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Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

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Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#71

Post by cjbgkagh »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #66
cjbgkagh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends very much on the disease, for my specific type of brain fog from dysautonomia (via ME/CFS and hEDS) it may feel like a gradual and permanent degradation but it is largely completely reversible and when you know what you're doing it's actually pretty easy to do so. This is only known by a very small minority of doctors so the chance a specific patient meets such a doctor is incredibly low which is why most peo…

>Depends very much on the disease, for my specific type of brain fog from dysautonomia (via ME/CFS and hEDS) sorry, I thought we were talking about Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's was what was mentioned in the post I responded to but now I see it is in fact every ailment that affects the brain, and not just Alzheimer's. >It’s also likely that even if the degradation is permanent it is also likely multifaceted and one…

That's part of the problem, the binary classification of diseased state. This is a cultural legacy from the Germ theory vs Terrain theory and the fact that the Allies won WWII - the Germans and Japanese were big on Terrain theory. The idea of Germ theory is that the body is fine unless there is a germ and thus the cure is to remove the germ. In your example replace germ with cancer. There was also a time where it was the empiricists versus fundamentalists but academia pushed medicine into a predominately fundamentalist approach not because it's more predictive but because it's easier to defend academically. Now that we have advanced data science tools we can do empirical studies at massive scale on already collected datasets, the results of this appear when google search gives useful health results, and now with LLMs giving very helpful information. The LLM, unlike a doctor, is not trying to relate everything to the Krebs cycle because they spent so long memorizing it.

You're hung up on the binary cure or not cure. It would be like doing a machine learning problem with a binary loss function, might as well try to make it better and you'll learn things on the way that could lead to a cure i.e. you'll have a smoother gradient that'll make advancements easier.

Most doctors know next to nothing about ME/CFS and I suspect they know a similar next to nothing about Alzheimer's so when they say there are no treatments I don't believe them. It's a dysfunctional industry backed by a dysfunctional academic system combined with a dysfunctional political system. If you do the similar research that I did on ME/CFS you'll find that many of the same rules apply to Alzheimers which suggest to me that it's likely auto-immune related, I don't need to know the actual mechanism for it for me to see that empirically it presents in a way that looks like auto-immune. Then empirically it appears that GLP-1As are really good for auto-immune so transitively I highly suspect GLP-1As will helpful here and in-fact the FDA has approved a GLP-1A for the treatment of Alzheimer's so I'm not the only one who thinks this.

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#72

Post by cjbgkagh »

anthk wrote: post #68
cjbgkagh wrote: post #33

I used to get this pretty regularly, I thought I just keep burning out. I have an unusually high IQ and noticed that my symptoms were very similar to the string of condensed matter physicists that committed suicide. Their descriptions of their health issues before they killed themselves mirrored my own and I too used the Flowers from Algernon to describe my difficulties to others. I shared other weird stuff like extr…

Beware with Ozempic, it can cause eye issues.

I am very sensitive to Ozempic and take a low dose of 0.5mg/week after 2 years. I started very carefully on 0.05mg and had the usual adverse reactions people experience at much higher doses. I assume my sensitivity increased with the prolonged absence of GLP-1 for a good portion of my life - as in the Ozempic is directly treating an absence. I'm not trying to lose weight with it so it's just a maintenance dose to help with the auto-immune stuff.

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#73

Post by kevingadd »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #7
kevingadd wrote: post #3

If you experience temporary cognitive decline like this definitely pay attention to it, it can indicate serious stressors in your life that need to be dealt with immediately. It can get worse steadily if you ignore it!

I am actually just starting to go on medical leave from work due to this My performance has been going down, my anxiety and stress are through the roof. Honestly you wouldn't know it from talking to me, other than the fact my memory is shot I'm completely forgetting stuff minutes after it happens I'm very unhappy with the feeling, and I hate going on leave for this, but I have to. I'm not even 40 and this is the seco…

Wishing you a smooth recovery! It'll take a while but recovery is possible

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#74

Post by globnomulous »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #69
tough wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah tbh english isn't my first language, and I meant more into -finding the causes- and eradicating alzheimer, aka preventing it, much like we have done with polio, or whatever. Not really curing people already in advanced state of the maladie... anyways, they're not mutually exclusive, but enhanching life should preceed ending it in the order of priorities imho

Ok sorry about the mistake, I just made the observation as a small aside, thinking perhaps you did mean cure as in totally revert damage.

You shouldn't apologize. You didn't make any mistake that I can see, and your comment is kind and patient.

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#75

Post by tough »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #69
tough wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah tbh english isn't my first language, and I meant more into -finding the causes- and eradicating alzheimer, aka preventing it, much like we have done with polio, or whatever. Not really curing people already in advanced state of the maladie... anyways, they're not mutually exclusive, but enhanching life should preceed ending it in the order of priorities imho

Ok sorry about the mistake, I just made the observation as a small aside, thinking perhaps you did mean cure as in totally revert damage.

yeah no worries at all, i appreciate your comment and the conversation it opened up!

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#76

Post by animal531 »

cantor_S_drug wrote: post #2

> When I re-read Flowers for Algernon recently I was just sad. The second half of the story, where his mind is going away, is just brutal, especially when he can remember how smart he was but knows it's gone for good. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544149 "Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same pr…

When I was 20 I could come up with an idea and just sit and my computer and code it over however many hours without experiencing any issues.

If I was reading a book as a teen my eyes would eventually get a little fuzzy, but we're talking margins here.

Now I'm close to 50 and a confluence of things have hit me. I figured out that I have a crippling case of ADD (who knew?) and the medication has been amazing. I really want to code more and have so many ideas and things I want (and financially speaking need) to work on, but my eyes are taking a tremendous amount of strain, so in the end a whole portion of the gains feels as if they're being wasted.

The old brain is at least still firing, when that begins to go I'm not sure what I'm going to have left.

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#77

Post by kp1197 »

It is unclear to me is whether Kent recovered his cognitive ability or not. He says he has, "thanks to the genie" (which seems to be his name for coding LLMs). Does this mean that with a genie, he is now able to produce like he was before? Or that he used a genie to help "re-train" himself?

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#78

Post by metal_guru_ »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #43
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

since these diseases destroy parts of the brain not just inhibit the functioning of the brain you would need to add an enhancement and not remove an inhibitor to bring back lost functionality.

Depends very much on the disease, for my specific type of brain fog from dysautonomia (via ME/CFS and hEDS) it may feel like a gradual and permanent degradation but it is largely completely reversible and when you know what you're doing it's actually pretty easy to do so. This is only known by a very small minority of doctors so the chance a specific patient meets such a doctor is incredibly low which is why most peo…

> I was able to remove the inhibitor and bounce back better than ever

How did you do this? Have you been able to solve the PEM issue?

Re: Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline

#79

Post by cjbgkagh »

metal_guru_ wrote: post #78
cjbgkagh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends very much on the disease, for my specific type of brain fog from dysautonomia (via ME/CFS and hEDS) it may feel like a gradual and permanent degradation but it is largely completely reversible and when you know what you're doing it's actually pretty easy to do so. This is only known by a very small minority of doctors so the chance a specific patient meets such a doctor is incredibly low which is why most peo…

> I was able to remove the inhibitor and bounce back better than ever How did you do this? Have you been able to solve the PEM issue?

I’ve not been able to solve the PEM issue, I think PEM is like an nut allergy and desensitization can be done with very very very small doses of exercise and a glacially slow build up of tolerance. My attempts at this has not worked but it appears to have worked for others that I know.
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