Tag: Medical

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Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1935 and My Current Mechanical Device Usage Patterns in End Game Taper

Apologies that today’s post is going to be only partially organic human produced writing. I’m a tad more focused on cobbling together my current end game which feels promising.

I am now dosed off my current biologic. Tomorrow I go in to run a bunch of bloodwork but I feel more stable than expected for 11 weeks since my last injection.

For a year and a half I’ve been stabilizing my immune system’s reactivity with a particularly gnarly humanized anti-IL17A, anti-IL-17F, and anti-IL17AF monoclonal antibody autoimmune master blaster that is named Bimzelx.

I take it for psoriatic arthritis and active ankylosing spondylitis. I do not recommend this devil of a medication unless you intend to reboot your entire autoimmune system (which I did), can tolerate a lot of soft tissue infections (which I couldn’t) and have tried everything else. Which I have. And this past year was brutal fighting off the side effects but I think I might actually have a shot at remission.

I am now layering a bunch of mechanical interventions to rework years of compensatory patterns my body has used to manage the constant pain in my thoracic spine and other areas of inflammation including my sternum, rib cage and joints.

But after seven years of trying everything I can to recover from prednisone to methotrexate to Humira and Taltz to literally just not eating for ten straight days (don’t worry I was supervised) my inflammatory biometrics are coming up clean. The pain isn’t fully gone but I think the pain can be diminished by quite a lot as I rebuild.

So it’s now or never if I want a shot at life without suppressing my immune system. I have no idea if I can do it and I may need to dose back on something else but at the moment I’m managing with a new arsenal.

Here are the artificial intelligence bits of the mechanical interventions I am leveraging. I am using a bunch more than the two below but it’s what I’ve got so enjoy.

1. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT)

Mechanically, HBOT does a few things that line up with what my data is showing:

  • More dissolved oxygen in blood and tissues
    Breathing 100% oxygen under pressure increases the amount of oxygen dissolved directly in plasma. That can:
  • Support tissue healing (skin, soft tissue, surgical sites)
  • Help inflamed or energy-starved tissues keep up with demand
  • Autonomic “downshift” for some people
    Research is mixed, but many people (and some small trials) show:
  • Lower resting heart rate and subjective anxiety after sessions
  • A tilt toward parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) dominance
    In your data, the days after HBOT blocks are exactly when we see HR drop back toward baseline and Recovery go green.
  • Anti‑inflammatory & microcirculation support (early evidence)
    HBOT can:
  • Modulate certain inflammatory pathways and oxidative stress
  • Improve microvascular blood flow, which matters for both autoimmune-affected tissues and healing pelleted areas / irritated skin

In your context (autoimmune, infection risk, prior soft‑tissue complications), HBOT looks like it’s acting as:

A structured, time‑boxed reset that helps your heart rate settle and supports healing, without adding mechanical strain.

You’re already doing the key safety piece: using it under medical guidance and watching how HR, Recovery, and symptoms respond day-to-day.

2. SCM (sternocleidomastoid) muscle work

The SCM runs from behind your ear to your collarbone and is heavily involved in:

  • Head and neck position
  • Breathing assistance when things feel tight
  • A dense web of nerves and fascia near the vagus nerve, carotid artery, and jugular vein

Working on SCM (gentle massage, trigger-point release, careful stretching) can impact:

  • Perceived heart‑rate “rev” and breath tension
    Tight SCMs show up when:
  • You’re chronically bracing, in pain, or anxious about pain
  • You’re using accessory neck muscles to breathe
  • Releasing them can:
  • Make breathing feel less effortful and more diaphragmatic
  • Reduce that “I’m keyed up in my chest and throat” feeling even if HR number isn’t wildly high.
  • Headache/migraine and neck-related pain
    SCM trigger points can refer pain to:
  • Temples, behind the eyes, jaw
    By easing those trigger points, you sometimes reduce:
  • Migraine severity/frequency
  • The background neck/jaw tension that keeps your nervous system on edge
  • Autonomic tone (indirectly)
    The area around the SCM is rich with baroreceptors and vagus-adjacent structures. Gentle work there can:
  • Encourage a downshift in sympathetic drive (less “fight-or-flight bracing”)
  • Pair nicely with breathwork (especially long, slow exhales) to reinforce parasympathetic activation

In practice for you, SCM work + HBOT looks like a two-pronged calm signal:

  • HBOT: physiological support + autonomic softening from the inside
  • SCM: mechanical and sensory de‑bracing around your neck, jaw, and breathing

My Whoop is seeing HR and Recovery respond in a way that suggests this combo is genuinely helping my system get out of that “stuck high-gear” state.

Categories
Community Medical Startups

Day 1930 and Imperfect Options That Remain

Some days end up being so much more interesting than you expect. I awoke to a family member, who has been preparing for a set of major surgeries, saying they had in fact gone in that morning for the first round of procedures.

I had been concerned they were putting it off so I was quite relieved that their lack of communication on the topic was simply their preparation to face what will be a grueling health challenge. Preparing for a procedure well gives you the best chance at success.

Then I went about a normal work day having lobbed a question, or maybe a prayer, onto the network as the reality of human lives is that imperfect options are always what remains. Being clear eyed about the choices in our lives and how the weight of our past actions have set us on a path can be hard. But it is necessary.

And as I wrapped up my day I was the recipient of some good news. I can’t share anything but the shape of it. But a project that was an experimental approach to a space I care deeply about has bravely faced the whipping winds and looks like they will successfully come to a safe berth intact with all souls.

Which is not such an easy thing to do when you set out for uncharted territory. I am so very proud of what has been accomplished thus far.

All things in life are the fruits of imperfect options that remain. That we make the best use of them is our obligation not only to ourselves but to those to whom we have committed. I am grateful that today was a day where those hard choices were made.

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Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1929 and Lacking The Executive Function for Dysphoria

I am no spring chicken. That’s why we bought some spring chickens this weekend. I kid I kid. I do however have a forever 35 face. I come from a line of women who age well sure but I have very consistent habits.

I’m lucky to have an ageless look. My husband would say I have a forever 28 face as I somehow look better having crossed into my forties than I did when we met at 28. Meanwhile my husband has gone from boyish wonder with full head of hair to distinguished grey beard with a bald pate.

Now sure husbands are supposed to say nice things like “no honey you haven’t aged a day!” Except I really do seem to have benefited greatly from genetics and routine.

He may be right, not out of any urge to flatter me, but simply because some women do look better with a little age on them. I looked young with a rounded features right until I looked ageless somewhere in my late thirties.

Alex and I at 29 where you absolutely can spot my pre-retinol skin
Alex and I two weeks ago before touring the West Wing during our trip to D.C

I don’t look all that different when I compare and contrast between photos from then and now. I gained and lost as much weight as a Kardashian (more than once damn you prednisone and bless you semaglutide) but my face has somehow retained its plump without a maximalist approach without gaining wrinkles. I’ve lost the fine lines.

Yet the approaches are getting more and more maximalist by the year. The difference between a 2016 routine and 2026 routine is enough to warrant a fresh round of social panic and scolding complete with a Big Story from New York Magazine’s The Cut.

Now I myself have left comments on extreme routines for twenty somethings to convince them that it’s too early for Botox as you do want to keep tools in the box for when you need them.

I didn’t start Botox till forty and I’m grateful as I need much less now. I didn’t pull anything out either even when cut looks were all the rage. I’m glad for my rounded features now.

But I have added in more to my beauty routine as I age because I enjoy it. I found it humorous when a 31 year old pursing a doctorate in clinical psychology said out loud what I’ve darkly joked about with girlfriends for years. It’s really hard to be completely controlled.

For a year in my early 20s, I was also spending literally all of my money on a psycho 100-step skin-care process. Looking back, I didn’t have the executive functioning to be successfully anorexic, which is what I also wanted. But I did have the discipline to enjoy this complicated multistep ritual of the skin care. I found it satisfying.” New York Magazine

Now we can all joke and say she shouldn’t be in practice but I never felt I could pull off an eating disorder either even though I often wished I could. That eating disorders are dangerous enough to kill you isn’t the point. It’s being able to control your body enough that you can kill yourself that we desire.

I hated that no matter how much effort I put into diet and exercise I could never achieve the standards of waif like beauty put out in the heyday of Anna Wintour’s heroin chic era. Millennial beauty expectations were a bitch and I could never quite work up the control to hate myself. Sure I got really fit with a heck of a squat but I always had to watch every single macronutrient and instead of skinny I got lean.

And while I appreciate a good Molière joke about The Imaginary Invalid, weight was never the issue that got me in trouble. It was hormones that got me.

So I knew poor health with a healthy weight and I knew poor health with a lot of weight gained trying to fix the poor health.

I will never allow myself to get over the BMI band again to avoid the medical discrimination I faced when I gained weight while on prednisone.

Alas no my autoimmune condition was not mitigated even an iota by weight loss. I had it before I was fat. I got fat treating it. I still have it now that I’m at a healthy weight.

But the desire to maximize your looks and your health always intertwine with women. Increasingly it does for men too. Body dysmorphia respect neither sex nor gender. I doubt it will ever again.

Beauty is a skill set. And some of that skill set is now pharmaceutical in nature. And if we are honest, it’s been that way for a few decades. It’s just that everyone know about it now. The network age comes for us all.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1928 and Migraine Uninterrupted

I have been hobbled by a migraine for most of the day. I wish I could pinpoint the triggers for it as right now I am lost as to what is causing both its intensity and unrelenting nature.

I’ve gone through all the basic remedies from putting your feet in hot water to total silence and darkness along with an alarming number of Imitrax. You can’t overdue them or it makes the cycle worse so I am at the gutting it out phase of this batch.

The migraine just didn’t seem to be breaking for more than a couple of hours and if I use those hours in any kind of active way I am setting myself up for a relapse. Yesterday we made a trip to Tractor Supply and then I spent my night in misery.

I was fighting a fever as my husband managed a stomach bug last week so it might be the aftermath of whatever happened there. I wish I had more to say that wasn’t a complaint about pain but it is hard to look at a screen for longer than a Tweet response.

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Biohacking Medical

Day 1915 and Physiological Stressers

Last October I did an experiment to balance out my core hormones by inserting pellets of testosterone and estradiol into my left buttcheck.

We’re started me with 10mg of estradiol (range 6-25mg with 8-10mg being most common), and 75mg of testosterone (range 50-150mg with the most common being 75-100mg. Day 1748

If you are interested in learning why women are optimizing their hormones, Cate Hall wrote an amazing piece on how it affected her life. A week or two after I did my own experiment the New York Times did a long lifestyle piece on the treatment’s growing popularity.

I had been working to raise my testosterone level to a baseline minimum with diet and supplements like DHEA with mixed success which is how we ended up trialing this new pellet method. And it worked very well very fast you can see from several rounds of bloodwork.

We did not do the full 75mg but landed around 62mg in the pellet which raised my testosterone right off the bat. It then quickly dropped off from very high to comfortably high. This go around we will do a lower testosterone dose to start and a lower estradiol one as well and test within the month to see if we can moderate them better over time.

Alas I did have some complications on my first attempt as my insertion sight got infected rather badly and took over a month to resolve.

If thr last fifteen months on my immunotherapy Bimzelx has had a theme it would be soft tissue infections. I am however as far out from a shot as I can be and am planning to stop it entirely as a girl can’t spend her whole life on antibiotics.

Though I am on quite a dose at the moment as we won’t make the same mistake twice. We stitched me up and prophylactically began a dose of a very intense antibiotic with the hope that I won’t lose a whole month of the four that these pellets dissolve through fighting cellulitis.

My goal is a balanced blend of estradiol, testosterone and progesterone so I have energy and focus and maybe fewer migraines during my luteal phase. You may wonder why I share all of this personal information and I wonder why more women don’t share it. We are in a brave new world of challenges in our healthcare and environment and the more we can share with each other the better our chances at finding solutions for all of us.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 1912 and Informing Ourselves

Some 20 years ago, before I knew I’d have medical troubles of any length, my college job was working for a medical ethicist who was a physician with a grant to study informed consent.

Now, years later, as I have worked my way through institutional resistance to how I may come to be disabled and generally dismissed as a patient, I come to find that much of the skepticism my mother had as a crunchy hippie is now functionally being proved a quarter century on. These uncomfortable trends drives skepticism in even the most informed minds. And most patients can only ever be expert on their symptoms.

This comes at the end of a crisis of communication about the value of public health and personal responsibility in a community. Many people did not feel that they were given adequate consent and no longer trust anything said by doctors. Would most medical professionals agree they had informed consent? I think most argue they were. I agree.

Now of course we’re all desperately trying to prevent harms here and patients more than ever feel that, as they don’t trust what’s coming to them because we’ve not effectively decoupled population-level information from the individual human behind a given case. Is that informed consent? Yeah as best we can do it.

Now how does research play into all this? I also happen to have the misfortune of having working on the early years of on one of the worst medical misinformation spreaders in all of healthcare. I say this lovingly: it is Gwyneth Paltrow.

Now if you root around Twitter, you will find commentary about how the supplements hawked on Goop and the supplements hawked on various right-wing sites are functionally identical. But she got a lot right because she is a rich well connected white woman with money. So again who is informed and to what degree?

Unfortunately some of the things that are sold as treatments or supplements they sell are real and have proven out. We’re working our way through the science on our gut biome, infection and its links to preventable autoimmune diseases, and any number of other previously heretical paths.

But we’ve really not transformed the way we process our information on what we know and what is actually considered best practices. The gap is very wide. Like a chasm. I am way outside the norms because I fucked myself up believing I wouldn’t be a statistic as it mostly worked for most women.

So I live with issues. But do I think that people have a right to experiment with what we think might be snake oil? Absolutely. Everyone calculates their own risk. Heck Sarno is just one giant placebo doctor on letting go.

We know that some of the avenues of exploration will prove to be placebo effect if they work. And we still somewhat trust things that are actually going to cause harm aren’t really making it into the popular press and mass consumption unless there’s some evidence. I sort of believe that to be true.

More people should feel that they have the right, if they have informed themselves over a period of time as patients, to work around the system if they make no progress despite best efforts and years of work.

There’s just a lot to balance on being informed about your conditions and your capacity to manage your own health that is up to you. I think that generally speaking the paternalistic attitude has not produced superior outcomes.

And the quality of care I get as someone who can pay for health care anywhere in the world, it is galling to me that the gap between what we know and how far we can go in practice is so wide.

So let the guy advertise the doggy cancer vaccine because at least it’s teaching people that we have solutions to more than they know. They can judge risk reward and be a little bit strange. Humans are humans.

You get to decide it based on your own understanding of your own life and you get what you get. I was disabled by my own misjudgment of informed consent on treatments recommended by a COO of a major company who paid to have as a perk to her workforce. Egg freezing was an approved elective procedure that everyone was on board with ten years ago.

I was informed. I consented. I got it wrong. Now let me see if I can fix it in my own manner of choosing. And I won’t trust mere authority next time. Neither celebrity nor pharmaceutical company is to be trusted.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1899 and Off To Sleep

I regret to say that after yesterday’s various excitements through my continued ill health; did not leave me with anything for today.

I crawled out of bed for a coffee far too late. Was greeted by marginally better biometrics such I think my Whoop took pity on me by giving me a green.

The trouble with context and personalization? It was only barely better than the reds of the worst that continued into a week of yellows where my resting heart rate and heart rate variability went in the wrong direction.

I largely spent today sleeping because I could t get enough last night. I hope you don’t mind if I go back to my nap as waking up was a challenge.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1896 and Short but Sweet

The weather forecast for western Montana for the next several days is gusty high winds and five feet of snow in the high country so I suspect I’ll have some good down time simply because there’s a chance I won’t even be able to go outside.

I have a dentist’s appointment tomorrow morning, first thing, which I am a little nervous about as I’m not accustomed to having issues with my teeth.

The work I got done a week ago kicked up quite a bit of dust, if you will, and now I am struggling with a high heart rate and a very low heart rate variability. I can’t seem to improve upon the numbers.

If the dentist doesn’t spot anything wrong, then hopefully I can simply get a prescription for fluoride toothpaste and head to my family doctor as long as the weather holds.

I wish I had more to say but the energy I had budgeted for the day has been all used up. I’m not even confident I have the strength to focus on television with a plot line. It is a challenging prospect for me to stay upbeat when I get beaten down by my own body but it’s all I can do and I’ll have to accept it.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical Politics

Day 1895 and If Not Us Then Who?

Despite persistent efforts to mitigate the downsides of my various medications, as well as maintaining dedicated wholistic lifestyle routines for my chronic diseases, I am not making adequate progress. I’d go so far as to say today it feels like I am sliding backwards.

But that is partially a function of luteal phase acute migraines and not the full picture on the ground. Yes, it’s true multiple metrics have gotten significantly worse over the 15-month span of my IL-17 inhibitor experiment with Bimselx and I am preparing to make the decision on what to do next. Many biometric markers are much better but the trade-offs are severe. It just feels like I can’t overcome them right now because I feel awful.

Nevertheless it’s important to remain grounded in the here and now. I think part of my trouble may be I am adjusting both to a new time zone and my normal altitude. Maybe I’m overly concerned by data points that will get smoothed out over time but it feels very spik.

Alas there is little room in life for downtime or bad days. Portfolio companies are fundraising, politics is getting uglier by the second, and one key blocker in my life has remained unsolved now for years.

I’ve never experienced a blocker quite so persistent as the American State Department’s handling of visa and immigration work. And yes that includes being disabled and chronically ill. That’s how bad state capacity is right now. My years-long attempt to get visas for family members to come help has not seen an iota of success.

But we keep going. There is much to be done, both practically and at higher levels of abstraction, and I am being whipsawed by hormone migraines over the last 48 hours. It is not an ideal time for weakness in one’s body.

Yesterday the best I could do in terms of writing was some rambling about my irritation with new retail sales cadences at Sephora feeling down market. Not that I necessarily need this space to be filled with decent content but I know that I am not running at even 10% capacity.

We all have to contribute our talents to this moment in time and there are projects that I wish to commit more time and energy to, even though it feels like it may be the death of me. But if not me then who? It’s a question we should all be asking ourselves and I hope more of us rise to the challenge.

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 1890 and It Bears Repeating Or Does It?

I can’t say I have fully recovered from pushing myself to my operational limits to do work (which looks a lot like socializing in my line of work) while still recovering from an infection after dental work.

It’s always recovering from an infection these days. I’ve been on some kind of antibiotic or anti-fungal every day since October.

2025 for me was getting an infection and then recovering from an infection on repeat. Ever since I decided to swap my biological injection 15 months ago from Coesyntx to Bimzelx and I think I’ve hit my limit.

It’s just too damn depressing that it’s a constant threat that I’ll have either a soft tissue infection or an abscess or a swollen gland that turns into a staphylococcus colony.

It’s as if I’ve got no skin biome left which is almost certainly true. I think I’d rather have CRP and sed rates and risk other infections than be rotating antibiotic varietals like some kind of junky afraid to develop a dependency.

Except instead of pain pills or lady downers it’s amoxicillin versus doxycycline versus Cipro with the occasional dalliance with a macrolide. I’ve also come to appreciate the benefits of Fluconzole. It’s not great. If you want a quick AI generated overview scan along

  • Beta-lactams: This broad group includes penicillins (e.g., amoxicillin), cephalosporins (e.g., cephalexin), and carbapenems (e.g., meropenem). They work by inhibiting cell wall synthesis.
  • Macrolides: (e.g., azithromycin, erythromycin) These inhibit protein synthesis and are often used for respiratory infections.
  • Tetracyclines: (e.g., doxycycline) Used for a wide range of infections, they inhibit protein synthesis.
  • Fluoroquinolones: (e.g., ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin) Broad-spectrum antibiotics that inhibit DNA synthesis.

My problem is that going back to my old biologic will take three to four months to full dose and it’s not a risk free process. And my full biometric panel is better on Bimzelx so is it really so bad that my resting heart rate is in the upper nineties every other week?

I think it may be time for me to make a pilgrims to the remaining clinics and pretend that I have any remaining institutional trust. Maybe I can vibe code something usual along the way.

I intend to support others on this journey as I’ve been chronically this journey a long time and the times are changing as we bring more artificial intelligence to the inference issues around our biometrics.