Tag: Migraine

Categories
Biohacking

Day 1755 and Slow Healer

I am on a TMI roll this week so you will have to excuse this old blogger. If my n-of-1 experiments help even one woman struggling with her health, it’s worth it to me to embarrass myself in public by sharing the real details.

I’ve come consider this blog not just a personal experiment in daily writing, but my contributions to training the artificial intelligences of our future. I shall write women’s health into the Akashic records, even if I have to write every single day. Oh wait

Today I am moderately concerned about mg pace of healing and if I have contributed negative to it by increasing my strain modestly.

Yesterday I wrote “want to see something gross” about how maximalist approach to healing the incision site where we placed testosterone pellets.

I thought it was going pretty darn well and I had physical evidence with photographs to prove it. I did however have two days of poor biometrics which I had thought was a result of pushing myself physically a bit too hard while in my two days of menstruation. I

have rip-roaringly bad luteal phases (hence the exploratory hormone therapy to bring my testosterone to a normal baseline) but I have blessedly short menstruation that hits hard but doesn’t stick around. Aunt Flow knows she gets a weekend, and it ain’t a long one, before she has overstayed her welcome.

Now I’m going to show you something a lot worse than gross pictures of an incision site. I’m going to show you embarrassingly bad Whoop metrics. And now that I see them laid out I realize I probably should have asked my doctor earlier if I needed to go back on a prophylactic antibiotic just in case cellulitis was lurking. Like my god my HRV and heart rate are god awful right now.

Now they were a bit wonky this month but this is some danger Will Robinson territory. I honestly didn’t feel bad enough that I took it seriously.

I thought “eh Whoop has been sucking” for me. I thought this is just adjustment and the high heart rate is the testosterone is kicking in and my low HRV is just adjusting to finally having some energy. I feel genuinely energetic for the first time in years.

But today at a check up with another doctor they noted that I was at higher risk of developing cellulitis given my history over the summer with the abscess surgery and the panniculitus it had revealed. The side effects of the immune suppressive called Bimzelx I use as an inflammatory dampener seems to mostly manifest in skin infections. So either I’m just a slow healer and being paranoid or I’ve got to rock on with some amoxicillin to get the ill’in to stop.

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 1754 and Do You Want To See Something Gross?

My inner child finds the idea asking if “you want to see something gross” to be funny. Of course, I want to see.

Gore and violence don’t get this reaction from me. I dislike it in movies and in the real world. But to see gross and the weird in the real world. I get it. Maybe lots of humans thinks seeing gross things are cool.

I think it is a bit sweet. It is as a very human reaction go “ewww cool” when faced with non lethal wounds. Maybe it’s truer with boys than girls, but if a kid said “do you want to see something gross?!” in Colorado when I was a tween the answer was a rousing yaah! Gross things are cool.

Maybe it’s a type of survival mechanisms where if we can learn more about what is lethal, and lethal injuries look like, it then improves our Darwinian fitness. We judge risk more accurately.

Flesh wounds need proper care and do turn out absolutely fine. And boy have we improved on the science of wound care since I was a kid. We have evolved past the bandaid.

When I first did my wilderness incident first responder training, I went worried I’d find the injuries we’d be treating emotionally challenging.

But even in a hard situation like a fire burn or the dermis getting sliced open, I still had a bit of that bravery of a little girl. That is cool! The bravado of a human who believes we can fix it

If you enjoy a story of plucky Rocky Mountain woman learning to do emergency care for herself and her community I’m glad we shared this time together.

Hopefully you never need these emergency skills. We take learn the risks and practice for them so we may never experience them.

So if you don’t feel this way, I’m giving you your ticket out of here. Stop reading now. But if you want to see something gross stay on.

For those who who are like “actually I want to hear all about getting your left butt cheek sliced open” to raise and normalize your testosterone levels by injecting tiny pellets of hormones though a steel dart gun via the scalpel entry point. Then it’s time to see something gross.

This is my wound on Wednesday morning after I had the procedure. It’s much bigger a slice than I’d expected but first time practitioners (I asked for the experiment) and while the treatment is safe across most vectors, I was a nervous immune compromised patient who prepared for the worse.

So this a real 10/10 “let’s see how it goes from here” experiment especially if the returns it delivers are real. I hope for the energy, pain tolerance and healing benefits the average patient sees

Now I am lucky enough to be an owner and finally user of my very own hyperbaric chamber for oxygen therapy. I wrote about it at length through trade wars and trips to Istanbul. We finally got the OxyRevo from China last month. I intend to upgrade to an HPOTech in our finished medical space (I believe HPOTech the best on the market currently)

So I am using a 90 minute full 2 atmosphere protocol already as I go went this treatment. I had also begun testing the GLOW stack from a peptide spot where I trust the owner. I’m helping him test. And this is the recommended stack for recovery.

.01 of the GLOW stack which is a regenerative peptide therapy with three peptides—BPC‑157, TB‑500, and GHK‑Cu—it was made to promote healing, tissue regeneration, and collagen production,

So I am absolutely throwing the gold care package at this. I am taking collagen and biotin, we’ve got the local food and the lack of seed oils, we’ve got the best current standard for peptides on injury and surgical recovery.

And somehow I am still scared. I never heal well or easily. I bruise easily and badly. I was so slow this summer to heal from an abscess surgery. I took a risk and I worried.

But I woke up this morning and my open wound has closed and the bruising has retreated in just five days to this. I’ll be in the scar mitigation territory in no time, and soon it won’t even be visible to the naked eye.

Day 5 of recovery from testosterone pellets

Progressively, the wound has moved from acute bruising and erythema toward decreased inflammation and resorption of bruising, with steady wound closure. Monitoring should continue, but the pattern suggests healthy tissue repair

So I hope you enjoyed seeing something gross. As it is keeping less and less gross by the minute.

Categories
Biohacking Medical Startups

Day 1753 and Vibe Coding for Your Skin Health

Many moons ago, when I was first attempting to get a diagnosis for why I was always in pain and exhausted, I got a battery of allergy tests. I did the “gold standard of allergy testing” called patch testing which is a form of pin prick testing designed to pick up responses that may be delayed.

It was an awful experience. I barely made it through the 5 day trial between the 100 allergen pin pricks and final measurements.

I remember begging the doctor for a way to measure early. I asked if I could take some Benadryl to take the edge off. Alas the only way it would be accurate and covered by my insurance is if I gutted it out.

You are not allowed to shower, sweat, be exposed to UV rays (no going outside) or take immune suppressants that might subdue your body’s response.

I was struggling to breathe, my entire body itched and ached, and I had a migraine so bad I couldn’t see for the stars & dizziness. It’s possible I wasn’t stable enough to have adequately consented to the test but I did get my final results.

Out of 100 common allergens tested it was confirmed I was extremely allergic to 10 of them with another moderate sensitivity set of twenty or so that I should merely try to avoid as opposed to my firm “no go” list.

The dermatologist gave me a sheet with 75 different chemical names and formats that I might encounter in the wild from these core allergens:

Budesonide
Ammonium Persulfate
Benzisothiazolinone
Limonene
Oleamidopropyl Dimethylamine
Formaldehyde
Lauryl Glucoside
Methylisothiazolinone
Propolis
Thimerosal

I instructed to search ingredient lists for these names any time I purchased a household product, personal care item, cosmetic or other item which might include these ingredients which ranged from nail care to vaccines.

It was honestly quite overwhelming. And some of the above ingredients are in basically everything. I dare you to avoid Limonene for a month.

So my husband and one of our best friends did what any practical minded engineer would do and they made me simple Google sheet where all 75 varietals could be checked if I plugged in the ingredients from any item.

I used it for years. I’d plug in the INCI from every brand I encountered into the sheet no matter what. I gave away a lot of products to friends.

Today it occurred to Alex that we should probably vibe code the thing into a proper web application using Replit so other people could check ingredient lists for their own allergies.

Within two hours, most of which was waiting on the kindly AIs to do their thing, we had a fully functional web application.

You can set your own allergens or click a few buttons for common allergens and “clean ingredient standards” and run a check for an all clear.

It isn’t super fancy but it doesn’t need to be. It just needed to keep your data safe, be easy to log into so you can securely check and access your personal list and generally functional enough to change and set allergens. We’ve put it on our own little domain just to see how much this will cost to run (and we’ve set up alerts so it doesn’t go bonkers) but we figured this should be accessible and simple.

And while there are other options on the market, most are bloated, overly paranoid and designed for scaring California moms rather than quickly helping people with clear preferences for avoidance and actual tested allergies. So hopefully our pain can help you breathe easier.

Some options for chemicals and irritants you can select on our app.
My own settings of allergies and sensitivities
Categories
Biohacking

Day 1748 and Putting Testosterone Pellets In My Butt Cheek

Intrepid biohacker that I am, when I learned that my testosterone levels were concerningly low, I began on a program to raise them.

I started with nutrition and supplementation but I already had a diet and supplement routine that was evidence based for raising testosterone levels in women.

I added in DHEA (Dehydroepiandrosterone) at 25mg. Six months of that brought me up to just about half of the lowest baseline acceptable. I was NOT getting adequate results.

My physician prescribed me a cream from a compound pharmacy which unfortunately didn’t agree with my skin. So we were going to get creative.

I had read a blog post from Cate Hall (whose husband Sasha Chapin had helped me on another entirely different vector of my life) on how testosterone pellets changed her life.

She had had teeny tiny testosterone pellets placed into her subcutaneous fat and had remarkable results in terms of energy and focus. This and that happened, and the summer was a mess, but today was the day I finally followed in her footsteps.

Vials of compounded testosterone

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 75-100).

We’ll aim for labs at 4-6 weeks after insertion which would represent peak levels. We will repeat dosing at 3-6 month intervals. We will check levels at 4 months or so, or earlier if I feel the effects waning.

Do be warned that within a paragraph or so, there will be images of needles, scalpels, and some blood. So feel free to not scroll down further.

Part of the difficulty with dosing this stuff is that the pellet doses are wonky and frequently out of stock – estradiol comes in 6mg and 10mg increments so 8mg is impossible.

Naturally, we’ve made surprisingly little progress when it comes to women’s health, particularly as it relates to hormones.

Prepared and ready to go

But as I am happy to be a guinea pig and my luteal phase is a mess of migraines and misery I figured I had little to lose and much to gain. I was the first patient my doctor has done the procedure on so if anyone in Bozeman is interested, you can confidently give it a go with him as I’ve survived it.

These cool tubes don’t actually go inside too far but sort of shoot the pellet into the incisions

I was given a local numbing agent with epinephrine. I needed a surprising amount of it but I was a bit nervous. Once I was just able to feel pressure and no pain it was time to make a small incision with a scalpel and in popped the tiny bit of hormone on the left butt cheek.

No big deal at all.

But if you don’t want to see it going in don’t scroll.

Just giving you space to turn back.

A tiny incision in my goose bumped bum with the little pellets easily tucked in

I am all bandaged up and still riding the cortisone of it all but I feel alright. I’ll be adding in progesterone orally to temper the estrogen as that’s another matter. I’m excited to report back on it as if I have even a fraction of Cate’s experience with it I’ll be quite happy. Also it’s about $70 a month so not cheap but not at all expensive for something that could potentially mitigate some long term issues I’ve struggled with for years.

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
Biohacking Medical

Day 1723 and Hormonal Rollercoaster Rides

We spent a long time at the doctor’s yesterday as Alex and I gutted it out with our excellent physician (with AI assists) through a myriad of different tests. We were attempting to figure out why he keeps getting respiratory infections and why I’m such a tasty treat to skin bacteria.

In truth, my basic inflammatory biometrics have improved so much on the new IL-17a inhibitor Bimzelx that it’s probably worth the hassle of occasionally having to slice open a random effected gland or abscess once a quarter. It’s just a shocking amount of work to do whack mole with pathology reports.

What I don’t seem to be able to improve is my low testosterone and the flavors of migraine headache that come with the roller coaster of my luteal phase. Which is presumably a clue and we are following it.

Astonishingly my lady hormones are in tip top shape. Though the “you should have no trouble getting pregnant if we can get off the medicines that stabilize you” remarks remains a heads trip. Yes I asked.

It is not a head trip that makes one’s husband enthusiastic about the prospect. Which is fair, as we have no family support, no backup plans for me regressing physically, and the family that does support us can’t get to America. So one can see why a CEO husband with sick investor wife who would have to give up work, plus potentially messed up baby, isn’t super appealing. Anyways! TFR is a fun topic.

I started with basic supplements in the precursor category like DHEA and STRO about a year ago when my testosterone came in at a 2 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL) when it should be somewhere between 9 to 55 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL). For context, adult men typically have levels in the 240–950 ng/dL.

The one sticky widget is that my testosterone remains stubbornly low. You wouldn’t think such a raging “see you next Tuesday” such as myself would be overburdened with the feminine hormones and lacking in ball buster hormones but I am.

I managed to eke it up to 5 with supplements and nutrition but it really didn’t match my otherwise excellent hormonal profile. Having ruined my chances at a healthy immune system when we tried the first half of IVF, I’ve spent some time working on and with my natural cycles.

Good information for all humans

I loathe being in my luteal phase but when I’m in my follicular phase I get 90% of my work done. We had presumed it was the rapid decline in estrogen and progesterone but maybe my floor rate testosterone was more of the issue.

For the past 8 weeks I’ve been using a testosterone cream that clicks up your dose and you rub it between your thighs. I know it’s gross. So I was curious to see where I might land. And praise the Lord I am now at 15 ng/dL. From 2 to 5 to 15 is some excellent progress but still below where we’d like me to hit. So we are going to run another test and try out the tiny pellets they slice into your skin. Since I’m already used to scalpels and antibiotics I figure why not?

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1717 and The Beginning of My 40 Treatments of Hyperbaric Chamber Oxygen Therapy

An auspicious pair of numbers for today’s date and I started something new which has been in the works since January began today. Our long awaited hyperbaric chamber has arrived and been fully set up in our yellow barn.

A lazy boy lounger and oxygen under two atmospheres of pressure.

It feels good to begin a positive focused wellness activity after what was otherwise a chaotic week of travel, geopolitics and violence.

As expected, it is not fun living through my own investment thesis. So you better believe I test my theories on myself. I want to survive the Jackpot.

Before Trump’s inauguration, we decided to purchase a hyperbaric chamber after one of our mutuals told us about his HBOT trial at a conference in the fall. It went very well for him and the research is promising for inflammatory conditions.

Over the winter break I happened to be in a city where I could test HBOT cheaply and was very impressed with the results in only ten sessions during a flare in my autoimmune condition. Crimping from Bryan Johnson

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) involves breathing pure or nearly pure oxygen (95-100%) in a pressurized chamber at anything above atmospheric pressure (2 ATA is equivalent to being 33 feet under seawater).

The increased pressure enhances the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen, boosting oxygen levels throughout the body. The therapy aims to promote rejuvenation by increasing oxygen concentration in tissues, supporting healing, cellular repair, and vascularization.

This sent me down a rabbit hole as I did a bunch of deep dives, got some text books and came to a simple conclusion after a lot of medical papers that it’s pretty simple.

It’s almost philosophically the way of life in the mountain west. Oxygen and pressure work on the biomechanics of a functional body. Alas getting my basic market model to Montana ended up being a cluster fork of issues. We placed the order in January.

For months we waited for what we’d been told would be a 6-8 week process. Alas all hell broke loose. We had tariffs uncertainty with the importer and the OEM.

Then Liberation Day looked dire which led our machine in a Chinese port hold which launched a trip to Istanbul to source the finest HBOT machines money can buy. I still intend to acquire on.

I have now, in September, after a long journey but a simple set up process, begun my first intensive protocol for autoimmune diseases on our own hyperbaric chamber.

Love your body enough to put it under pressure and take a deep breath.

I will complete a minimum of 40 sessions (5 sessions weekly) at 2 atmospheric pressures, in a hard chamber from OxyRevo with each session 90 minutes while breathing 100% oxygen for 20 minutes separated by a 5 minute break.

If you are interested and see strip mall options note that these are not consumer grade machines. The protocol requires a hard chamber to achieve that pressures. It’s quite a bit higher than soft chambers on the market.

There are risks associated with HBOT from correct pressurization issues to impacts like tinnitus. The more prepared you are to adapt to changing pressure with breathing techniques and equalization (looking to divers for these protocols) the happier your central nervous system will be.

Take control
Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1692 and Your Wellness Isn’t A Demonstration of Moral Integrity

I am enjoying the adaptive training program prompt managed by an artificial intelligence which I’ve amended around my chronic health conditions as well as my considerable slate of biometrics.

I’ve been using it for a week now as I needed a recovery plan for the fitness losses that came with a month of bed rest recovery after my surgery in July.

Not to suggest I was in terrific shape before the surgery as it discovered a deep tissue infection that went so deep and so rogue I’d likely been suffering from it for sometime despite my attempts at preventative care.

It’s upsetting seeing your resting heart rate go from mid 80s to mid 60s. Realizing your high resting heart rate isn’t because you are a lazy fattybombalatty who doesn’t do enough cardio (real thing a physical therapist has said to me) but because you have a chronic deep tissue antibiotic resistant bacterial infection. Ain’t chronic disease a trip?

Anyways, I’m healing and trying not to overdo things in the process as I’m a bit stupid when it comes to wellness. More is always better has been my mental orientation for much of my life and it’s a hard habit to kick.

Workaholics Anonymous needs a subgroup for those of us who can find ways to over do literally everything. And I do mean everything. I did a stretching and mobility routine last night that had my heart rate at 150BPM doing seated spinal twists. Did I stop? Nope. I finished the 30 minute program. My adaptive training programs response?

Complete rest – no negotiations

And who am I to negotiate with an AI who has no emotions involved in the process of putting together a recovery training regimen. It’s not going to moralize at me.

Categories
Biohacking Medical

Day 1617 and Trap Queen

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.

Via Physio-Pedia

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.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1502 and Always Something

When we first moved to Montana we did a pretty thorough home inspection. My husband flew in a friend who is residential contractor.

We didn’t need much remediation work. A bit of radon and we installed a state of the art water filtering system but otherwise everything from foundations to soil quality were looking good. But you can never be too sure things stay that way.

We’ve done some repairs and installations over the past two years and it would appear somewhere in there we must have had some water damage. We ran some mold tests and the reports are not good.

As we’d done so much testing before moving in we’d not done thorough assessment. It hadn’t seemed necessary. But as part of the new year’s rigorous “get a grip on autoimmune” push we did an ERMI test (done via dust collection) through an independent lab EnviroBiomics.

The Environmental Relative Moldiness Index (ERMI) test is a DNA-based method developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess indoor mold contamination by analyzing settled dust in homes.

It uses mold-specific quantitative polymerase chain reaction (MSqPCR) to identify and quantify 36 mold species, which are divided into two categories: Group 1 (associated with water-damaged homes) and Group 2 (common indoor molds not linked to water damage).

The ERMI score is calculated by subtracting the log-transformed sum of Group 2 molds from Group 1 molds, providing a single numerical value to indicate the relative moldiness of a house.

Welp. Seems like we may have some water damage somewhere. We’ve got some theories from the last two years.

ERMI Score 18.3:
Places this bedroom in the higher range of mold contamination. Typically, an ERMI above 5 is already considered higher than average. A score of 18.3 signals a strong likelihood of hidden moisture issues or longstanding mold growth.

We also ran a HERTSMI-2 test on which we scored 20. That test is a bit more salient for my autoimmune conditions. And its results were not encouraging. Running that through ChatGPT’s new Deep Research.

This test is used to gauge risk for mold-sensitive or chronically ill individuals. A value over 15 strongly suggests that the environment may be unsafe for those with mold-related illnesses or sensitivities. Re-occupancy should be delayed until remediation and follow-up testing confirm substantially reduced mold levels.

We have to do remediation of some sort though we think it’s limited to the basement. But I’ll be staying upstairs for a while if this conclusion is sound. It’s always something.

Conclusion: The contamination is significant and poses a tangible health risk. Addressing it thoroughly is crucial, particularly given your household’s health concerns.