Tag: Biohacking

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Biohacking

Day 1135 and In The Red But Climbing

I’d love to know if this happens to anyone else. I find I’m easily influenced by the data that my fitness trackers share with me. Sometimes it will even affect my mood negatively. A green recovery can make me feel more optimistic.

I’m a user of both a Whoop and an Apple Watch. I’ve got a whole biohacking routine like every other Silicon Valley bro.

This morning, after a fitful seven and a half hours of sleep, my Whoop showed my recovery was in the red. My HRV was 26 which is low even my my standards.

I felt worse yesterday than I do today so it’s my hope that my Whoop is merely showing me the bad day I had after the fact. Pain can affect my recovery significantly as it’s a lot of stress. I’ll manage my way through it slowly and with lots of rest. And I’ll try not to let it get to my head. A quiet day in bed reading the internet is is a good day in my book.

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Biohacking Travel

Day 1130 and Accidental Fast

I had a series of unplanned excursions today that got slightly out of hand. A hotel didn’t work out and I found myself switching my base of operations.

In the process of moving about, I thought to myself “I’ll just have a coffee and eat later!” I fart all the time. It was 10am at that point and I’d had dinner the night before at 6pm.

Truly I sealed my own fate. I did not stop to eat for the next ten hours. I first repacked all of my clothing and other travel items. I then packed it all into a car. I then drove all over town running various errands to make sure I was prepared for the week. I didn’t want any distractions during my workweek.

Being practically minded, and hoping to avoid eating out for all meals, I ended up at a grocery store and bought a week’s worth of meal ingredients. That itself took over an hour. By then was a busy Sunday afternoon so it felt as if the entire city was doing grocery shopping at the same time as me. Fighting with folks in the parking garage made me reconsider if some people should be allowed cars at all. I was getting exasperated.

The drive to my subsequent my lodging managed to take well over an hour and a half. Traffic on the weekends right?

While I knew the lodging was up a hill it somehow didn’t occur to the “bitches be shopping” version of me at the grocery store.

The version of me that lives in reality had to schlep suitcases and a week’s worth of groceries up what my fitness tracker says is five flights of stairs. It took a few trips.

By the time I’d unpacked, put away the groceries and finally had the sense to put together a plate of cold cuts and tomatoes it was 6pm.

That number of activities doesn’t seem like it should have taken the whole day but at least I got in an accidental fast. I hadn’t planned to go an entire day but I’m sure I’ll make up for it with all the groceries I bought tomorrow.

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Travel

Day 1129 and Ambient Noises

My corner of Montana is in the cozy quiet grip of rural winter. I’ve left that quiet behind for a trip.

I’m in a city center and I have a symphonic mix of civilizational noises. The hum of idling trucks, the roar of a motorcycle zooming past, and shrieking giggling teenagers walking past all remind me that density gives vibrancy.

I have become accustomed to quiet noises of country life. Winter in Montana has a wonderful muffled quality after a snow fall. Once a storm has passed and the winds have blown out, you enjoy such peaceful stillness under the snow.

The ambient noises of life drag on my attention. Even as the city outside goes on with its day the Airbnb has its own new noises. The odd efficiency apartment half sized fridge buzzes at a volume I don’t think my refrigerator at home could manage. My fridge runs so quiet an alarm goes off if it’s left open.

Adjusting to new environmental sounds is always a nervous system challenge. The ambient noises of life get categorized by your mind eventually but the adjustment is tiring. I hope these new noises become routine soon. I’d rather it be a thrum in the background filter of my brain instead of this awful foreground of novel noises.

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Homesteading

Day 1109 and Cabin Fever

I hope the rest of America is enjoying the polar vortex that is bearing down on them. Our weather improved somewhat from from there last two days of -40 into the comparatively balmy -5.

I do feel a little bit stir crazy being inside for this long or maybe I’m just feeling a little crazy from pain. I’m feeling some intense pain in my spine and joints during this freeze. It’s unclear if the pain weather related but I’ve got no reason to be experiencing any kind of flare so my mind has tied them together.

I’m hoping that as the weather recedes for us on the western half of the country I’ll be ready to leap into action. I’m a bit antsy. I’ve been considering a number of moves as I have commitments to work on a number of portfolio and founder related initiatives as well as the most crucial #FreedomToCompute campaign.

I’d write more but I am not at the top of my game so I’ll dip back into reading and hope tomorrow is a good day.

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Community

Day 1103 and Choosing Optimism

We finally got some significant snowfall in Montana last night. We’ve had a dry and relatively warm winter, so having half a foot of light powder was good news. It seemed to put everyone I met today in spirits.

I had cause to go into town and it was all smiles everywhere we went. A quick doctor visit was all enthusiastic exchanges about how beautiful it was outside.

The universe must have picked up on my general optimism as while we were in town some friends texted let us know they were coming through on their way to the airport. The timing worked perfectly as we went over to the other side of the valley to meet up before their next bit of travel and intersected for some socializing. Football games, bingo nights and bar food certainly sounds like a nice night in America.

As much pessimism infects our daily narratives, sometimes all it takes is a snow day and being together to remind you that we’ve got of reasons for optimism.

After reading about Joel Mokyr’s Culture of Growth thesis on the importance of a positive mindset for technological progress I’m reminded again that we have to bring that mindset to daily life.

The popularity of the e/acc mindset is a reminder that we can choose optimistic narratives to reset the negative algorithmic tilt. I am grateful for every social interaction I have with others who want to discuss progress. I see commitments in lives every day to building. There is optimism everywhere from biohacking to open source software to bingo nights.

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Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1100 and New Symptoms

I am experiencing some ongoing nausea today alongside a number of odd side symptoms like body temperature disregulation. I am displeased with this development

It’s probably a cluster of symptoms related to a migraine. So I’ve taken an Imitrax. I had some sort of reaction to dinner last night (possibly allergic though to what I couldn’t say) that hasn’t quite subsided. I am in a dark room silent with an ice pack popping Zofran and praying.

I always hate when I have a new symptom as it’s scary. I don’t know if it’s a new problem or something a new spin on my existing autoimmune issues.

It’s easy for me to slip into fear as I run through a differential diagnosis. The idea that I might have a new dimension to deal with in my daily health routine triggers all my autonomic stress responses. I’ve got a handle on my existing health issues and I don’t have any desire for new ones.

There is a strange aspect of chronic disease where if you’ve reached any kind of stability or continuity you simply don’t want to mess with it. Adding in new treatments or medication is always a scary prospect. I’ve been doing bodywork that seems to have significant impact in a positive way but I’m terrified that as it improves things I’ll have down days as systems interact. I shall pray it improves soon.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1099 and Wide Ribs

I’ve started some body work recently with an osteopath to see if more muscular skeletal fixes might be helpful. I’ve only had two sessions but I’ve already learned some very interesting things about my body.

I have a wider more open rib cage apparently. The osteopath noted that I’m on the wider side of ribs and that I could do some zipping to “close” them to impact my thoracic.

I did lot of singing and voice work in my school years. It was a requirement of Waldorf curriculums not any personal preference I had myself. Diaphragmatic breathing was a big part of voice training for me and it served me well over a number of athletic hobbies over the years.

I now wonder if I was born lucky with wider ribs on average (a reasonable assumption in my mind) or if the regular practice of voice work strengthened it such that it’s now now part of my affects and thereby reshapes my entire compensatory system. Either way my ribs are open and wide and I can breath and move my posture around this fact.

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Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1092 and Responsible

Being responsible for your own life sounds like it should be a shared cultural goal. I was raised to view America as a place where we placed high cultural value on personal responsibility. Now I’m not so sure it’s a shared value for Americans at all.

I have been struggling this week with the responsibility I have to myself. I’ve been up and down with pain so excruciating I’ve struggled to think. And I’ve had a few glorious respites from the intensity. My afternoons have been a misery as my pain gets worse as the day goes on.

I don’t seem to have fully resolved what is causing my pain to be so much worse this week and I am praying it is just exacerbated by my end of year fatigue.

With that in mind I will be responsible for myself and keep this short. Hopefully I’ll be up for a year end review before the year is actually over.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1090 and Winter Breaks

I would very much like to take an extended break to restore my mind and my body. I feel as if I could use a week or two offline.

The holy nights have held a place in my heart and mind as the season for introspection. I like doing fasts during this time, but it’s not been physically wise to take an extended fast recently.

I expect 2024 to be a big year. I had lots of little things to wrap in 2023 which is impacting my capacity to fully check out for the remainder of the year. Duty calls I suppose. I am keeping my obligations to others but I may need to find a way to keep obligations to myself.

On that note, I’ll keep this short. It’s better to get back to reading and resting when my capacity is diminished.

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Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1089 and Silencing Inputs

I am doing very poorly today. All inputs into my system are being read by my senses as pain.

I’ve spent the last two or three hours in a dark room without any systems inputs but background. I’d hoped to become unconscious but was unable to sleep. It was an extended period of consciousness doing battle with pain. I didn’t set a timer or I’d be able to tell you for sure how much time I spent in this state.

I couldn’t read text on paper or watch visuals on a screen, I couldn’t listen to audio or intake spoken word without difficulty and intense focusing, nor could I tolerate novel or new smells. You’d think this would be very boring except that the intensity of the nerve outputs clouded all thought.

My body seems to be reading all changes in systems inputs as painful. I am unsure where the proximate source of my pain might be as it’s both too intense to get outside of and too diffuse to respond to mindfulness.

Typical locations like my thoracic spine hurt but I feel it in every joint as I take inventory. My intercostal muscles across my rib cage and chest are so tight I’d swear I have several broken ribs if I didn’t know better.

I’ve taken several pain medications of varying strengths (anti inflammatory and analgesic) to little effect. I had to stop watching Christmas movies with my husband sometime in the afternoon as I simply couldn’t handle the noise and sound coming from the tablet.

I don’t know how coherent my writing is at the moment and I feared I wouldn’t be able to muster any focus. I am finding it hard to look at my mobile phone screen even at the minimum brightness setting. This usually indicates a migraine but that seems like a secondary issue.

I hope this passes as I do not have time to manage this kind of symptomatic intensity. Perhaps my body knows this and is simply allowing a breakdown on a day where it’s safest to do so. In which case I may need another holiday or two to actually find a break restorative instead of as emergency maintenance.