I wonder how it can be trusted if a LLM generates it. They say that "Attribution and citation are preserved in every interaction." but I don't know that's possible with an LLM.
The anecdote about taking 50k IU of vitamin D is really dangerous. Above 4000 daily IU is already putting a lot of people in hypervitaminosis (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21646368/)
Yeah, that's a very high dose. It's true most of us are deficient in vitamin D, but it's the kind of thing that should probably be regularly monitored once supplementation starts, rather than popping pills and hoping for the best.
Tablespoon of apple cider vinegar during meals (mentioned this in the GERD thread, also helps with my gut and brain fog issues too).
There are a ton of rabbit holes you can go down for SIBO, leaky gut, gastroparesis, MMC, etc. All of them revolve around how fast and how well food transits your gut. Longer food stays inside you, the more problems you have.
I went off the beaten path of things proven by clinical research. So none of this stuff is more than anecdotes, but some of the things that helped for me: digestive enzymes, oregano oil, gluten-free diet, probiotics (BB536, and kefir), mastiha tears, kambo, vitamin B, organ meats. I'm currently refining my daily supplement stack.
Things that don't kill you make you weaker. The other saying only applies to mental hurt, not physical.
From my experience, there's nothing you can really do to fix this beyond 'live a normal healthy life, and let it heal itself, slowly, and not fully.'
I worked at a hospital (in IT) during covid, had to be onsite a couple of days a week. lots of people dying all around, n95 all day, etc. not a problem. As I settled in, I realized my manager, and the director, were absolutely toxic people on a powertrip. they didn't care if you said "this is likely to bring down random hospital applications, we need to do it this other way." 2 stars on glassdoor, cowboy hats all around, staff morale not present. they'd come up with technical ideas on how to do something, despite being barely technical people. telling them how to do, say a data migration online, because you're an SME who's been doing it for almost 30 years is a personal challenge, and you get crapped on, overruled, and put in your place. Lots of downtime, lots of patients affected, yet they report literal fake status reports up the chain and generalize-away every issue to the point that the generic statement hides the issue.
I started getting heartburn during the day. Then I started getting hearburn in the morning as my alarm rang. Then I started waking up 5min before the alarm rang, with heartburn, and teenager zits on my face at mid-life. Morning was now a cup of baking soda water instead of coffee. ion pump blockers. more baking soda.
after 6 months, the manager ordered me to execute a migration plan that would shave off 2 days from a year-long plan. I made a nice writeup stating we need to monitor sockets on the array a few days to make sure people aren't actively using the data she want's to trash. Last time she had me do this, she asked over email, and it brought down a whole clinic that was using a share she thought was unused. This time, I was asked not over email, but with a call from her cell phone, to my cell phone.
I said no problem, send me an email or type it in chat, and I'll do it despite the high risk. I was of course fired 5 days later, but already had a new fully remote job, which I started 5 days earlier (lol).
The point of the story is - the stomach issue didn't go away. 3 years later, it's still there. It's much less, but that last/final bit, where a couple of times a year I need ion blockers for 2 weeks, and maybe one day a week I still need to start w/ baking soda water - that's probably there to stay. I eat very healty, lots of fiber, I'm fit. That 6 months of acidic people did damage that a middle-aged body can't heal all the way.
I am about five years out from a similar situation, so let me give you a glimmer of hope: I did get better, very slowly. I wish I could say why, I’ve obviously tried all sorts of things and also a lot of life has happened between then and now, but _don’t give up hope_
And best of luck, I suspect you really helped some patients at your former job relative to someone who would have been less conscientious. Maybe even me, we’ll never know!
While I agree that stimulant are overprescribed they can however be at least temporarily helpful to help someone with ADHD get their life in order and make meaningful lifestyle changes in order to get the symptoms under control.
How would we measure if it’s being overprescribed?
It’s more likely still under-diagnosed.
The pandemic threw such a big spanner in the works that so many of us started to struggle enough to notice it wasn’t normal. This put the mental health system under significant strain. More people than ever have been diagnosed.
In the US, an ill-guided rule that limits the manufactured capacity of stimulants, not by demand, but by an arbitrary number, impact people recently.
They couldn’t refill their scripts. Supply effectively ran out.
> temporarily helpful to help someone with ADHD get their life in order and make meaningful lifestyle changes in order to get the symptoms under control.
A wheelchair is temporarily helpful, so are reading glasses. They could help someone to get their life in order, and make meaningful lifestyle changes to get their symptoms under control.
Somehow I think we’d both agree even after that you wouldn’t take someone’s wheelchair or reading glasses from them?
My experience is really similar. When my physical health is good my ADD symptoms are barely noticeable. Medication can however be useful to get your life in order, to be able to carve out time for physical exercise and set up other healthy habits (meditation, journaling, task management system, time blocking etc).
Medication helped a lot in the beginning, but what really helped in the long term was talk therapy, and setting up helpful systems and habits such as exercising, diet, journalling. But this would not have been possible without taking Ritalin in the first place. I'm mostly off-meds now.
I found the medication useful in interesting ways.
While on its effect, I've learn what it feels like to be focused, how ones mind works when in "not easily distracted mode", and I've very slowly learnt to apply some of these things even then not taking the medication.
Stimulants are not always necessary long term, but they usually are to start effecting enough change to be able to function in the present society.
For some (me probably) it'll be a lifelong thing, but it definitely doesn't have to be for everyone!
I'm happy for your success!
I really wish I had access to more talk therapy, physiotherapy, guided relaxation, mindfullness'ish sessions, and some other forms of support. The medicine helps me to stay mostly functioning, but with talking to a therapist and practicing "basal body knowledge" I was feeling so much better!
I'll be starting the talk therapy side of things soon I believe! Bit of a lag on that due to covid etc.
I've already had some systems in place (if it's not in Todoist it's not getting done) but I was falling behind even my norm. If I can get to a point where I can function well enough without meds that will be brilliant, here's to hoping :)
Yes, this is indeed a weird way to frame the effect of coffee on iron absorption. There's a lot of medical litterature about how coffee often play a role in iron deficiency.
