#my life is so disrupted i am so so fatigued

[jaggerjuice]

mfw i go to sleep at 3am and wake up at 10. pm.

[keplercryptids]

common myths about migraines (AKA if you get headaches regularly, please seek treatment for migraines)

"i don't have migraines because while i get them several times a week, it's only when i am hungry or dehydrated."

those are probably migraines. thirst, hunger, sleep disturbances, or any disruption to routine are common migraine triggers.

"my headaches are specifically barometric related, i get them when the weather/altitude changes."

those are probably migraines. barometric pressure is a common migraine trigger.

"i get headaches all the time but ibuprofen gets rid of them so they can't be migraines."

that's not true. ibuprofen works great at relieving migraine pain for many people.

"my consistent headaches are tension headaches. i feel them originate in my neck/shoulders."

those are probably migraines. muscle tension is a common migraine trigger.

if you are regularly getting headaches (once a week or more), you are likely getting migraines. in fact, a good rule of thumb if you're consistently getting headaches is to treat them as migraines until you can rule out migraines. that's how common "chronic headache = migraine" actually is.

migraines are a neurological disorder wherein pain is one symptom. pain is often the MAIN symptom, and the most noticeable symptom, which can make diagnosis tricky. other symptoms of migraine include:

fatigue

nausea/vomiting

digestive issues

visual disturbances (auras)

sensitivity to light and/or sound

mood changes

brain fog/cognitive changes

ringing in the ears

dizziness/vertigo

numbness/weakness on one side of the body

this list is NOT complete, but is a starting point. i really like the comparison to a hangover. if you generally feel hungover when you get a headache (without having consumed alcohol), that's a classic migraine presentation.

so many people suffer from migraine and don't even know it, so they aren't able to advocate for themselves to get treatment. there are great new migraine treatments on the market! if you're able, please seek treatment for your migraines. a better quality of life is possible.

[earthtooz]

x : PUNCH TO THE HEART ! :*+ﾟ

in which: rin shows up at your place at 2:35 am, desperate for some first aid and your love.

warnings: BOXER!RIN AU, 2.2k wc, gn!reader, mentions of blood, HURT/COMFORT, reader patches rin up, ooc!rin possibly but this is my fantasy and you all are living in it!, ambiguous relationship; u can perceive it however u like :>, unedited, a lot of intimacy, one suggestive line.

a/n: this wasn't meant to happen, but there were quite a few people who wanted this to happen. i will be tagging the accounts, and you should all thank @limitlesshq for making this happen. i'm gonna go eat my laptop now bc i want this man so badly.

it’s 2:35am when you hear the furious rasping of knuckles on your door.

you’re a little terrified, rooted to where you were currently standing in the kitchen when you hear the intrusive noise. on the journey to retrieve a glass of water, you really were not expecting an unknown assailant to disrupt this methodical routine of yours.

willing yourself to move, you approach the door as carefully as possible, holding your breath whilst you peer into the peephole. the sight you’re greeted with causes you to stumble a little, face scrunching into an unpleasant expression as you lean on the door for a bit more stability. 

when you open the door, you don’t know who looks more shocked to see the other.

“rin?” you greet after a brief moment of silence, his teal eyes cutting into yours.

his eyebrows furrow, the shock melting away from his face. “did i wake you?”

“no, i was- uh, doing my work.”

“at 2:30? you should be getting some sleep-”

“can we not talk about my bad habits right now? not whilst you’re looking like…” you gesture to his face, “this.” 

there’s streaks of blood on his face, his hair sticks to his forehead due to sweat, he has a bust lip along with a few other cuts scattered along his skin and the drowsiness in his eyes is making you feel fatigued too. 

but there’s a part of you that twists in discomfort just thinking about what he’s been up to tonight, where he’d been tonight. the bulge in the pockets of his jacket confirm your thoughts and you wonder how much cash he could’ve racked up tonight to look this disastrous.

rin frequenting boxing matches as a fighter for a little extra cash was something you learnt about him ages ago, but ever since knowing it, you don’t recall him being beat up too badly. something about ‘being too good for lukewarm dipshits’. 

rin rolls his eyes. “i’m coming in.”

he pushes open the door a little further to accommodate his frame before stepping through as if this were his home, causing you to stare after him in bewilderment. where was this attitude coming from? why was he acting so weird tonight?

slowly, you shut the door and lock it, turning around to confront rin who now sits on the edge of the couch, forearms resting on his legs as he sighs heavily. walking over to his pitiful figure, you stop a few feet short.

“is something wrong?” you ask, voice practically a whisper as to avoid shattering whatever fragile state rin was in right now. 

“‘m just really tired. nasty fight tonight.”

you don’t say anything, not wanting to force rin to open up. instead, you take a hesitant step forward to card a hand through his messy hair and the sound that leaves him is close to a groan of relief. it hurts, really, rin’s double life stresses you out to the point that it causes physical aches in your chest simply thinking about what he has to go through. he says it’s a nice stress relief and the money doesn’t hurt, but because he ‘enjoys’ the activity, he never knows how to stop.

his hand weakly reaches out to grab at you, pulling you closer once they close around your waist, allowing him to lean against your stomach. the dark-haired soaks up whatever affection you give him and with each stroke of your hands through his hair, he leans himself further into you, using you as a crutch, a lifeline, a safe haven. 

when you step away a little to take a look at his injuries, you don’t miss the way his hands clench onto your shirt, holding on to the fabric with a vice grip as he stares up at you.

“where are you going?” he asks, voice ragged.

“nowhere, why?” you answer. rin’s grip lets up a little, but he pulls you into him effortlessly, causing you to grab onto his shoulders for stability.

“i don’t want you to go. need to be with you tonight. need to be with you all the time.”

the way your heart flips over and over again in your chest should be illegal because you feel like you’re about to be sent into cardiac arrest. rin is most beautiful when vulnerable, you think, and as concerning as your confession may sound, you mean it well. he bears his shield and sword, wields them so well that he forgets to drop them sometimes, that there is so much more to see when your view isn’t obscured by self-reliance and independence.

your hands travel upwards to cup his cheeks and he sighs, closing his eyes to relax against you.

“i’m not leaving, i just wanted to check out your injuries. speaking of which, you really need to wash up. let me take care of your wounds.” 

“they’re fine. i got some first aid already.”

“then why didn’t they wash the blood off your face?”

“i left before they could. wanted to see you.” 

“you’re so bothersome,” you scold with a small smile, patting his cheek affectionately. “i’m tired too, i want to go to bed so it’s either you wash up or i’m leaving you on the street.” 

with a grunt, rin stands up, surrendering to your pleads as he lets you drag him in the direction of your bathroom. “go shower. i’ll take dress your wounds afterwards,” you command, dropping a spare towel in his arms.

the dark-haired glances up at you with an amused look in his eyes. “not gonna join me?”

“you belong on the streets, don’t make me actually throw you out.”

he rolls his eyes. “aye aye captain.”

closing the door behind you, you dutifully retreat to your room where you had last left your laptop running with the document of the assessment you had to complete by the end of the week. killing time by working a little more wouldn’t hurt anyone, you think, before opening another tab, music still softly playing from your laptop speakers to set the ambient mood.

“what do you think you’re doing?”

a stern voice disrupts your train of thought, the sound of furious typing on keyboard suddenly halting when you see itoshi rin in your doorway, dripping water from his hair with nothing but a towel to cover his body, chest on display for your viewing pleasure.

not that you indulge him.

you breathe out roughly, rubbing your face. “oh good, you’re done. c’mon.”

standing up from where you were working, rin doesn’t let you walk too far out of your room, using a toned arm to stop you as it winds around your torso, bringing you to him effortlessly. you feel the post-shower warmth from his chest radiate off him, almost lulling you to sleep with how heavy your eyelids feel.

“you’re not overworking yourself again, are you?” the dark-haired asks quietly, his hand now tracing circles at your hip from where it snuck underneath your clothes.

the yawn that escapes you gives you the only answer he needs. “it’s just tonight, i promise.”

“you say that all the time. you need to take care of yourself, y/n. these habits aren’t healthy.”

“i know, i know. rich coming from you,” you mutter. “can we talk about this another time? i’d really like to clean you up and get to bed as soon as possible.”

you feel him nod from behind and soon enough, the grasp he had around you loosens, allowing you to step away and guide him to the bathroom. there, you sit him down on the toilet seat and furrow through your cabinets for the first kid, grabbing some antiseptic, cotton pads, and a variety of bandaids. 

the remaining mist from his shower lingers in your bathroom and the smell of your products remain heavy in the air- heavy on rin too.

the whole process you spend it in silence, letting the tension accumulate on its own as you brush away still damp spots with a dry cloth and squeeze some antiseptic onto his wounds before placing some bandaids over some of them. he’s not very reactive throughout the process, but his indicators of pain flash across his expression from time to time, even if just for a second. especially prominent when you dealt with his bust lips.

your heart aches.

when pressing the last dressing onto a cut on his cheek, you instinctively bend down to place a lingering kiss over it, as if the one action will communicate all the concern and affection you held for him.

as if the love you feel for him will be branded onto his skin.

it’s with an air of reluctance and melancholy that you pull away from him, not meeting rin’s eyes as you go to put the supplies back in the cabinet and wash your hands. 

you easily preempt the two arms that wind around you and the familiar chest that presses itself to your back once again. it seems to be rin’s favourite position, especially with how liberally he rests his chin on your shoulder, staring at your reflection, waiting for you to look back at him.

you don’t cave. otherwise you might break.

“talk to me,” he whispers next to your ear, tightening his embrace ever so slightly.

the silence is deafening, especially to rin who grows more and more concerned over it.

“y/n.”

“i don’t like it when you show up like this,” you confess in an exhale, reaching for a towel to dry your hands with. “it hurts seeing you hurt with blood all over your face, all bruised.”

now it’s his turn to be silent. you finally bring your head up to look in the mirror but the sight only makes you realise how much of a mess you look. your hair is ruffled, your eyes are drooping, and you look a little crazed. 

yet rin looks at you like you are some iridescent, all-knowing being. like you weave the strings to his life. like you command the outcome of his life. the twisted part is that he would. he would allow you to do all of the above, because “you’re the only place i can go.”

what he means to say is that you’re the only place he wants to go, but the confession causes a hiccup (something that resembled a quiet sob) to escape your throat. rin holds you tighter to him, pressing several kisses on your neck, trying to distract himself from your grief because otherwise he thinks he’d crack too. 

“rin.” one quiet syllable of his name causes him to stop and look back up at you, those usually indifferent, cerulean eyes containing so much intention and devotion. 

he loves you, he realises. 

“i’m glad you trust me and i trust you too, but seeing you hurt and broken down hurts me too.” 

you love him back, he realises.

“you talk all the time about taking care of myself, but what about you? you can’t expect people to do the things you can’t, rin.” you’re not looking at him again; it kills him. “i know i can’t stop you from going out every so often, i don’t have a place to tell you what to do- am i making sense right now?”

he gives your waist a squeeze. “you are. you’re right, i’m sorry for making you feel this way-”

“you don’t have anything to be sorry about. this is all just in my head, i’m sorry, i just need to sleep the day off and then-”

“-stop invalidating yourself. you’re right.”

“i don’t mean what i say from a ‘you’re bothering me’ kind of way, i don’t mind it when you come to me for help- i’m more than happy to! it’s just… i’m not as strong willed as i like to be sometimes.”

you turn around in his grasp and he presses you into the ceramic of the bathroom counter, rubbing comforting circles into your skin. “i know, i know,” he repeats. “it’s okay. thank you for being here, that’s enough for me. you make my nights so much easier, don’t you know?”

his forehead rests against yours.

“best part is being able to know that once everything is over, you can be there to make life so much better.”

with a shaky exhale, you begin laughing. “what if i’m actually asleep though and don’t wake up to answer the door?”

“i thought you were going to be asleep tonight.” 

“then why did you come?”

“i didn’t mean for you to answer. i just wanted to be near you.”

the weight of his confession is hefty, but calms the ponderous storm of your mind nevertheless. you laugh even harder. rin’s ears turn bright red. at least you’re smiling again. he would fight in countless matches and get several punches to the jaw if it meant he could see you all happy and radiant in his arms. 

you retreat out of the bathroom to find appropriate clothes for him to wear so he can be in something other than a towel. 

then soon enough, you’re both curled up under your covers with rin holding you to him in a vice grip. when he’s sure that you’re fast asleep, he breathes a quiet, but meaningful ‘i love you’ into your skin, branding you in return before succumbing to unconsciousness with all he could ever want in his arms.

[thebibliosphere]

How did you get rid of yr migraines?? #ineedthistoo

They're not totally gone, but I found out they were being hugely exacerbated by atypical binocular vision disorder. (Meaning I don't have the usual expected double vision, which was why my regular eye doctor missed it.)

I got tested by a neuro-ophthalmologist who did a 3, almost 4-hour eye exam to find that my eyes were not working in harmony and were likely causing a lot of fatigue and pain.

If you want to read more about how I got diagnosed and what it was like, I documented the whole thing on my blog. Just look for 'binocular vision disorder.'

If you want the tl;dr version: I am now wearing micro prism lenses to correct my eyes, along with a red tint to the glass to help with my severe photophobia.

My eye doctor prescribes migraine patients red-tinted lenses, as the red tint blocks more blue light than either yellow or green-- which are the typical color of lenses designed for screen use.

Even if you don't have any form of BVD, I'm going to highly suggest looking into red-tinted glasses, as even when I was waiting on my new prescription coming in, I was wearing a pair of non-rx red glasses, and my migraine pain severity went down drastically.

I didn't realize how much I was squinting and clenching my facial muscles from pain caused by blue light (natural and tech generated). All the screens in my house are now set to the night-light setting, which makes them orange/red, and I'm getting uv films for my windows so we can still see out but not have as much sun/snow glare in our south-facing home.

I'm also replacing the green acetate cover for my screen with a red one, just for an added layer of protection.

It makes my world very rosy, but it's helping*.

I also take magnesium and b2 as directed by my regular neurologist, which seems to help--though obviously, it couldn't help correct the issue my eyes were creating, so I'm interested to see if I get more benefit from them now.

The rest of my migraines now seem to be hormonal, which I am still pursuing, though sadly, with little help from my current ob/gyn. Need to work on that.

Anyway, that's how I went from 15-20 migraines a month down to 3. My eyes were fucked. They are still fucked, and I'm doing vision therapy along with the prisms to try and help, but so far, it's working!

---

*For anyone wondering, I still do green light therapy, which is also recommended for migraines. I'm just also trying to block as much blue light as possible, as that seems to be a major source of pain for me, not to mention the disruption to my sleep schedule. I've suffered my whole life from delayed sleep phase syndrome as part of my ADHD, but my chronic insomnia and problems sleeping have improved a lot since I started wearing red lenses and filtering all the tech in my house. (Ignore that I'm posting this at 2am, I'm awake by choice.)

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

by Lydia Wilkins

“Come back to me when you start wanting children,” my gynecologist said. I had asked about the implications on fertility, thanks to my Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) diagnosis — and was dismissed once again. It enveloped me with such despair.

For over two years I was shunted between varying medical offices, from primary care to an STI clinic. Among many disabling symptoms, I was experiencing hair loss and excessive hair growth along my jawline since my SARS-C0V-2 infection. After developing Long COVID in March 2022, doctors considered me a “medical curiosity” and tested me endlessly, leading to wrong diagnosis after wrong diagnosis. I was prescribed medication after medication, but nothing seemed to help.

Eventually, I added another diagnosis to my chart when I was diagnosed with PCOS by a gynecologist. The hormonal condition is lifelong, presenting with symptoms such as excessive hair, hair loss, fatigue, and irregular periods. The World Health Organization recognizes PCOS as a leading cause of infertility; you are also at risk of other conditions such as diabetes. The gynecologist additionally said there was a possibility that I have endometriosis, in which tissue from the uterus grows in places where it should not be. Endometriosis is recognized for extreme levels of life-impacting pain and is also associated with infertility.

The impact of Long COVID on sexual health is still not fully known, but there are serious signs of sexual and reproductive health being impacted. To be a disabled woman who has to advocate for herself, with the research, in the face of medical indifference is beyond exhausting. At every stage, I have correctly diagnosed myself, while specialists would play “catch-up.”

Why are medical experts and public health officials not sounding the alarm, to warn the public about the impact of Long COVID on fertility?

Like COVID-19 which leaves inflammation in its wake, PCOS is also thought to be an inflammation-related condition. PCOS is primarily a hormonal condition that impacts an estimated one in ten women and may put you at higher risk of severe COVID-19, according to research. PCOS can also make it more difficult to get pregnant, or, like endometriosis, increase complications during pregnancy.

I still have so many questions, such as if there is anything I could do now to mitigate the chronic nature of PCOS. Yet, doctors continually fob off these questions, shrouding me in a patronizing expectation of “having to wait until you start having children,” as if once I am interested in children, I will gain admission to an elite secret club of better care.

The UK campaigning group Long COVID Kids has documented the wider impact of Long COVID on reproductive health — such as changes to menstruation and triggering menopause. The same post also points to a study of the negative impact on ovarian function, along with other triggered conditions such as ovarian cysts.

A Patient-Led Research Collaborative review also found that women with Long Covid had increased rates of reproductive health issues — including, but not limited to, endometriosis, infertility, ovarian cysts, and other conditions. The review also mentioned another condition I am waiting to be tested for, after two years of misdiagnosis — POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome). Why are these conditions not considered in tandem with each other, to save time and needless testing that causes nothing but distress?

We also know that COVID-19 tends to disrupt menstruation, as well as “fertility potential.” COVID-19 impacts male fertility, too, reducing sperm counts even after mild infections and causing erectile dysfunction. Some people with Long COVID are opting out of having children altogether, because of the strain of delivery and childbearing to the body, or because of the inability to raise or financially support a child.

Before catching COVID-19, I was bouncy, energetic, and socially confident. I had never had any notable health issues; now, my hair falls out in clumps, enough that my hairdresser has adapted to hide the thinning hairline. Excessive hair growth dominates my jawline and eyebrows. There’s also acne, dark spots of skin, and tense bloating warranting “she’s pregnant!” commentary from friends, family, and colleagues. There are few resources on how to cope with such an overwhelming diagnosis and aftermath.

I have been disabled from birth — but attempting to access reproductive healthcare with Long COVID has been a rough learning experience. Thanks to a litany of traumatic experiences when seeking relief from Long COVID, I am now obliged to take a chaperone with me to all medical appointments. Medical professionals speak to my chaperone as if they are the patient — “what can I do to help?”

We are told we have to trust medical professionals — but that trust is a privilege not afforded to disabled people in healthcare settings.

I, in turn, am the “sweetheart” spoken at with “the voice.” Disabled people everywhere know it — slow and childlike, patronizing and loud. I am not afforded dignity or privacy as a result. Other professionals have asked for free disability education instead of discussing my symptoms; it’s an inappropriate presumption, as well as beyond bitterly distressing.

My care was also marked by desexualization, or being reduced to the presumed state of a child. Doctors assumed, “she’s disabled — so she won’t be interested in any of that,” as Lucy Webster documented in her book, The View From Down Here.

Disabled women learn to suppress our anger to achieve any kind of diagnostic result, never “speaking to” the weighted horror. We have dreams, too — but they are tempered by societal commentary, both inside and outside a medical setting. I used to dream of an ordinary life, maybe a life of growing old with a partner, a house, a family in some way. Now, I realize it would be a privilege to not be questioned about these wants or to not be subject to constant commentary.

Women have long been advocating for better reproductive healthcare in the Western world; PCOS has long been misunderstood, with treatment often merely consisting of being told, “just lose weight.” A lack of curiosity has written off reproductive healthcare as only “a woman’s issue” for far too long.

More research on the emerging connection between reproductive health and Long COVID is needed, as is a deliberate culture shift in any caring profession. That can only start with education aimed at ending ingrained stigma. Health is a collective concept — and if we forget that, the pandemic has taught us nothing.

[glowwithkristen]

Nurturing Your Well-Being: Signs of Emotional Overwhelm and Calming Affirmations for Self-Care

In today's fast-paced world, it's easy to neglect our emotional well-being amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life. However, prioritizing self-care is crucial for maintaining a healthy mind and body. Recognizing the signs of emotional overwhelm is the first step towards implementing self-care practices into your routine. Additionally, incorporating calming affirmations can help alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression, promoting a more balanced and resilient mindset.

Signs of Emotional Overwhelm

1. **Persistent Stress**: Feeling constantly stressed or on edge, even in situations that wouldn't typically cause stress, could indicate emotional overwhelm.

2. **Difficulty Sleeping**: Insomnia or disrupted sleep patterns may signal underlying emotional strain.

3. **Fatigue**: Feeling exhausted despite getting an adequate amount of sleep is a common indicator of emotional overwhelm.

4. **Irritability**: Becoming easily agitated or snapping at others over minor issues could be a sign of underlying emotional distress.

5. **Withdrawal**: Withdrawing from social interactions or activities you once enjoyed can signify emotional exhaustion.

6. **Physical Symptoms**: Headaches, muscle tension, and digestive issues may manifest as a result of prolonged emotional stress.

7. **Difficulty Concentrating**: Struggling to focus or make decisions could indicate that your mind is overwhelmed with stress.

Calming Affirmations for Anxiety and Depression

1. **"I am worthy of love and compassion, especially from myself."**

2. **"I embrace each moment with a sense of peace and gratitude."**

3. **"I release all worries and fears, allowing myself to find inner calm."**

4. **"I trust in my ability to overcome challenges, one step at a time."**

5. **"I am capable of handling whatever comes my way with grace and resilience."**

6. **"I honor my emotions and give myself permission to feel without judgment."**

7. **"I choose to focus on the present moment, letting go of past regrets and future uncertainties."**

8. **"I am surrounded by love and support, even in times of darkness."**

9. **"I nourish my mind, body, and soul with kindness and self-care."**

10. **"I am enough, just as I am, and I deserve peace and happiness."

Prioritizing self-care is essential for maintaining emotional well-being in today's hectic world. By recognizing the signs of emotional overwhelm and incorporating calming affirmations into your daily routine, you can cultivate a sense of inner peace and resilience. Remember, self-care isn't selfish—it's a necessary practice that allows you to show up as the best version of yourself for both yourself and those around you. So, take a moment to breathe, listen to your inner voice, and nurture your well-being with kindness and compassion.

[fckmiilk]

You never think it will happen to you.

Just found out my ED (when it was really bad from 13-19y/o) gave me thyroid problems and here’s a fun list of the major symptoms for me:

-swollen & painful thyroid gland (throat)

-neck & face are almost always swollen

-thinning hair

-nails are brittle

-chronic heart palpitations

-constant anxiety

-joint pain

-increased sweating

-intolerance to heat or cold.

-skin discoloration

-difficulty sleeping

-fatigue or restlessness

-constipation or more frequent bowel movements

-dry/itchy skin

-memory problems

IF YOU HAVE SYMPTOMS THAT LINE UP WITH A LOT OF THESE AND ARE ABLE TO PLEASE GO GET CHECKED AT THE DOCTOR I AM MISERABLE AND REALLY WISH I KNEW SOONER SO IT DIDNT GET THIS BAD

The worst part is that while this makes me want to make healthier choices for my body, the reality is that I still have an ED. I still WANT to follow through with the bad behaviors but now my choices are exclusively-

A.) Continue with ED behaviors and risk going into a coma due to my thyroid that’s not being taken care of, or-

B.) Force myself to do what is necessary to improve my physical health enough that my thyroid and symptoms are manageable without cause life disrupting discomfort at least or death at worst.

[boxheadpaint]

hungry but not much to eat and tgen mildly depressing news, ok. obviously this is worsened by being hungry and not medicated yet. decide instead to go back to bed and lie to still to use up energy and sleep through hunger. Somehow this does not work and just end up more tired and more hungry. And still havent taken meds. my thrilling life. dove noises outside tho. wait i havent done a diary post in a bit hang on lemme rev up here.

ok back. Collapsed while cooking because im intwlligent, but did enjoy a good meal with my partner. watched some Star Trek while my body refused to regain energy so as to take a shower, and had to take a shower anyway. Have been much less depressed lately, though have been dealing with constant daytime fatigue for some reason. Im mr fall asleep. going to get groceries later today thank goodness

current goal in pokerogue because of course. Like obviously yes shiny farming but also at this point im trying to make the most disgusting dog possible. Behold

Completely and utterly nasty thing.

im not sure how to get back into digital art sooner rather than later, my computer has become immensely annoying to use. Beyond having to prop it by hand because of lack of back panel, it also heats up a bunch very quickly and the cursor is Still an irritating molecule off center to me- likely because of the angle I have to look at when it’s laying flat from no adequate support.

I don’t want to ditch digital completely because of some minor inconveniences but my patience with the machine has been wearing thin for a long while now. at least it’s not giving me notifications to update to windows 11. Like fuck off and such.

Lately I find myself more and more mad about advertisements and marketing. Beyond the disruptive nature of these things and the wastefulness theyre also straight up stupid and just make things look worse by existing. It doesn’t matter how many different ads for reeses you show me with the bojack guy over them, and in fact the more I see them the more likely I am to just say the governments putting poison shit in it so people will stop buying them. Also fuck everything that charges more money for a gluten free version of a product

come June im going on a ride up north and visiting my sister briefly, which I look forward to. There was some miscommmunication about days so I thot I was going to be able to hang out with her for a full day on her weekend, but it turned out that was unavailable and it made me upset. still, even if it’s just for a few hours after her shift ill be happy to spend any time with her. I miss being just a room away from her at a given moment sometimes and wish I could have appreciated that time more, though I know a part of why I didn’t was the house itself and its effect on me. Swagless really

anyway somehow I managed to be up until 3 am once again. Im marking the date down as today even if I started this post yesterday. Hoping to relax and get good news soon, or at least neutral news. News of a sort

5/18/2024, the dog is also several levels higher now than pictured. Like by a lot

[bakuliwrites]

Snippet Sunday

Thank you so much for tagging me @bardic-inspo! 💜

Currently working on Chapter 3 of Mirror (an Astarion x Tav post-game fic).

Orlando’s fatigue sparks in Astarion an insecurity he hardly wants to admit. Will she become fed up with this life? With him? Will she leave one day, frustrated by the exhaustion, the confinement to darkness? Is moonlight and starlight enough for her? Will she miss the sun on her skin? Will she come to hate the two permanent pinpoint scars on her neck?  Parasite, whispers over and over, echoing hollowly in Astarion’s thoughts. “You’re exhausted, my love,” he finally returns, brows knit as he encloses Orlando’s hand in his, “You can’t carry on like this.” She smiles warmly, affection flooding her hazel eyes, “I am adjusting. It might just take me a while.” “Don’t you miss the daylight? You know, you don’t have to change your schedule just for me. You dreadful morning-people confound me, but I’d hate to disrupt something that inexplicably worked for you,” he jokes, though underneath his sarcasm lie tremors of anxiety. Orlando laughs, but as she does so, an image of her projects in Astarion’s mind: young Orlando, broken and sunburnt, bloodied and crusted in sea salt, lying on jagged rocks in the middle of a deathly calm sea. He can feel the fear, the thirst, the scorching pain as if it is his very own. The sun has never been kind to her, a thought that both pains and relieves Astarion. “Sorry,” she murmurs, squeezing her eyes shut and drawing back the memory into her own head, “I didn’t mean to do that.” 

I'm also re-working Dark Star to focus more on past-Gortash x Tav, but that probably won't go up for a little bit.

I'd like to tag anyone who wants to post what they are working on! I am always happy to read and see what people are coming up with :) Hope you are all doing well and have a lovely start to the week! 💜

[hypnomurps]

Right, sorry for the absence, life hit like a train and fatigue is a bitch but I’m back :]

So what to talk about…. Maybe… we’ll maybe I should start with something easy. See most hypnotists do like using tools. We don’t need them, voices and eyes and whatever are more than enough, the words working themselves into and through your brain, I’m sure you know the feeling, but no, tools are nice.

They make my job guiding you down and your job of drifting ands sinking easier. And pretty much everything can be a tool. A spiral maybe, or the sounds of the world around us, a hand in your hair, massaging your scalp or maybe a metronome. I do like metronomes. But they’re not my favourite. No my personal favourite is the cliche of cliches, the good old pocket watch. Because most wrist watches give me sensory issues I started using one even before I really started doing hypnosis, believe it or not.

Now it might seem overdone and old fashioned, I mean, what’s next? Am I going to tell you how sleepy you’re getting or that your eyelids are starting to droop? No, see there’s more uses for a pocket watch than a glorified pendulum. So let’s open one. See the time, hours, minutes, seconds. And the second hand is ticking on and in and on, there’s no real back and fourth like with a metronome, just onward, round and round, deeper and deeper, maybe it’s starting to pull you down more and more each tick seemingly stronger than the next…

And then there’s the sound. It’s quiet and discreet but it’s there. With every tick there’s an audio component. Tick tick tick…. There you go, now you hear it, don’t you? And of course there’s still the use as a pendulum, the true cliche. Do you think you can keep up with all three at once?

Want to try?

Good.

So three, the motion of the second hand, round and round deeper and deeper

Two, the ticking and noise, disrupting your mind and focus so it can be drawn back, is it fractionation or is it too minor for that? Who knows, really?

And one, the gentle sway back and fourth, back and fourth, pulling your mind deeper making you want to

Drop

Good job. You’re doing well. Just sinking. Down down down.

And you can enjoy this trance, sinking for as long as you’d like, as long as it’s reasonable to drift and then coming back up and feeling oh so lovely.

Have a nice day, I hope you enjoyed

[cameronfrye666]

How I Unf*cked Myself (a digestive health story)

TLDR (yes a very long TLDR, but this post is proportionally long)

Chronically fatigued and sick as a kid

Repeated courses of antibiotics (probably 20+) and 2x Epstein-barr infection between age 8 and 17

Around age 18 started noticing really weird food intolerances

Couldn’t drink alcohol without insane hangovers lasting 2 weeks+

Couldn’t consume foods high in refined sugar without going into days-to-weeks long episodes of hyperactivity, insomnia & extreme stress

Felt relatively shit eating most carbs

Tried fixing with diet change and vitamin / mineral supplements. Helped some symptoms but didn’t fix the issue.

Tried fixing with various probiotics. Incredibly mixed results - eventually found a regimen that worked for a period of time but, again, didn’t fix the issue.

After a hellish reaction to prebiotic fibre supplements, consulted a gastroenterologist and was diagnosed with Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, Gut Dysbiosis and an active H. Pylori Infection. Significant Improvement of symptoms following:

10x 14 days Rifaximin (550 mg 3x daily)

H. Pylori Eradication Regimen (one week amoxicillin, clarythromycin, metrodinazole and omeprazole)

2 years of:

Keto / SCD Diet

Either Candibactin AR&BR, FC-Cidal, Dysbiocide & ADP supplements, or Allimed Neem & Cinnamon, alternating every 2 months between them (two caps of each product 3x daily).

Occasional use of natural motility agents depending on symptoms (ginger / artichoke formulations and iberogast). 

This whole process sucked beyond description, if you have gut / digestive issues it is probably affecting your general health & wellbeing more than you realize. 

Intro

I don’t really have anything left to say other than that it was a more painful experience than I think I could ever accurately describe. Gut health seems to be one of the last remaining big frontiers of human health, and I hope they figure it out so no one has to experience this again. I am still moderately lost in the issue but it has at least gotten a lot better recently.

Story

The Descent

February 4th 2012 is a day that I will likely never forget for the rest of my life. I woke up from a relatively short and disrupted sleep around 10am. A close friend of mine who had slept over the night before was sitting on the living room couch watching The Social Network with my dad. It seemed a sensible, logical thing to join them. So I sat down on the couch, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t.  It's hard to explain exactly why I couldn't, but I just felt this immense inability to relax and settle down. Every bone in my body was vibrating, like this immense persistent energy rush. 

I had also had a fair amount of red bull and other sugary soft drinks as mixer the night before, so I chalked this feeling up to a sugar / caffeine spike and decided to try and get on with the day. I had some breakfast, got showered etc., attempted to do some school work and participated in a family Sunday dinner. By about 10pm it began to become clear that this feeling of immense overpowering stress was not dissipating; if anything, it had gotten worse.

The next two weeks were an incredibly disorienting, painful and confusing experience. Rather than alleviate, the symptoms more or less persisted, although they would ebb and flow throughout the day. I started to notice that I felt the best first thing in the morning (important to note that "best" is a very relative term here) and worst from the late afternoon into evening, with a notable spike directly after dinner hour. I was living in a complete fog. I lost all emotional contact with the world around me. All I felt all day was this persistent restlessness and stress and a complete inability to get rid of it no matter what I did (showering, watching movies, lying down in bed etc.). I just felt like someone had mainlined adrenaline into one of my veins and wouldn’t turn off the tap. It is the most excruciatingly painful thing I have ever experienced, or think I am ever likely to experience. In some way, it is almost impossible to explain in normal words. 

It was at the end of these two weeks that I finally decided to consult a doctor. Everyone here will likely be unsurprised to hear that he suggested I was suffering from a temporary bout of anxiety. Although I have certainly been anxious about my fair share of things in the past (studies, personal relationships etc.), I could feel that this was something quite different. On top of that, there was just nothing in my life bothering me at that time. I had great friends, had already been accepted to the University of my choice and was staring down the barrel of four months of school where my academic results didn’t matter anymore and then a three month summer break. I was offered some tranquilizers or anti-anxiety meds for my symptoms, but I wasn’t really interested in trying them as I wanted to get to the root of whatever the issue was. 

The only other suggestion he had for me was to maybe take a look at my diet. He noticed I was twitching a lot and I offered that I had recently suffered some bad muscle cramps as well, so he suggested that after a bout of mononucleosis earlier in the year and a long winter with little sun, I may be deficient in a few things. He prescribed me a short course of magnesium and vitamin b-12 supplements and sent me on my way.

Over the next month, with the supplements only sort of helping and with me still watching my life essentially completely fall apart around me (barely able to attend school, permanently unwell, chronically stressed, insomniac etc., almost complete loss of social life) I consulted a few more doctors. They more or less all had the same response: you can try antidepressants and/or tranquilizers, but otherwise, sorry, we can't help you. A few also questioned the nutritional supplement prescription.

It was at this point that I started to feel I was more or less on my own in whatever this was.

Part II: Ascent #1

The three months following the initial onset of my symptoms were probably some of the worst of my life, which, considering everything I’ve experienced over the last decade+, is really saying something. I was in a completely emotionally disconnected state, basically felt only stress on a daily basis, and had no idea what was going on.

The only real nuggets of information I had that I trusted were that (i) it might be nutrition-related and (ii) caffeine and/or alcohol were clearly bad for me. I started doing a load of research into what causes nutritional deficiencies and imbalances, how to correct them, and what a healthy diet looks like. Prior to this I had been more or less unconcerned about what I ate or drank in a day, although my diet was reasonably healthy mostly just due to my mother's cooking.

My readings on diet led me to make a few changes. First, I changed from a magnesium oxide supplement to magnesium bisglycinate, for better absorption. Then, I switched to an entirely refined-sugar free, whole grain diet high in unprocessed meats and vegetables. Lastly, I started taking almost nightly electrolyte salt baths (either epsom salt or dead-sea salt).

Although none of these changes cured me by any means, very slowly, I started to feel somewhat better. I could feel moderate improvements on a daily basis. Some days were better than others, but overall things were on an upwards trend. From this point onwards I became almost completely convinced that my symptoms were the result of a nutritional imbalance and that I would cure them through diet and supplementation.

Then, something very strange happened, which, in retrospect, should have pointed me in the direction of my ultimate diagnosis. I went into hospital to have my tonsils removed (as mentioned I had been very sick as a kid), and when I came out later the next day I had a very strange level of emotional clarity. Somehow everything was less painful, and although the crazy stress symptoms weren't totally gone, the improvement in just 36 hours felt drastic. At the time I thought maybe it was painkillers I had been given, perhaps the IV drip they put me on post-op? In retrospect, it was most definitely the high-dose amoxicillin I had been taking since the operation for reasons I can explain later on.

Part III: Stasis #1

That summer things more or less stabilized. Nothing was ever quite as good as the days and week following the tonsillectomy, but the insane debilitating stress didn't come back either, so overall I couldn't complain. From a mental point-of-view I was sort of able to return to normal life other than having to watch my diet and avoid substance. I started university in the fall and was successful despite the obvious social constraints that came along with my new health regimen.

The years following this were pretty up and down. I was able to get through my university courses, have some semblance of a social life, and never returned to the manic stress state of my initial descent. That being said, I never felt "quite right" again. It is hard to place, but my health just still felt very poor. I had low energy, slept a lot, often felt quite irritable, and had very poor performance in sporting activities despite previously being a strong athlete.

The main salient point that came out of this period was that I started to notice that high-sugar foods could bring on shorter-term episodes that mimicked the time period of the original onset of my symptoms. In one instance, I almost failed a university exam after consuming a jelly-filled donut the day before and becoming almost literally incapable of processing information for a few days afterwards. Suffice to say, I completely cut sugar from my diet from this point onwards.

I also tried a few Myers' cocktail IV drips (basically a mix of magnesium, calcium and b-vitamins) during this time period as part of my thinking on the issue being caused by nutritional deficiency. I would feel pretty great for a few days following them (improved sleep, able to focus while studying, good energy for exercise) but then go back to my same poor-health state afterwards. This only compounded my belief that the issue was purely nutritional in nature. Alongside this I consulted some nutritionists and diet specialists, and they recommended me some further supplements and dietary changes, but none of it made that overwhelming of a difference compared to the changes I’d already made. 

Part IV: Descent #2

For four years life went on in the position described above, at least from a health point-of-view. I had found a regimen that kept me functional and stable, and for the most part stuck to it and tried to forget about it all and get on with life. It was great to find some stability, but at the same time as an early twenty-something in University, having to stick to a pretty strict diet and lifestyle just wasn’t all that much fun.

So somehow I got the idea in my head that having found this stability, I must actually be cured of whatever it was and could go back to eating & drinking whatever I wanted. I got an 8-month research placement in France in 2016 and decided that I would just let loose and enjoy myself during that time. Upon arriving I quite quickly returned to being totally free with what I consumed, although perhaps still went light on very sugary foods. For the first few weeks, I felt great. I mean maybe not totally physical well, but it was just so mentally liberating to not think about this stuff anymore. I had a lot of fun going out with my new roommate, going on dates and just living life in a more free way. 

Around the second month of being there I started to notice some chronic unwelness creeping back in. My sleep was starting to become quite poor, I had terrible focus at work and wasn’t accomplishing much, and would feel really unwell after most meals. I ignored it for a while.

By the third month, it was almost panic stations again. I don’t know why I didn’t react to this sooner, probably I was just trying to deny how bad it was getting again, but by mid-March (I had started worked in January), I was bordering on being physically non-functional again. I couldn’t do much other than spend most days in bed when I wasn’t at work, felt constantly agitated, was achieving essentially nothing on a daily basis (thankfully I was working in a French R&D centre where very little was happening at the best of times), and just felt constantly ill. It was not quite the return to the extreme stress of the first episode but I was still really unwell and uncomfortable most of the time. 

I wasn’t really sure what to do, but I knew I really didn’t want to do another 6-months of diet control just to get back to a sort-of sufferable health state, so I started coming up with ideas for a quick fix. The only thing I really had was that those IV cocktails had made me feel pretty great, and since I was still in this mode of thinking it was all due to nutritional deficiency, I hoped that might be an easy solution (the logic being that alcohol and poor diet had lowered my micronutrient levels and I could just reverse it). It seemed this wasn’t available privately in Paris, so I went to London for the weekend just to get one. 

What happened after that infusion is one part of this story that I still do not understand whatsoever. Within hours of getting the Myers drip, rather than feeling great, I felt catastrophically unwell. I did not sleep that whole night and for most of the rest of the weekend, and returned to Paris in a complete fog. The feeling persisted for some weeks. I have a few ideas of what it could have been - too much B-complex which can give you energy rushes, some kind of micronutrient overdose / toxicity since I was still taking lots of supplements on top of the IV at that time, or some kind of immune reaction - but really I don’t know. Suffice to say I never took one again.

Part V: Ascent #2

The terrible reaction to that IV drip started to put the idea in my head that maybe this whole thing wasn’t just related to nutrition and / or a micronutrient deficiency. So I started doing a lot of searching online about what else can affect digestion, intolerance to certain foods, and associated unexplained chronic health symptoms. The thing that kept on coming up was the gut microbiome. I had heard of probiotics before, and knew that yoghurt was supposed to help your digestion, but outside of that I was pretty uneducated. All I could really tell was that it might be worth a shot trying a probiotic supplement to see if it would help.

So, being me, I went online and found the strongest, highest-dose probiotic supplement I could find, or at least on amazon.fr . It was the Renew Life Ultimate Care probiotic with a dose of 200 Billion live cultures (I didn’t know about vivomixx and other 400Bn+ clinical products at the time). The night it arrived, I popped a dose and went to bed, and then another first thing in the morning. By the time I had eaten breakfast and arrived at work around 9am, I felt violently ill. I was sweating, had a pounding headache and felt like I was going to vomit at any moment. I managed to hold it together for the morning, barely managed to stomach lunch and then went home as soon as people started to leave (around 4pm). 

I immediately went to google and started searching for what could cause this, and the main thing that came up was something called the Jarrisch-Herxheimmer reaction. I’m not sure what the clinical validation for this is, but the general understanding is that when something starts killing off pathogens in your body (which probiotics will do when they enter a pathogenic environment), they release toxins and inflammatory cytokines (can do a search yourself) into the body / bloodstream and you feel really unwell. Basically you are starting a fight between good & bad bacteria in your body and you feel the effects of it.

In some sense I was kind of excited that this had happened. The fact that I felt so violently unwell from taking probiotics perhaps pointed to the fact that I did have some kind of gut issue, which was a potentially useful revelation, although in the meantime I still felt horrendously ill. Most advice indicated that the reaction was temporary until you got “over the hump” but by day 7 I was still sick and things were only getting worse, so I stopped taking the pills altogether. 

After looking into how I could manage this better, it seemed like low-dose pills or small amounts of probiotic foods could be a way to manage the reaction while still improving, and as there was a health food store on my street, I decided to start experimenting with Kefir. The first night just to see I drank 2 cups of the stuff and of course felt violently ill again. I then embarked on a months-long journey of upping my dose from just tea-spoons to being able to tolerate about 1/2 to 1 cup per night. 

Within about six months I was able to dose freely with Kefir, and was eating other probiotic foods like sauerkraut and kimchi, all to positive effect. I managed to return to school following the end of my research placement, and although I still didn’t feel great, I would say I had made it back to another “stasis period”. 

My next hypothesis for improvement was to switch from probiotic foods to a supplement again, although just because it was simpler to take than cups of kefir and / or plates of sauerkraut every night. I experimented with quite a few that I found online. I tolerated most of them that had a dose of 100Bn bacteria or less, although somehow still felt better eating the fermented food. Eventually, I tried the Renew Life Mood & Stress probiotic (no longer in production) because it had some strains that were clinically proven to reduce stress levels, which had been one of my main symptoms in bad periods, and it seems to work quite well. I wouldn’t say it completely changed how I felt on a daily basis but it kept me stable to the point that I could stop having to drink Kefir all the time and things felt mostly alright. I felt as if I had found the answer at least for a little while.

Part VI: Stasis #2

This period was the longest in this whole mess. For six years from 2016 to 2022 I just took my daily probiotic supplement, kept a fairly clean diet, and once again got on with life. In this time I graduated from University, moved cities within Canada, and then moved to London to found a start-up which I am still a director of (it has nothing to do with gut health). Until 2018 I would occasionally drink when social engagements came up, but I still always felt somewhat sick after. After feeling ill for almost two weeks after drinking heavily at a company Christmas party, I gave up alcohol entirely. I also never really returned to high-sugar foods for how unwell they had made me feel in the past and also just lack of need (I always found not drinking much more socially inhibiting that not eating deserts and the like). 

It was in the spring of 2022 that, after 5-6 years of stasis, I once again became fed up with the whole thing. I was a young professional in my late twenties at this point and just didn’t understand why I had to take a probiotic supplement (of which I could only tolerate doses on the lower end) and eat a strict diet just to feel somewhat normal. I had considered longer-term solutions like getting a Fecal Microbiota Transplant to try and solve the issue once and for all, but most things like that were only offered privately, were expensive and the providers that did exist seemed a bit suspect (most FMT-type treatments are only available in clinical trials or for C-dificile infections at the moment). 

Somewhere in here a nurse I spoke to at an FMT clinic I had called told me to try going keto and see if it helped. I did it and felt pretty awesome for four months but lost a ton of weight (I was already very skinny) and found it very hard to maintain (especially socially). I eventually gave it up returned to a whole-grain high-protein diet. 

Part VII: Descent #3

After considering various options of how I reasonably could take action to improve my health and general life condition, I came up with the solution of finding a Nutritionist experienced in gut health issues. I had spent a lot of time avoiding medical professionals after my initial bad experiences with doctors and nutritionists either not being able to help or actually being actively unhelpful by questioning all of the symptoms and whether my reactions to foods were just psychosomatic, but I decided it was time to try again. I found a registered dietician in London who also had a PhD in gut microbiome research, which seemed like a great fit.

I shared my whole story with all of my symptoms and current condition, and although she had some questions about my sugar reaction and some of the weirder extended stress symptoms, she mostly accepted the story and that I clearly had some kind of untreated gut health issue. Her recommendation was that my diet was already positive (although could try introducing a few more carbs) and that the probiotic I was taking was as good as could be recommended by current knowledge in the field (noted that it is generally quite personal which ones work for some people and others not, and they don’t really know why). 

In terms of path forward, she recommended that I try introducing some more prebiotic foods and potentially a prebiotic supplement. Going down the list of my daily diet, it was already quite prebiotic / fibre-heavy, so we decided to try a supplement. The idea is that the prebiotic fibre helps feed and grow more of the probiotics you are taking in the supplement, and will improve your gut health. 

I started taking a daily dose (12g) of inulin, the best-validated prebiotic supplement available. The first few days I didn’t feel great and had pretty upset digestion, but nothing crazy. After about 3-4 days, I started having a reaction similar to the first time I ever tried high-dose probiotics. I felt pretty spaced out, generally ill, and hadn’t much appetite or desire for food. I interpreted this as being another Herxheimer reaction, so decided to stick with the supplementation. After about 1 month I still felt really unwell. Most days were a struggle to get through, I was in a total fog, and felt a lot of the extreme stress sensitivity of my initial low-points creeping back in. I spoke to the nutritionist and we decided that I would reduce my inulin dose or stop taking it all together. I reduced my dose by 1/2 and then by 1/3 but still felt increasingly unwell, so two weeks later stopped taking it all together. 

The next month was very uncomfortable. I felt quite ill most days, had general nausea / feelings of disorientation, wasn’t really tolerating most foods, and wasn’t sure what was going on again. In a last ditch, I decided to stop taking all supplements (at this point just my daily probiotic). For about two weeks after stopping the probiotics I didn’t feel all that different, but then somewhere around 12-14 days in, things started to go seriously south. Day by day, or even hour by hour at one point, I started to feel things degrading at first back to the all-day stress symptoms I had in the very beginning of this whole journey, and then to a version like 100x worse than that.

At one point I didn’t sleep for almost five days. My heart was permanently bounding out of my chest, and I was just in excruciating pain every single minute of the waking hours. I had to quit my job for a period of time, and my life was otherwise completely turned upside down. Without going into too many specifics, as I have tried to focus at first on the health aspect here, this is also the closest I came to thinking that perhaps life had just not really worked out for me and it was time to consider giving up on it. For whatever reason I still don’t completely understand, I stuck with it and suffered through the worst.

The greatest intensity of these symptoms lasted for about a month. I went back on the keto diet just because I had felt well on it in the past and didn’t really know what else to do, and after 5-6 weeks I was able to return to work, although only part-time, and somewhat get a handle on my life. I still felt pretty unwell most of the time, and had become quite isolated personally and socially because of it, but at least it felt like the adrenaline tap had lowered a bit and I could mostly suffer through each day. 

From a health-hypothesis point of view, I was a bit at wits end. I had contacted the nutritionist again and although she agreed the prebiotics can cause an adverse health reaction in some individuals for reasons not well understood, she didn’t really accept most of what I was saying around the extreme stress symptoms returning, and seemed a bit doubtful of me and what I was presenting. I decided that was about as far as we could continue together. Although I don’t deny I was in a terrible mental state at that time (which would be the case for anyone given the circumstances), I was completely convinced, and am unwavering to this day about the fact that the principal source of my issue was a serious, unadressed physical condition.

Part VIII: Ascent #3

All I felt I really had left was to go to a hospital and just accept whatever treatment they proposed (whether tranquilizers, sedation, some other drug or therapy I wasn’t aware of) or lay it all out for an experienced gastroenterologist / digestive specialist and just see what happened. I had often thought of seeking a specialist doctor, but was wary as pretty much all GPs and other doctors had been quite dismissive of my symptoms and assumed condition in the past. Here, however, we were quite literally in the “nothing to lose” position. With how things had gone the last months and my current life situation, I felt that if I didn’t fix this once and for all there was quite little point in continuing to live. 

Luckily, I am at least somewhat a person of means, and in the UK there is quite an availability of private medical specialists who will see you for a cash fee. I went to one I had found from a private doctor review website who seemed to have some experience in chronic digestive and gut health issues. I explained to him this entire story, perhaps not quite in such detail and with such emotional weight around specifics of how bad it felt, but largely my reaction to certain foods, how I had tried to manage it over the years, and my current situation. 

Firstly, he broadly accepted most of what I was saying, which was quite relieving in the first instance. His answer, although inconcrete, was that digestive health is, even for him and other experts, a very poorly understood area. He couldn’t say exactly why this was happening to me, but if I had the time and money he was willing to start looking into it with me and see if there were any potential solutions. For the first time, I felt as if an established member of the medical community was accepting their own blind spots in whatever this issue was , and willing to try and help.

His first suggestion was to run some tests to rule out more common and well-understood digestive disorders like Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. These all came back negative. Upon these results, he suggested that given my reaction to the prebiotic fibre and previous reaction to carbs and high-sugar foods, the most likely explanation was a chronic case of Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth or SIBO.  The way to diagnose would be a sugar or lactulose (another prebiotic) breath-test, and the treatment being a course of a choice of antibiotics to wipe out the overgrowth and try to correct the dysbiosis (gut microbiota imbalance). 

I was quite open that I didn’t really feel comfortable trying a sugar or prebiotic-fuelled test at that time, given how precarious my health and life position was and my previous reaction to both of those substances. He suggested that since the point of the test is to see if either the sugar or lactulose cook up any bad bacteria and produce gas, and I had already shown a very negative anecdotal reaction to both with associated gas production, he was happy to just prescribe an empirical dose of the antibiotics. 

This is now going back a bit, but as a child I was given a tremendous amount of antibiotics. I am fairly convinced that that is what caused all these issues for me, or was at least the main contributor. So naturally I was a bit wary of another doctor giving me more antibiotics, although I trusted this new one quite a lot. I eventually found online that there is some validation of natural antimicrobial and anti fungal substances being helpful in treating overgrowths and gut dysbiosis, so I decided to explore those options first. They are mostly all formulations of herbal oils and concentrates. It’s the sort of thing I would have been quite skeptical of before all of this started, but at this point I had had so many unexpected negative and positive reactions to different foods, supplements and treatments that I was more or less willing to try anything.

The best validated one is called Candibactin. It’s a combined treatment of mostly Oregano Oil and a Chinese Herb called berberine. I ordered some online and decided to give it a whirl. By my third dose, I was having an extremely intense version of what I experienced when I first took probiotics. Persistent headaches, sweating, lack of appetite, general unwellness and pain. It felt like an extremely intense flu and at some point I felt like I was spiking a fever. I chalked this up to the Herxheimmer reaction again and stuck with it. Once again, by about day 7, the symptoms were still extremely intense and I had to give up on the treatment. Interestingly, although I was in extreme discomfort, my digestion had normalized in this time (I will spare you the description). I didn’t really know what to make of this but it is interesting that the supplements had at least done something. 

Following the experience on the herbal supplement which I had no desire to repeat for the moment, my symptoms somewhat stabilized although didn’t return to what they were prior to starting them. I wouldn’t say I felt notably better or worse but just “different”. I decided it was time to give the pharmaceuticals a go and see if I could tolerate them or if they were helpful in some other way, so I took a two week course of Rifaximin (the drug they give for SIBO). Being on Rifaximin was an extremely painful experience, but not quite as bad as the herbal supplements so I managed to push through it and by the end it had had quite a positive effect on me. I still didn’t feel great after the Rifaximin, and continued to work only part-time, but it had definitely done something. 

Somewhere in here I also commissioned a microbiome stool test, which showed I had a quite significant dysbiosis (low levels of lactobacilli with almost undetectable levels of bifidobacterium, and a strong overgrowth of H2S-producing pathogens). It also showed I had an active H-Pylori infection and extremely poor absorption of fat and other macronutrients. Off the back of it the gastro prescribed me a triple-course of antibiotics to clear the H-Pylori and attributed the poor absorption to persistent SIBO. The triple-therapy for H. Pylori was a horrible experience and I actually ended up in hospital and was told to stop taking one of the drugs (Flagyl / Metronidazole) because it was giving me tinnitus, insomnia and general disorientation, which apparently can be a side effect, but the treatment otherwise worked. 

After this latest course of antibiotics, I was, as before, not in a life-ending position, but my health was still quite bad. I was not accomplishing much at work, and I had essentially no social life. I decided something had to change, so I told my work I would take two months off after Christmas and do whatever I needed to do to solve this thing. The two remaining options I had before me were to try the herbal formulations again, or eat a completely liquid diet for 2-3 weeks to try and starve the pathogenic overgrowth (actually a clinically validated method of treating SIBO).

I first tried a fat-based version of the elemental diet first (most are sugar-based and I didn’t want to test that again), but it caused extremely painful stomach-burning feelings, which apparently can be caused by caprylic acid in the MCT oil it is primarily composed of, and I stopped after two days. After meditating on it for about five days I decided to just re-start the herbal formulations and endure whatever pain it caused me until this thing was hopefully cured. 

So began two years of varied supplementation and antibiotics. I switched off the Candibactin formulation at one point to another called FC-cidal & Dysbiocide, as is recommended to avoid building resistance, although this is less common with the natural products, and also took multiple further courses of Rifaximin as things weren’t progressing as quickly as I’d hoped. The experience was painful but in different ways than it had been the first time around, and also took a lot longer than I expected, although I suppose after 10 years at it that shouldn’t have been surprising. I am not entirely sure why being on the herbals the second time around was less extreme than the first. I don’t know if they were less effective than at the first exposure, or that something about my situation had changed, but it was different in some way. It’s also worth noting that pretty much the whole time I was taking the herbal supplements & Rifaximin I stayed on a Keto or SCD diet (specific carbohydrate diet, basically no starches and reduced carb), although I’ve moved off this in recent months as I’ve started to feel better.

Part IX: Today

Something seems to have worked. I can’t point to it concretely or specifically, I am not a microbiologist or a gastroenterologist, but my life feels so much better now than it did when all this kicked off, and I feel very positive about the future. I am actually back on a 3-month course of Rifaximin that my gastro has prescribed me at the moment to see if we can totally kick the issue, and will probably follow-up with some kind of diet / supplement regimen for some time after that, but either way my symptoms are so much improved by what I've done in the last two years that that feels like a success. I can't say that the problem is gone forever or would never come back but I definitely understand it a lot better and have a lot of tools to make sure that my life doesn't fall apart again like it did those last three times.

I still don’t really know what this all means to me personally. The process of getting better (trying the prebiotic, having my health collapse, taking the various pharmaceutical & herbal antibiotics) almost destroyed me as a person. At some point I had distanced myself almost completely from my job, my girlfriend at the time, most friends and pretty much any semblance of a normal social life or any life at all. For the better part of a year life was really just an existence of suffering every day and hoping to make it to the next one. Despite that, and that of course things always can or could have gone differently, I unfortunately feel as if at a high level I had no other choice. I was completely unwilling to spend the rest of my life living below my full potential of enjoyment, and was always going to do whatever it took to get there. I am sometimes shocked that I managed to survive all of this, but I am here, still living and will try to deal with whatever the experience has done to me in the same way I dealt with the issue itself: by living it, experiencing it day by day, not turning away from it, and knowing that no matter how dark the world can become, so long as you are still here, it is not really over. 

Although the physical symptoms were and have been excruciatingly painful, one of the most difficult things about this whole experience has been the level of misunderstanding and invalidation, both from the medical community and from some friends, family, other personal acquaintances and the general public, around what happened to me. I understand that it is a difficult story to follow, but unfortunately it was all very real and somehow I managed to find a route out of it for now. One day the medical community will figure this out and understand what happened to me and others like me (because they are also out there in very sad corners of the internet - links below), and share it with the world to build our collective understanding and compassion. Until then it is strange to be one of the few people to know all of this and what this experience feels like and has felt like, but I am trying day by day to come closer to people and understand why we aren’t yet equipped as a society to address these kinds issues on multiple fronts. I don’t blame anyone for not understanding what was happening to me, but the few who did and were willing to listen at the time are angels and I’m not sure I would have gotten through it without them.

Eventually I hope I will fully recover from all of this. Physically, mentally, emotionally, because it has touched every aspect of my life over the last twelve years. Until then I am just here living every day in this strange situation of being a survivor of such a horrible, confusing and largely misunderstood problem. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ibs/comments/jpkol3/how_probiotics_destroyed_my_health_long_storyrant/

[voidoflife1]

My name is Anas Al-Sharfa. Since October 7, 2023, we have been suffering from a brutal war that has destroyed our dreams and hopes, exceeding the limits of human comprehension. During this savage war, we have endured hardships that mountains could not bear. We are facing severe water shortages and a critical lack of food and nutrition due to the blockade in northern Gaza for the past 10 months, preventing essential supplies like meat, vegetables, and fruits from entering. This situation has forced us to eat animal feed, leading to weight loss, various diseases, and a significant weakening of our immune systems.

We also suffer from severe water shortages, often walking nearly 1 kilometer to obtain a single gallon of water, which is approximately 16 liters, barely enough for five family members. As a result of the war, our home and agricultural land, which used to provide our daily sustenance, were destroyed and completely bulldozed, leading to major disruptions in our lives. We have also suffered from repeated displacement, moving from one place to another and from one area to another due to the horrific and brutal bombings.

Additionally, we have been deprived of education and the opportunity to build a future. I was studying to become a doctor to help people, but fate did not allow this as my university, where I dreamed of studying, was destroyed. I have been overwhelmed with thoughts during this war—how will I build my future? How will I complete my studies?

We also suffer from fear and terror due to bombings, fire belts, and explosives. Hospitals, which are the lifeline for every sick and needy person, have also been destroyed. We face a shortage of medicines and vaccines while diseases increase and ravage us, with no solution in sight as there are no hospitals or medical supplies available here in Gaza. We live in constant fear for my younger siblings because they haven't received their general vaccinations, particularly after the widespread outbreak of polio due to the lack of cleaning supplies and the massive accumulation of waste in the streets. The streets are also flooded with sewage, posing a grave threat to our children. My brother suffered from jaundice, battling it for about two weeks with fatigue, dizziness, and other symptoms. It's a deadly disease, and as mentioned before, there’s no treatment available due to the destruction of hospitals and health centers.

We are also suffering from the absence of cooking gas, forcing us to use wood and plastic to start fires, which could lead to poisoning. We've been without electricity since October 7, spending days in darkness, causing immense fear in my younger siblings. This has also made it extremely difficult to charge our phones and batteries for lighting at night. We had to travel kilometers from our home to find places with electricity, incurring high costs to charge our phones and batteries.

Moreover, we have had no stable income since the beginning of the war after our agricultural land was destroyed.

I kindly request assistance for my family so that we can live a better life.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/7fn48y-gaza-palestine

https://www.tiktok.com/@anas.alshrafa8?_t=8pE6rwceXIG&_r=1

https://www.instagram.com/anas.2007667?igsh=eXZrcDg3ZXYzbXNr

I’m sorry the world has failed you. It’s important though to keep pushing through, you’ve survived this much. Check the tags #palestine or #gaza for more people to ask for help for. Other tags that i am not 100% sure about but have seen a bit are #from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #all eyes on rafah

[adhd-attention-deficit-dumbass]

Hi! Hello! I’m so sorry if I’m bothering you. I see a lot of adhd symptom lists and things, but I was wondering if you knew any symptoms that a person would HAVE to have in order to qualify for an adhd diagnosis? Saying the question that way kind of makes it sound like I’m trying to lie to get a diagnosis, I’m not I promise. I’m just in line to get an Adhd evaluation, but if there’s a way I can determine for certain if I don’t have it (Emphasis on “don’t”, I’m not looking for a confirmation that I have it. I’m trying to find any disqualifiers so I can determine if I should even bother going to the evaluation.) without doing the evaluation that‘d be really helpful! I know not wanting to do an adhd evaluation sounds super dumb, but the thing is my doctors already hate me for getting an evaluation in the first place and if the person evaluating me is like “No, you obviously don’t have adhd” I’ll literally never hear the end of it! I cannot emphasize enough how much my doctors hate hate HATE that I’m getting an adhd evaluation, they tried everything they could stop me without actually evaluating me, to insulting me to lying to me about “not being able to be diagnosed with adhd after a person turns 7???”

I’m so sorry this ask is so long.

(Apologies for answering this like a year later I hope You’re doing ok)

You’re not a bother at all, the asks are open for a reason❤️ Thank you for your question.

The thing about ADHD is that it’s a diagnosis determined by a bunch of observations made and many doctors (including mine) are more and more leaning towards an understanding of ADHD as more of a spectrum disorder much like Autism.

That said, I know how nerve-wracking it is pre/during evaluation and I just want you to know that whether or not you have ADHD does not invalidate your experiences and struggles. Of course since I know how annoying it is to ask something and recieve an answer that doesn’t adress your question here’s my two cents. (am I using that correctly? Native speakers let me know)

Symtoms of ADHD can often seem relatable because they are. Everyone struggles with these things sometimes because we all have brains. This makes a diagnosis complex.

The thing about ADHD is that these things happen so frequently and in such a severe way that they disrupt our everyday life.

I am chronically depressed, exhausted and riddled with anxiety, in part because ADHD causes a lot of stress in my life

Assignments are always late. I am always late even when I try my damned hardest not to be. I struggle with routines because I have memory issues.

Eating, brushing my teeth and showering regularily doesn’t feel like routine even if I do it daily. It always feels new and requires a lot of effort.

My emotions are all over the place, to the point where my partner doesn’t know what to expect and it causes him anxiety and stress when I fail to regulate them

I ”blow up” easily over little things and I can cry for hours. And I mean hours, full on ugly crying, sobbing, shaking for hours without even feeling ”done”

More scientificly; tests show that although I have an above average intelligence (or whatever you wanna call it) I underperform severly in areas involving numbers and remembering patters which indicate I have a a deficient working memory

I also have several comorbidites which are common with ADHD such as a connective tissue disorder known as Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder, (HSD) as well as chronic insomnia, extreme fatigue and as mentioned depression and anxiety. These are not required for a diagnosis but makes it more plausible.

I hope this was helpful in some way, I wish you good luck with your evaluation and general life. Remember your struggles are valid with or without a diagnosis.

❤️Peace out ✌🏻

[vent-channel]

A lot has happened but I got clean for a little while again (over a week now). I am so tired though still. I have many exams

Tomorrow I have my maths exam. The grade I get on maths will determine where I go with my life the next two years. If I get under a 6 I very well might just quit school and try to home-ed myself since I won’t be able to get into the sixth form I want if I don’t and I can’t go to my secondary’s sixth form. I don’t go to school aside from exams now so revision is on me. But I am very fatigued as the exam today had a slightly different time and it stressed me greatly. And revision is barely coming to me at all.

My biggest fear is having an actual meltdown in the exam. I have cried in several already even with my accommodations since being in school/exam conditions is very stressful for me, but it’s never been particularly disruptive and I still did the test.

I constantly want to bash my head into the desk but if I do I ruin everyone else tests as well. Already worried about it since I fidget a lot and I am allowed my tangle in which makes a bit of noise.

No amount of accommodations can save me from being burnt out and the damage that is already done. I kind of wish people had taken more notice of the near-daily sh I did at one point and just pulled me out. The school is not made for autistic people. And no matter how many accommodations there’s still over 2000 people and nobody in England likes autistic people let’s be real. You either get condescending SEN adults or bullies call you various slurs and nobody care. I think that there is a large politeness culture here but when you’re autistic (funnily enough) you get to see beyond it, not because you’re good at reading things but because it’s socially acceptable to treat people who can’t act ‘correctly’ like crap lol.

It’s really hard to take people who say ‘the majority of people are good’ seriously when the majority of people are not good. Like I have friends but let’s be so honest here. I get that a lot of people mature as adults but that doesn’t mean they’ve changed it just means they have enough brain cells to not say things that get them fired

[humitary]

Some context

I have a chronic fatigue condition, but that is just a symptom of a bigger illness that I have been diagnosed with, which is called Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). CIRS is an inflammatory condition that can be caused by a variety of agents. My specific form of CIRS came about from a genetic condition that I have had all of my life, but that did not present itself until I experienced an acute biotoxic contamination a little over 3 years ago.

When I started getting sick from the biotoxic contamination, someone recognized what it was and sent me to a specialist doctor to get some testing done. I went through a number of tests and was given the CIRS diagnosis. On top of that, my doctor told me that (at the time) I had the most severe case of this condition that she had ever seen in her practice, based on all my lab results. Lucky me.

I now have a team of health-care providers helping me out with all this, including:

A functional Medicine Doctor (treating me for my inflammatory condition.

An endocrinologist for hormone balancing.

A cardiologist for my heart issues, some of which are related to the inflammatory condition.

A psychiatrist for neurological medications.

A primary-care physician.

A mental-health counselor.

So I do have a couple people helping me with the mental-health aspects of my illness, and I am on an antidepressant medication. The unfortunate thing is that my biotoxic contamination and also the inflammatory response have a tendency to deregulate my nervous system, and disrupt many of my body’s metabolic pathways. This often reduces the effectiveness of certain medications, or causes rare side effects to occur. I’m now on my 3rd antidepressant that I am trying out, because the first two caused some fairly significant side effects that were bad enough that my doctors told me I shouldn’t try them anymore.

I am also open to alternative healing modalities, and I am currently pursuing a couple of other resources that are not part of the allopathic medical community. I have not yet engaged in any new therapies with those resources, but I am eager to try them, because the allopathic route has not produced a whole lot of positive change in my illness, and it has not given me any significant improvement in my quality of life.

[womanlalaboy]

Hustle Culture: The Dark Side of Productivity

Do you ever feel restless even when you're supposed to be resting? Do you ever lie on your back after a long day at work and still feel like you could have done more? Are you like me, never satisfied with how limited 24 hours is in a day? Do you also feel like you're always running out of time? If so, you might have fallen prey to hustle culture.

Forbes said in one of their articles that hustle culture "teaches us that there’s always more: more money to make, a bigger title or promotion, and a higher wall to climb," and it sounds enticing - inspiring, even. Especially in these fast-paced times where productivity and efficiency are praised and even redefining what success is. Communication these days happens with a touch of a button, a swipe of a finger, and even with an order to virtual assistant bots. Many tasks can now be automated, enabling us to produce more, almost to the point of exhaustion. It's not wrong to be productive, but we should also ask ourselves, "at what cost?"

With information so readily available, there seems to be no excuse to go beyond our humanness. We tend to forget fundamental things in life like rest, reflection, and connection. In my case, the implication of being caught up in hustle culture is the obsession with doing things quickly and sometimes all at the same time. 24 hours never seem to be enough. My sleep is always disrupted by my urge to do more, so even when I am resting, I am never truly resting. Although not easy, there are ways to unlearn this and prioritize balance. Here are some things I've been keeping in mind that I hope can help others as well.

Self-awareness: By consciously observing my feelings and behavior, I can recognize my motivations and unhealthy habits and understand why I behave in certain ways. From there, I try to choose how to respond to those feelings and behaviors intentionally. This also allows me to reframe my mindset and make my habits work for me.

Setting boundaries: The work-from-home setup helped me focus on the things I love to do, but it was also challenging to identify when to stop "working." So I set boundaries for myself by dividing my personal spaces and workspace. I also made sure to set different ringtones for my work alarm and personal alarm. I stopped entertaining work communications after clocking out. This helped prevent burnout and maintain work-life balance.

Prioritizing rest: One of the many things I learned from the book "Essentialism" is the importance of good quality sleep. It is often neglected by those caught in hustle culture because they feel like they could be spending their idle time doing more important and productive things, forgetting, underappreciating, and underestimating the power of good sleep and how it helps us work with exquisite quality. People caught up in hustle culture also often ignore their body's call for rest when they are fatigued or sick. Not only is it unhealthy, but it also impedes our potential to do better.

Being kind to myself: Like any other addiction, it's not easy to unlearn the obsession with productivity and efficiency, so I constantly remind myself that it's okay to surrender to the urge to do more sometimes. I shouldn't beat myself up more than I already do. Being kind to myself also allows me to pat myself on the back and tell myself that I don't have to be perfect and do everything all at once.

My change in behavior really started when I realized how badly I used to treat myself. I learned that I had a very low sense of self-worth because, growing up, I placed my value in my ability to make my family proud. My parents would often tell their friends how smart, artistic, and beautiful I was, and they would pressure me to join contest after contest, ace test after test, and earn honor after honor. So when I was idle, which I mean resting, I felt like I wasn't doing something meaningful. From there, I became addicted to getting things done. It was a different kind of high. Not being able to tick things off my to-do list made me feel guilty and anxious. That's when I knew it was a problem.

Fortunately, I was able to reframe my mind and acknowledge that I can deserve good things even if I didn't have to bleed for them. I realized that I should not punish myself for resting and that my productivity does not define me as a successful person. Lastly, I figured out that I can have ambitions without it costing me my physical and mental health.

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Full disclosure: I had ChatGPT proofread this blog post because it is so much better than the other paid proofreading tools