New work helps to explain how chronic stress can inflame the gut

The most effective thing for me seemed to be hitting the gym hard, lifting heavy and sweating a lot.

Alongside that, I went through a lot of trial and error with the foods my body would tolerate. I started with a low histamine/low FODMAP approach, various fasting methods, bone broths (collagen), probiotics (sauerkraut, kefir), etc., and slowly introduced various foods on top of that while noting what made me feel good or bad and basing my diet around that. Everyone is different so what worked for me diet-wise may not work for you.

Lastly, for my particular case, I think liver-boosting supplements like milk thistle and NAC helped significantly (and probably some others for any vitamin/mineral deficiencies, especially D3+K2). I suspect the root cause of my problems was toxic mold plus stress/trauma.

It's just uncanny to see a whole lot of the "random" foods that make me feel bad on a single list, and that number next to the anchovies explains the post-homemade pizza feeling too...

Will definitely need to follow up!

While there are few individual ah-ha moments, seeing everything laid out end to end to end aggregates into a realization that The First World lifestyle is extremely unhealthy and often (premature death) deadly.

Fwiw, in some ways The Comfort Crisis was like physical (and mental) health version of The Coddling of the American Mind, but without the PC-ish type baggage. Note: this comparison - for me - is a compliment as both books look to challenge mainstream narratives and normalizations.

That's very very vague.

I'm skeptical of this part. Aren't there always a huge number of proteins present in the body when cell damage occurs? For example, if I get a cold, and I eat chicken soup to prevent it, according to your explanation, I could develop antibodies for chicken soup. This doesn't seem to happen significantly often.

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.

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.

There's nothing you can do. This is your new thing now, have fun with your new friend. And watch this: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6xc3r7

Or to the extent that it was, they only knew of it through narrow or outright inaccurate stereotypes. It's become a somewhat common story over the past few years in online ADHD communities for Gen X and older Millennial parents to get their kid diagnosed and have a "wait, that's not normal?" reaction to the explanation of how the condition actually tends to manifest.

One approach is to work with a medical team over time to document symptoms and impact on your life, experiment and document attempted treatment alternatives, escalate to appropriate specialists as necessary, etc.

Another approach is to spend a weekend reading blog posts, forums and chatting with your bros, then convincing yourself of a particular syndrome/disease you must have, urgently scheduling an appointment with a brand new medical practitioner, refusing to discuss your medical history or symptoms since you already know everything, demanding a particular and specific treatment, refusing to discuss alternatives and then becoming hostile and aggressive when that practitioner doesn't immediately write you a prescription for the particular medication or expensive test that you have already decided that you need.

That second approach is a caricature that unfortunately approaches a modern reality, and it isn't what I'd term as "Great!" for anyone involved. The first approach is equally horrible since our system is so back-logged that the amount of time and personal effort between starting the process and receiving the help you need is onerous.

Note that this applies equally well to gastro-intestinal distress as it does to ADHD or any other chronic condition.

Ritalin is a stimulant that tricks the brain into believing it needs to perform and focus.

Saying

"I have ADHD, so I need my Ritalin to be normal"

is equivalent to saying

"I'm depressed and anxious, so I need my cocaine to feel normal"

It probably does help! If you are stuck in a rut, external tools can break you out and show you what the other side is like. But using drugs is basically lying to your brain.

- The rise of social/fitness loci. Young people socialize through sports, cycling groups, climbing gyms. - The advent of data-driven fitness. So many people have wearables, sleep trackers, follow the science behind health (Huberman podcast, Rhonda Patrick, etc.). - More people are opting for healthier living, generally (regular bedtimes, stopping or greatly limiting drinking, removing stigma from mental health diagnoses).

It feels like this generation is the first to really prioritize physical wellbeing as a primary driver of overall quality of life. I sincerely hope this trend sticks, and we look back 20 years from now and are surprised that so many people for so long neglected the fundamentals of health.

It's a matter of perspective. I find it a relief that many things I thought were my moral failings were simply predictable consequences of a common problem.

> I do not personally believe that treatments that can improve one's life should be gatekeeped (gatekept?) sheerly by disorders

In my most libertarian moments I totally agree. But I also accept (even if I don't agree) that a large number of people believe that the detriments to society as a whole (including to some individuals in particular) caused by the misuse of powerful and addictive substances outweighs the benefits of un-controlled access.

> How was I diagnosed? I went through a gauntlet of exhausting interviews and somewhat pseudo-scientific psychometrics -- WAIS IV IQ test, Stop/Go test, and plenty of others that I cannot remember the name of. It's about as legitimate as one can hope for currently... or at least a decade ago.

The "fad" I was talking about was individuals showing up to a medical professional and having the totally unrealistic expectation that after a one hour consultation they would be diagnosed with a severe mental disorder and that they would walk out that same day with a prescription for a controlled stimulant.

The real path to treatment in our system is much more difficult. You have to demonstrate and document a history of symptoms and their effects on your life. It can take 6-12 months in many places to get into a specialist like a psychiatrist. Then it can take many more months of experimentation with alternative treatments before being prescribed medications.

That path is, frankly, atrocious. We are so starved for qualified resources that the system purposely slows things down. If you are able to work and live life even minimally - you are low on the priority list in many cases. There are enough truly horrible cases (severe schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.) that involve people unable to function at all that those who are merely suffering can get ignored. Front-line medical workers gate-keep access to specialists out of necessity, not out of malicious intent.

The patience you demonstrated to get the help you need is commendable but also proof that the system delivers for those who need it.

The alternative path that many choose to take is to become hostile, aggressive or abusive. They refuse to push through the system or to even attempt alternatives. They demand a specific diagnosis and a precise medication and they get angry when they don't get it.

> In some ways, I feel like I made a deal with the Devil.

This is is one reason why the system pushes people to try every alternative possible before going down the route of medication. If someone can find any alternative to medication to manage their symptoms - they ought to avoid the diagnosis and avoid the medicine.

It is just the case that many possible alternatives, including life-style changes, are explicitly forbidden to talk about. So while the medical practitioner may want to say: you need better friends, a better job, a better life in general ... they often cannot. Nor are some aggressive and hostile people willing to listen even if they could.

But what a large body of research shows is that the most psychologically resilient adults are those who were not forced to demonstrate emotional fortitude in childhood. This makes intuitive sense too, otherwise you'd expect to see adult children of addicts, war orphans, grown child soldiers etc having the most stable temperaments, a thing that is just notoriously not the case.

Or living in / growing up in an environment where these are the major concerns. Cycles, etc.