Start a blog already.
Totally agree, why do people keep using the 'tweet' format for long stories that obviously do not fit? The reading experience is not good at all. Not trying to be negative am genuinely interested in the reasons.
So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
81–90 of 303 posts
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#82I don't know about the glucose ... ... but burning out can really destroy your life. I know it destroyed mine. It took me years to recover, and I'm still not 100%. I started working for an early stage startup right after school when I was 19yo. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat properly. Our team was small. Responsibilities super high. And I burned out. Oh, I have so many stories from this time... like when I hadn't slept…
Sometimes i wonder if i'm in the path for that. Because even though i do 13h days every day of extremelly stressing work (putting out fires all the time), i do always get 8h sleep and 1h exercise. And so so food.
Compare it with how you feel when you are on holidays. If there's a noticeable difference (not having muscle micro spasms, better sleep - or very tired just when you start them -, better breathing, more inspired or willing to try new things, etc) then you should reconsider to reduce the amount of stress/work in your life.
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Functional Hypoglycemia is a real thing. I did a high school paper on it back when I had a rotary phone and pet dinosaur. At the time -- nearly four decades ago -- there was no known cause and the only useful treatment was diet and taking high doses of vitamins. When glucose levels get depleted, the body starts drawing on stored stuff in the liver. The mechanism for releasing that is adrenaline. When the liver stores…
Wait, that's exactly what has been happening to me for the past few weeks. Each night I woke up after 2 hours of sleep with heart racing. Then I woke up another 2 times, due to tingling in my arm. My heart was calmer at that point. I was wondering what could be the cause..
That could be a lot of things, including sleep apnea. A formal sleep study is a good place to start.
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#84I don't necessarily doubt the author, but how do you chronically deprive your brain of glucose? Afaik you would get glucose back whenever you ate anything. Unless you were doing keto, but then your body and brain run on ketones. And if you did somehow deprive your brain of fuel, you would get symptoms in a much shorter span. Maybe undereating, but he doesn't list weight loss, and if you're rapidly losing weight and s…
Anyone who has been around a type I diabetic knows how quickly the brains shuts down when glucose levels drop. It doesn’t even have to get that low before cognition takes a massive hit.
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#85I don't necessarily doubt the author, but how do you chronically deprive your brain of glucose? Afaik you would get glucose back whenever you ate anything. Unless you were doing keto, but then your body and brain run on ketones. And if you did somehow deprive your brain of fuel, you would get symptoms in a much shorter span. Maybe undereating, but he doesn't list weight loss, and if you're rapidly losing weight and s…
The brain actually burns a lot of energy so I think its not unreasonable to expect it to burn the fuel it has access to. There was this study on chess players or something in a competition, I don't remember what the study was called exactly, but they found the chess players despite sitting down the whole time burnt an extraordinary amount of calories. In China there is even sort of a common saying for this. Generally…
There are tons of psychological and physiological mechanisms that would activate before reaching literally 0g of glucose if your brain, most that would send you straight into the ER or into complete loss of consciousness.
Dangerously low blood sugar doesn't cause losing the ability to speak or to function that you can ignore and just keep working.
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#86Why didn't the psychiatry and GP want to fill in the Temporary Disability papers? Does the healthcare system disincentivize them from doing so?
They might be some kind of just-world fallacy power-hungry sadists?
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#87I don't know about the glucose ... ... but burning out can really destroy your life. I know it destroyed mine. It took me years to recover, and I'm still not 100%. I started working for an early stage startup right after school when I was 19yo. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat properly. Our team was small. Responsibilities super high. And I burned out. Oh, I have so many stories from this time... like when I hadn't slept…
Sometimes i wonder if i'm in the path for that. Because even though i do 13h days every day of extremelly stressing work (putting out fires all the time), i do always get 8h sleep and 1h exercise. And so so food.
[deleted]
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you visualize things in your mind as if they were physically in front of you? People with aphantasia cannot and they often can't remember visual events from the past as a result. Perhaps you have it too.
As someone else with similar issues, I'm pretty deeply aphantasic. The best mental visualization I can manage of even simple imagery (think "a red triangle on a black background") is roughly comparable to a half-transparent blurry watercolor, and I can't clearly picture faces at all (though I don't have any particular trouble with recognizing people when I see them).
Is that really aphantasia? I understood it to be the absolute absence of any mental imagery. Your description actually sounds similar to my own experience. I'm capable of summon up imagery with effort when I need to, but it's never very clear or frequent.
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#89I don't know about the glucose ... ... but burning out can really destroy your life. I know it destroyed mine. It took me years to recover, and I'm still not 100%. I started working for an early stage startup right after school when I was 19yo. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat properly. Our team was small. Responsibilities super high. And I burned out. Oh, I have so many stories from this time... like when I hadn't slept…
Sometimes i wonder if i'm in the path for that. Because even though i do 13h days every day of extremelly stressing work (putting out fires all the time), i do always get 8h sleep and 1h exercise. And so so food.
Research is conflicting, but burnout many times is not caused by the amount of hours worked, whether you are exercising, eating right, etc. Those may be components to it or make you less resilient in general, but burnout seems to really come from things like feeling lack of meaning/purpose, inconsistency in values, perceived or actual unfairness, etc.
Another interesting perspective I have heard describes burnout as being an imbalance between what you want to do/work on vs. what you have to do/work on.
Similarly, while we like to think of “self care” as part of the cure to burnout, self care does not necessarily mean eating right, exercising, etc. Those things are important and may help, but self care also includes things like living a life consistent with your values, finding time to fulfill work that is viewed as meaningful/aligned with a purpose, etc.
The article linked below is worth the read if you’re interested.
Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain
#90Saying it wasn't burnout in the usual sense, and instead was an actual physical issue ... Well, that's just medieval. Good story though.
What led him to those physical issues is however psychological. People need a work-life balance. No matter how interesting or awesome your job is. He unfortunately is still not looking inward for the actual cause of his problems. He just switched jobs to one less prone to overwork.
Sadly the story lacked the "why?"
Why are you working so hard to give yourself seizures and ignore them? When is it a good time to just tell your boss fuck off I'm out?
I don't know the guy, but I would understand if it was the case if he was trying to provide for his starving family in a third world country. One thing is reaching burnout, one thing is literally reaching the point of permanent physical damage and just carrying on.
For what?