic and autoimmune symptoms were so bad I took 5mg prednisone. On Saturday they were no better and I upped the dose by 2.5mg to 7.5mg. I moved forward my absurdly expensive biologic injection by a day. I haven’t been able to convince my health insurance to get them more frequently so it’s a risk.

I’m doing better today. My pain is abated to an almost unnoticeable level at a 2. That’s rare for me. And it makes me want to rush into as much work, chores and activity as possible just to enjoy it.

I’m typically working with a 5-6 level of pain on any given day but I can work (with medication) up to a 7 within reason. Past 8 I’m in bed and struggling.

The downside is of course that prednisone just sucks. It messes up your appetite. You balloon up almost instantly with side effects like moon face. And your body develops a dependency quite rapidly.

Titration off of steroids like prednisone require a steady and slow discipline so you don’t get “blow back” as it can make your symptoms even worse.

I’ll have titration for a few days ahead of me. But maybe I’ll get to enjoy the lack of pain. Already I’ve cleaned for an hour, done laundry, checked off a number of small “to do” list items and I am blessedly free of the exhaustion that comes from working with moderate to severe pain that is my normal daily experience.

I was sent a study in the journal Nature about a team who used CAR T therapies to achieve total remission in 3 patients. And I see hope on the horizon.

One woman and two men with severe autoimmune conditions have gone into remission after being treated with bioengineered and CRISPR-modified immune cells1. The three individuals from China are the first people with autoimmune disorders to be treated with engineered immune cells created from donor cells, rather than ones collected from their own bodies. Nature

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Medical

Day 1373 and Anaphylaxis Maybe

I don’t know what I did but I’m like 50% of the way towards an anaphylactic reaction. I was exposed to salt water, a sunscreen whose ingredients I didn’t vet as carefully as normal (foreign language) and a few environmental factors that could potentially have contributed.

I’d post a picture here but it’s not something I’d relish having a permanent home on the internet if you feel me. Imagine bee stung lips but not in the sexy cosmetics way. Then apply that level of red inflammatory tissue to my entire face, chest, arms and other delicate areas.

I sucked back 5mg of prednisone which I loathe but I’m in no position to be picky. I don’t have an epi-pen with me but my throat isn’t closing off so it’s probably overkill.

A cortisone shot would hit the spot though I’m sure. I also took 50mg of Benadryl. That’s why I’m posting so early in the day as it’s hard to say if this pharmaceutical combination will result in me having Trump on steroids energy or passing out from antihistamine energy

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 1367 and Proper Names

My mother always insisted pharmaceuticals and supplements be called ny their chemical composites rather than a company’s brand name for it. She believed medicine shouldn’t requiring marketing & branding.

Instead of Benadryl it was diphenhydramine. For a headache we used ibuprofen not Advil. Acetaminophen was the proper name not Tylenol.

She taught me what went into popular brand name medication like DayQuil and I learned the ratios of guaiphenesin to dextromethorphan. Always take the minimum viable dose she’d say. And if I only had a cough I didn’t a fever reducer.

America is lucky to have a thriving generic medicine market. If you are a Costco shopper you can buy thousands of tablets of every crucial over the counter medication at just a few cents per dose.

There is a new series from healthcare publisher Trade Offs about issues in generic medicine manufacturing. It’s well worth your time getting to know more about how we came to have generic medicine (the Hatch-Waxman Act) and where the weaknesses are in the business of supplying these crucial medicines.

Take the time to read more on the issues as it’s been forty years of struggle for access and safety and we are experiencing shortages and supply chain risk that is unprecedented.

Categories
Medical

Day 1357 and Light It Up

It’s been a weird couple of days for me. It’s been a weird couple of days for just about everyone. At least all of my electronics are intact and no one has tried to kill me right?

I was hoping I’d be on the mend for this pneumonia like thing I’ve had for a few days. I took a Z pack on advice of my doctor. It’s a bit better but I’m still coughing. I’ve got my voice back at least. I keep hoping better medicine will arrive but I’m not getting my hopes up.

I’m going to lay low. I’ll keep it short. Maybe tomorrow I will have more to say and better lung capacity. I’ll keep it light. Lightening up. It’s better than lighting it up.

Categories
Medical

1354 and Better Access

I get some comfort when I see someone with substantially more resources than me use the same tools as me. Bryan Johnson tracks his sleep with Whoop. So do I.

You’d think there would be more variance but largely the tide of turning health technology into consumer technology has been to increase access. If you are interested in building better health habits we can use the same tools.

I am so grateful for the access I have to understanding my own body. It used to be considered quite rude to question doctors but as with any profession some are better at it than others.

Thanks to the work of the open internet and the tooling of artificial intelligence I cross check an astonishing amount of medical information. With a little work and the right questions and intelligent person can do basic differential diagnostics using Claude and Perplexity.

Networking together public papers, handy upper funnel content strategy of the Mayo Clinic, and the database of Drugs.com has been a real boon to involved patients who want to double check things.

Be skeptical of credentialism and gatekeeping in medicine. While everyone wants safe and responsible medical care there are plenty of well entrenched interests that don’t want you to do more for yourself. We deliberately keep the population of doctors limited in America. Professional organizations exist to protect themselves. But everyone deserves the tools to be healthier.

Categories
Medical

Day 1352 and a Dry Cough

I don’t know where I picked it up but the back to work and back to school season seems to also mean back to petty respiratory infection season. I’ve got a bad dry cough that is so intense I feel like I pulled a muscle in my left intercostal rib area.

I don’t feel terribly sick and all of my biometrics are within normal range. It’s just this horrible rough dry cough that seems to have tweaked my side so badly I’m contemplating wrapping my rib cage with a bandage.

I haven’t had a broken rib in sometime but this is as close to the feeling as I recall. I’d lost my voice a bit yesterday (been doing a bit more taking than usual as it’s fall) and pushing through it might have been a poor decision.

The other possibility is that the left intercostal pain is related to my inflammatory condition and it’s moved from its normal residence in my spine. I have very low pain in my spine at the moment so anything is possible.

I’ll lay low this weekend and hope it goes away on its own. Maybe the antitussive cough syrup will provide some relief.

Categories
Medical

Day 1331 and Reboot

Yesterday was a bad day for me physically. Unexpectedly awful pain caught me off guard. I went to a doctor today. It’s always hard to say what anything is about with bodies.

I am sleeping all of it off today. I figure no matter how overwhelmed one might be physically, if you can sleep it’s bound to help.

It’s two days in row where more than the basics of putting down a few paragraphs is a struggle. If it comes to three days I’ll probably have to dig in on it. I don’t want to write nor do I have much to say. I want to feel better.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1330 and Unexpectedly Awful

I’ve been on a very steady health trajectory for the last six weeks or so after I kicked my lingering Covid symptoms from an infection I picked up at the beginning of the summer. Alas today I found myself with a significant pain flare.

I can barely focus on simple tasks like writing the pain is so forceful. Usually I have some warning with pain as it’s a symptom of an autoimmune inflammatory condition. If I over stress myself I’ll have consequences a few days later just like a regular person.

But today I went from working out to flat on my back in bed taking the highest doses of medication I’ve got. And I still at a 7 or 8 pain wise. I don’t quite know what to do about it expect as I’m not comfortable taking more medication.

I’m hoping it’s an anomaly and I’ll feel better tomorrow. I wish I could provide a better accounting of the sudden misery. But honestly the pain is so bad this is the best I can manage. Please no one worry as I don’t have the capacity to respond right now. I just can’t think clearly enough to write about anything but the pain so I’m stuck with chronicling it. And I’ve got a habit to maintain here where I write every day.