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Comment by wdavidw | Hacker News Reader

I live on a boat on the seine river in meudon, facing boulogne, just outide of paris downhill, about 15mn biking from eiffel towel. Me and our neighboors enjoy swiming and padding on hot days, many friends are fishing just outside our windows. Like mentioned in the article, we don’t go in the water after heaving rains. It is a wonderful environment with trees and fresh air.

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> we don’t go in the water after heaving rains.

I cannot emphasize enough how important this part is. I have a major incurable health issue from ignoring this rule.

Is this general advice or specific to Paris?

And what is the background here?

Heavy rain tends to overloads combined sewer systems, leading to potential discharge of untreated sewage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_sewer#Health_impacts

This rule applies to any water near land. You get runoff from dog, cat, bird defecation among whatever chemicals may be found on land. This is even if storm water sewage does not overflow.

I lived in Key West for half of my life. I got addicted to swimming daily and would always go, no matter what. Now I have sinusitis caused cluster headaches. When I trace back events, the first one happened about a year into the swimming. Now they are truly debilitating.

I would even add not swimming during an out-going tide if the water passes by nasty land. (nasty = like seemingly lovely mangroves where birds live or bird poo covered rocks)

Now I always check water quality reports to find the cleanest water on vacation as well. Most places do them, even if not advertised.

just a heads up that microdosing dmt (non psychoactive doses, just a mg or two) are game changing instant cures for some forms of cluster headaches. Can be worth moving to a locale where plant based medicine has at least been decriminalized.

I have tried everything including off-label surgery, that's one I have not. Thanks.

By off-label surgery are you referring to trepanning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning

Also, on a possibly constructive note, have you investigated mycotoxins or heavy-metals (as a possible cause)?

> By off-label surgery are you referring to trepanning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning

Wow! Jeez, I mean the thought of doing that myself has certainly crossed my mind in semi-jest, mid attack, but nope.

I found this old study [0] and based on that I had endoscopic sinus surgery. It stopped a 9 month cluster and I did not have another attack for almost a year. The surgeon did it because my sinuses were opaque, but the reason I did it was with the hope of the chance of cluster benefit.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8924166/

Poor you! It must be so painful :(

Are there any foods or drinks that bring it on or make it worse or better? Sorry if it's a dumb question, I'm just curious!

Thanks. Alcohol or an empty stomach brings them on, or sometimes they just happen.

There is an instant solution to stop the pain, it’s in that study as a footnote I believe. But it’s illegal, extremely habit forming, and very expensive.

I have heard that there is a new novocaine nasal spray coming out. That should do the trick if I can ever get my hands on it.

Just as another data point, my ex-girlfriend also had debilitating cluster headaches. Psilocybin, not microdosing just tripping on it, would make it stop for a couple of months.

Also, you might be familiar that taking pure oxygen during an attack in known to stop the attack. The problem is that it builds a tolerance were you need more and more which brings problems of its own.

I know someone who's had success stopping an in-progress visual migraine with low dose psilocybin.

They tried it based on some published research. Here's one such study. https://n.neurology.org/content/66/12/1920

Do you have any studies you can point me toward on this?

A quick pubmed search of `("cluster headache" OR "migraine") AND ("dmt" or "dimethyltryptamine"), 14 results, has nothing relevant.

Not all truth is published -- but I frequently see poor claims of using psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") to treat migraine/cluster headache, of which, the clinical effects are potentially dubious [0], [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] in particular which I believe to be an effect driven by the desperation for treatment [6], [7] when nothing else has worked.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22129843/ [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33184743/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35718005/ [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16801660/ [4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36597700/ [5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36416492/ [6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28870224/ [7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30290701/

I get really worried about people suggesting psychoactive drugs with no clinical proof for it :(

Not sure about DMT, but LSD seems to show promise.

https://www.science.org/content/article/lsd-alleviates-suici...

Not really, it's mostly gathered from cluster headache forums online.

I did not know this, thanks for sharing!

Where do you check water quality. I live in Israel and have a hard time finding water quality reports.

Israel, the country of a thousand lakes. :-)

It does have a coastline, and presumably certain beaches will be closer or further from sewage outflows or may be affected by algal blooms or oil spills what have you.

I surfed near rivers and storms drains my whole life and never had an issue, YMMV.

Where?

Old cities have combined sewage system, and storm water mixes with poop. Then it comes out of the storm drain into the river Newer cities have separate systems for storm drainage and for human waste.

Mostly in Australia

I had never heard about this rule, so thank you for the write up. It's one of those things that should be in a random stupid things not to do in your like rulebook that should exist.

I have a few of these rules, that I picked up at random points in my life that either saved my life later on or caused permanent damage because I was young and stupid and didn't bother listening to my elders experiences.

I have a few of these rules

Interesting, can you share some other such rules?

That'd be interesting yes

Here are some (obvious ones?). Loud music, tinnitus. No seat belt, wheelchair. Drink salt water, get more thirsty.

I have this one with power tools: "Power tool, power cool", which is intentionally silly, and that just means that if I'm using a power tool I'll put on safety glasses.

Nice. “Power cool” sounds so much better than “safety squints.”

I’ve read drinking a small amount of salt water a single time during a survival situation can be beneficial versus no water. I leave it to readers to research this themselves further

  > Now I always check water quality reports to find the cleanest water on vacation as well.

Where to find these reports? Say, for Israel or Greece?

Are you sure it was related to the pollution/run off? Or is that just a guess?

It could possibly and simply be the fact you swam every day. A few years ago I bought my first house with a pool and have had a pool since. I swam every day for a couple years (~8 months/year), then this year I'm having a ton of swimmer's ear & sinusitis issues. My pool water is about as clean as it gets for outdoor swimming. And for me at least has been more correlated with frequency of contact with water than anything else. If my ears or sinuses act up, I take a week off from the pool and it gets better.

I cannot be 100% sure - see bio - but I am pretty sure.

All Key West waters are shitty water according to easily searchable stats, but rain runoff makes it much worse. [0]

To get to your point though, I had always hated chlorinated water even more. It will absolutely destroy your mucous membrane even if it is "clean." This destroys your first line of defense and can lead to all kinds of sensitivity after you leave the water. I believe that's the off-label benefit of those nose clips.

[0] Here is the actual "48 hour rule"

https://www.theswimguide.org/2015/10/27/48-hour-rule-protect...

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+it+safe+to+swim+after+rai...

Sewer overflows will put a lot of really bad stuff into the river in massive quantities.

This is a big problem for cities as they grow - heavy rains cause sewage outflow events. Chicago has spent 3 billion dollars on a massive underground tunnel system to try and mitigate this to help clean up the Chicago river.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan

Some more reading about the river cleanup project:

https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-river-tour/can-we-swim-...

Anyways - yes - lots of cities near watersheds have this problem. I would say most - fecal coliform counts have been high enough to justify warnings a variety of places I've fished or vacationed. Sometimes not that big of cities.

You can just live on a boat on a river? I assume it would involve permissions from authorities and some kind of rent etc, right? What do you do for water, electricity, sanitary services, garbage collection et cetera?

There are plenty of river ports/quays with power and water hookups. If you want to houseboat it, you really only need to move when you want to dump the septic tank (and in some areas, not even that).

The "good" spots are highly desirable and usually privately owned (or on a very long-term lease), and you often need to buy a boat to get the mooring spot beneath it. (A buddy of mine in London ended up with 3 boats while upgrading his mooring spot.)

Another options is to vagabond it, where you move your boat to a new area every week or two -- this is usually unserviced, so it's more like camping, but lets you use unofficial spots and is free.

(The last option is to find goofy loopholes. E.g., in some areas of the Thames, you can create a nesting habitat for an endangered bird on your boat, and then once the bird settles in, they can't force you to move, since doing so would destroy an important habitat. Sounds stupid but a surprising number of permanent city boats are there on some sort of loophole.)

> in some areas of the Thames, you can create a nesting habitat for an endangered bird on your boat, and then once the bird settles in, they can't force you to move, since doing so would destroy an important habitat.

Seems like the fix for that would be to force you to leave the boat where it is, but to stay off of it so as not to disturb or disrupt the bird's habitat while at the same time leaving you responsible for rent and the boat's upkeep. That way you'd have an expensive boat you can't use but must also pay for and maintain. The plus side being that nobody in their right mind would try to attract endangered birds, the downside being that in order to avoid the costs, a cruel person might harm the bird if it happened to build a nest on their boat naturally (not sure how often that actually happens when people aren't intentionally building habitats for them).

It's possible that discouraging that kind of thing just isn't worth it. Maybe the people taking up space with their houseboats aren't as big a problem as there not being enough nice habitats for a struggling species, and the loophole is a net good for the restoration of the bird population without being a major problem for others.

Your solution is worse in every way.

People would never choose the bird over not paying rent for nothing, especially because the people doing this trick would not be the one’s with a lot of money.

Here in The Netherlands, bats are protected. Bats nest in the ventilated outside walls of houses. According to law, if you want to insulate your walls and it is suspected you have bats, you now need to pay an inspector €3000-6000 just to check. If you do have bats, they need to be lured out and re-nested with another expensive operation. What people do instead is flush their walls with low grade toxins so the bats get scared off.

€6000 to look inside of your walls for bats?!

Quitting my job today to move to the Netherlands to start a bat inspection business.

Spoken like someone who's had a traumatic run-in with a bureaucracy.

Google “houseboats <european city>” and you’ll see how they are moored and connected to services. There’s many good videos on YouTube doing tours of boats if you want to go down a rabbit hole.

Of course you can, Duncan MacLeod is living in one in the Highlander TV show [0] ;)

Many are also "fixed" restaurants, bars / nightclubs.

[0] https://twitter.com/yohannmultipass/status/11181422507883151...

The distance from, say, Île Seguin to the Eiffel tower is more like 8km; certainly less than 10.

I also live in Meudon (in the hills); I recently bought an inflatable kayak to try it on the Seine but have not dared use it yet, and so far also failed to convince my kids to try it with me ;-(

    Here we are, born to be kings
    We're the princes of the universe
    Here we belong, fighting to survive
    In a world with the darkest powers
    Heh
    And here we are, we're the princes of the universe
    Here we belong, fighting for survival
    We've come to be the rulers of you all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypyvcfnu4Gg

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