Tag: Heat

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 2018 and Getting in Writing Reps In My Pressure Tube

I am a wreck. But now that everyone is discovering the value of daily writing (get in the repetition before the AI harms your skill), I have to gut it out as usual when I’ve got little in the way of cogent thought.

In an attempt to recover, I’m in a hyperbaric chamber sucking back oxygen under two atmospheres of pressure and I still can’t get my heart to stop pounding. Damned drugs.

It’s 100 degrees outside which probably doesn’t, help but even with oxygen, an eye mask, a soothing Endel NSDR session delivered by Bose noise canceling headphones, I could not get my heart rate under 100 consistently.

I wish I had a better theory than having over extended myself by traveling from mountain to swamp and desert to sea and then back again. Work and family call me, and they are not ever in the same place. It’s been a season of enormous wins but the price is being paid now.

It would seem that I’ve found my way to my first full system cascade failure since I went off my IL-17 inhibitor and onto a peptide regime with hormonal support.

I’ve had four glorious months of being able to act like I’m a reasonably healthy woman. Then I returned from a Fourth of July celebration in Utah to Montana and immediately fell apart.

My physician suggested the dreaded prednisone as well as a cycle of doxycycline. Goody goody gum drops. Both notably raise resting heart rates.

Want to see how bad? Get a look at this chart of horror and pharmaceutical malice. I woke up around my usual time and my heart has been pounding all night (no wonder prednisone makes people go nuts), my HRV registered as an 8 (average at my age should be 40-50) and this only registered as kinda in the green because I’ve had a week of it being in the mid teens. So yeah what the actual fuck. What do I even have?

The worst Whoop recording I’ve ever had

Maybe I just need to quietly let the steroids tamp down any inflammation and let the antibiotics kill off any bacteria that have decided to colonize me but I won’t lie I am terrified that those good months were a fleeting moment and this is my new normal.

Thankfully I know in my rational mind I’m in my luteal phase of hormonal horrors and I’ll get bloodwork as soon as my menstrual cycle lets me bleed.

It’s likely I’ll be in need of some new hormonal pellets sliced into my ass and any infection or inflammation is just a function of having gone a bit too hard and too fast in my glee that I can feel good again.

Categories
Culture Travel

Day 2004 and Heatwave Scandals

I’m in the middle of a miserable heatwave that is cooking Europe. You probably know it’s a heatwave over on the continent even in America as anytime Europe has a heatwave, the internet starts debating whether Europe has a degrowth mindset or if all this bitching is just Americans misunderstanding European culture & using anecdotal evidence. Even Europeans get upset at how this makes them look.

I’ve been hiding out from the heatwave in a hotel room. I am one of the lucky ones. Europe is as diverse as America so it’s a little silly to discuss it as a whole but only 20% of Europe’s housing has air conditioning. Germany is at 3%. The United Kingdom is at 5%. Honestly the mind reels as in America 90% of our housing has air conditioning even if we can’t all afford to run it.

It’s not just the housing either. A hotel room with strong air conditioning is a rarity in Western Europe. They will claim they have air conditioning at corporate chains and in Airbnbs, but it is not always the air conditioning you’d expect in America where you have more control.

In Europe you have a few options generally. A corporate hotel will be controlled by a central HVAC system. They may pretend that you can change it but in Germany they won’t let you go below 72 degrees at a Marriott. Ask a United Airlines pilot in Frankfurt what block of hotels they stay at to get a decent night sleep. It’s a nightmare and hacks are numerous but usually fruitless.

Your other options are finding independent hotels or Airbnbs with a mini-split. But good luck with that. The Germans and the French will tell you off for running it. There are towns where you need to show a medical need. I once had this happen to me.

So yes it’s usual that I’m in a comfortable hotel with a central HVAC system with individual room controls (not a mini-split) that allows me to get it down to 18C. That’s pretty unusual.

Why am I so lucky as to have air conditioning in a European hotel room that is central air and not a mini-split? Well I picked the hotel that the diplomats stay at in the capital. They don’t suffer at all.

The private small independent hotel I am at has NGOs staffers constantly winding people in and out of. It is a well maintained beauty of an independent hotel in an era of corporate standards. So it has a wiff of the old patrician smell to it and they enjoy their perks.

There are zoomers outside protesting corruption but inside technocrats and policy analysts and other bureaucrats enjoy cool temperatures at their control as they go about their work being high minded about democracy and equity.

Alas that isn’t a perk that everyone even working for the European Commission enjoys. While Ursula Von Der Leyen isn’t in control of much, she exerts influence and power over culture and expectations in Europe she doesn’t suffer herself.

During the current record-breaking European heatwave, the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels experienced an AC system failure — or forced shutdown — on Friday, June 27.

Staff on floors 1–7 received an urgent text message at midday reading: “BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day” The Express

I’m glad my hotel was allowed keep its cool since her lower tier staffers don’t have that luxury. I understand why it’s a scandal. French and German cultural leaders can discuss their hospitals and schools without air conditioning with as much pride as they like. I am not buying it. Europe can fix this problem if it likes.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 1976 and Ionian Island Ferries

Trains, planes and automobiles are nice but it’s not really summer till you have been on a boat. That’s right, I’m on a motherfucking boat. Well, I’m on ferry so the favored class of boat of certain Saturday Night Live cast mates.

I’m headed to a Greek island to relax with some friends. One of us came partially by train, one by ferry and car, and one by puddle jumper plane.

We’ve run the gamut of transportation across Europe to make it to a favored island known for its views, its caves, and of course its clear Ionian blue.

It’s been an adventure organized somewhat last minute as various itineraries made it clear we’d be within a few hundred miles of each other. So an Airbnb villa was procured at the last minute and the race was on to find our way to the island.

Grecian blue decks out the back/front of one of the many ferries leaving Port of Igoumenitsa

Igoumenitsa is the chief port of Thesprotia and Epirus, and one of the largest passenger ports of Greece, connecting northwestern Mainland Greece with the Ionian Islands and Italy via Wikipedia

I’m looking forward to a few leisurely days on the water, hopefully involving a few more boats but of the more manageable island hopping varietals. One can’t exactly jump off of a ferry into clear blue waters.

The chaos of loading a ferry fully of cars, mopeds, and tourist buses is an amusing sight. I’m not quite sure how the Greeks manage such an intensely maritime environment but it’s certainly a fun way to travel.

Small barking dogs, screaming children, sullen tweens, and irritated elders all being screamed at by deck hands is quite a way to start a relaxing time.

Categories
Community Preparedness

Day 1940 and Spring Runoff Season

I joked to my husband that he better get back before nightfall. He had been in the capital Helena for our work on the digital innovation task force. Sunset was at 8:20 or so. The days are getting longer.

The day’s work went at a good clip as the weather coming in was on all minds. We were in for another large late spring snowstorm.

In our corner of the valley we got maybe a couple of wet inches but even up the canyons it was more than a foot.

It kept snowing all night through early morning. It was also quite cold. We went from lashing dry wind and the first fire of the season to snow in no time. Our AQI was poor from the fire south down range of the valley. Hopefully this helped.

It was snowing when I woke but by the time I showered and finished a cleaning round, it was already shockingly bright. Bright blue clear skies and full sun acted like a solar snowblower.

The clouds cleared so quickly and the reflection of the high altitude sun glinting off the white melting snow had me applying sunscreen twice.

We had warm days recently so the spring melt of April is already rising. Adding to snow today was looking at a picture of the challenges of our summer ahead.

Our snow pack is low, We had a rush of snow after warming which will push growth. But can it sustain itself the dryness? The fear is dried out forests and grasses like tinder by August. I hope by being away we can stay a step ahead. The patterns of the Rockies are becoming familiar to all of us.

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1843 and Does Enya Listen to Herself In The Bath?

As a woo child of the New Age 90’s era of music, I love listening to Enya in the bathtub. Pure Moods and a hippie mother set a tone for bathing for the remainder of my life.

Alas in Montana we do not have a bathtub in any of our bathrooms. We have a hot tub but the chemicals bother my skin so I only get to enjoy a bathtub when I’m traveling.

And you better believe I have Enya downloaded on Spotify for those occasions even though I’m certain at some point we probably owned all of her music on tape and CD.

While I love the classics (who doesn’t want to sail away?) I had Wild Child come up as I was soaking up magnesium yesterday. Which is not a bad checklist for becoming present in the moment.

Ever close your eyes
Ever stop and listen
Ever feel alive
And you’ve nothing missing
You don’t need a reason
Let the day go on and on

Let the rain fall down
Everywhere around you
Give into it now
Let the day surround you
You don’t need a reason
Let the rain go on and on

What a day
What a day to take to
What a way
What a way
To make it through
What a day
What a day to take to
A wild child – Enya

I’m no wild child but I don’t need a reason to enjoy a bath or a day. Rest up and rejuvenate.

Categories
Biohacking Homesteading

Day 1788 and Where is Our Winter?

We’ve not had any real snowfall in our corner of Southwest Montana just yet. It’s not unusual to get snow in September but it is now late November, and I can only recall a smattering of frost and a light dusting of snow. We’ve not needed to shovel the walkway, let alone plow out the drive.

The Bridgers are bare without even a hint of a snowcap. It has been 50 degrees and sunny for too many days. It just doesn’t feel natural.

Last night we set ourselves up for our idea of a wild Saturday night with sauna session after sunset. It was a balmy 180F inside our cedar sauna. Cooling off was a little trickier than usual though.

We set a sand timer for 15 minutes. When it finished we rush out with our felt hats and drop our towels to let the sweat evaporate. It is glorious to go from heat to cold shock.

Alas that doesn’t work as well when it’s in the mid fifties even in the November nighttime. Staring up at the stars, we could see the heat mist off our bodies and our breath but only just. It was twenty degrees too warm for that party trick.

Getting back in the sauna for round two was harder than I expected. The rush from heat to freeze to heat is part of the experience. Without the full range of our normal temperature change it just felt a little off. Stimulating but also a little scary. Where is our winter?

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1732 and It’s Getting Hot In Here So Take Off All Your Clothes

You might want bring towel though, as our handcrafted Finnish sauna will need some use before the cedar is completely smooth. Yes, that’s right, the MilFred family Yellow Barn now has a sauna. And she is a beauty. Just check out the view we picked for her.

Alex and the wonderful family who built the cedar sauna structure placed her under the back awning of the big yellow barn today. Wiring and electronics are underway as I write.

We’ve been slowly but surely turning our barn into our ideal wellness center both for our own use and eventually for the wider community as well. We are privileged with skills, capital and loads of very expensive personal experience with chronic illnesses.

So naturally as geriatric millennials it is always our instincts to turn our pain into something useful and also if we are lucky pay back the expenditures and turn a profit. Which we can then reinvest. It’s the circle of life for a generation who found the circle of life to be a tad more inflationary than expected.

The man of action putting the finishing touches on the electronics. We don’t have anything in our home systems connected to the cloud, so he built his own fully local controller with
ESP32 as the brains, 60a 240v contactor for heater, RGBW LED controls
UI/ final control via Home Assistant and HomeKit. You can snag the code on GitHub

In true MilFred fashion, we are building and testing everything all on ourselves. An n of 1 is good, an n of 2 is better, and if you’d like to test it out hit us up while it is a work in progress. Build in public and beta test with your friends.

Tucked under the awning of the barn so one can easily pop in from gym, HBOT or cold plunge to warm cedar comfort and mountain views

We’d like to ultimately build a space for healing, relaxation and training for those who prefer time tested modalities like heat, cold, oxygen and pressure.

Friends and family can come and test out our now very impressive range of equipment as we build this all out.

We have one of the few hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers available outside of hospital use in the region. You can pressurize to 2 atmospheres and set a range of parameters for a range of treatments. I use it for my inflammatory condition while Alex is treating the remains of long covid. You’d be shocked what pressure and oxygen can do.

Our hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber

If you want a work out get in some squat reps in our power cage, take a swing at the punching bag or lengthen your spine on our Pilates reformer. You can even climb around on the rock wall built into the the barn ceiling (not even kidding that is the work of the previous family).

If you are looking for a spa day you can have a sweat in the sauna, do red light therapy on your face, chill out on a PEMF mat, and hopefully soon take a dip in a cold plunge. Though if you are ambitious you can sprint across the front pasture and jump in our pond but I’ll warn you that the ducks might not love it.

The pond is fed by a creek that comes from the canyon above our house

The point being that we are building by hand and through personal experience something that improves our lives and others and that’s a pretty hot thing to do. Don’t worry, we will provide towels and robes if you do indeed take off all your clothes. Just come on over and try it out.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1233 and Heat

I have been enjoying the mild weather of May. I’ve not had any extremes which is a sort of pleasant surprise. Climate and weather intersect poorly too often these days.

I was explaining to a mutual how we’d settled on Montana to buy land and much of the calculation was about the pleasures of a cold, dry and mountainous climate. It’s sunny without much in the way of humidity which makes for enjoyable winters even when it gets cold.

I am not much of a fan of humidity. It hurts my joints and reminds me of my ankylosis. I’m much more prone to trouble with inflammation when it’s damp.

Whenever I encounter a coastal climate I struggle a bit. Others may love a riviera but I’ve never found one I liked. I’ve been to a reasonably diverse array from San Francisco to coastal Mediterranean and I can do without.

The weather is however about to change. Soon it will be the season of air conditioning. I’ll be going through Texas for a conference at the end of May. I’m not looking forward to the heat.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 933 and Hot Hot Heat

It would seem that we’ve officially entered the high season of summer that even northern latitudes like Montana cannot escaped entirely.

I wish I had the capacity to work out a circadian rhythm that entirely accounted for how miserable long hot days can be even if you are inside in the shade. Siestas and late evenings could work but I’ve got the hang of it. I need my eight hours.

I never get cabin fever in the winter. Even the worst storm usually abates within a couple days. I can happily layer up and enjoy being in the cold and dark. I can be outside if it’s cooler, darker and clearer. If it’s not I’m basically a caged animal.

But there is nothing to be down about the sun being out till 10pm and with temperatures crossing over the 90F/32C degree mark, all that is left is escape indoors to a cold dark place and wait out the season.

Last year on July 21 I wrote about summer season affective disorder so it’s clearly a pattern I notice around this time. I’m simply grateful it’s starter later than it did when I lived in Colorado where hot streaks are beginning even earlier.

With Montana summers, I go to sleep when the sun is still out and I wake up and it’s already sunrise. If the heat weren’t so intense I think it would be bearable but the heat domes are becoming pretty common. I remain grateful it’s only six to eight weeks unlike most of continent where summer is longer and crueler.

Another factor in all of this is how challenging fire season can be for spending time outside comfortably even if it’s not combined with a heatwave. I went out this morning before temperatures climbed to get some sun and exercise. The air quality was still decent but multiple fires are popping off in Montana and I expect this to change shortly. I suspect I’ll need to find a way to manage more time indoors as the summer rages on.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 564 and Not Exercising

Summer is supposed to be when you are outside and most active. But that’s not been true for me. I’m not entirely when I stopped working out this summer, but I suspect it was sometime this May when I got the flu. When I was in Montana I caught influenza A from my husband while we were buying our new homestead.

I was pretty under the weather for the entire month. I probably extended my suffering by being in a high stress situation for several week. I had to do things like attend a two hour property inspection while I was definitely still sick. And then a few days later I was stuck in a car for 8 hours straight back to Colorado. Thankfully my husband actually did the driving. Negotiating the emotions of buying our first house while sick wasn’t ideal either. That was arguably the most intensive part of the entire experience.

Going into May I was hiking and walking an hour a day along with several consistent months of a 3 day a week weight lifting split routine. My squats looked good and my tracker apps were pleased with my low level ambient activity. I was still struggling with fatigue but I felt like being active was surely the best way of improving my energy levels.

I’m not as convinced this is true anymore. There has been chatter for decades about post exertional malaise in various viral and autoimmune cases. It is regularly brought up now in long Covid as well. I’ve experienced some variant on and off for years whenever I have symptom flares. Even modest exertion like a short walk can lay me flat if I’m not feeling well.

As I had a lot of ups and downs in my symptoms in June in July I let even modest exercise efforts go entirely. Between traveling to hot climates like Texas and the Mediterranean I wasn’t exactly eager to be outside either. Heat is my nemesis. I’m probably one of the few people who can go spend time seaside and struggle to be outside unless I’m literally in the water. There is a reason I am so eager to move to Montana.

Looking at my various trackers and diaries the past three years I have seen aggressive declines in my physical activity levels over the summer. As heat domes and 100 degree days become the norm I just can’t tolerate a lot of time outside. The temperature barely dips below 80 even at nighttime. And if I try to be active in that kind of heat I see set backs in all my metrics.

I’ve got years of data at this point and it’s funny that I’m always at my fittest and most active in the dead of winter. Everyone else enjoys sweater weather and Christmas indulgence while I am lifting heavy, energetically watching my nutrition and reveling in the cold. Maybe you can take the Swede out of Scandinavia but you can’t take the Scandinavian out of the Swede.