Tag: Chronic Disease

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Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1565 and Elephant’s Eye

I love bathing cultures of all kinds. It’s the beauty girl in me. I’ve been lucky to have worked in a number of wellness and fitness settings professionally and it’s privileged me to experiences that make one feel deeply human.

The modern Korean spas are dazzling and as enjoyable to me as natural Rocky Mountain hot springs. Baltic and Nordic sauna feels like home. One day I’d like to do a Japanese Onsen.

Being in Istanbul I wanted a chance to experience the Turkish hammams. If I was a bucket list sort of person this would be on it.

In a past life I worked on the Standard Hotels whose Miami property has a local spin on hammam culture. I loved the baths and cisterns with the heated floors.

But I’d not had the pleasure of experiencing the real thing until today.

The elephants eye

The domed architecture with the elephants eye lighting is a wonder of the world. Humanity has been finding ways to incorporate beauty into uplifting our bodily function for all of recorded history.

The cistern

To lay on warmed marble and look up at the light while cocooned in warmth and water is a fine way to be embodied. And for a little aside for a certain set would you believe the name of the hammam? It was qualia. If that isn’t the inverse tugging at me what else could it possibly be.

Categories
Biohacking Travel

Day 1563 and On The Road

Life has been screaming loudly at me to pay attention to hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy.

Concurrently we are moving through a massive global economic reorganization that impacts how one plans for even local businesses like a med spa.

So while we’ve purchased our first chamber before the tariffs have gone into effect, it seems reasonable to get ahead of the game and begin the sourcing process.

Now I know this sounds crazy, but I’m driving through Greece to visit a factory in Istanbul that manufactures some of the best HBOT options available.

Sharing the road with sheep

Any good road trip is filled with unexpected surprises like sharing the road with sheep but by tomorrow I should be in a slightly more urban setting.

Categories
Finance Medical Travel

Day 1562 and Istanbul

In a twist that one of my friends described as “an extremely Julie situation” I’m heading to Istanbul tomorrow. I’m in Europe so I’m actually going to drive. Any recommendations for hotels, great meals and must see sights are most welcome.

How I ended up on this last minute surprise journey is a long involved story that includes spotting a maintenance issue on a hyperbaric chamber, having a friendly mutual who swears by HBOT email the CEO to troubleshoot, and a long Twitter conversation to do said troubleshooting.

This then turned into an offer of a tour of the factory by their team (since we are in the market as we plan out our Montana medical spa) that was topped off by an offer to discuss the experience on my favorite podcast.

Apparently manufacturing complex medical equipment in this new era of tariffs and bilateral trade agreements is a topic of interest to many people as Turkey may end up a better trading partner than China for many categories of sophisticated equipment.

The Trump administration is making attempts to reorient more of the world under our trade & defense umbrella rather than China is obviously on everyone’s mind. Turkey is an advanced manufacturing industry from which I have imported in the distant past for textiles so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from this trip.

One of the machines I’ll be checking out
Categories
Biohacking Medical

1560 and Signs to Act

I’ve been holding myself a bit back from the world as I’ve been trying to take care of myself and lay low. Too much system input and a spate of bad luck (housing and health issues) made for a bumpy time.

So while I’ve been steadily attempting to stay online for some information flow my epistemic hygiene has mostly consisted of “staying offline” and working through routines that provide positive feedback loops.

I’ve been keenly interested in hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy from both my very effective first set of treatments and the experiences I’ve seen in my own social circle. Everyone from local Bozeman friends (mostly men) working through injuries and chronic issues to tech’s favorite health billionaire Bryan Johnson have shared their enthusiasm for the therapy. It quite frankly just works.

We’ve acquired one (and am researching another provider that Bryan himself owns) as I’m exploring businesses that would allow us to bring them to Montana. Step one will be letting our friends come use ours in the barn! S

tep 100? Maybe MilFred Industries ends up with a wellness brand. I’ve certainly got extensive experience in every adjacent category from fitness (Equinox) to branded wellness (Goop) and direct to consumer cosmetics (Stowaway) so anything is possible.

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 1559 and Auto Pilot

I like routines as much as the next autist. Which is to say I like them quite a lot. But I don’t care for being on autopilot as I go through my day.

Being present feels better than disassociating from the moment. I can’t help but feel like running a subroutine with little attention is a bit like falling away from myself.

I was in a hyperbaric chamber oxygen treatment session today and found myself struggling to breathe. The chamber I am using has an oxygen concentrator which is meant to flow at 100%. But I could barely feel anything in the tubes and found myself taking the mask off to get a breath. The ambient air for comparison is 21%.

Had I been on autopilot maybe I wouldn’t have noticed. I think there was an issue with the valves in the chamber but the technicians didn’t seem to take my explanations particularly seriously.

They kept insisting that it automatically adjusted to my breathing. I kept trying to increase the flow using different breathing techniques like Wim Hoff and square breathing but nothing seemed to work.

I still feel off. Like I’ve got altitude sickness or pneumonia. I can’t catch my breath. If anyone knows anything about HPOTech I’d love to know if it being at 23% means anything so I can figure out if there is a valve issue or if that was just it being at the end of the session.

Categories
Politics

Day 1556 and Market Mania and Mold

I’ve had a week of poor sleep that feels like it’s catching up with me. My mood is sour and my mind is mush. This sort of state leaves me with anxiety.

The running joke in the family is that anytime the markets are about to go off I feel it in my body long before it hits the Bloomberg terminal.

I vividly remember the day Silicon Valley Bank collapsed as I had a terrible migraine. I had a sense in the days before I can only describe as snowblind. An informational blizzard of such density and intensity it turned every vantage into a blinding sameness.

It’s possible I’m a mess as the whole week was a mixture of market mania thanks to “Liberation Day” tariffs along with other personal life challenges like mold remediation.

I feel anxious about everything which is to say I am not anxious about anything. It’s simply pervasive. If past market issues caused snowblindness this feels more like swamp gas. It stinks, is favored by conspiratorial types and is a fantastic excuse for seeing things you shouldn’t.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1552 and Mold Updates

Over the winter we did a mold test on our bedroom after I had had a batch of sub-optimal bloodwork and flares in my autoimmune condition. We wanted to be thorough in assessing potential reasons for any issues from environmental to pharmaceutical.

I was suspicious that mold would be a culprit. Or perhaps I did not want it to be a culprit. Mold has always seemed like an excuse the professionally sick lean on like a crutch. You can imagine some worried well Goop reading white woman blaming mold.

I don’t know if this is engrained ableism on my part (lol) but no one wants to be that annoying sick woman with the litany of vague issues plaguing her life. And yes I fear this about myself because I do have to manage an autoimmune condition.

So I went into mold testing with some cynicism. It’s mike making a claim you’ve got a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Sure both mold and fibromyalgia are real but I’ve learned from experience that you must avoid both lest you be seen as someone unserious.

The wall next to bed.

Alas it has turned out to be serious. It took most of the winter to work through the breaking down the walls part but once Alex began pulling back the walls it was dramatic and easy to spot.

The bedroom getting ripped apartment.

As it turns out the wall on my side of the bed has quite a bit of mold types growing happily. As best we can tell it must be some type of small leak in the pipes.

Gnarly white spores

There’s a couple hydronic heater pipes right by the baseboards so the current theory is maybe one developed a tiny pinhole leak for a bit that sealed itself back up. Don’t ask me about that one as it’s on Alex.

His plan for now is to remediate it, patch things back up, fog the room and have the carpets steam cleaned. Which is a bigger job than we might like but much better than it could have been.

Categories
Aesthetics Medical

Day 1547 and Fragrance Free

Going to a spa or a hair appointment has an added layer of stress when you’ve got skin allergies.

I don’t need clean or organic beauty (though I do prefer it). It’s not about being fancy so much as I need it to be free of synthetic fragrances like Limonene.

Limonene is a naturally occurring, colorless liquid terpene hydrocarbon (C10H16) found in citrus fruits and other plants, known for its citrus scent and used as a flavoring agent, solvent, and in various products like cleaning products, cosmetics, and supplements

Somehow I became allergic over the years to a number of fragrances both natural and synthetic. A clean beauty list of “no no”ingredients has become common as everyone from Sephora’s to BeautyPie agreed on things like keeping products free of paraben, sulphate and Methylisothiazol.

It’s a little harder to justify not including citrus or lavender unless you are trying to cater to the most sensitive skin. Both are quite popular for all kinds of personal care. I have to be careful of almost all soaps.

Some of my interest in preparedness (and in travel size cosmetics) surely comes from having to carry around basics from shampoo to shea butter. It’s a pain to have to consider but also a pleasure to always be prepared for any scenario.

Categories
Medical Politics

Day 1544 and Ownership

Americans are big fans of private property; or so our reputation says. But we’ve got a lot of exceptions, rules and regulations how we exercise our rights in that regard.

From zoning laws to bodily sovereignty, restrictions on what you can do with your “stuff” really runs the gamut in America.

I refused to join security clearance service Clear or take part in genetic testing at 23andMe because I simply didn’t trust that my genetic and biometric data wouldn’t end up being sold to a private equity shop in the event of bankruptcy. Which alas is exactly what is happening to 23andMe.

I don’t care for the state having my biometrics but at least it’s possible to advocate medical rights and personal privacy. The TSA and the State Department have me cleared for TSAPre and Trusted Traveler.

I don’t love it but I’ve got some rights that leviathan is meant to abide by. I don’t believe we’ve yet found a way to bind a corporation to a similar term of service. But the cyperpunk future seems more likely to give us less control not more.

Between the law of the low road and our current tendency toward “the idiot plot” in all areas of life it seems like ownership of our bodies and its data is a pipe dream. Hell you can’t even keep a Signal group chat secure anymore as any old idiot (or savvy Machiavellian) can drop in a journalist.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1536 and Backward to Move Forward

Much as the winter has been hard on everyone in my close circle, I don’t particularly want spring to arrive. I’d rather have a pleasant winter follow the unpleasant one instead.

I woke up to fresh snowfall this morning after a hard night. Some previous stressor is making my hair shed. Pain has wrapped itself tightly around my intercostal as it radiates from my thoracic spine. I feel as if I’m fighting a light infection as I ran a fever yesterday and today.

I only have a few days till my next loading dose of my new biologic drug Bimzelx which is a new type of IL-17 inhibitor for my ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis. Bimzelx targets both IL-17A and IL-17F, while my previous protocol Cosentyx targets only IL-17A.

Changing medications is a whole thing that introduces way more unexpected problems even with the best of planning. See for instance getting my eyelid sliced open twice to manage an infection. Neat right?

Oh and don’t forget the mold issue. Figuring a solution to our master bedroom and downstairs mold issues means we’ve got some destruction and renovation that we probably can’t accomplish before the summer.

Which is a bit of a bummer as our guest floor isn’t as well air conditioned. Add in the late evening light and I expect the next two seasons will be challenging to make progress during. But sometimes you have to go backwards to fix existing problems in order to move forward.