#i finally found a supplement that fixes it even more than the prescriptions

[suncaptor]

I do think the 1 thing I noticed is that post covid vaccine my vitamin B levels were low but not deficient and going on B supplements fixed much of my neuropathy, and now sometimes if I stop with B supplements while I am flaring up neuropathy does come back even if my blood tests show normal B levels (not even in low end) so I do think supplementing B helps my neuropathic pain.

[musemesmer]

Migraine & Tension Headache Management | Chronically Ill Studyblr

@lupinstvdies​ asked me for tips about how I manage migraines. It’s extensive. Migraine management is a lot of work but it’s so routine now that I don’t even notice it. By doing all of this things (almost) daily, I’m able to transition to a med free life (though I’ll still take migraine abortives if necessary), and focus on my health.

My knowledge for managing migraines is a result of extensive research, talking to people, reading forums, and personal experience. Some things might work for you, some not. 

Start small - with one or two habits - and see what works for you. Then build over time. Health isn’t built in a day. A lot of things take time and consistency - perfection does not happen right away.

ALL of these things will be useful for studyblrs / desk workers as well, because these are self care tips that aren’t exclusive to people with migraines. 

Finally, if you have any questions (Is this type of electrolyte supplement okay? Do these glasses work with my face? How do I meditate?) - PLEASE ask me. Knowledge is so important, but even more important when shared! Most of this information will not be summarized for you by a doctor. 

In this post you’ll find information on:

My history with migraines

Theraspecs & blue light glasses

Moisturizing eye drops

WeatherX pressure-adapting ear plugs

Electrolytes & Magnesium

Water & Sleep

Essential Oils

Physical Therapy, Treating Trigger Points at Home, and Yoga

My History with Migraines 

I’ve had mild headaches all my life, but didn’t start having migraines until a few years ago, and then I only had them once or twice a year. Then in April 2019, I started developing severe, frequent migraines. For the past year and a half I’ve had chronic migraines and tension headaches. Mine were weird because they came out of nowhere and hit powerfully and hard. Within months I had to stop working. In February 2020 I could hardly get out of bed because I just had pain all the time. I tried different types of drugs (Topamax/Topirimate, beta blockers) and they didn’t work. Finally in March of this year I got on Amitriptyline, which calmed my migraines down. Now I’m weaning off it because I have a lot of tools that can help me. I’m sick of medicine side effects. This isn’t for everyone, but I do believe that the tools below can help many people.

Theraspecs 

⎔ My #1 tool is Theraspecs. These are heavily tinted glasses that block different types of light to help with migraines. I went from being able to look at a screen 30 min a DAY to HOURS. It helps with TV, flourescent lighting, everything. You can get them prescription, send in your own frames, get night driving ones, and even sunglasses. These CHANGED MY LIFE.  

Theraspecs and Axonoptics are made especially for people with light sensitivity. These are stronger than normal blue light glasses, which you can get on Amazon, though some people say they work as well.

They are very red but after 5 minutes wearing them, you don’t notice it. People around you get used to it very quickly so it doesn’t look “dorky” (something I was personally very worried of).

Some insurances cover these.

These are especially important when looking at screens.

Moisturizing Eye Drops

⎔ I’ve found my eyes get so dry looking at screens / being inside with AC/Fans/Heating / and also from migraines. I found some moisturizing eye drops on amazon and use them daily. They help a lot so my eyes are less strained. 

WeatherX

⎔ WeatherX offers earplugs that help you adjust to different pressure changes which can cause migraines. This is especially useful if you have problems with storms or sudden hot and cold weather. I don’t use mine too often but when I do, it is a life saver. 

Electrolytes (especially Magnesium Citrate).

⎔ Electrolytes are three essential nutrients your body needs - sodium, potassium, and magnesium. You can get these in commercial sports drinks (like Powerade and Gatorade, which I don’t recommend because of sugar and additives), different foods, or as supplements. 

I started taking some electrolyte tablets in my water every day and noticed a huge difference in my migraines. You can also get a potassium / sodium blend, known as Lo Salt or Lite Salt. 

⎔ Magnesium Citrate. After taking the tablets and also reading up about another health issue I had, I learned about the importance of Magnesium Citrate. Magnesium used to be brought to food from soil, but because of modern farming practices, there’s a deficiency in our soil of up to 80-90%. A lack of magnesium in our body causes us to be stressed more easily, and react more strongly (e.g., through anxiety, irritation) to little life things, such as loud noises. Then stress causes us to lose magnesium through urine - creating a viscous cycle.  

A lack of magnesium can CAUSE or CONTRIBUTE to a lot of issues: sleepiness, anxiety, migraines, headaches, feeling weak, feeling distracted. 

Hormonal Birth Control VERY FREQUENTLY depletes the body of magnesium. You can fix this easily by taking a minimum of 500mg of magnesium a day. 

Make sure to take Magnesium Citrate - other types aren’t absorbed as well by the body.

Magnesium Citrate can cause diarrhea. Try to avoid taking with other diuretics (coffee, milk) or try an hour or two before/after eating.  

This may seem hard but it’ll prompt you to drink more water, which is really good for you too.

Be patient. It may take a week or so to start seeing real differences.

Water. Drink it. It’s good for you. 

⎔ I find under 3L a day and I feel really off - but I had to work up to that amount. 

⎔ Drink it first thing in the morning and sip throughout the day. Also if you’re managing your electrolytes you’ll have to go to the bathroom less.   

Sleep. You need it. 

⎔ Whether your condition is caused by tension in the body or a neurological condition, your body needs sleep. Meditating can help you get to sleep. Try to keep a regular sleep schedule every night. It makes a big difference. 

Essential Oils

⎔  Peppermint and Lavender can help calm you down. I dab peppermint directly on my temples (some people say don’t do this though, but it works wonders to help relax me). It instantly relaxes me and gets rid of a lot of the tension in my temples/forehead/jaw/neck/shoulders. 

⎔ Yesterday I made a lavender lotion by putting some essential oil directly in the lotion in a small bottle and mixing it. 

⎔ I also have a lavender spray (spray bottle + water + lavender) that I use on my face throughout the day. Cheap and effective.

⎔ Essential oils can be pricey but a little goes SUCH a long way that it’s so worth it for me. You can often get them on Amazon or in a pharmacy.

Physical Therapy / Trigger Points / Yoga

** All of this is also super important for if you’re sitting at a desk every day.

⎔ This made a HUGE difference in my ability to handle migraines. I didn’t really believe it - I was like, “I’m having auras, I’m having issues seeing, there’s pain in my brain and pressure behind my right eye, this is NEUROLOGICAL. NO WAY is it muscular!”

⎔ Boy was I wrong. Physical therapy helped me a bunch - but if you don’t have the ability to do physical therapy, here are some things you can do at home and cheaply.

⎔ This fantastic (and dorky) video explains what trigger points are and how to help them. I suggest doing this every day. I use a very simple fascia massage ball similar to this. A tennis ball also works. Also look at this video for exercises for the upper shoulder / front of the shoulder.

Tips for this: When you’re working with the ball with your back to the wall, you can hold the ball with the opposite hand. This means, if you’re working on the right side of your neck but the ball keeps slipping, hold it with your left hand. Keep the side that you’re working on relaxed! Same for the ball on the door frame - keep your arm limp and relaxed. 

⎔ Yoga really helps. I do this quick 10 minute video by Yoga with Adriene almost every day and it makes a colossal difference. 

⎔ Strengthening your core and focusing on proper sitting posture helps a lot. A good / easy core strengthener can be found in the Plank Workout at Home App by Leap Fitness Group. Android and iPhone. 

I really like that it works ALL ab muscles, not just some of them. found that at day 9 of the beginner it became too hard for me, so I am doing day 1 today, day 10 tomorrow, day 2, then day 11. Hopefully that will work. Feel free to modify the program to make it work for you!

[arabellaflynn]

Hello, all. It has been a rough pandemic.

As you may have figured, since I am in the performing arts, I have been completely out of work since this shitshow began. The earliest venues will open up here in MA is September, which is not helpful for me, because I need to be out of my current place by 8/31. No one will rent to me on my Patreon income, so I've been trying to figure out how to supplement that with other online work.

My first thought, frankly, was camming. I'm attractive and I know that, and I don't care about being naked in "public". I have a lot of opinions on the legitimacy and legalization of sex work, but making a statement would be a convenient bonus; I'd be in it for the tips. As the appliance menagerie on the Flintstones used to say, "Eh. It's a living."

The best camera I currently have is attached to the slightly-less ancient laptop. You know, the one with the broken hinge that won't hold the screen up on the right. Only the wifi on that computer has quit working. The onboard chip was always kind of flaky, but for some reason it has chosen now to deteriorate to the point where it no longer acknowledges a router on the other side of the goddamn wall. Shooting in the living room with an ethernet cable is not an option, because another housemate is already doing that.

I bought a dual-band USB wifi adapter with antenna. It's a Realtek chip -- not gold-plated, but also not total junk. I specifically checked to make sure it worked with Ubuntu Bionic before I ordered. I have now installed three separate sets of drivers in three completely different ways, read everything ever written about this on AskUbuntu, and still the computer refuses to acknowledge its existence. Not even if I blacklist the onboard chip to keep it from falling back into previous bad habits.

The other elderly laptop (with the working wifi) has a cam that tops out at 640 x 480, which I suppose might squeak by as a tiny facecam on Twitch, or for tutoring where no one cares about pixelization. The microphone, however, is crap. It's a tinny omni on the screen bezel that likes room noise more than my voice. I don't have an external microphone, and there's no onboard Bluetooth for my wireless headset. So I bought a USB Bluetooth adapter, which this computer is ignoring as hard as the other one is the wifi dongle. I have a wired headset with a mic, but because this computer is probably mere months too old to know what to do with an inline mic on the same jack as the output signal, it doesn't register at all.

The camera on my phone is potato quality, because that is honestly about how much the phone cost. Ditto the refurb Kindle. Neither is smart enough to keep up with streaming video, which I found out when I tried to do a video rehearsal for something months ago. 

I have no place to do any kind of professional non-entertainment streaming work (e.g., tutoring) with my terrible equipment in any event. I don't own a desk. If a free desk appeared on my doorstep tomorrow, I would have nowhere to put it. My bedroom is small enough to contravene the Geneva Convention requirements for POW cells and I'm basically stuck in here, for reasons of both air conditioning and not having to interact with a house full of people who very much want me gone.

What I do have is a set of working emulators and some free video editing software, so I decided to take a stab at a subtitled Let's Play. I can certainly ramble on for 30 or so hours of Final Fantasy II. At the very least it'll give me something scheduled to do. So I pulled everything out and set it up, only to find that my controller was "pining for the fjords" -- no lights, no acknowledgement from RetroArch, no response to any button presses.

...

...okay, well, at least we're down to a level of equipment I can afford to replace. So I am waiting for the mail carrier to bring me another $10 gamepad, whilst stuck in bureaucratic hell. I'm down to emergency public assistance, which keeps asking me to send them random documents, inconveniently one at a time. Even when I can submit them online I'm required to wait a minimum of 2-3 business days before a human can look at them. I'm trying to not be mad -- they are clearly horribly overworked -- but it also leaves me with a lot of time to do nothing but busy-wait. They've finally decided I'm destitute enough for food stamps, so now I have to sit on my hands until the card arrives in the mail.

The chronic, crushing lack of resources is not helped by (or helping) the fact that I'm just not functioning very well. I was already on the edge of disintegration when the lockdown orders hit anyway; I was taking every piece of work I could find in an effort to scrape together enough for first/last/deposit on a new apartment, and honestly that's more than I can handle. I can consistently get to about 20 hours of "stuff that can't be done while in bed, wearing pajamas" per week, with occasional spikes up to about 30, before I start losing the ability to take care of myself. I skip showers, let my living space become a complete disaster area, and go to bed without dinner because the whole process of choosing something to eat, preparing it, eating it, and cleaning up after myself is so overwhelming that I just burst into tears and don't do it. I fed the rats twice a day and cleaned their cage once or twice a week, but couldn't manage to do the same for myself.

It's difficult to explain to people the state of being physically and mentally exhausted without also being sweaty and shaky from muscle fatigue. Perhaps the single most salient example I can give is lying in bed at night and realizing I kind of vaguely needed to pee. Not like urgently -- just enough that I knew if I didn't, I'd wake up the next day with an uncomfortably full bladder. Then just lying there anyway, not because I thought suffering was noble or I deserved it or anything idiotic like that, but just because taking care of it would involve standing up, walking into another room, and initiating a new task, and I did not have the capacity to do any of those things.

If you suggest I start making a to-do list, I will sit down right now and invent a brand new Blunt Object Transfer Protocol (botp://) expressly for the purpose of punching you, personally, in the face over the goddamn internet. I will even credit you in the patent application. I will not share the licensing profits, which judging from social media right now, would be approximately all of the money on the face of the Earth. I do not need "life hacks". 

What I really need is a case worker, or possibly a babysitter, or just to have shown up at the ER about two months ago, because that is the only way I have ever found to get people to pay attention when I ask for help. Otherwise I get triaged out of sight and out of mind -- they ask if I'm suicidal, I tell them no, they tell me 'okay, here's a prescription for six Xanax and a packet of resources, go home and fix it yourself'. I'm just like, you sons of bitches, do you think I don't know how to Google things? If I could fix this on my own, I wouldn't be talking to you. Except I can't right now, because plague.

Everyone wants to fob me off on someone else. I was referred to an SSDI attorney by a friend, because frankly that's where I'm at right now. I wrote to them, specifically mentioning his name and the associate who helped him, and explained that I was basically a vegetable and I needed help applying for disability. I'm a college-educated suburban white girl, who grew up hearing her parents make rude jokes about welfare queens -- I have no idea how any of this works and I'm so broken I kept losing my place in a blanket whose pattern was literally "knit-purl-knit-purl to end of row; turn work over; repeat". Their response was "Sounds like you need some help applying for SSDI/SSI disability. Here's the website for the Boston Bar Association, good luck!" Crisis lines of both the psychiatric and financial varieties keep directing me to one of two national clearinghouse sites for social support services, both of which direct me to each other, because neither has any programs in my area.

I am trying really, really hard not to resent the ever-loving fuck out of anyone who has any sort of support system right now. One housemate has almost the exact same list of medical problems that I do, and is also completely out of work right now. She is married to the one who has a grown-up salaried WFH IT job, and will never have to worry about having a roof over her head or food in the cabinets. The single housemate has supportive family literally a five minute walk down the street; if she ever gets her feet kicked out from under her, she can stay with them temporarily while she scrambles back up. Another friend yote out to California right before lockdown to stay with his family. A local offered to help me with paperwork, then ghosted me intermittently before explaining that he was having a hard time himself right now and barely had the capacity for his own life. I have an elderly rat, no more savings, and no options.

I don't even know how I'm going to move the little I own. How do you even ask people to do that in the middle of a pandemic? If I don't have the money to move, I definitely don't have the money for a moving company, and I'm envisioning all of my community-minded friends pursing their lips in judgement and declining because like all the good people they are diligently social distancing.

I have also discovered, while hauling an empty suitcase out to Watertown and a full one back home again, that I do not cope well with face masks. It's fine if I'm not doing much, especially if I'm in a climate-controlled space like a store or the T, but as soon as I exert myself at all, I see spots. And no, it is not a matter of "just get used to it"; I have tested this by trying to wear a mask during my home workouts. It is just stuffy enough under there, and there is just enough reduction in air flow, that the world keeps going all film-grainy and dark on the sides, which I know from experience is the first step on a very short path to the Magical Land of Syncope. I had to stop during the outdoor trek and sit on the suitcase about twice a block through the commercial district, where it stayed on because there were people. This was when it was 72 whole degrees out (and the AC is generally on 74°F inside) which doesn't bode well for moving my heavy shit around in late August. 

I'm normally good at catching things at the weird-vision stage, although enough random strangers and T employees have asked me if I'm okay that I have to assume I look as ill as I feel at that point. And I have an absolutely tragic talent for talking people out of calling emergency services when I do actually keel over, but everyone is so health-panicked that I don't think it would work right now. I know what's happened and why, but I can't exactly communicate that to bystanders when I'm unconscious. As nice as EMS is, I don't feel like waking up to a round of Twenty Questions ("How many fingers am I holding up? Who's the President? Do you have a seizure disorder?"). So I just don't go out.

Alison over at Ask A Manager got a question about this the other day that suggests this is considered legitimate can't-(always-)wear-a-mask territory, and I am able to wear a mask where required in MA, which is indoors/during interactions with other people when it's actually useful, so I don't have any qualms on the scientific or legal front. I have just never been a good judge of how much potential peril/damage it's "reasonable" to put up with, and I don't have the capacity to explain myself over and over again a million times a day. 

I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of covid, I'm tired of living in a big glitzy continent-spanning banana republic, I'm tired of anxiety, I'm tired of other people carping at me to do things I can't in order to fix their anxiety for them, I'm tired of not having the space to dance, I'm tired of asking for help before things fall apart and being told 'well, come back when it is an emergency', and most of all I'm tired of this cycle where I tell myself "I'm going to stop being lazy! I'm going to put on my big-girl pants and wake up early and work 40 hours a week and support myself like an adult!" and then fail at it again because I just do not have the capacity to do that. I do not know how to make the system understand that I need some kind of support right now. 

Sorry for yet another depressing update, but that's where I am right now.

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[peachdoxie]

Could you maybe explain what executive dysfunction is and how one might be able to tell if they have it?

Tonight on “So You Think You Might Have Executive Dysfunction: How to tell if this is what’s ruining your life right now.”

Have you ever woken up, starting scrolling aimlessly through things on your phone, and just continued doing that for three hours despite knowing you have errands to run, food to eat, bathrooms to use, and materials to study?

Have you ever sat in a chair and stared at the carpet for hours instead of starting that new book you bought, all the while thinking “I want to start that new book I bought”?

Have you ever wanted or needed to do something but instead didn’t for absolutely no discernible reason?

If you said yes to any of these questions and deal with this shit on a regular basis, then you might have executive dysfunction!

Executive dysfunction describes the case where there are problems regulating the executive functions, which are the brain processes that control behavior. Essentially, it’s when you have problems planning, starting, and finishing tasks and goals. In my experience as someone with executive functioning problems, it’s pretty much when you just can’t get yourself to do something you know you need/want to do.

I’ve heard it described before as being constantly “stuck”, or that you’re waiting for something so you can start doing what you need to do, but you don’t know what you’re waiting for or when it will happen, so you just do nothing instead. (I can’t find the post that talks about being “stuck”, but here’s the one about waiting for something to happen.) If you want some more expressions of what executive dysfunction feels like, here are some posts I’ve reblogged that talk about it: 

one two donald duck executive dysfunction meals. 

Executive dysfunction comes often with anxiety, depression, ADD/ADHD, autism, and a variety of other mental or physical health problems, since all of them impact your ability to moderate your behavior and get things done. Though I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression issues for most of my life, I didn’t have problems with executive dysfunction until about two years ago between my sophomore and junior years of college when I developed fibromyalgia, which is a chronic fatigue and pain disorder. However, it’s not a prerequisite that you have to have any mental or physical health issues in order to struggle with executive dysfunction.

Personally, a lot of times when I say I’m having executive dysfunction issues, it’s because I’m struggling to get things done even when I’m not feeling the effects of fibromyalgia, anxiety, or depression. For example, on days I have off from school or work but still have things to do, I’ll often wake up feeling okay, but just play on my phone for like four hours (not an exaggeration) without getting out of bed, even though I’m hungry, have to use the bathroom, need to charge my phone, and have other things to do that require more steps, like go run errands or work on grad school applications.

People with executive dysfunction also often have memory and concentration issues. My reading speed for non-fiction slowed down by a lot when executive dysfunction hit me because it takes that much more mental energy to focus on what I’m reading and not forget the preceding sentence. In my last two years of college, I had to take really good notes because otherwise I’d barely remember what we talked about. It impacted my grades in class because I’d often lose out on participation points because I’d have to focus really hard on taking notes and what people literally just said or else I’ll forget. It takes me longer now to formulate thoughts and speak well without preparation because my brain feels slower. It’s not just in a class or work setting, either, that these things cause problems, but in most parts of my life as well.

In the process of writing this post, I kept stopping and staring at the wall or the fork on my table or the piece of link on my sock or something and thinking about what I wanted to write. I had the words in my head, already planned out, but just...couldn’t type them. Thought about it, but just didn’t. There was nothing stopping me. Talking about this stuff doesn’t give me anxiety, and I’m not depressed at the moment (I actually got a lot of stuff done today so I’m in a good mood). My head is relatively clear and I’m not dealing with fatigue or extreme sleepiness. Continuing with the post was just not something I could do at those moments until I was able to break myself out of it. (Also, don’t feel like it’s a burden asking me about executive dysfunction. I’m more than happy to talk about it and help someone. That has nothing to do with me having problems writing it.)

I haven’t paid my rent yet and it’s overdue. I didn’t clean most of my dishes for over a week and so they just sat in the bathroom sink until this afternoon when I finally had the mental capacity to do it. It’s often too much to open the closet door and toss my dirty clothes where they should go, so there’s a pile of them sitting right outside the closet door. I need to fix a problem with my Amazon account so that my orders stop being cancelled, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m supposed to take a variety of supplements and medications for my multitude of health issues, but most nights I can only manage to make myself take the prescription ones (aka the ones where if I don’t take them, I will have a VERY crappy next day.) My leg has been in pain for about half an hour and even though the ibuprofen bottle is within reach, I still haven’t taken some to make the pain lessen.

Though this post is long, I hope it’s given you a bit of a look into what life with executive dysfunction is like. My experiences are, of course, not universal, but from my understanding, I have fairly standard executive dysfunction problems. If you want to know more, I recommend reading through the Wikipedia page, though that’s fairly dense and full of jargon. This page talks about executive dysfunction as the result of a traumatic brain injury, which is one way but not the only way that executive dysfunction can arise, but I found it a good overview of what the symptoms and effects are. 

Of course, if you or anyone else has any further questions for me, I’m more than happy to give a go at answering them.

[ctrl-alt-cait]

I’m Fat, and People Need To Get Over It.

When you deal with the medical system regularly (and when you deal with the general public, people at your gym, people at your school, your friends, your family, your neighbors, etc…) you probably know what an emphasis everyone puts on weight.

You get measured for BMI in public school PE, your doctor probably has it on your chart, and if you’re over (or under) a specific number, you’re going to hear about it. A lot. And there are a TON of reasons why the BMI chart is not scientifically sound in the first place: a few, summarized, you can read here. There are a lot of issues with basing health off of weight, and “ideal weight” off of health. Systems like this often ignore the amount of muscle, bone, water, and fat that your average human has, for example. And then, beyond that, even when you do body mass composition scans (which are way more helpful for health predictors), these numbers fail to take into account quite a few things which have bearing on your weight.

Sure, it’s easy to tell me that there are a string of numbers which should determine my body fat percentage. It ranges anywhere from 10-12% for essential fat to live, up to 31% as the borderline for acceptable edging on overweight. 32% plus is considered overweight. And this number can be helpful to me, because now I know that my body fat percentage is about 35%, at the lower end of overweight. And that tells me, in a truly scientific manner, what my chubby looking body is made up of. It still doesn’t take into consideration a lot of things we should look at when treating a patient: economic status, ethnic background, regional background, genetics, family history, mental illnesses, physical illnesses, comorbidity, or previous healthcare. You can hypothesize about why I’m fat all day long, why anyone is fat or underweight, why any of us are measured by this metric at all- it’s theoretical, and it’s interesting, until it’s you, and then suddenly it isn’t very fun anymore.

I have been, since I was 11 and hit menarche, overweight. It has fluctuated a bit over the years, as I’ve struggled with various health issues, and realized that I have at least three different competing illnesses that mess with your endocrine system and metabolism. And yet, I was a sports playing child. My parents emphasized eating your veggies, and limiting sweets. I go to the gym 3-4 times a week, now, and eat a pretty low carb, fiber and protein full diet. I cut out foods that I have gastrointestinal sensitivity to. I have my medical issues closely monitored, and my chronic pain is followed carefully. My heart passes all the tests I’ve had done on it. My liver is fine. My blood tests are well within average. My lungs are pretty meh, but that’s linked to chronic bronchitis. I can do 45 minutes of cardio and get that pulse rolling up at “weight loss levels” every time I visit the gym. I have tried super restrictive keto diets, anti-inflammatory diets, low fat diets, low carb diets, food tracking, visiting registered dieticians, taking nutritional classes myself, super calorie counting diets, etc.

But I’m still fat.

And I run into the roadblock of weight every time I see a doctor.

It has taken years for me to understand the true consequence of dealing with weight in the medical field. It’s simply true that overweight patients get worse care. Weight can be a huge issue in the social world. Obesity stigma has wide ranging public health implications. Being overweight makes you predisposed to eating disorders: being underweight does too. We are obsessed with physical appearance, and we ignore mental health quite handily, setting us up for a crisis of health, both mental and physical. I have had doctors I was seeing for entirely different issues, unrelated at all to weight, tell me that my problems would melt away if I would just lose weight. Some of the greatest hits:

The doctor who told me, in highschool, that I should just walk “for four hours a day after school” to force my body to lose weight.

The psychiatrist who told me that my mental health would improve when I graduated high school because “boys will stop being ashamed to admit they like fat girls, and you will finally get some attention, which will improve your self esteem.”

The doctor who, I found out recently, told my parents that gastric bypass would fix all of my problems, while I was in an urgent care clinic for completely un-weight-related complications.

The doctors who told me that my neurological symptoms were caused by weight, and not the permanent damage I had in my shoulder, or the other health conditions I had, and then accused me of lying about my diet.

And, of course, the psychiatrist who told me that it was okay to have an eating disorder for “a while, as long as you lose weight while doing it” when I expressed that being on a super-restrictive diet was giving me horrible physical side effects and what I feared may be long lasting mental ones too.

I have been recommended unsafe supplements, medications, diets, workout regimens, therapies, and lifestyle change plans to lose weight, all under the guise of helping me. Doctor after doctor has returned my truthfully filled out forms about my exercise and diet with doubt, and labeled me untruthful. Because to them, it is impossible- how can someone live healthily and still be overweight? People ignore the complications of healthcare in bodies that don’t fit a particular mold- take my friend who’s lost her appetite and a clinically significant amount of weight without meaning to, and can’t get a doctor to take her symptoms seriously, because isn’t that what women want? To be thinner? Or, for example, the doctor who was recently in the news for ignoring the symptoms of cancer in an obese woman so long that it metastasized and killed her. Our culture disregards the fact that simply because we know some health complications can come from being overweight doesn’t mean we need to stop looking for a definite conclusion. People of all weights need to be tested, and diagnosed accurately, because assuming all health issues stem from being over or underweight in anyone who doesn’t fit the flawed BMI chart is a public health risk we should not be taking. Perhaps part of the issue is that people of lower incomes and certain ethnic groups are more likely to be outside the range of accepted BMIs, and so they don’t have the recourse to demand the kind of testing the wealthy can. Perhaps part of the issue is that, when it comes down to it, doctors are only human, and humans have an inextricable bias to them that is heavily influenced by their culture.

This bias kills people of non-white ethnic groups, marginalized religions, different body types, non-straight sexualities, and gender-nonconforming people all the time. We have to realize, at some point, that doctors can be, and frequently are, wrong. That doesn’t mean you need to give up on allopathic medicine, and live in the woods with your essential oils to cure everything. But it does mean that we have to consider that maybe some people aren’t getting the best care, the care they deserve, because they are fat. There is a link, in certain cases, between being overweight and heightened risk factors for comorbid diseases. You are more likely to have sleep apnea, gout, osteoarthritis, cardiovascular issues, and gallbladder problems. This has, so far, been pretty well linked. But what drives me nuts about the concern-trolling comments on pictures online of overweight women, on articles about loving your body, on research about health, and in person from doctors and everyone else under the sun: that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to be heard, to be cared for, and to be thoroughly diagnosed. Fatness does not come first.

An example of fatness coming first when, for patient quality of life, it should not, would be certain styles of pain management. This is a field of study that I’m very familiar with and have also been a patient in many times. If I go into my doctor and complain of a full body pain that fatigues me, and makes my life difficult and miserable, I would expect to be treated for the pain. I would expect a pain medication to be prescribed, and tests to be done. Which, side note: I wasn’t asking for opiates. I was asking for a longer term anti inflammatory type of pain relief medication that would hopefully also lower system irritation. But, in my personal case, as a fat woman, I was denied pain medication, told to lose weight, and referred to another doctor.

What do I do in the interim? Suffer in pain, because weight loss is not exactly a quick and easy option, especially after all the things I’d already tried? Be miserable, because a doctor didn’t believe me that I’d put in years of good faith effort to be healthy, and passed almost all the other metrics for it? That’s exactly what I did. I suffered in pain, because no one I saw would give me a prescription other than “weight loss”, and I waited patiently for three months to see the other doctor. When I got to the other doctor, she grilled me about my lifestyle habits, accused me of “not wanting to be better”, told me she wouldn’t prescribe pain medication, and only decided to do a physical examination because I literally described my symptoms in textbook detail. She did what could have only been a 3 minute evaluation of my pain symptoms, pronounced that I was correct about my own damn body and did have fibromyalgia, and then reiterated that she wouldn’t prescribe pain medication until I lost some weight.

So we have multiple doctors in this practice network, now, that know full well I have a debilitating pain condition, who will not prescribe me as needed pain medication because I’m too fat.

Well, unfortunately for them, and me, I didn’t lose weight. I couldn’t lose weight. There was absolutely no healthy, no fad or yo-yo diet way for me to lose weight at this point. There still probably isn’t- I take several supplements that can support weight management, but aren’t contraindicated with my other medications. I live my healthy lifestyle. I am still in pain.

I am still fat.

I will always agree that finding the cause of pain, or discomfort, or disease is necessary to a patient for them to live a good quality life. We shouldn’t be out here blindly medicating people. But we also shouldn’t allow people to suffer while standing on a perceived moral high ground, dangling the carrot of relief over them as though somehow, when they jump through a high enough hoop, we will be able to say, “see? It was your fatness all along.” and the problem will be gone. Even in the face of plain diagnostic results, fatness becomes a quicksand to medical intervention. In part, I imagine it has to do with that aforementioned moral high ground. We have come to view weight as a moral marker, beyond even our cultural obsession with looks. There are “bad” foods and “good” foods- no in between, no moderation, no internal discussion about the harmfully dichotomous nature of declaring fatness a moral failing and thinness an idealized dream. We look down upon “fat slobs” and mock them in our comedies, our dramas, our romantic movies. A fat woman is not desirable, and a fat man is a travesty. Conversely, we will also mock thinness when it goes outside of the accepted range- women with “pancake” chests and men with “noodle” arms. This cultural bias is popular, it’s deeply held, and it is dangerously intertwined with the doctoral hands that hold our lives, our health, and our happiness. Even among overweight people, I’m still nowhere near as stigmatized as people a few sizes bigger than I am, and that breaks my heart.

The biggest thing nagging at my mind through all of this, as I talk about all the ways in which I’ve tried my best to fit into the medical idea of what “healthy” is, is that people deserve care regardless of whether or not they are willing to, or are trying to lose weight. People deserve care, love, acceptance no matter whether they are unhappy with their weight or not. Beyond even the issue of how I have been pressured to make many lifestyle changes, most of which I’m happy with, is the issue of people who should not have to conform to any standard but happiness to get a good quality of life. There are only so many plates you can juggle in your life, and I would never begrudge someone spending the hours of daylight I spend on fitting into an allopathic definition of “trying to be healthy” on something more enjoyable and fulfilling for them.

I could philosophize more about being fat, and the many issues we face in this culture: about the lack of affordable and comfortable clothing, the stigma of working out at the gym, the mockery, the bullying, the laughter, the jokes, the culture of abuse that has led me to psychological issue after psychological issue, the body dysmorphia I struggle with, and the healthcare battle ahead. After all that, though, I will still. Be. Fat.

So I would like to cordially invite all of my doctors, and everyone who has had the passing thought, or the gall to mention it to my face, all of the people in the society I have to coexist with, to get over it. Get over my weight. Get over the hump of grilling me on my daily habits, and tsking like some overblown moral judge when I decide I want to eat a cupcake. Get over your reluctance to take me seriously when I come in with a genuine medical issue. Get over your inability to prescribe me medications that would let me live my life happily. Get over the euphemisms for being overweight, and the skirting around your own implicit bias towards fat people. Get over “heavier girls” and “curvy girls” and “husky men”. Get over all the terrible connotations you have towards the word fat, and the immediate need to correct me like you’re doing me a favor when I say that I am, in fact, fat. I get that you want to be kind. But when you treat the reality of my existence like an insult, it can feel kind of shitty.

It’s not an insult. It’s not a psychological disease. It’s not the body dysmorphia talking.

I am just, plain and simple, a fat woman. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. There are so many things to love about my body- it is functional in so many ways. It carries me to school and back. It enables me to learn amazing things, and experience wonderful days. My body can take me through the forest, my legs can get me to the top of a hill. And if yours can’t? That’s just fine too. Body positivity gets a lot of flack for “normalizing and romanticizing unhealthy behaviors”. But hardly anyone (save a few outliers that the world wide powers of the internet will enable you to find) sees the body positivity movement and decides to become unhealthy because of it, not to mention the fact that average sized people rarely receive that kind of feedback for other “unhealthy” behaviors. It is not a bad thing for us to love ourselves, whether we are disabled, or fat, or outside the cultural beauty norms for any other reason. When I look in the mirror, I struggle with my appearance because other people have told me to for so long that it feels like it’s stuck in my very bones. Would it be such a bad thing for me to not feel that way? Would it be bad for children to grow up loving their bodies for being such miraculous things, without struggling to access fair healthcare, job opportunities, and peer groups?

I’m fat, and I’m happy. It’s time for the world to stop worshipping the God of Outward Appearances, and leave my personal healthcare business alone.

[nevillwallace97]

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