Tag: Biohacking

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Chronic Disease

Day 621 and Pain’s Anxiety

Before I was diagnosed with my spinal condition ankylosing spondylitis, I didn’t really understand that I was in pain. I know that sounds weird, but I just knows I felt like shit. I hadn’t yet pinpoint the origins of the crisis in my own body. I was a stranger to myself.

Back then getting a diagnosis involved a lot of questions about my mental health. Are you anxious? Would you consider taking an anxiety medication just to see if it help? Are you sure it’s not all in your head? No doctor I’m not sure of anything that’s why I’m asking you.

The thing is I did feel anxious. My central nervous system was in a perpetual state of fight or flight from the pain. I had tachycardia. I was twitchy. I wasn’t a sleeping well. I didn’t want to be touched. It hurt too much. I was exhausted all the time and felt overwhelmed that no one seemed to know what was wrong with me. I’m lucky no one asked me if I was depressed or I might have been put on Prozac.

I’m one of the lucky ones. My chronic disease has a simple blood panel and physical exam to diagnose it. It only took me a few specialists to get to a rheumatologist.

I fear I would have been given an anxiety diagnosis and told it was all in my head if I’d had something more complex. But thankfully we untangled that any anxiety or depression I felt was simply a function of being in an inflammatory condition so acute every movement was painful. You’d have a racing heart and a fear of movement or touch too if everything was painful to the touch

The thing is I am scared of my pain. I do regularly get caught in fight or flight fear responses if the pain appears and I’m not prepared for it. I am militant about certain aspects of self care and my biohacking as I fear flares. I fear the drugs that are required when it isn’t controlled. It makes me anxious to need drugs at all to control my symptoms. Especially in America where a war on drugs has made it hard to need anything stronger than Advil.

Everything about pain and it’s treatment is anxiety inducing in America. And that’s a hard comorbidity to live with in a disease. As if pain wasn’t enough, the latent fear that you might not be believed lingers.

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Biohacking

Day 606 and Recovery

As you might know, biohacking is more than just a hobby for me. It’s the way I keep on top of any remaining chronic health challenges. In particular, I love how my Whoop helps me pinpoint where I am between strain and recovery.

I had absolutely stellar recovery scores last week even as I pushed my strain significantly. I was “in the green” which meant I was getting enough rest to recover from all my activity. But I’ve had a few days of yellow “warning” recovery scores that suggest I may need extra sleep and less activity strain.

I felt it this morning when I had some anxiety hit me hard as made a run to the grocery store. If I am feeling particularly tired I can easily let myself get anxious and overwhelmed if I don’t feel I’ve got the space and time to recover myself physically. I was racing against the clock to get lunch for everyone (both Alex and our house guest) hoping I’d be home within enough time for making meal and taking shower before my usual Monday therapy power hours.

I was thus quite relieved to find that therapy was canceled. A little end of summer reprieve. All the rushing to get things done went poof as did any remaining anxiety. I didn’t need to push. I could pay attention to my recovery. I was now free to heed the edicts of the Whoop. I hope this bit of good luck puts me into the green tomorrow.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 601 and New Limits

The past couple of days have been super intense. Heck, the past month has been a lot. I passed out last night with my phone in my hand a bit after 9pm and woke up well after 8am this morning. My Whoop indicated I had high strain for the past two days and needed more recovery.

Still I went about my usual routines but soon found myself yawning and struggling to keep my eyes open after eating lunch. I felt lucky I hadn’t scheduled much today. I got back into bed figuring I would read a little bit. I kept drifting off. So much for being productive this afternoon.

One of my biggest fears is doing too much. Because I’ve been a workaholic in the past, I have a lingering sense of unease anytime I can tell I’ve been pushing myself for a few days. It used to be that my body would simply crash if I applied too much pressure, but as my health is at about 80% improved from my initial diagnosis I can no longer rely on such direct feedback.

I say that like it’s a bad thing but it’s a huge relief that I can modestly over do things and not immediately find my body crashing into a rest period. But it also means I have to be much more conscious of my own needs for rest and recovery as it’s no longer quite so obvious when I’ve done too much. This represents both a huge achievement for me and also a transitional moment in which I must find new boundaries.

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Chronic Disease

Day 591 and Normal Sunday

Having a modest disability like chronic pain (I have a form of arthritis in my spine) means I can’t always be physically active for an entire day. I need to lay down flat sometimes to relieve pressure on my spine and I can be fatigued from the persistent pain. It’s something I have to work around even if it’s not completely debilitating.

I’ve worked hard to control the disease. But it has meant a lot of days where normal activity had a poor return on the energy invested. If had a day where I was on my feet for hours at a time I’d probably pay for it the next day with extra time laying down. So I try to limit unnecessary activities.

I’m giving a lot of context that might not be necessary for regular readers of this daily chronicle that know me. But it’s not always easy for me to do what normal people take for granted. Imagine a day where you wake up, shower, cook and clean up after yourself, you go to work, you run some errands, you exercise, you come home to cook and clean some more, you care for your family and maybe you enjoy a hobby. A regular day.

I named ten activities you do without thinking. If I want to avoid hurting myself or using too much energy in one day, I have to pick two or three of those things. You might not be surprised to learn I pick showering, work and my health routines.

If I’m having a good day, I can add on additional activity or two. But it’s probably something I can do laying flat on my back. That’s how Twitter became a central nexus for socializing if you are curious.

So having given paragraphs of context I hope it allows you to understand my excitement about having an absolutely normal Sunday. This morning got up. I made food for myself. I went for a forty minute walk. I did my entire biohacking routine. I went to a nursery to see about some options for the orchard. Then I went to the grocery store with my husband and we did the shopping for the week. Then we did some chores on the new homestead. A truly astonishing about of activities for someone like me.

And even after all activity that I felt well enough for a long shower (often a painful activity as hot water swells my joints). It’s 5pm and I’ve been up and about since 8am and only laid down just now to write this post. And someone I feel totally fine.

Shortly I’ll be cooking mushroom risotto for Sunday dinner. My husband is the cook of the family but for some reason Arborio rice is his nemesis. He’s never made a decent risotto in all the time I’ve known him. Typically after a day with this much activity I’d never even consider cooking. But I’m having a normal Sunday and doesn’t it sound nice to make something a little more involved to eat?

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Biohacking

Day 583 and Inflammatory

Remember how I said I was overclocked yesterday? I felt like my entire central nervous system was on overdrive. Well I am a little less anxious today, but no less unfocused. It has been suggested to me that this may be a function of inflammatory stress.

I have in general followed a strict biohacking routine. But moving meant many of the nutritional supports and routines that keep inflammatory stress at bay were not possible. Sometimes your only option is picking up takeout. While I appreciate seed oil disrespecters as the natural intersection of left coded hippies and right coded bro-scientists sometimes the best you can do is chow down on fast food. And boy am I feeling the negative effects of that necessity.

I used all of my focus today to do my various biohacking routines to try to mop up the inflammatory mess that I think might be contributing to this overclocked emotional state. I have a spreadsheet of supplements that has stuff for me to take basically every hour (here are the highlights of my 8am hour which is normie friendly). I went hard on making sure I didn’t miss a single dose.

I also took the time to reboot other activities that should be calming. I went for a leisurely walk. I meditated. Our new power cage arrived so I will hopefully be back squatting and deadlifting soon. We’ve got plans for an infrared sauna. Our pond is fed by a mountain stream and I’d love to dredge it deep enough to enjoy it as a cold therapy dunk. Alex installed a new shower head until then so I can get a more intense cold shower.

All of this is mostly just a mental overview of where I am at and my plans to get my body stabilized over the next couple of weeks so I am at my most focused and capable once summer is over and my fall work season kicks in.

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Biohacking

Day 580 and Feeling Normal

I had quite a case of insomnia last night. Eventually around 1am I caved and took a sleeping pill. I am so glad I did as I slept straight through till noon today. And I woke up feeling, dare I say it, almost normal. I felt better than normal. I actually felt good. Clearly I needed a long, comfortable, and uninterrupted night of sleep.

My Whoop has logged a lot of sleep disturbances since we arrived in Montana which has dragged down my recovery score. It always takes a few nights before I acclimate to a place’s natural sounds. The creaky stairs or the shifting of a building becomes something your unconscious mind recognizes over time. I think I’m finally starting to adjust and feel safe in our new house.

I’d been struggling to keep my routines and rhythms through the moving and unpacking. I had horrible digestive struggles from the excess amounts of processed we ate on the road. Then I found myself overheated and itchy as a heatwave smacked into a lack of air conditioning with a side of dusty boxes. I was physically a bit of a wreck.

Naturally I am relieved to feel like my body is adjusting positively. One of the many reasons we were excited to move to Montana is the cooler weather and ample space to be outdoors. My body is in less pain when I keep it cool and active. The optimism that wilted under the heatwave is now back.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 564 and Not Exercising

Summer is supposed to be when you are outside and most active. But that’s not been true for me. I’m not entirely when I stopped working out this summer, but I suspect it was sometime this May when I got the flu. When I was in Montana I caught influenza A from my husband while we were buying our new homestead.

I was pretty under the weather for the entire month. I probably extended my suffering by being in a high stress situation for several week. I had to do things like attend a two hour property inspection while I was definitely still sick. And then a few days later I was stuck in a car for 8 hours straight back to Colorado. Thankfully my husband actually did the driving. Negotiating the emotions of buying our first house while sick wasn’t ideal either. That was arguably the most intensive part of the entire experience.

Going into May I was hiking and walking an hour a day along with several consistent months of a 3 day a week weight lifting split routine. My squats looked good and my tracker apps were pleased with my low level ambient activity. I was still struggling with fatigue but I felt like being active was surely the best way of improving my energy levels.

I’m not as convinced this is true anymore. There has been chatter for decades about post exertional malaise in various viral and autoimmune cases. It is regularly brought up now in long Covid as well. I’ve experienced some variant on and off for years whenever I have symptom flares. Even modest exertion like a short walk can lay me flat if I’m not feeling well.

As I had a lot of ups and downs in my symptoms in June in July I let even modest exercise efforts go entirely. Between traveling to hot climates like Texas and the Mediterranean I wasn’t exactly eager to be outside either. Heat is my nemesis. I’m probably one of the few people who can go spend time seaside and struggle to be outside unless I’m literally in the water. There is a reason I am so eager to move to Montana.

Looking at my various trackers and diaries the past three years I have seen aggressive declines in my physical activity levels over the summer. As heat domes and 100 degree days become the norm I just can’t tolerate a lot of time outside. The temperature barely dips below 80 even at nighttime. And if I try to be active in that kind of heat I see set backs in all my metrics.

I’ve got years of data at this point and it’s funny that I’m always at my fittest and most active in the dead of winter. Everyone else enjoys sweater weather and Christmas indulgence while I am lifting heavy, energetically watching my nutrition and reveling in the cold. Maybe you can take the Swede out of Scandinavia but you can’t take the Scandinavian out of the Swede.

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Medical

Day 553 and Itchy

Pollution in the air, chlorine in the tap water, and overflowing filters on struggling air conditioners have left me an itchy mess. Not all parts of European have clean air or water as it turns out. I’m on the Ionian Sea and let’s just say the history of close economies and socialist strong men have left a legacy of infrastructure underinvestment.

My eyes look like I’m high as a kite. I’ve got angry raised welts across my arms. I have a lymph node that got backed up and is now the size of a marble under one armpit. A few of the hives have struggled to heal over and now require antibiotics. I love needing a course of Doxycycline on the road because a sore couldn’t fight off some exotic invader. No wonder they put enough chlorine in the water to scent an entire Olympic size pool. It’s clearly not enough.

Travel has always been a challenge when you are disabled. The indignity of finding yourself with seeping weeping yellow teardrops isn’t very relaxing. My travel pharmacy is working overtime as I carefully mix doses of Benadryl, Hydroxyzine, and Cortisone creams. And my travel cosmetics simply cannot fix the deep sunken blue eye bags that have developed from rubbing in antihistamines and spritzing in eye drops.

I really hope that no one at customs decides to get too curious about why I look so utterly fucked. I’m not entirely sure “I’m sensitive to pollution” is that believable to someone for whom this level of irritants is normal.

In less than a month I’ll be moving into the homestead in Montana. I’m dreaming of the clean air and sparkling rivers. I hope I can stay out for sometime. If I never have to leave “the last best place” on earth I’ll be happy.

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Medical

Day 545 and Stretched Time

Time has never acted like it is linear in my observation. It extends and stretches when you wish it could speed by. And it slows and circles back when you would most prefer it go quickly. Time is relative is a good joke, but also might be more related to a curse.

As I was waiting for a food delivery order today I could feel time unspooling. It stretched on into two episodes of some engaging but fundamentally disinteresting Netflix show. My head began to hurt. I remember taking an aspirin and getting a snack. I recall a phone call made to the delivery service order. And then my sense of linearity starts to fray. I’m not sure what happened next or in what order.

I think it was clear a migraine was coming on in the middle of this first act of swollen stretching time. But I couldn’t tell you for sure. Once pain hooks up with time it requires a Buddha or someone enlightened on the ways of Jhana. Still I tried to push myself out of the path of this time. Why not ordered a pizza as a replacement meal. That might be quick? I blamed the blooming migraine and it’s sister nausea on a lack of food. But in reality I was past the point of being helped. I was simply trying to avoid the oncoming path of the migraine.

I recall a pizza arriving but not the original delivery order. I made an attempt to eat. But I was in the grips of the time expanding migraine now. I took an Imitrax. I had some CBD. Perhaps terrapins and triptans could convince my mind that the moments of pain were short and fleeting. That was my best hope for experiencing the migraine in a positive way.

I put on a face mask. I sunk into a mindfulness practice. I noticed and turned over the kinds of discomforts I found myself in one by one. The emotional fears that I wanted distance rose up. The pain that bubbled around my body tightened, giving me a rationale for not wanting to being touched. A mind that wanted to drift far from others overlapped with my normal mind, this mind wasn’t forced to endure the noisy input from the world. All those experiences rose and burst forth and dissipated. Pain, distance, and fear came and went.

Consciousness seemed possible again. I had the sense that I could articulate some of what happened to me over the past three hours. That perhaps I could codify it in writing. It wouldn’t be as vivid but it would be there. The fear and failure and disprovals still existed but less acutely. The pressure on my mind had become less swollen. Time wasn’t threatening to extend out any other direction but forward. And maybe I could finally enjoy a bite to eat again. It has been five hours total since the migraine began.

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Chronic Disease

Day 540 and No Pain

I’ve come to accept an ambient level of pain as part of my daily existence. I’ve logged over fourteen hundred discrete pain measurements over a three year period. It’s likely one been in pain for a bit longer but those are the documented years since I had a diagnosis and began working to overcome it.

I’ve only had a handful of days where I’ve logged below a three. The pain scale most of the medial industry uses is from 1-10 with 4-6 being moderate pain and 10 being unbearable give me the opioids pain.

I typically log somewhere between four on a good day and seven by it’s end. I’ll usually have an eight or a nine a few times a month. Those knock me flat and I won’t be able to get out of bed. I can work and do basics when I’m at a five or six but it’s very tiring. And frankly it took a lot of mindfulness work to learn to work through pain.

Pain is actually exhausting. It’s hard to even begin to describe how much it reduces your total capacity. Articulating pain has eluded much finer writers than I. Just because one can live through it doesn’t mean one should.

To have had a morning of relief felt truly miraculous. It was sadly short lived. Some stresses hit my day and my pain is back up to a four. I can live with a four. I have been for sometime. But to finally have seen the light of having a pain free day after years of struggling will sustain me for a while. To know that it’s possible. It felt like a miracle.