I had a pretty rough anaphylactic experience over New Year’s Eve (fireworks are pretty but dusty) that has me reaching for steroids to calm the hives. My autoimmune response was awful.
Not being one to take being sick laying down, I decided to make a run to a clinic that has a hyperbaric chamber. I’ve known a number of athletes who use them as well as those who suffer from rheumatoid diseases. I signed up for ten sessions as frankly I need to recover from the horrors of the corticosteroids I took.
I feel as if I have bubbles in my joints. They move and grow and every change hurts so badly I can’t stop myself from crying.
I’ve put out a request for biohacking help as it doesn’t seem like my current routines (which have been stable enough for normal work) are doing the trick any longer.
It’s hard sometimes to tell the difference between pain itself and the fear of the pain not relenting when the pain becomes acute. I get scared that the ever increasing pain won’t be controllable.
I’ll riffle through NSAIDs, Tramadol, and the dreaded stronger options as I do box breathing and voo-hum breathes. I’m practiced at throwing my attention away from the pain but the physiological impact is the same even if my mind can distance itself.
Before I was first diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis, I had doctors try to convince me it was all in my head. “Take an Ativan!” I’ve never quite lost the fear that I won’t be taken seriously as pain management is such a clusterfork in America.
Addicts abound and doctors are often skeptical and malicious. It can feel as if those of us with chronic pain from illness will never be able to get enough distance between our genuine needs and the “drug seeking” junkies in crisis on our streets. We get treated like criminals with suspicion while zombies on the streets find other ways.
I’ve never known the supposed euphoria of an opioid like OxyContin as for me the rare occasion where I take on feels more like a brief respite from horror. There is no joy or ebullience. Only a mind of normality of function and clarity of mind which I imagine normal life is like for most people.
I’m looking for my next step in my medical care. If you’ve been watching the blog over the last few years you’ve seen my struggles with chronic health issues and the work I do to be well enough to pursue my work.
But I’m at an impasse and I know we must have more solutions than what I’ve got. Looking for a doctor or research group that may have protocols or care capacity for the autoimmune buffet of nonsense that plagues so many. I have ankylosis & psoriatic arthritis, joint pain & anaphylactic allergy issues along with migraines.
I’ve worked with woo, lifestyle and nutrition changes, supplements, osteopathy, injections and IVs, longevity science & expensive biologics to pursue the functionality I have now to work. But I long to work the hours of my youth and I don’t believe science has progressed so little that arthritis and migraines should be so painful and exhausting. So please feel free to DM on Twitter with recommendations for clinics and physicians.
Seems like everyone I talk with is extremely sick. We’ve got norovirus ripping through a bunch of populations in America and Europe. Lots of reports of flus and Covid variants taking folks with respiratory cases in my professional and personal life. And of course everyone is worried about the H5N1 the bird flu variant.
I myself am having some autoimmune flares that I’m resorting to treating with steroids which is extremely frustrating. I fear the power of immune system rebooting drugs like prednisone.
Steroids are the “nuke it from orbit” option when your system is too reactive. I try to dose it down as soon as symptoms clear but blowback sometimes means you can’t titrate off them without symptoms returning. I rarely do more than 5mg a few days in a row.l but even then I worry about its usage. Being covered in hives and unable to think from an autoimmune response is probably worse though. Minimum viable dose in all things.
You ever push yourself so hard (physically, emotionally, mentally) that you crash afterwards? This is a common human experience. It’s called an altered window of immunity. Over exert yourself and you get sick.
I’ve come to understand the Christmas Break period as my yearly window of altered immunity. One reason I like to fast during the Holy Nights is to bring down my own physical and emotional reactivity.
When basic functions feel stressful and even small involuntary processes like digestion feel inflammatory then the work of living feels toxic. At that point one hopes rest is enough to get it out of your system.
The human tendency to ignore small problems until they become big problems is surely part of a wider cycle of disease. We wait to rest and repair till it’s too late and find ourselves crashing. For everyone bobbing along on the waves of life be sure to take a deep breath before plunging back under. It just might save your life.
When the weather begins a shift to wet, cold or otherwise stormy, I feel it like some poor grandmother in a folktale.
My joints begin to ache, I feel swelling across my fascia and my ankylosis pain intensifies. Why do joints hurt when a storm system moves in? We’ve got a couple plausible explanations for all too common phenomena.
Barometric Pressure Changes: Before a rainstorm, barometric pressure (the weight of the air) typically drops. This decrease in external pressure can allow tissues surrounding the joints to expand.
Humidity and Inflammation: Rainy weather often brings high humidity, which may worsen inflammation in joints, particularly for those with conditions like arthritis.
Thanks to Perplexity the bone deep discomfort of a storm front becomes much easier to understand.
Cold conditions can stiffen joints by thickening the synovial fluid that lubricates them. Reduced blood circulation may also contribute. Changes in weather can make nerves more sensitive which amplifying pain signals.
The remedies for these changes are pretty basic. Stay warm, get your blood flowing with some light exercise, stay hydrated, stretch and take anti-inflammatory medications like NSAIDs to mitigate discomfort.
I asked Grok to draw me as a cyborg granny out in front of a storm
Prompted Grok to draw me as an arthritic cyborg granny in a rocking chair waiting and watching as a storm comes in.
A quibble I have with modern industrial living is the prevalence of overhead lighting. I know we have to tolerate the bright lights in public and institutional spaces for reasons of cost, efficiency and clarity but why on earth have we found it to be acceptable in the home?
I’m grateful our divas bring their significant cultural gravitas to this debate. Bless Mariah Carey for leading the charge on this assault on the senses. I’ll let her not terribly articulate quote from a podcast speak the truth.
”I can’t with the overhead lighting. Why do they do it to us?,” Carey, 55, said. “But overhead lighting I don’t think so honey. Please stop it!…Everywhere I go, shut the lights! I don’t want to see them no more. Overhead lighting, it makes me sick.”
However it is relatively challenging to do cool focused lighting well. Yes it possible to do overhead track lighting in ways that bring focus and don’t overwhelm your senses. But it’s harder to do right.
You’d probably have to literally light Mariah Carey for a living to do it in a way that’s comfortable for someone with sensory issues. I developed migraines in my thirties and combined with my spectrum level sensitivity to noise, sound, taste and light I don’t need to push my luck. .
Given that us mere mortals without expert lighting design have to live comfortably, I fully stand by my preference for lamps and multiple light sources in my private spaces. It’s just going to be less of a headache. Literally.
If you light from overhead with bright cool tones bulbs so you can see the details I get it. I can’t fathom why I’d want that for anything but cooking, cleaning or sewing.
When the it’s time to relax and interact you are damn right I want a nice warm lamp. Now I’ve got double the lighting. No wonder the topic gives so many of us headaches.
I’m running on fumes and would really like to say “fuck it” to both the year and my daily habits but as that’s not an option I’ll kvetch about it instead.
As optimistic as I am about 2025 (I know this isn’t a widely held view), I’ve never felt like I needed a break more than I do now.
Clearly I’m not alone. Germany’s Chancellor Scholz lost a no confidence vote setting the stage for snap elections. Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland stepped down today further weakening Justin Trudeau’s government.
And that’s just today’s news. The world’s institutions are in a state of transition and regular people like me could use just a few weeks to catch our breath.
Remember when we had “two weeks to stop the spread?” Maybe we need that for whatever the heck is going on now. Two weeks to calm your tits?
There are plenty of people screaming for a pause in artificial intelligence but I think they have it all backwards. I’d like a pause in all the politics of the world and press on towards a future where we have more insight into the world. Accelerate the future but please let me have a break from the current moment just for a bit.
I woke up at 4am with my racing heart. I looked at my Whoop biometrics and my resting heart rate was abnormally high. I’m talking 110bpm at the peak of my REM cycle. I obviously has a nightmare.
I figured that nothing could be that scary so I took my temperature. Sure enough I was running a light fever.
The last few days have been a particularly gruesome one the internet. Rapid change, institutional distrust, and chaos have led us to blood. And instead of sorrow it’s all cheers and memes.
I hope it passes quickly. Both my own fever and the one gripping the timelines. I feel in need of some time off from the world. It’s been an intense year. I pray for more introspection through advent.
The fog that surrounds violence leads to reactivity and it’s very easy to get things wrong. And the narratives surrounding this young man are both surprising and yet easily spun to cater to a number of simple biases.
One of those biases that I suspect will be warped across the news cycles is so easy to believe it’s making me suspicious.
The young man has easily accessible social media accounts some of which were still up when the news broke. I followed him on Twitter myself to see. What I found made me a little suspicious.
A centrist Penn shredded HuberBro Thiel tweeting TPOT moots futurism policy aesthetic gearporn guy adding maximum anarchy into the system as the UHC murderer does not feel right.
His GoodReads account shows a man who read a lot of health optimizations literature including quite a bit on back pain and psychedelics. His follows on Twitter were almost uncomfortably midwit thoughtfluencer types but hardly any outside the Overton window.
The Twitter profile of the suspect.
Frankly if I wanted to make make a narrative about disgruntled dangers of TechBro philosophy I’d be trying to steer this conversation into an Uncle Ted speed run to reinforce hostility towards these ideas. It’s easy to see the dark side of the agency discourse & “just do things” set of values if someone kills.
If I found medical system skepticism and Silicon Valley threatening to my interests I’d be latching onto this story as fast as I could to explain why it’s dangerous craziness and the world view should be pitchforked.
There are also very already easy narrative explanations for how an attractive man with an elite institution set of credentials could have snapped. The suspect is so normie in background and so bleak in worldview and he had back surgery and took shrooms. An iconic tweet from Landshark about ayahuasca seems prescient
