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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2168 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 27, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I want to source steroids from underground labs, are there guides for this? I rather not pay too much for third party testing and willing to just wing it.

my guess is you'd have a much easier time getting past nanny filtering if you searched the ftm trans communities on reddit on how they source graymarket hormones

Is anyone on semaglutide (or tirzepatide)? How's it been for you? I'm probably going on it soon.

My dad's on it. Weight loss has been solid, but he's had bouts of intense nausea for months that are only beginning to ease up now several months in.

Yes. I've found the willpower component of dieting much easier, but the other issues (fatigue, slower thinking) entirely unchanged.

yikes, one thing that was encouraging me to try it is that people report that it doesn't seem to do those things

I'll try to report back when I'm on a higher dosage--still just getting started. So their reports are probably more reliable

Yes. To be honest it hasn't done a thing for me in terms of weight loss, though that isn't why I'm on it (but I was hoping for the fringe benefit). I still have the same urge to eat sweets that I did before, and still have to fight just as hard to (largely unsuccessfully) try to resist.

The one big change has been that I get full significantly faster than before. So if one's primary food related struggle is overeating meals, I can imagine it would help them a lot. But that is not my struggle, sadly. Overall I would say my experience is that the effect of semaglutide for weight loss is overly hyped, but YMMV depending on your specific situation.

My husband's on it, and he's pretty happy with it so far. No serious side effects, he's well below 300 pounds for the first time in many years, and there's a decent chance he'll get within spitting distance of 200 in another year or so.

I had tried it from peptide science, and also retatrutide, so I probably had the real deal, but it didn't do much for me. I also am not very consistent with it, and I don't even bother to keep it refrigerated. It does seem to decrease appetite, but my body weight is normal, and I tried it more for IBS, addiction and after eating tiredness which probably has to do with huge spikes in blood glucose and crash after eating.

Can anyone make sense of table 3 in this study? As I read it, none of the numbers add up. For example, in the "PAL: total no. errors" section, they claim a large difference between placebo and intervention with p < 0.001, but the change from baseline looks about the same in both groups. Also, the change from baseline in both groups is about 8 points, but they report about 5.

I've read a lot of scientific papers before, and I can usually make sense of them, but I have no idea what's going on here. Is this some kind of error, or are they using a convention I don't understand?

My best guess would be that it's something to do with the note at the bottom of the table where it says that all model results are adjusted for baseline SNAQ score. Like maybe the pre and post values are raw averages in each group, but the differences are model outputs from a model that includes an additional variable? I don't know though -- I was thrown off by the first line of that table, where the estimated coefficient, 0.58, isn't inside its own 95% CI, (1.08, 2.24).

That confidence interval must be a misprint. If the lower bound is not 1.08, but -1.08, it makes perfect sense, since 0.58 is the midpoint between -1.08 and 2.24.

Maybe? But there was only a 1.1-point difference in SNAQ score (range: 4-20), so I don't see how that could lead to such a large adjusted difference, nor does it explain the discrepancy between baseline, end value, and "change from baseline."

I've been pretty lazy this month. Starting now I precommit to daily accountability updates in this thread. Please hold my feet to the fire.

Tomorrow's tasks:

  • [x] Language and science reviews
  • [-] Close 10% of tabs and get inbox to 50: Closed 10% of tabs, but inbox is at 87
  • [ ] 100 pushups, 100 squats: pushups done, squats Fail.
  • [ ] 1 hr walking:Fail
  • [x] Drink 2l water
  • [ ] File reimbursement requests:Fail
  • [ ] Set up beeminder?: Bad idea in retrospect
  • [x] Watch a lecture
  • [x] Outline a lecture

Day 2's tasks:

  • [ ] Language and science reviews
  • [ ] Close 10% of tabs and get inbox to 50
  • [ ] 100 pushups, 100 squats
  • [ ] 1 hr walking
  • [ ] 45 min rowing
  • [ ] Drink 2l water
  • [ ] File reimbursement requests
  • [ ] Data analysis
  • [ ] Holiday shopping

How many tabs do you have open, that closing 10% merits inclusion in this list?

This is embarassing.

Phone 1: 365, Phone 2: 265, Personal Computer: 84, Work computer Browser 1: 227, Browser 2: 267

In practice, I'm only aiming to close 10% of tabs on the systems I use on days that I use them.

Also, fell into Factorio on the weekend and got nothing done.

>23hr ago

There's still time to fit in an hour of walking.

You need half-circles for your daily goals.

Tomorrow? Why not today?

I meant tasks due tomorrow. Thanks for holding my feet to the fire, though.

I did my first solo post-grad teaching session! I was anxious as hell, to the point where I woke up at 5 am with palpitations and couldn't go back to sleep, but it worked out and my talk was well received. More than a fear of public speaking, I've always been on edge about more senior doctors deciding today's the day to pimp me with keen/absurd questions, but thankfully I knew enough not to make a fool of myself.

If you're curious, the study I dissected was on novel evidence suggesting semaglutide decreased incidence of Alzheimer's. I happened to discuss other related studies that found it effective in many, apparently unrelated conditions ranging from Parkinson's to gambling addictions, though you can always read Scott's post on semaglutide instead. And a cheap and cheerful cost-benefit analysis from the perspective of the NHS, because I need to pad out the runtime somehow.

the study I dissected was on novel evidence suggesting semaglutide decreased incidence of Alzheimer's

Mechanistically, this seems plausible, given the evidence implicating insulin resistance and systemic inflammation in neurodegenerative diseases. Was that all, or did the study incorporate epidemiological evidence?

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.14313

It was a target trial emulation, using over a hundred million patient EHRs to find 1.1 million eligible ones.

Wait. The NHS thinks semaglutide is cost-effecrive? In what formulation? Could you share the math/link with us?

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta875/documents/final-appraisal-determination-document

Here's the original analysis that NICE put out, and more recently, it's been approved for morbid obesity with a bunch of strict criteria and not a first-line treatment as far as I'm aware. More of a backstop where all else failed. That's just for obesity though, it's somewhat easier to get for diabetes if memory serves. I believe it's all injectable, or at least that's what I saw in the analysis.

The UK literally has an organization called NICE?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GtSNNcp2A9Q?si=naKWh_KKZvFycSx3

It is an old joke in Britain that every government organisation is named for the opposite of what it does. The Department of Employment is responsible for unemployment, the Ministry of Defence presides over defence cuts, etc.

NICE is the organisation for deciding whether it’s cost-effective to give sick people medicine :P

(All joking aside, NICE generally has a good reputation and is considered pretty good at providing value for money. It’s one of the only parts of the NHS that works).

It's actually "!NICE", pronounced with an alveolar click.

"Cost-effective" does not mean it saves more money that it costs, if that's why you're surprised. It means that its net cost/benefit ratio meets a certain GBP/QALY threshold.

After three years in a house far away from people my age, I'm finally moving back into an apartment. I'm looking for two types of advice/help/etc:

  1. How to make friends in an apartment complex? I'm planning on going to the pool in summer months, saying hi in the hallways, starting an apartment group chat (if there isn't one already), introducing myself to the neighbors on the first day, maybe hosting an event, etc. Any other ideas that are simple and effective?

  2. Quality of life improvements I can make to an apartment? I'm planning on Hue lights for simulating sunrise in my bedroom, installing a smart thermostat, and a bidet. Open to anything else!

On 1, not to be too much of a downer, but to at least temper expectations, IME it's been extremely rare to nonexistent to have groups of friends based around an apartment complex. It might happen if the majority of people there are all in some new life situation, like just got to college, or just moved to a new city for their first professional job. If everyone is in very different life situations and already has their own group of friends and family, it's pretty much not happening.

IME, you can't form and sustain an actual group of friends by any individual's sheer will. Everybody who would be in the group has to actually want to be in a new group and make at least some active effort to keep it going. I've seen more than a few "groups" that one or two people seemed really invested in fade into nothing because nobody else was really that into it.

By all means try to be social to those around you. But probably a more realistic expectation is to maybe make one or two actual friends. Try a bunch of other activities as well. You may either find an already-existing group you might be accepted into, or maybe make one or two individual friends at several things and convince some of them to all get together regularly. And don't be too surprised if nobody you meet in many such activities seems to have much interest in being actual friends with anybody else there, including you.

Are you sure this apartment is going to have people your age? It seems like a crapshoot whether those people will be any good.

I'd focus effort on joining some activities like kickball where you can meet and hangout with people your age, and just be willing to invite them over and host at your place.

QOL improvements for apartment:

  • Set your Hue lights to dim & orange after sunset to help the onset of melatonin
  • Adjustable dumbbell set + bench + doorway pull-up bar
  • Air purifiers help clean your air and keep dust to a minimum
  • Hard water softener (if applicable) to maintain healthy skin / scalp
  • Eight sleep mattress ($$$ but best QOL purchase I've ever made)
  • Chef grade knives & pans makes cooking less of a chore and more of a joy

What’s an eight sleep mattress?

A dual-sided temperature controlled mattress topper. I sleep hot, my wife sleeps cold. I lower the temp on my side, and she cranks then heat up on her side. We both sleep like royalty. In addition, it keeps track of your heart rate, HRV, and sleep metrics like REM, deep sleep, etc.

I promised to not be whiny but I am just sad for now and had to post this.

This is the sort of thing Wellness Wednesday threads exist for. I'm sorry for your loss. It's real, despite your brief acquaintance, and your sorrow is understandable.

Nearly every comment is blaming them for travelling, some accusing them of being lesbian communist sluts who were travelling to get dicked by backpackers

This is surprising to me; I heard reports of the Laos deaths on the radio here in the United States, and all commentary was really focused on the methanol angle. But I suppose the Internet will do what the Internet does.

We had a lot of fun apart from the bad parts of the night, got drunk, I did some substances

I suspect a big contributor to anyone blaming these girls for their fate is the tendency of humans to turn tragedy into a morality play. Sometimes bad things just happen, and there's nothing anyone could reasonably have done differently. Other times, there are actionable lessons to take away. Very, very often, that actionable lesson is "drugs and alcohol are a completely unnecessary risk." It's unfortunate that your friends, instead of learning that lesson in a recoverable way, are now being turned into an object lesson for others, which I think probably explains some of your sadness. These girls were not a cautionary tale, to you; they were people you knew. And now they're gone, and that's a tragedy regardless of how it came about, or what lessons may or may not be taken from it.

Got nothing productive to say....but damn small world.

I saw reports of this yesterday. Apparently methanol poisoning in Laos has been increasing recently, something to do with the locals making booze to sell to the tourists and not being particularly careful about what the hell it is they're serving. There have been arrests apparently though to what degree this represents justice I have no idea. My condolences to you. You may find, as I have, that death hits constantly, all around--acquaintances, family, friends--and more often than any of us would like, and tends to happen when you least expect it.

This blew up in Australian media due to a couple of Aussies also dying from methanol poisoning (to the point where the Prime Minister publicly offered his condolences to their families). Apparently it was all clustered around the same hostel.

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