Tag: Wellness

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
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1752 and Too Much Protestant Work Ethic

I am pouring far too much autistic enthusiasm into my pet beauty shopping column that has a roughly half and half ration “theory of appearance culture in Protestantism” and half “specific routines at different price points” but I am enjoying it.

The heavier lift is going to be the work I am putting into the individual routines for the founding subscribers who have paid good money for help and I intend to give them my absolute all. I admit I’ve put way more thought than is probably necessary into each one but it’s a joy to track down specific products and geographic needs. It’s a shame that market editor was never a well paid enough job at a fashion magazine as I am pretty good at it.

Like, of course, I have opinions on the German drugstore market and its cost effective actives lines versus the old school naturals brands and where to acquire them. I don’t have quite as extensive a sample library of the market staples on hand but you know I spent hours browsing the grocery and retail shops when I was living in Frankfurt.

And on that note I’m going to bed early as I’m healing from my various biohacking experiments and I’m exhausted even with all the effort I’m putting into wound healing it still takes a certain about of rest to actually knit things together no matter how much time I spend with HBOT or what peptide stack I’m taking (it’s a spicy boy on the way in I’ll say that much).

Categories
Aesthetics Medical

Day 1751 and On Brand with Protestant Renunciations and Wound Care

I really misjudged my healing time on the testosterone pellets even though I pretty much always assume a worst case scenario for myself. I’m not really hurting but I am pretty bruised which is typical for me.

We may have some room for improvement technique with it so I am encouraged if the is as bad as it gets. I am not seeing any benefits from it yet and ugly bruising and a bit of an opening on an incision isn’t so bad.

A lot will depend on how well I recover and how much the hormone actually helps when I’m not healing. I’m also in the luteal horrors phase where my hormones are most ridiculous so I’m curious to see the curve.

The best part of this remains that I have a world class treatment for skin wounds on hand. Hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy’s best research has been in wound management from burns to slow healing diabetics. So if I have to nurse a wound doing it with oxygen at pressure is actually pretty baller.

And to make it even more on theme, I spent most of my time in there writing out a column on skincare and the Great Male Renunciation of Appearances as part of my beauty shopping column and excuse to write about the secret history of appearance and its power.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work Medical

Day 1749 and Some The Worse For Wear

Every time life gets intense I wonder to myself why am I speeding into the turn? And then I look back at the last almost half decade (which is easier than I’d expected as I’ve written every day) and I feel the achingly slow pace at which we tackle the challenges of our lives.

We’ve had really big wins and really glass chewing teeth grinding bloody inch by inch progress that barely feels like a win at all.

It’s easy to focus on the bruises when they aren’t a metaphor like yesterday’s adventures in scalpel driven hormone treatment. But the the wounds that are more emotional are just as easy to spot.

Some pain has given me relief and some has been so heartbreaking it crushes me that it’s beyond my control. Bodies and borders are often beyond the control of mortals.

So I’m just rushing headlong into fun things like shopping columns and biohacking and my portfolio companies and my political engagement and hopefully we find the money and solutions to all the bottlenecks which range from family and pain to visas. And yes the bruise on my butt is literal.

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
Aesthetics

Day 1747 and Hyper Autistic Protestant Work Ethic Beauty Blog

I spent some time being really “in my special interest” today writing about why I think we should give more, and not less, time to beauty. I’ll post it to my new substack tomorrow as that will remain focused in subject matter.

Appearances clearly matter in every facet of life, but we don’t do much to help develop taste even as we face an onslaught of the hyper visual unrealistic world of short form video.

It’s all dopamine drips and quick hits that make it hard to develop taste of your own. At best you found algorithms that suited some things you could enjoy but sincerely held joy is rare. I’ve been able to experience many times and it’s now one keeps going in a cruel world.

I spent so much of my life beating the drumbeat of more access to the secret knowledge of the world only to discover again and again, that even if you offer up to the world pearls, not everyone will want them.

Or as my mother liked to say her Latin teacher said “I’m throwing pearl’s before swine!”

To appreciate the details is to recognize that layer upon layer of irritation worked to a finished pearlescent sheen which seems too delicate to truly show the process. That’s its beauty.

Each layer of culture is built by people who cares about details. And all kinds of details matter. Sometimes the details are financial. Sometimes aesthetic. Sometimes it’s noticing a very specific signal inside a very particular group and being able to admire the elegances.

I myself didn’t think I ever much went in for subtlety of any kind until I spent more of my time in mass markets. I’ve come to realize I was allowed to live without too much push on my own tastes for so much of my life.

And because I care about details, now I know I a stupid amount about the business of appearances because I worked at its heart.

So naturally I’d like to do more to share that knowledge as I realize it is maybe much rarer than I realized.

I intend to do it as a fun addition to my life as I experience so much of life through professional and personal interest in technologies. I’ve got aspirations for a world where we choice to work to be better. That requires a world where beauty can be cultivated in improving ourselves. so you can be certain I appreciate the angles of how we use the existing culturally technologies at hand to create the new ones.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1746 and Processed Pizza Hangover

Yesterday was my birthday and we celebrated it in grand style and semi- tradition by spending two hours walking every single aisle of Costco.

Now you might think all that walking around would leave your body feeling invigorated, and honestly it did, but we finished our grand tour by eating at the Costco food court. Now there are probably ways to eat healthy there but not how we did it.

We went for the classics including the dollar fifty hot dog and soda combination (a bulwark against inflation that has stood longer than seems possible) a slice of pepperoni pizza, a strawberry smoothie and a chocolate chip cookie. I had the pizza, some of the smoothie and half the cookie while Alex had the hotdog, a root beer, the rest of the smooth and a little bit of the cookie.

Our mutual and biohacker in chief Bryan Johnson gifted me a birthday roast of this meal. Which was not only hilariously funny but absolutely true.

Happy Birthday.

We didn’t feel immediately worse but we woke up today with what I’d qualify as a hangover. We can enjoy the above roasting as we generally don’t eat junk food and when we do it’s in more of the local beef category than the hyper processed and hyper preserved category.

Before you think this is a show of virtue, this preference never did anything for my aesthetics or metabolism, it’s just that it always makes me feel bad.

I am quite sensitive to preservatives and refuse to eat most forms of American bread and most varieties of prepared meal. No matter how good the ingredients are, the preservatives just do not agree with me.

It’s not that I’m a healthy eater naturally so much as hyper palatable foods are often hyper preserved foods and that sends my histamine response soaring into cytokine storms. So it’s no wonder I woke up feeling hungover.

I did real damage to myself as Bryan pointed out. We had a lovely time and I like to think the joy and happiness reduced our cortisol enough to bring us some balance. But it was easy to quit drinking for the same reason as it is easy to quit fast food. You feel like shit afterwards.

One of the most amusing fights I recall my parents having was my father taking my kindergarten class to tour a Carl’s Jr kitchen. They gave us a kid’s meal at the end, and while I turned up my nose at the burger, I did eat the french fried potatoes. My very crunchy and wise mother was not happy. “Now she will have a taste for French Fries!”

And damned if she wasn’t right. I still haven’t ever eaten a fast food hamburger. The idea of it is revolting to me and I’ve no clue how that came to be programmed in me. I may be one of the few people in America who has never eaten a Big Mac. But I love french fries. And good potatoes fried in a decent oil never leaves me feeling awful. But bread that doesn’t go moldy? That gives me a hangover every time.

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1744 and A Yenta For Your Perfect Look

I am considering doing more writing, but instead of it being an exercise in creating more, I am interested in writing about how to consume well, so meet Nice Packaging, a beauty shopping column with a b side about the business of keeping up appearances.

Background on why I want to do this is below, but if you want to be a part of it getting started, I’m going to offer “founding members” for it live 1:1 time with me to craft your perfect routine. Details here

Background

I get a fair amount of joy out of being the person in my social group who everyone goes to for advice on what to buy in the areas where I am most expert. I sort of wish it just could be just category (cosmetics would probably top the list ) but I’ve developed a wide range of interests as I’ve cultivated my tastes over the years so I’m just as likely to be asked what supplements I take for my biohacking as I am to be asked for skincare and cosmetic recommendations.

Chronic disease offers very transparent revealed preferences as I do what works best for my health. A a long career in the style industry means I’ve learned a lot and how to apply it as looking good is often a side effect of feeling good.

I have been in wellness my whole career as it’s not just a matter of having clean clear skin and long hair (though I mostly do) but having been inside the corporate sanctums of everywhere from Goop to Equinox. I learned a lot sourcing for my own makeup brand and I’ve applied the depth of knowledge I have in cosmeceuticals to my own healing as naturally we humans pay more for beauty than we do for health. The cosmetics industry is often light years ahead of standard medical practice.

Other topics I will play with may be more esoteric. I oddly well informed on preparedness thanks to our Montana off grid lifestyle. I’m regularly asked about stocking pharmaceuticals and first kits as those wellness worlds overlap with chronic disease, biohacking and family preparedness. Wellness goes hand in hand with fighting for your own life.

I still travel a great deal so I’ve got travel and packing optimization stories and preferences for days. Having once owned a cosmetics brand that specialized in on-the-go makeup, I can tell you now to pack what you need to look good for any scenario from surviving O’Hare with your family to packing black tie makeup that fits through London Heathrow’s quart bag nightmare.

And finally as an avid reader in the go-to gal for science fiction and reading lists which isn’t as likely to go with the rest but I’m shockingly well read in the genre. And no I don’t mean romantasy. I read hard sci-fi from cyperpunk to space opera. Thinking about what will be popular in the future means living on the cutting edge taste of the right now.

I’ll maintain my daily blog here as this is me time or me space or whatever you might like to call it. I enjoy having the space to ramble about continental philosophy, internet cultural subgroups and their fascinating ecosystems, my own emotional work and becoming version of myself that makes me happy and healthiest.

So I’ll be considering what all this looks like, editorial cadences and how I will integrate which portions of those varied interests into what is most likely going to be a style blog.

Get Started with Me

I can also use your help in getting this off the ground, so I’m offering something special – if you join as a “Founding Member” for the first year (for $300), I’ll spend an hour with you, coming up with your perfect skincare or cosmetics routine, and even send you some products to get started with. And btw, this can be just as helpful for men as for women.

One of my greatest pleasures is putting together cosmetic routines for my friends to test and trial to get you exactly what works for them. I’ve done this for billionaires and working class dollar store shoppers so I promise you I know the market.

I typically do an intake session with you with a questionnaire and some one-one time where we yap about your look, your hopes for them and your ambitions. Then I go over all of your preferences, allergies and issues. With that in mind I create a month or so of samples total for us to experiment with.

I’ll prepare your routine from either my personal brand library of travel sizes (which is enormous) or I decant into sample containers creams, serums, lotions and lotions into one perfect routine. Don’t worry I’m a germaphobe autist.

My goal is to make a routine that matches your skin & hair, and bodily needs perfectly with hour preferences. Things like daily simplicity or complete looksmaxxing, your budget from drugstore to luxury, your comfort level with different kinds of return on investment from Pareto optimization to no routine is too much. And then you test it out and we refine it together. I’m like a yenta for your grooming.

Sign Up Here

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 Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1688 and Deciding What To Outsource to Artificial Intelligence for Health and Wellness

One of my Twitter mutuals recently published an artificial intelligence prompt for making an adaptive fitness coach which works inside any of the major large models.

Having recently been saved from going septic and a gnarly deep tissue infection thanks to clever diagnostics from the commercial chatbots I am considering what else they might be able to help me along with in my day to day.

Being failed rather regularly by doctors over a decade of chronic illnesses has made me skeptical of the institutions in American medicine. But having one doctor (a dermatologist) miss a glaringly obvious differential really shook me.

Her dismissal of the details and particulars wasn’t malice, but a function of the systemic inability to put enough attention on the details of the person in front of her. Attention really was all she needed ironically.

I’m sure she didn’t set out to be that kind of doctor, I’d bet she hates that it’s all 90 second visits and Medicare coding and making money for the private equity group who owns the clinic. I feel for her. She surely wants to get back to doctoring.

No one can spot every detail and retain the complexities of every case. Especially one like mine. But a computer has a much better shot at mimicking Dr House than I do at finding a Dr House for myself. And it certainly has a better chance than someone who let the system dominate them into breezing over the details.

So I am using my mutual’s prompt to see if I can outsource a very slow and adaptive return to fitness after my month off from exercise to recover from surgery. I like what I’m seeing from all models that I’ve tried it on but I imagine I’ll have all the same “me” problems with overdoing it and pushing too hard. But who knows, maybe this aspect of wellness is better handled by machine than by me.