After seeing my sadly in the recovery scores from my Whoop I felt a bit of a cortisol mitigation effort was in effect. In other words, I took a little spa day.
When I was younger and living in Chinatown above an acupuncture and massage joint that specialized in pressure point work. Going once a week probably saved my life. It was affordable and close and good.
It was always packed with the working class of the area. The prison complex wasn’t too far away, we had a precinct two blocks down, and the court buildings system is an enormous warren of humans. A lot of very intense people in tough, sometimes very physical situations.
So by comparison my body was easy work for a man who worked on hurt cops and stressed out prosecutors. White girl problems are easy.
So I’ve done a run of sauna and cold work. I’ve had a massage. I have stretched and done breath work and moved around to feel things reset their flow.
I should really remember that heat, cold, oxygen, movement and pressure really do solve most problems. Don’t forget to eat and drink.
I’ve had several day’s worth of poor sleep. My sleep debt had reached a good full night’s of rest at over 9 hours. And boy did I make it up and then some last night.
A screenshot of my Whoop’s recovery page
I wasn’t asleep all of those 15 hours according to both Whoop and Apple but it sure felt like I was in deep slumber.
With earplugs and an eye mask in, I felt dead to the world. And what’s worse is I’ve had an entire month of pooor recovery and sleep
The 4th of July is now my independence from a month of poor biometrics
Now on July 4th I have been liberated from a long month of poor biometrics and awful recovery scores. And it only took 15 hours of being in a dark cold hotel room and a build up stress, exhaustion, mistreatment and other sundry social frustrations.
Mixing more strain than recovery into my Whoop cocktail for maximum life
Today really does feel like Independence Day for me. I’ve been freed from a body weighed down by physical realities and I am now free from it.
His writing captures something in my imagination with turns of phrase like “the longest stride of soul we ever took” evoking a crossing to the harsh wakefulness of reality. And as he says “it takes so many years to wake, but will you wake for pity’s sake?”
I have been slumbering in both reality and in the metaphorical ties that bound me to others. And today is the day where all Americans ponder how our founding fathers contemplated the reality of waking to the dawn of a new experiment. The American experiment continues and we must remain awake to our role within it. I have many thoughts on this which may now soon flow having awoken from quite a sleep indeed.
Somewhere along the way I leaned into my hippie heritage and stopped wearing bras. Don’t fret, I didn’t burn them. Nor do I view it as any sort of political or fashion statement. It was the pain that did me in.
I simply could not tolerate the pain from the pressure of even the most forgiving fabric bralette. No bra fitter in the world (not even the famed Orchard Corset of the lower east side) could get around the physics of an inflamed spinal and intercostal condition. My breasts would have go free.
I do have some sense of propriety about the situation. I lock the girls up firmly for business and conservative occasions, but even then if I can find a way to style myself such that I can hide the lack of brazier I do it.
And as I pack for a summer camp out in which I will be socializing with some very conservative people indeed, I found myself humming a crass tune from my maternal grandmother’s third husband’s family.
It was a 4th of July tradition in the raucous La Flair clan (a flavor of French Canadians who oddly settled on Long Island) to host a talent show. The well endowed Boomer women of the clan, who wonderfully possess no shame, had a chorus line dance they called “Bounce Your Boobies!”
I won’t be dressing or dancing in the manner of this fantastic clan but it’s quite likely my boobs will be doing a bit of bouncing for the rest of my life.
I need to do a better job at tying up loose ends. I’ll bring up a change and then forget to do updates until I’ve concluded the experiment.
My January health reboot included changing my IL-17 biologic injection (moving from Cosentyx to Bimzlex) in the hopes of reducing my soaring inflammation markers has its last loading dose today. I take it for my psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.
I got a fresh round of bloodwork done last week and am pleased to have seen my CRP & my sed rate at the best point in some years. Subjective metrics like pain and energy are usually leading indicators for my erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein coming down. And that is my priority with pharmaceutical choices and holistic ones.
I have had a lot of negative side effects that were new to me that did show up during my Bimzelx transition. I got a meiborn gland infection on my eyelidtwice. I had to get it sliced and lanced TWICE! And I took two rounds of antibiotics (which I love as I feel terrific when I’m on doxycycline or amoxicillin).
So it’s looking good for Bimzelx even though I’m not wild about how my immune system has reacted. The eyelid stuff is scary. I’ve had folliculitis in odd places so I’ll need more topic antibiotic washes presumably. My scalp has not taken it well.
Other oddities of note. Bimzelx also hurts way more than any other injection I’ve ever gotten in my entire life. I’ve done methotrexate, all the hormones for egg retrieval, multiple biologics (Coesyntx and Humira) and nothing comes close to this kind of pain. It’s a big vial and an auto-injector so you have no control so you must muster up the willpower to hurt yourself for 45 seconds of burning pain. Because you can’t restart you’ve got to do it. I scream. It’s bad.
It does appear to be working so we shall see how the change from loading dose to regular every two month maintenance dosing goes. I don’t know if I have multiple weird infections a year in me but I do like being able to exercise and have more work capacity. I’d say on balance it’s worth it for me.
I went to bed yesterday around 3:30 or so. Oops. I could barely write a post as I was struggling to stay awake at all. I did three short paragraphs and tagged it and said good enough.
A long night of poor sleep
My sleep was not peaceful or restorative but at least it was long. The night before I was up late (ok 10:30pm or so) and I struggled to fall asleep.
Alex’s birthday party on Saturday was enough to wipe me out so badly that on Sunday I couldn’t stay up past mid-afternoon. Pathetic yes but not surprising.
I recently did a big round of bloodwork and was thrilled to see my inflammation is down significantly but I have something called inflammatory anemia. So maybe a contributing factor to my exhaustion. There are a number of odd areas that need some attention especially in my endocrine system.
The Bimzelx switch is in its 4th month so almost through the loading dosing. I have had awful side effects but the code biomarkers of CRP and Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) are significantly improved.
I still have all kinds of weird pains and compensatory biomechanical problems but I’m feeling moderately optimistic. The next steps are around the corner. And hopefully I get more deep sleep and REM sleep before I tackle it.
I am coming off multiple days of in-person interactions. It has been nice to go from Costco to committees to backyard bbq.
I am tired. I intend to rest and alas because I am doing things in the moment I have had too few moments for even a brief rest. It has been a good time.
My HRV and my RHR are way down and way up respectively. I need that to reverse so I’ll sleep it off.
I am older than my husband but only by enough (a year and change) to let me land middle aged jokes. We celebrated his birthday at Costco. We are spending Saturday grilling. We own a Subaru. I think the jig is up.
I’ve been fighting to restore my body to “factory settings” since we made the mistake of messing around with fertility treatment hormones. Sadly why our middle aged jokes don’t involve children. Ourciviccontributions and investments in founders tie us to our future for now
And in our ambitions to be prepared for giving that future everything we’ve got, we are doing more and more for our health.
I started an earlier as my body gave out earlier but we are both doing more biohacking. We are slowly building out a collection of treatments and devices that we hope will end as a medical spa serving our region.
The hyperbaric chamber for oxygen therapy we purchased in January l has finally reached American shores. More sauna and ice cycling might be in our future too. On a “in the red” day I’ve been known to hit my recovery with everything I’ve got. Heat, cold, and pressure can fix almost anything. Add in oxygen and we might just survive whatever the future throws at us.
It seems easier to send electromagnetic waves at different frequencies than create a sealed oxygen chamber but consumer is weird and the military and elite athletics tested HBOT whereas mere hippies played around with PEMF.
A temperature setting swaps for 4 separate vibration settings Delta Waves, Theta Waves (Schaumann Reponse, Alpha and Beta Waves
So it’s qualia only here on the good vibrations but I am excited to try it out. I can’t exactly feel the vibrations unlike in other clinical settings where I’ve experienced much more intense (it’s measured in gauss or Tesla) but infrared warmth is a nice experience even if the vibrations don’t do much. But I will report on it.
It’s a gorgeous breeze June Sunday in Montana. It’s the sort of day where you go to your favorite bakery for an exotic little pastry, maybe get lunch from a favorite restaurant and then go for a hike or a bike ride to marvel at the majesty in wonder.
As I am working through a new physio routine to improve compensatory pain in my trapezius muscles I was a little nervous. I wanted to adequately test that I’d found new corrective instincts without overdoing things.
I walked a favorite two mile circuit with a stead inclined of hills that eases back out into the flat valley. I felt terrific. The sun was shining but the breeze kept it cool. Truly paradise on earth.
And then within an hour or so I got an awful headache. Had I failed at reworking my compensation so badly? I checked fascia and muscle points and found my shoulders relaxed.
Then I checked my upper cervical spike and yelped. I had swapped one compensation for another and gave myself a killer headache in the process. But I didn’t have the same pain pattern or headache type and that is a win.
I am struggling with some biomechanical issues in my upper body that are intersecting poorly with the inflammation of my ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis.
The upper fibers of my trapezius muscles are killing me. I presume I have some soreness and pain as I’ve been incorporating a new slow progressive full body workout program. But a little digging is making me reassess that conclusion.
I’ve been patiently working the problem of my inflammatory issues for literally half a decade and yet I am regularly finding new information thanks to the wonders of deep research products.
Somehow I had never really researched enthesitis despite it being a fairly core symptom in my case presentation of spondyloarthropathies.
It is an inflammation where tendons and ligaments attach to the bone and I have it something fierce in my intercostals and trapezius muscles.
There are many other areas where enthesitis can occur, he says, including the area where the ribs meet the breastbone, the back of the head where it meets the neck, and in the spine in the area closest to the skin. Creaky Joints
It’s possible current pain not delayed onset muscle soreness at all. It’s enthesitis. I don’t know if my new IL-17 inhibitor is working as it should but the strain of my new workout regimen is just a part of a wider issue in my condition. I’ve got a deep dive running on exercises but right now I’m going to take a muscle relaxer (magnesium) and lay down.
