I must have jinxed myself yesterday by commenting on having signs of an upward physical trajectory. Whatever infection Alex has been battling for weeks hit me. Either that or my attempt to eat a yogurt to begin rebuilding my gut biome went very badly.
I woke up feeling decent but sore everywhere. Maybe it was delayed onset muscle soreness from the light yoga I did? I drank lemon water and meditated and got some sunlight. Still all calm on the western front. I had a coffee. I was feeling well enough that I thought let’s get in 20 grams of protein and go do some squats.
Within fifteen minutes my heart was racing, I was congested, and all the areas of my skin which had healed up so beautifully from HBOT sessions went from normal to itchy and red.
Had I accidentally introduced some intolerable form of lactobacillus or either supposedly friendly probiotic by eating a popular but high end brand of skyr? There is no way it’s the yogurt right?
It kept getting worse. I took my temperature. 99F. The actual fuck. My Whoop had noted my skin was warmer than average when I woke so maybe I should have seen this coming but natural fever seemed extreme.
Maybe it was taking a Fluconazole after my doctor notice some tearing “downstairs” at my annual physical when he was checking out my surgical scar from July.
Maybe it’s that I am on my seventh session of hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy and the results starting to compound. Protocols say it takes about ten to feel a difference and my full protocol will be sixty so I’ve got a ways to go.
Maybe it’s just the absolutely gorgeous fall weather filtering in the perfect amount of light for that ideal temperate middle ground of low heat and humidity that makes being outside a joy.
Maybe it’s just a fluke. But today I feel almost human again.
I felt joy in being the adult responsible for running the household today. I managed loads of laundry, housekeeping, a proper grooming session of my own body, a grocery run into town, a decent workout, and of course, time in the hyperbaric chamber.
My husband is still struggling mightily with whatever combination of infections, stress, and post-viral damage is ripping up his immune response. He is usually the one caring for me. But today I was able to care for us both.
My husband and I are both sick. It’s the kind of “not quite respiratory, not quite sinus, not quite right” viral infection that always seems to take twice as long to clear as you expect.
Aging and stress is part of it but so is the damage we both have from covid-19 infections that turned into pneumonia. We’ve never been the same.
The good/bad news is that everyone we know seems to have the same basic set of physical degradations that we do. Varying levels of impact are met with varying levels of healthcare and wellness routines. From peptides to hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy, no one is taking this shit sitting down.
I was already chronically ill before the world changed forever. It’s now common to have a flavor of autoimmune inflammatory chaos. I feel both less alone but much more frustrated at the crisis in American healthcare.
My medical billing codes as ankylosing spondylitis (arthritis in my spine) and psoriatic arthritis (psoriasis but it’s inside your body and it hurts!) but the tldr is constant pain, occasionally losing the capacity to walk, and the persistent exhaustion of chronic inflammation.
As we both cancel travel plans (for a charity event we’ve supported for years) and struggle to manage food and medication, I am reminded of the grief we are all carrying around.
As the world goes on with the “before times” as l memory for older generations, and the idea of any kind of positive “before” is unimaginable to the young, the grief comes and goes. The elders we stopped civilization to keep alive are dead or dying and our youth are distraught.
I remember being so angry and afraid for him when he left for cruise as lockdowns went into effect. I begged him to cancel the trip. I was afraid he would get sick or die.
He didn’t share those fears. He got stuck on the boat for an extra week or two, as no port would let them dock. He had the time of his life. I was locked in an apartment in Manhattan.
I don’t think he ever got Covid. For which I am grateful. I know far too many who did. I know many angry Zoomers grieving lost high school and college years.
Housing went up by 50% as we printed to survive the crisis. Strange times for us all and now we face the Great Ravine where the choices we made catch up to us.
My investment thesis of an increasingly chaotic world was novel when I first began and now it’s the same pitch every Tom, Dick and Harry espouses. What was once unclear is now the consensus. I am I am alive to see it and find no satisfaction in being right. The grief is all around us. Grief is for the living.
My immediate family is in poor shape. Health troubles across almost everyone along with varying degrees of emotional stress.
One tries to responsibly pursue “restorative” activities that give you back energy like meditation, light exercise or movement, and if you happen to be lucky like we are some supplemental oxygen.
The various efforts of relaxation techniques like non-sleep deep relaxation. Box breathing to interoception still has the baseline stress metrics you’d expect of a serious illness or a loss.
We spent a long time at the doctor’s yesterday as Alex and I gutted it out with our excellent physician (with AI assists) through a myriad of different tests. We were attempting to figure out why he keeps getting respiratory infections and why I’m such a tasty treat to skin bacteria.
What I don’t seem to be able to improve is my low testosterone and the flavors of migraine headache that come with the roller coaster of my luteal phase. Which is presumably a clue and we are following it.
Astonishingly my lady hormones are in tip top shape. Though the “you should have no trouble getting pregnant if we can get off the medicines that stabilize you” remarks remains a heads trip. Yes I asked.
It is not a head trip that makes one’s husband enthusiastic about the prospect. Which is fair, as we have no family support, no backup plans for me regressing physically, and the family that does support us can’t get to America. So one can see why a CEO husband with sick investor wife who would have to give up work, plus potentially messed up baby, isn’t super appealing. Anyways! TFR is a fun topic.
I started with basic supplements in the precursor category like DHEA and STRO about a year ago when my testosterone came in at a 2 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL) when it should be somewhere between 9 to 55 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL). For context, adult men typically have levels in the 240–950 ng/dL.
The one sticky widget is that my testosterone remains stubbornly low. You wouldn’t think such a raging “see you next Tuesday” such as myself would be overburdened with the feminine hormones and lacking in ball buster hormones but I am.
For the past 8 weeks I’ve been using a testosterone cream that clicks up your dose and you rub it between your thighs. I know it’s gross. So I was curious to see where I might land. And praise the Lord I am now at 15 ng/dL. From 2 to 5 to 15 is some excellent progress but still below where we’d like me to hit. So we are going to run another test and try out the tiny pellets they slice into your skin. Since I’m already used to scalpels and antibiotics I figure why not?
I slept rather poorly last night. I get anxious before medical appointments. Interfacing with America’s medical system can range from merely uncomfortable to actively hostile so I suppose some heightened vigilance isn’t irrational.
I really yearn for an uptick in qualitative metrics I associate with higher quality of life like energy for my favorite physical activities (weightlifting and hiking). The fatigue and stress from the pain, and downstream side effects are constant reminders of poor health.
So I am looking for improvements in basic markers like my CRP and Sed Rate as those inflammatory markers should coincide with the qualitative improvements.
An auspicious pair of numbers for today’s date and I started something new which has been in the works since January began today. Our long awaited hyperbaric chamber has arrived and been fully set up in our yellow barn.
A lazy boy lounger and oxygen under two atmospheres of pressure.
It feels good to begin a positive focused wellness activity after what was otherwise a chaotic week of travel, geopolitics and violence.
As expected, it is not fun living through my own investment thesis. So you better believe I test my theories on myself. I want to survive the Jackpot.
Before Trump’s inauguration, we decided to purchase a hyperbaric chamber after one of our mutuals told us about his HBOT trial at a conference in the fall. It went very well for him and the research is promising for inflammatory conditions.
Over the winter break I happened to be in a city where I could test HBOT cheaply and was very impressed with the results in only ten sessions during a flare in my autoimmune condition. Crimping from Bryan Johnson
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) involves breathing pure or nearly pure oxygen (95-100%) in a pressurized chamber at anything above atmospheric pressure (2 ATA is equivalent to being 33 feet under seawater).
The increased pressure enhances the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen, boosting oxygen levels throughout the body. The therapy aims to promote rejuvenation by increasing oxygen concentration in tissues, supporting healing, cellular repair, and vascularization.
This sent me down a rabbit hole as I did a bunch of deep dives, got some text books and came to a simple conclusion after a lot of medical papers that it’s pretty simple.
It’s almost philosophically the way of life in the mountain west. Oxygen and pressure work on the biomechanics of a functional body. Alas getting my basic market model to Montana ended up being a cluster fork of issues. We placed the order in January.
For months we waited for what we’d been told would be a 6-8 week process. Alas all hell broke loose. We had tariffs uncertainty with the importer and the OEM.
I have now, in September, after a long journey but a simple set up process, begun my first intensive protocol for autoimmune diseases on our own hyperbaric chamber.
Love your body enough to put it under pressure and take a deep breath.
I will complete a minimum of 40 sessions (5 sessions weekly) at 2 atmospheric pressures, in a hard chamber from OxyRevo with each session 90 minutes while breathing 100% oxygen for 20 minutes separated by a 5 minute break.
If you are interested and see strip mall options note that these are not consumer grade machines. The protocol requires a hard chamber to achieve that pressures. It’s quite a bit higher than soft chambers on the market.
There are risks associated with HBOT from correct pressurization issues to impacts like tinnitus. The more prepared you are to adapt to changing pressure with breathing techniques and equalization (looking to divers for these protocols) the happier your central nervous system will be.
I’ve got my over the ear noise canceling headphones on playing a Solfeggio frequencies of 396 Hz which is labled as “liberating guilt and fear” on my Endel mobile application (which I recommend though I’m not involved with it).
My father died this weekend. While I had been preparing for the possibility for sometime the reality of the moment is never what you expect.
Grief is a strange emotion. You forgive your parents but they don’t always forgive themselves. And then it’s over and everyone is free. The pain is over and the past arrived and your present is without them.
The past becomes a foreign country and you don’t speak the language and as you become middle aged you see your life reworked through success and failure and the hard costs which your ego previously obscured like too much greasepaint.
It is maudlin to stay in grief but if we do not let go of the past we will project past pains and old understandings of reality onto others that do nothing but harm.
It’s a beautiful thing to watch these huge emotions play out in your life. Death offers grand dramas when all you can offer is having built a future on the foundation they gave you.
Lots of good suggestions made up the conversation and I’ve tried all of them. Supplements like magnesium and Oxytocin. Theories of mind like the pathless path, jhanna meditation, somatic release, nervous system work, Alexander Technique, and even coaches like Joe Hudson. So many other modalities that I also use were there.
One of the one-shots mentioned was “unclenching” which has been doing numbers. I myself am trying to “do less” and even “no effort” as part of the minimum coercion effort as let’s be real my HRV (also a one shot) has been a little low.
Isn’t it delightful to be inside a set of good and positively reinforcing memes that make your obstacles disappear. I guess we should all be one-shotting so we can speed run reduced suffering.
If none of that is legible then consider poking about as it has made my life better and maybe it will make yours better too.
We often talk about solving “pain points” when doing product development and market fit work for startups. We have popular metaphors in this vein. Start a company that sells painkillers not vitamins is so ubiquitous a piece of advice I can’t even locate its original source.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how much I personally apply this motto to the pain I’ve experienced in my own life. I’ve had personal pain points (travel and miniatures cosmetics sounded small but the market proved itself out) and now I am working on a medical spa concept as a side project in our barn in Montana.
The two growth areas in America, and soon I imagine the world, is artificial intelligence and healthcare for aging populations. I’ve been particularly interested in complex chronic diseases and the holistic approach required to treat them as I myself suffer from one.
If I experience a problem my instinct is to solve it for everyone. So I figure if the data coming from Jackson Hole is to be believed I should find a way to integrate what I know well (technology and complex disease management) and use that experience help our elders age with less pain. Literally painkillers perhaps in some cases.
I found this listicle in some dreck of an SEO bot optimized website so apologies to any original bloggers but it’s a decent list of how to think through why we like this metaphor. Skip if you just want my human written personal content. I’m just experimenting with including extra content from AI for my own recording keeping.
The Reality Test: Do users actively seek solutions, or do you need to educate them?
• The Money Test: Does budget appear instantly, or do they “need to think about it”?
• The Urgency Test: Do they want it this month, or is it “maybe next quarter”?
• The Solution Test: Are they actively looking for alternatives?
• The Decision Test: Do deals close in 1-2 calls?
• The Value Test: Can they quantify the cost of the problem?
• The Team Test: Does the whole team being sold on it want it?
