Tag: Biohacking

Categories
Travel

Day 1847 and Cardio versus Packing versus Ski Bunnies

I’ll be on the road for a portion of tomorrow. Other members of my traveling party have already pulled ahead to parts unknown, as shifting obligations and vehicle needs turned schedules this way and that. Nomads as we adapt to a new world.

Europe is in a tense state and the weather hasn’t helped much. As I’m writing, Davos is awaiting Trump speech in the Swiss mountain town.

I finished a workout in the hotel gym but my room wasn’t quite ready for me, so I went down to the lounge to take in the BBC having had my fill of Bloomberg commentary while in the gym.

Management must keep up with their bosses

You can probably spot the hotel brand and imagine easily my experience intaking the World Economic Forum by proxy as I attempt to manage my life and health in the unspooling of the order of things.

I packed up a slightly unusual range of things for my transit tomorrow, as I had been going by car but will hop a low cost carrier to recenter. Somehow this has my large luggage separated from me. I’m carrying a very fine leather duffle I recently acquired as a gift for my husband.

Will this work for my carry on and personal item?

I have gone from doing a bit of cardio bunny as I work to improve my V02 max to a pack rabbit, as I moved around this and that to be sure my cascade of items and medications were within reach and packed appropriately. And would make weight but I’ll get to it.

I’ll not end my travels as a snow bunny in Davos though I have seen rather a lot of snow in Southern Europe as far south as Greece.

Why are bunnies on my mind? Well I have to keep in mind some odd weights for the low cost carrier I’ll be using for a short hop. Just look at this guide to baggage.

3kg is a silly amount of weight for a bag. That’s the weight of a house pet like a bunmy

3kg (3 kilograms) is equivalent to approximately 6.6 pounds. While this weight is roughly the size of a medium-to-large house rabbit rather than a “small” one, it is a common weight for many everyday household items like a large bag of flour or three liters of milk. Via Perplexity and Weight of Stuff

For whatever odd reason, the carrier listed your personal item or under seat bag as needing to weigh 3kg. This is about the weight of a house rabbit.

Which is honestly not a lot. I doubt any purse I’ve ever carried is under 3kg when you account for laptop, shoes, cosmetics, wallet and other sundries. But we shall see if my backpack can do it. Nothing but pajamas and medications ought to keep it light.

Categories
Biohacking Medical Travel

Day 1846 and Doctor’s Orders

I have had a lot of experience with doctors over the last few years. A chronic autoimmune condition isn’t the sort of illness that gets “better” like a virus. It can only be managed.

I have come up with endless ways of collaborating with people who far too often believe they are more informed, powerful and intelligent than me.

Sometimes they are even right about that perception. It’s a frustrating fact of life that doctors value their status occasionally more than their patients.

Today I went to a tourist hospital renowned for its extensive offerings and professionalism. My usual interpreter (it’s in a foreign country as many nations from Mexico to Turkey to South Korea serve American patients) had a number of procedures and visits organized for me. I felt confident I’d learn a lot and maybe find new pathways to healthcare management.

I happened to have an aesthetic elective treatment first. A plastic surgeon met with me to refresh some Botox. That seemed excessive given a nurse does my light work back in Montana but why not get a professional opinion while you have the chance.

I’d intended to spend the afternoon at the hospital doing a number of more productive activities than smoothing my fine lines. I’d set up rheumatology and immunology lines of questioning and I was excited to get some holistic work done including ozone and an IV infusion of vitamins and minerals.

Alas I was stopped in my tracks by a physician who simply would not approve the IV I had set up, the ozone work, nor would she approve the alternatives I suggested (an intramuscular B vitamin shot). I made my case with the interpreter and my AI.

The doctor wouldn’t budge. She even obfuscated suggesting that glutathione was illegal though backed down when it turned out to be a malpractice issue related to compounding pharmacies.

I very much wanted to buff up my immune system, especially having chosen something elective to go first, and I could not make progress. It shut down my whole afternoon. All that was left was tests and waiting.

There was no order the doctor was willing to give for short term immune improvements unless I committed to five weeks of procedures which given it was a tourist hospital seemed a little ironic.

I am demoralized but doctors will be doctors. I never seem to manage to convince them when I really need it. Doctor’s orders are not always for the benefit of the patient. Maybe no one wanted a woman sitting around hooked up to a vitamin infusion. Who knows. I probably would have skipped the Botox though.

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking Travel

Day 1845 and Lake Effects

I feel a ray of optimism emerging like a bulb who mistimes a false spring in late winter. I am in the dead of winter and I have the first glimmers of light.

“How you do one thing is how you do everything” is an aphorism about character that would take a natural born contrarian to engage.

I made a series of small decisions to keep myself still and make use of resources and skill clusters so I didn’t have to stress myself for a timeline that I didn’t make.

I took a few days to back off into medical tourism and longevity experiments. Nothing fancy or even novel. I wanted good sleep and a classic NAD+, Myers Cocktail, essential trace minerala, glutathione, Alpha-lipoic acid. Just good clean anti-inflammatory fun.

I want the good decisions about sleep habits and nutritional choices (sea bass, shaved vegetable salad, prawns and artichokes), the good exercise decisions (mobility and V02 max if I can’t push muscle too hard without impacting my my nervous system’s vagal tone).

I feel so lucky that this is a choice I can make. I need to be in fighting shape or the compounding choices of my health will have the wrong trend line. I want to see our future.

I am breathing slowly and watching a kind of lake effect whip up the water in the pool outside giving a fluid dynamics show to anyone who loves the movement of water and wind. That makes me want to live in our present.

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1843 and Does Enya Listen to Herself In The Bath?

As a woo child of the New Age 90’s era of music, I love listening to Enya in the bathtub. Pure Moods and a hippie mother set a tone for bathing for the remainder of my life.

Alas in Montana we do not have a bathtub in any of our bathrooms. We have a hot tub but the chemicals bother my skin so I only get to enjoy a bathtub when I’m traveling.

And you better believe I have Enya downloaded on Spotify for those occasions even though I’m certain at some point we probably owned all of her music on tape and CD.

While I love the classics (who doesn’t want to sail away?) I had Wild Child come up as I was soaking up magnesium yesterday. Which is not a bad checklist for becoming present in the moment.

Ever close your eyes
Ever stop and listen
Ever feel alive
And you’ve nothing missing
You don’t need a reason
Let the day go on and on

Let the rain fall down
Everywhere around you
Give into it now
Let the day surround you
You don’t need a reason
Let the rain go on and on

What a day
What a day to take to
What a way
What a way
To make it through
What a day
What a day to take to
A wild child – Enya

I’m no wild child but I don’t need a reason to enjoy a bath or a day. Rest up and rejuvenate.

Categories
Emotional Work Preparedness

Day 1842 and What If It Is Very Different

I am trying to imagine my life being very different. If I step away from some of the areas where I have visibility what changes. I am imagining a phase change of assumptions about not only my own life but life as it goes forward.

It’s the topic we’ve all been dancing around for years and years, with crescendos coming all the more frequent. The science fiction I love so very much has different ways of portraying a jump in material conditions.

The Expanse called it The Churn. William Gibson called it The Jackpot. I wonder what we will call this period in a hundred years.

I have so much curiosity. Maybe too much. an almost childish sense of imagination has never left me even as I go about very adult life. The wonder and “what if” sensibility haven’t been crushed under cynicism even if it would be rational.

I don’t know if I feel equipped to manage what’s coming. How much of the difference will be the choices I make to life my life and how much will be forced on me. It’s a twitchy and terrifying prospect to consider just how much freedom we have against a backdrop of limited information. Only action will illuminate.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work Travel

Day 1841 and Lapping It Up

As we do our yearly family planning retreat (such as startup couple cliche) I’ve been balancing the stress of the wider chaos of the moment and my body’s turmoil.

It’s contrasted with the calm and removed relaxation of a hotel with excellent hospitality. The soft attention to detail is a blessing on a body that is not quite up to factory standards.

As we go over goals, budgets, allocations and timelines the stress is buffered by being able to take breaks to walk alongside the waterfront or swim laps in the quiet infinity pool.

That might not seem like a triumph, if you don’t know me it sounds like a stupid humble brag about my very fine life. But I’ve spent years unable to wear a bathing suit at all because of the pain cause by Lycra’s pressure on inflamed tendons and tissues. Three years ago I wrote about the bathing suit I’d never work

And today I was able to dive in and do the butterfly and the backstroke as if it were the kind of workout I do all the time. The possibility of improvement is here.

One of the planning goals is to see how far we can take my health with nutrition, sleep, physical therapy and other modalities that rely on movement and self healing over the many intense drugs I’ve needed to calm the flares. I almost believe it’s possible. And I sure plan to try.

Categories
Biohacking Media Medical

Day 1832 and Beaten With My Own Measuring Stick

It being the new year “the new thing” to talk about is “the new you!” As if you weren’t the same person as you were a few days ago. But you have this convenient convention that allows you to decide now is the time for change.

I used to call this time of year “eating disorder season” but GLP-1s have turned down the volume on that noise. We still have New Year’s resolutions and media just love having a topic tentpole to discuss new trends, habits, and opportunities.

We may not have as much of the fat chatter to contend with anymore (thankfully) but I do have reams of biometrics and plenty of concerns about my own health so the season of changing yourself remains even if the material conditions have improved. The app chatter is still in my head.

My Whoop continues to nudge me on the “aging” metrics and which ones are hurting my healthspan the most. I hide it for a peace of mind but on the latest update it is openly admitting that it’s given me goals that are impossible for me given my limitations.

It’s a relief to see the application get better but of course I’ve know the algorithm and my limitations don’t always mix. It’s been workable when I’m in Montana walking outside but it swings my numbers a lot when I’m in a small apartment in a polluted city. It’s a “short hallway” problem.

I move a lot inside (safer and less polluted) but it doesn’t those short bursts and turns as steps so I push to get more steps counted and it overwhelms my nervous system and immunocompromised state.

I am being beaten by my own measuring stick. I always suspected this was the case but at least now Whoop can talk back and tell me just how it nudges me into worry and concern. Which is a good lesson for all of us.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1830 and Itchy Twitchy Bitchy

It’s one of life’s truisms that we may wish for prestige, power and money, but none matter without your health.

“The first wealth is health” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

I don’t think it is self flattering to admit I have got some amount of respect, influence and capital. And yet every spare dollar and moment I have I spend trying to improve my health.

The other types of wealth I have don’t matter if I’m in too much pain to think or I am so regularly infected that my resting heart rate is in the mid nineties.

Yesterday I started getting what I call itchy and twitchy. It’s often the first sign of an infection that has broken through an altered window of immunity.

My entire body will itchy. Sometimes it will be accompanied by a rash like eczema. If the rash is bad enough to be opened through itching I can easily get a bad infection. The discomfort of all that makes me twitchy from the anxiety of it all.

I suspect I am itchy twitchy at the moment as I am in a city with polluted air from major construction and high air mold counts from the winter rains. It makes me want to hit the road immediately for dryer climates but I’ll take prednisone first.

That should make me very pleasant. Anyone who has taken the steroid knows it’s a joke as the drug makes everyone who takes it feel a bit crazy. And you get fat and moon faced for added insult to injury. So apologies in advance if I’m going to be a bit bitchy.

Categories
Chronicle Travel

Day 1827 and Year 6 of Daily Writing Begins

I didn’t feel like writing yesterday. That’s a weird way to start a commitment to a sixth year of writing every single day in public on this blog. I do intend to keep writing daily.

Maybe I should restart. My life was so full on the last day of the year, that the writing I had intended on doing on the last day of year five I simply couldn’t do. I fell asleep. It’s alright I had a beautiful synopsis of the emotions of the experience even if the links didn’t get passed may.

I felt the urge to sleep come on so strongly I wrapped up with a few “oh that happened too” sentences and I was out. Poof! Exhausted. Thankfully fireworks woke me up at midnight so I could ring in the new year.

I was midway into May doing a “best of” round up review by hand when that sudden “consciousness loss is imminent” feeling hit me. I’ve been driving the Dinaric Alps on an adventure that ended up in Sarajevo. I am sure I’ll write about the experience soon.

But now I have a meal and some unpacking to do. My 2026 is off to an interesting start. I’ve crossed three borders today. You can see how I might be tired.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture Medical Startups Travel

Day 1826 and Some Best of 2025 Selections

Yesterday I wrote about the experience of my daily writing experiment rounding out its fifth year. It’s been a fun and often emotional journey that I find hard to fully capture. But I’ll attempt to list a few of my favorite posts of 2025 on the last day of year.

Healthcare and Biohacking

Day 1490 and Healthcare’s Sin Eaters

Day 1468 Deciding to Go HBOT and Starting HBOT

1567 and Turkish Medical Tourism

1565 and Elephant’s Eye

1560 and Getting an HBOT

Day 1517 and Blink Blink (First Incision of 4 Scalpel Incidents in 2025

Day 1503 and Managing Healthcare Projects from Mold to Hyperbarics

Startups

Day 1486 and Is There A Tech Right

Day 1510 and Turning Valar On

Day 1542 and Future Blind

Day 1572 and Reskilling

Media

Day 1485 and A New Pogue at The New York Times

Day 1581 and Lecturing at UC Boulder on Renegade Futurism

Day 1569 and the sky above the port tuned to a dead channel

Day 1496 and Maneuver Warfare

Politics

Day 1484 and Montana’s Right to Compute Bill

Day 1549 and Productive Primates

Day 1578 and Dark Start or Energy Realism

Day 1576 and a NatCon Boomer Kicks a Townie Millennial Out of Their Hometown

Trends, Cultural and the Academy

Day 1484 and Zoomer Identity Violence Trend

Day 1479 and Liminal Industrial Transport in an Empty Frankfurt International Terminal Pod Hotel

Day 1580 and Learning By Doing or Embodied Learning for Humans

Day 1575 and Renegade Futurism

Day 1555 and Modern Machiavelli

And I got to about May and realized I didn’t feel like I needed to put more into the organization. I had 4 medical procedures involving surgery. My father died. My best startups all raised rounds to scale. You can find your own way from there. It’s been a hard year despite the wins.