Ask HN: What was your “Oh shit” moment with regards to your health?
When did you start taking better care of your health and what prompted this realization?
Intermittent fasting and cutting all junk food, running and gym to preserve muscle and accelerate weight loss (<10% BF). It was much easier as I don't drink.
Realising it's mostly about what you eat for weightloss/gain, I've taught myself to come to terms with how much an item of food would take to work off again, and I have no interest in eating crisps/ chocolates/ ready meals/ fast food knowing how much extra it gives me than I need.
I weigh myself every day now and use weekly rolling averages to work out if I'm deviating from my ideal weight, but generally after any bigger-than-usual meal (celebrations, social meals) I try to undo it the same day through a heavy workout in the evening/night.
Five years on, I was blaming myself for feeling exhausted, having fluid retention, perpetual nausea, and headaches, and generally not feeling up to life. I wasn't exercising enough, I just need to focus, I'd been forcing myself to work too much, I wasn't eating as well as I should, etc.
When I finally went to the doctor a few years later, my BP was 220/110. My kidney disease had progressed to CRF 3/4, and the pulsatile tinnitus I experienced 24/7 was the result of prolonged venous reconfiguration, never to fully dissipate.
The "oh shit" moment was at that first appointment when the nurse gave a startled "u-um!" after taking my bp and ran out of the room. The doctor came in and explained I needed immediate care for renal hypertension or I'd probably stroke out before I was in my 30s.
Now I've got permanent vision damage, a lot of atrophy and inflexibility that lead to PT from some really unnecessary injuries, and I'm on a permanently high dose of ACE inhibitors that cause problems if I don't manage my fluids, temperature, and electrolytes. It's been a slow road to discovering my new limits and rebuilding, but on the plus side, I'm now two years in remission and feel like I'm getting better every year. I credit joining Kaiser HMO for their excellent job managing my recovery.
the food pyramid we learned in school was misleading
My desperate quest to regain wellness (remission) has led me down all sorts of alt-health avenues. So far my greatest relief comes from the use of psychedelics (for inner work), Kratom (for pain), qigong (for exercise and release), breathwork (to repair my cells & ANS), and fasting (I achieved my best remission yet after a 7-day fast). Yeah, cuckoo. As a retired hospital RN, I am disillusioned enough with the state of medical care in the USA that I basically refuse to go. I could go on and on about what a shame this is. I have tried Prednisone (a typical first line of treatment) and trust me that medicine is hell. My sympathy to anyone who must be on that drug for life.
Over time it has become clear why I am sick. Prior to 2021 I considered myself healthy. I had great diet (vegetarian, organic) and earth-bound lifestyle. I was bit of an extreme athlete, having covered thousands of miles solo backpacking Death Valley, the High Sierra, and the Colorado Plateau. I spent most my time outdoors in the fresh air. Yet, because of childhood trauma I was broken inside, and I indulged in self-hatred. Until recently I was in denial about all that. I suffered strange symptoms for years and ignored them. Exiting denial and re-parenting myself, showing myself compassion, has been very helpful.
If I can help anyone who is feeling well, it'd be to say cherish your health and give love -- not advice -- to the sick. To the sick, I'd say, may you be happy, healthy, and free from suffering
My mom, driving me home from the hospital where I had just finished a stay for a large abscess, started telling me how my problem was I was "too anxious" and really should try prozac. Huh? No, my problem is there's an avocado-sized sac of pus in my insides that could have exploded and killed me. That seemed to be the pretty consistent consensus from the doctors who just spent a week treating me with antibiotics and the surgeons who poked me every day to make sure I didn't need emergency surgery and the interventional radiologist who inserted a drain into my belly.
There was another point where I physically couldn't walk a single block, I couldn't eat anything (on doctors orders) other than popsicles and pudding and ensure, was losing a pound per day, and had to sleep for 2-3 hours for every hour that I was awake. And one of my close friend's response was "your problem is you're eating crappy food, what if you just had a nice big salad?" It was infuriating for its tone deafness: the problem was not the crappy food I was eating, it was the hole in my colon that had caused sepsis; the doctors were clear that eating any fiber could make everything worse and I needed to stay on a super low fiber diet until the perforation and fistula resolved.
Anyway, the whole thing was a wake-up call in multiple senses. I need to take better are care of myself. I need to do things that I love while I'm able to do them, because that little glimpse at living with illness was pretty terrifying. When I have issues, I need to be judicious with what and to whom I disclose (including updating my emergency contact information to not be my mom).
My favorite quote that I heard during that ordeal was "health is a crown only the sick can see." I feel really lucky that my situation largely resolved, and that having been very sick has left me with the ability to recognize the privilege of health.
It's definitely changed how I think about people living with chronic illness-- not that I thought they were "just anxious" or "just need to eat a big salad" before, but recognizing that their struggle is so multifaceted. It's feeling physically unwell in ways you can't imagine (not just feeling sleepy, but it's like your body giving you a 5 minute warning that we're going down for a nap whether you like it or not). It's struggling with a broken healthcare system that's not designed to help you and requires you to be your own advocate (when admitted for sepsis, they forgot to order antibiotics for me after my first round in the ER, so I became septic again on the floor, and had to ask multiple times when my next round of antibiotics were; the hospital maintains that was appropriate care). It's navigating your own relationships where people dispense unsolicited and demeaning advice while also sometimes distancing themselves from you. It's horrible.
So, stay healthy and avoid getting sick as best you can, identify and build a support network, and be kind and gentle and inclusive with your friends that are sick-- someday that will be you.
I relate to most of this because I used to take care of people having very similar experiences in a big city hospital network. But it's those last couple things you said that hit home the hardest. I'm at the point nearly two years into a dark battle where I've come to terms with the fact I lost most my friends... but I'm excited about the higher caliber friends I'll have going forward, especially since I'm learning to love myself first (key). My best wishes for your strong recovery!