An Update on Dianna's Health (Physics Girl) [video]
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I think one thing that took me by surprise is just how COVID seems to damage the immune system in some people, causing T cell exhaustion (chronic exposure to an antigen causing molecular changes in T cell expression so there's more inhibitory receptors and they're not as functional).
If you've noticed some strange symptoms a few months after having COVID, like thrush, unexpected autoimmune issues, or just feel like infections hit you a lot harder nowadays, I highly recommend doing a lymphocyte subpanel blood test.
You can order them online. Might help clarify some things.
I'm currently using a protein called Thymic Protein-A to increase my CD4+ T cell counts and it's been somewhat successful in making me feel better (doubled my lymphocytes which were on the low end for a few years in about a week), though time will tell whether or not it's ultimately a successful treatment (especially since CD4+ T cell counts increase at a rate of about 10 cells per microliter in healthy human adults).
Just my two cents. Obviously it's different for everyone. But I think every bit of information counts while we're still trying to figure this thing out.
Yes, there's value in supporting the things you said, but ~9k patrons to support a creator who isn't creating, and her husband, and her medical costs and andandand... that's not actually very much, especially if she lives in a major city in the US where rent is frequently ridiculous.
Am I missing something here? The cut that Patreon gets is 5-12% of revenue and processing payments for 2-3$ are 5% + 10c. At worst, she's getting $2.2 for every $3/m user.
Are they rolling in it, no not at all. I'm not sure what your point is, they don't think they can work, it's been going on for a bit, they get a nice community pay out ... do people live on less, yes definitely. But she didnt' win the lottery here.
For a creator of her size, patreon takes 12% right off the top. ($39k)
In addition, there is a transaction fee of 2.9% + $0.30. ($9.5k + $32.5k = $42k)
Then you have to pay taxes. Self employment taxes on $283k are $26.5k. Federal/state/local income taxes are $82k.
189k of your earnings are GONE.
So, you’re at $135k takehome. Not $325k, but not bad, right?! Well, maybe, except this does not include any of the benefits of a traditional job. No health insurance, dental, retirement, etc. Hopefully, they have good health insurance, otherwise they are probably already close to bankrupt.
If you’re wondering whether $135k takehome can support a couple through a catastrophic health issue like this long term, I have the personal experience to say that it can’t. I won’t elaborate further, but maybe someone else can.
She is apparently in her 30s. Same with me. I pay for an excellent Marketplace health insurance policy. My premium, annualized, is around $6,500, and my annual out-of-pocket maximum is $8,000. That’s $14,500 a year. Double that to liberally cover two people, and you’re still under $30k/year.
How is $135k/year inadequate?
My comment was a rebuttal to someone who argued that $135k/year in take-home is insufficient to support a couple - any couple - through a catastrophic health issue.
...and so definitely needs your charity more than people with only $25k/yr.
So yeah maybe 8,000 is enough now but maybe 1,000 was not :)
My point is that it's easy to give money to a Youtuber you like who posts a video with sad piano music and call it a day (I have done this too). It's harder to spend a bit of time to find a way to help the invisible people in your community who may be more in need. You can do both, I would just prioritize the latter.
The name does it little justice, and fatigue - while certainly pathological and disabling - is not the primary feature. The disease appears unique in terms of an abnormal response to exertion. This has been characterised via two-day cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Healthy controls and even those with other severely limiting diseases will show improvement on day 2, but ME/CFS uniquely shows a reduction on the second day.
Other key features are orthostatic intolerance with demonstration of reduction in cerebral blood flow in the majority on sitting/standing. Neurological symptoms including extreme sensitivity to light and sound explain her blindfold and ear protectors. Many have fluctuating cognitive slowing ("brain fog").
New insights into the metabolic derangements are being gained. Recently[1] evaluation of urine metabolomics demonstrated that healthy sedentary controls excrete many metabolites at 4 and 24 hours following an exercise challenge, while ME/CFS patients do not.
Apart from the devastating effects on patients and the economic impacts of losing so many from the workforce[2], I believe that understanding the immune and metabolic derangements underlying this condition will lead to major insights across many health domains.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/4/3685 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
In my experience, having caught covid in March 2020, fatigue is the problem. It's just that calling it "fatigue" doesn't spell out how dehabilitating that aspect is. It's maybe 100 ft/30 meters from my bed to the kitchen. At the worst of my long covid, I was getting winded walking from my bed to the kitchen. So then I'm in the kitchen, I'm supposed to make food for myself. But it's not like I could stand up for any amount of time. Chopping vegetables is right out. Making anything more advanced than microwave food was too difficult at the worst of it. And even then, figuring out the directions on them was sometimes too complicated. And I figured out C pointers and passed calculus. You don't know how your body can fail you until you can't do something that should be trivial to do but you simply can't. It's easier to see for physical maladies - you'd not ask someone with two broken legs why they can't stand up.
Fatigue in a Long Covid context means it's too tiring even to just watch Netflix. That the exertion to sit there and focus your mind even slightly is beyond you. People are able to put Netflix on in the background and still fall grasp most of the story. With long covid, following a plot, just listening, with all the power you have remaining, is simply asking too much of your body.
The most damning part of it is the aftermath from any significant physical exertion. Like going to the doctor in person. Remember, it's a marathon of exhaustion going from bed to the kitchen, so leaving the bed, getting dressed, going to the doctor, sitting the waiting room, filling out forms - remember your brain only barely works so writing out the answer to eben the first question, name, is a challenge. Seeing the Dr, hopefully they're of any use. Then you have to dance for them and take their tests. Finally you get home and crawl back in to bed, exhausted, so you take a nap. You wake up after that nap get some water and go back to sleep becy you're still tired. When you wake up it's literally been 4 days. You pushed yourself because going to see the doctor was important, but the overexertion of going to see the doctor wiped you out and not only were you bedridden for four days, but you were unconscious. That forces you to recalibrate your whole life. You can't just push through things and stay up a bit late or go out to see friends without stopping to think (which, again, is in and of itself a challenge in ways it never was before) is there anything I need to be conscious for in the next four days?
So at least for me, "fatigue" was the primary complaint (followed by "brain fog"), it's just that without spelling out what fatigue actually means in the context of long covid, it's not apparent what that actually means.
My thesis, which I have no direct science to back up, is that the blood vessel damage done by COVID may be partially responsible. Citrulline metabolizes in the liver into arginine, which is used in either to produce ATP or by epithelial cells to repair vascular damage. The body prioritizes vascular repair, so the arginine you normally produce if you have vascular damage is directed away from “energy” leaving you chronically fatigued. This is the same process by which sickle cell anemia leads to chronic fatigue - the shape of the sickle cell irritates the blood vessel lining. Citrulline is effective in phase II/III trials (sadly the primary researcher died and the research stopped) with sickle cell patients.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11688916/
This helped me a great deal, within a few hours of my first consumption of a citrulline malate blend I bought on Amazon I was myself again after a year of suffering. Within a few months I was able to stop supplementing and felt generally normal. YMMV.
I asked several doctors before starting the regime about safety concerns and they had none (the body urinates any excess it can’t process, and citrulline is a non essential amino acid fundamental to the nitric oxide cycle) and they generally expected it would improve energy - as it did.
Good luck!
The history of controversy surrounding it is worth a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_related_to_chr...
It seems that cardio health was the biggest contributor to not getting serious Covid, seems surprising that an athlete would get this.
Worth noting that Simone [1] had some serious health challenges of her own not too long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x5XRQ07sjU
Something about being a female STEM YouTuber...
:-(
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> Giertz is a descendant of Lars Magnus Ericsson, founder of Ericsson.
If you don’t know her videos, I think Simone produces some of the greatest content on youtube. Deeply authentic, highly skilled, with a really funny subtext of knowing absurdist humor to them. Really great content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A
Just the first 50 seconds are pure gold.
Bubble wrap player machine is deeply pointless and amazing https://youtu.be/nLGs7auWdgE
https://youtu.be/M1B3gATS0GE the proud parent machine was profoundly disturbing.
I dunno, I thought it was brilliant. Not the device itself, but the dramatic narrative that she wove around it. The machine itself was almost just a MacGuffin.
Almost :-)
https://twitter.com/CaraSantaMaria/status/154449776549699584...
The tips of my fingernails were bands of dark red and the rest of my nail bed was completely white. I showed it to something like 5 different doctors and was shrugged off every time. I also started to develop skipping heart beats that got so bad it was happening hundreds of times a day.
Prior to COVID I was highly active 6 days a week and had been for nearly a decade. After COVID I was finding it hard to exercise once or twice a week. This went on for years, all the while I was trying to figure out WTF was going on with me. Eventually I started supplementing copper and my heart issues went away completely within a week. I then started to supplement Iron and my nail beds started to fill back in.
After a month of supplementing I got my Iron/Copper levels checked out of pocket and my ferritin was below range and my copper was just in range. I don't know if I was susceptible to this and COVID kicked me into this territory or what but man was it a shitty ride.
Post viral wise, things can get really nasty, even if being infected with the virus doesn't appear to be that bad. I had shingles five or six years ago and have had chronic fatigue since. I'd say I was pretty fit being able to cycle 30 miles a day going back and forth between work, and now I'd consider myself lucky if I could do 1/8 that. I have a stick on me at all times in case I collapse. Congitively I'm pretty borked at points as well. I am better than a few years ago, but it's clear that I'll never be back to where I was -- I experience good days and bad weeks.
Avoid COVID if you can, get your boosters and if you do get COVID or any other illness, really, please try to rest well and avoid returning back to normal too quickly if life allows for that (I know it isn't that easy). I went back to work too quickly and belive that had a significant impact on my recovery.
I've seen long Covid first hand. I'm not sure I buy this, especially with the e-begging attached.