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Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

decodebytes.substack.com

251–260 of 334 posts

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#251
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share an example of an unproven treatment that works better than standard care?

Research is currently being done and this is of course anecdotal (I mean, if it wasn't it would be proven treatment, wouldn't it?) That said, my depression was improved more by a couple of magic mushrooms trips than by more than a year of psychology. The results have been so good that it feels wrong to share it, makes it sound like some miracle stuff and I think any depressed person would go for it in a heartbeat com…

Yeah idk if that's the same, psychedelics are getting mainstream attention as helping depression. And like you said real research is being done. Research used to be done before the governments got in the way.

I think the stuff people are talking about are like when Steve Jobs did the fruit diet thing to cure cancer

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#252
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share an example of an unproven treatment that works better than standard care?

I used to have pretty bad sinus. I used to take antibiotics for 10 days a month and would be good for 20 days and this goes on each month. After 6 months, my immunity has gone to shit. The doctor recommended clearing out my sinus by a surgery but apparently that doesn't solve the root cause. It can happen again and again. I tried multiple doctors, treatments, tips etc and etc nothing worked. I finally visited a homeo…

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Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#253
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mild sleep apnea due to TMJ and went through an odyssey trying out a mandibular adjustment device. It absolutely wrecked my jaw, made my TMJ far worse than it was prior to using it. It also did more than "screw with my teeth a little," it quite literally pushed my bottom teeth forward and destroyed my bite. The device was fitted by apparently one of the best docs of their kind in SoCal. And yet, after looking…

I have bruxism myself... What's the link with sleep apnea exactly? The jaw's position pushing the tongue back?

I’m not sure which way the arrow of causation points - one of the body’s reactions to stopping breathing while unconscious is to grind the jaw.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#255
post #27

Sleep apnea is strange. Good news! We have a diagnosis, sleep apnea. You're bad at sleeping now, the thing everybody has to do all night long every day since birth. The solution is to wear a modern iron lung whenever you want or need to sleep forever. Many times it's because people are overweight but you aren't. Is that really all there is for treatment? No throat exercises or therapeutic sleeping positions? No diets…

I read a book called Breath by James Nestor, it’s all about the benefits of nose breathing. Anecdotally this has completely fixed my sleep apnea/ snoring/ energy levels/ etc. Highly recommended!

His book "Deep" remains one of my very favorite books of all books, and I've turned a fair stack of pages. It's a different kind of medicine though; for me, it revived my soul, if there is such a thing.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#256
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He recognized the signs of sleep apnea and pursued treatment with sleep apnea devices, getting confirmation of the problem with the help of his doctor. The DIY part was largely related to pushing the process forward, not doing novel experimentation. Nobody would call that “anti-science”. Anti-science would be something like ignoring the common treatments and trying to solve the problem with natural supplements or som…

>He recognized the signs of sleep apnea and pursued treatment with sleep apnea devices, getting confirmation of the problem with the help of his doctor. It actually baffled me that it wasn't his doctor who picked this up. A person waking up several times with confirmation from someone sleeping besides him that he has stopped breathing, I'm no doctor and gee maybe it's because there are a few cases in my family but th…

Especially now. Sleep apnea is a big cash cow for medical networks.

Normally if you mention a problem even somewhat in the neighborhood of sleep apnea you’re shoved into the funnel for sleep studies and CPAP devices.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#257
post #13

> The morale of the story, you need to sometimes tackle your own health and take matters into your own hands The frustrating thing for me is that doing so is often labeled as being anti-science, when the truth is, this guy was actually doing the science himself. It's not anti-science to take your health into your own hands. It's anti-outdated-underfunded-medical-systems.

It sounds like they're objecting to your lack of respect for scientific authority. If so, they should read Paul Feyerabend.

Science is at its worst when it's coupled with authority.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#258
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diagnosed at 24 with sleep apnea. I tried a bunch of things. What worked for me was regular cardio exercise and daily doses of high absorption magnesium. The magnesium is absolutely unproven pseudoscience nonsense that can't possibly work. But if I stop taking it my sleep suffers massively.

I take magnesium for migraine and vertigo. Very much not a believer in supplements -- before this, I went through years of specialists prescribing various pharmaceuticals with various side effects. These days the problem is under control without any meds; I just take magnesium (specifically, a mix of l-threonate, glycinate and taurate), telling myself every day that it's probably unrelated to my feeling better. Like…

>> Very much not a believer in supplements

…why?

Vitamin, mineral, and nutrient deficiencies are a very well known science.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flipside, there are also a small selection of unproven treatments that work better than standard care.

Can you share an example of an unproven treatment that works better than standard care?

One of the issues with specialty medical care is that you aren’t seen as a whole person.

The orthopedic guy sees you as a candidate for surgery a, b or c. He may miss that something else is going on. A treatment may be “unproven” for a symptom, but perfectly acceptable for a root cause.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#260

Why not look at the underlying cause? I was diagnosed with sleep apnea when I was 50. An oral surgeon wanted to carve out my tonsils and uvula. I changed my diet and began exercising. Lost 50 pounds. My sleep apnea went away and I no longer even snore. The downside of getting diagnosed is my life insurance company dropped me.

> Why not look at the underlying cause?

Agreed in general, but in this case that's exactly the story. He discovered his apnea is cognitive ("central"), not due to his throat geometry. If we're ever able to figure out and solve the root causes of cognitive problems like that, it will be amazing, and we should, but I don't think we're there yet.

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