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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   1586 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 29, 2026

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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Rotisserie chicken eaters: Science says that diets high in sodium are bad for you. What do you do about this? Or do you disagree with The Science?

It is funny to me that teammates in high school baseball would insist on drinking Gatorade and getting others to drink Gatorade on the basis that you NEED those electrolytes on hot days or you'd DIE. That's more of a problem for elite athletes, not my dumbass sitting on a bench. Extra electrolytes seem to be something that you should try to get rid of.

Alpha gal gang: Did you know about this site? Apparently in the year of 2026 you can directly order (expensive) alpha-gal-less pork created by The Science now. We're living in the future, bros. https://amaroohills.com/

My impression of The Science around sodium was that (for people with healthy kidneys) the thing to watch out for is your sodium-potassium ratio.

IIRC, an important mechanism your body has for maintaining appropriate sodium concentrations requires having potassium ions lying around, so in the absence of that potassium your blood volume goes up (if you can't lose some solute, decreasing concentration requires more solvent).

This seems to be backed up clinically - it takes a lot of sodium reduction to get pretty modest reductions in blood pressure / stroke risk / mortality, whereas increasing potassium intake shows strong signal for all three (again, as long as your kidneys are healthy - hyperkalemia is pretty bad)

Then again, trying to correct an extremely-high-sodium diet by throwing potassium at it seems like a dangerous prospect too - I'm guessing there's a good reason the best results found in the linked meta-analysis were for substituting some dietary sodium for potassium

Consistent high sodium intake over time will overwork your kidneys. At the same time your body needs salt to regulate fluid, among other things. It's an issue of degree. What you're referring to as Science here isn't a great mystery. The typical diet in the US is high in sodium, and sodium in most pre-prepared or restaurant foods is particularly high, which anyone who doesn't cook (and therefore doesn't realize how much salt is required to get the intense tastes in such foods) doesn't realize. Thus you have all sorts of warnings and caveats. But rotisserie chicken is good, go ahead and have it, just not every meal every day for years.

The sodium thing has come up before.

Science says that diets high in sodium are bad for you

It's slightly more precise to say that Science™ says that diets high in sodium are correlated with higher blood pressure, and chronic hypertension is bad for you. There are some sodium low or non-responders and some sodium super responders with respect to blood pressure. it's not fully conclusive that sodium independent of high blood pressure is bad for you.

There's also a difference in what is bad for you in the sports performance and bad for you in the longevity sense.

The transient effect of higher sodium intake is higher volumes of plasma. This is beneficial for endurance, power production, and heat adaptation. In fact, increased plasma volumes are the main immediate adaptation from endurance or heat adaptation training. Arguably cardio training is not "bad for you" but the first order transient effect is the same as increased sodium intake.

In the steady state, provided you are drinking enough water your body (partially) compensates for increased sodium consumption by increasing sodium excretion. There is still a chronic elevation of blood pressure with higher sodium intakes, but it's much smaller than the transient effects reported in most of the literature. Worth noting is a bit of a methodological puzzle. Food logs are notoriously inaccurate for tracing micronutrients like sodium. Excluding the Mars500 study, you mostly can't lock people up in a room and give them calibrated meals for long enough to see the steady state effect on blood pressure. Because of this most long term sodium studies are looking at urinary sodium, assuming higher urinary sodium corresponds to higher intake. This is probably true, but the real question is: if the human body has the ability to compensate for increased sodium consumption with higher excretion, what is the mechanism by which it increases blood pressure in homeostasis? Like, why doesn't your serum sodium just return to normal levels once your body starts excreting more?

Anyway, if you feel flat all the time and it's affecting your sports performance, consider you might be a salty sweater, and either measure or try modest intakes of electrolytes (don't forget about calcium, magnesium, and potassium as well just loading up on sodium will throw your electrolytes out of whack). If you have chronic hypertension, maybe talk to your physician about blood pressure medication. Modern generation medications are very effective and in practice far easier to control than ultra-low sodium diets, especially if you are eating prepared foods like rotisserie chicken.

The Science™ is probably correct that if it's driving up your blood pressure high sodium is bad for you. But medication and body-weight/metabolic disease management are probably significantly larger factors in the steady state.

This is the sort of high-quality motte post about random topics I've never thought about that I love to see. Thank you.

I have a meta-comment, however, about themotte: I wonder how dangerous high quality posts like this are that are outside my area of expertise?

What I mean by that is that I don't have enough background knowledge to fully judge the accuracy of this post. I will probably make future decisions based on this information though. And I suspect that there are enough well written posts like this that contain enough not-quite-perfectly-accurate statements that I will make suboptimal decisions in the future based on motte comments that I thought were correct but turned out not to be. And I wonder what the cumulative negative effects of this will be on my life.

you would love the new Asterisk Mag post on painkillers, basic information but still pretty good.

The common version of that is called Gell-Mann Amnesia. Unfortunately, there aren't great ways to avoid it.

Dell-Mann Amnesia is related. But the effect I'm thinking about / worried about is different.

I had Dell-Mann Amnesia once. Once I upgraded my laptop the symptoms stopped though.

Alpha gal gang: Did you know about this site? Apparently in the year of 2026 you can directly order (expensive) alpha-gal-less pork created by The Science now. We're living in the future, bros. https://amaroohills.com/

My first thought when I read "alpha gal" is that it's a cringey synonym for "girlboss" and I am always slightly confused by things like "wasteful spending bill without girlbosses".

One of the longest living populations in the world subsists on cigarettes, wine, prossecco, prosciutto, salami and aged cheese ...

As long as your kidneys are ok and you drink a lot of water - salt is not really an issue.

The Blue Zones might simply be bad record keeping and pension fraud.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3

NEED those electrolytes on hot days or you'd DIE

Maybe not die but it will wreck your performance.

I posted a few weeks ago about how I just do not have a thirst reflex (anymore?) and I've been giving myself headaches from distance runs pretty reliably by not hydrating enough.

I finally started taking a vest with built in flasks with me (that I fill with salt water) and it's been a night and day change. Better performance, better feeling afterwards.

Even on cool days.

Exercise-induced hyponatremia is a thing, and deaths from it aren't unheard of. If you're sweating a lot and drinking straight water, I'd strongly consider some sort of electrolyte supplement.

The difference is that you're actually doing stuff. I was not exaggerating about warming a bench. And the day that he said that was not particularly hot.

Rotisserie chicken eaters: Science says that diets high in sodium are bad for you. What do you do about this?

If I am preparing a meal and one of the ingredients is salty then I add less salt. If all of my ingredients are salty then I go to the grocery store to restock on fresh produce. Easy enough.

It is funny to me that teammates in high school baseball would insist on drinking Gatorade and getting others to drink Gatorade on the basis that you NEED those electrolytes on hot days or you'd DIE.

I sweat so much on hot summer days, even just standing outside, that I will get dizzy without some source of electrolytes, whether gatorade, jerky, or something else. Other people don't seem to have this problem and I envy them.

Drink more water and a high-sodium diet (within reason) is not a problem.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I drank water. I’m a huge milk, apple juice and soda drinker. I can’t drink beverages like Gatorade. I’m a fiend in general for taste and high sugar and salt items.

Whenever I eat at work, I always try to have my hamburger or pizza or whatever it is, drenched in butter all over, or I’ll grab like 29 packets of salt and 5 of ketchup. Just how I’ve always been.

Is the soda diet? I probably drink 4-6 glasses of water a day. Maybe more. You would be running 1k+ calories per day on mostly sugar water if it’s not diet pop. Unless you are 6 years old I can’t see someone have the metabolism to handle that amount of calories from beverages. Sugar water of course tastes phenomenol but that is primarily because it’s dense in calories and humans evolved in often starving conditions. In a world of plentiful food and sedentary lifestyle we just aren’t designed for abundant sugary drinks.

No, it’s regular. I can’t drink diet anything. I desire intense flavor in food and drinks. I kill on average between 4-10 bottles of regular soda a day at work, and then continue drinking cans of it outside of work, and then milk usually during dinner time and dessert.

My weight hovers between 160lbs and 170lb. I’ve eaten so much I’ve gone over 170 very slightly and then the next morning I go right back down to 165 or so; and I’m a tall man. It just felt like my metabolism would instantly crush it. But the weight doesn’t stay no matter how hard I try to gain it. I can’t stay feeling full longer than 15-30 minutes at a time usually before I feel hungry again.

Some things I just can’t eat because like I’ve said, I’ll feel anemic and fatigued the whole day. Salads are one of them. I hate salads. If I’d already eaten the meat and potatoes and everything else out of the fridge, I remember I’d go into the cupboards, dig out an unopened container of chocolate frosting, scoop all of it into a bowl, put it in the microwave and eat all of it with a spoon. Yeah, empty calories but gave me a momentary energy boost.

When my mother would go grocery shopping for our family as kids, she’d do regular grocery shopping for all of us, and then she’d do grocery shopping just for me, so we always spent more than the average family. My friends always said I had the diet of a 10 year old kid. A lot of times though I skip out on meals here and there just to stay more in line with everyone else but I’m starving inside when I do that.

… that is primarily because it’s dense in calories and humans evolved in often starving conditions. In a world of plentiful food and sedentary lifestyle we just aren’t designed for abundant sugary drinks.

My father made this point to me once. He argued back in hunter-gatherer times nature would select ‘against’ people like me from existing because I’d be the guy who ends up killing the whole tribe by starving them of all their food to satisfy my own hunger and would wind up being exiled to die in isolation. And if I survived that I’d probably end up getting killed from raiding all the neighboring tribes for their food. Thats why there isn’t many people like us. But every now and then I suppose nature as a hiccup from its evolutionary past.

Ok this post combined with this post and now I'm sure you should undergo some sort of study. Below you mention a "metabolic" issue. What is the issue, if you don't mind writing it out? If you do mind, no problem.

MCAD deficiency. Essentially it’s a rare disorder that impacts the body’s ability to break down fats but also store them. It also greatly impacts low blood glucose/sugar levels and is a known cause of sudden infant death syndrome when it’s not detected. Mine wasn’t detected until very early adulthood.

Explains the metabolic part. No idea how that ties in with the sleeping part.

Is it easier to hop over you than walk around? This diet of yours doesn't sound too healthy.

My diet isn’t healthy but when my family tried putting me on such a diet as a child, I’d feel anemic and fatigued all the time. When I went back to my normal (and unfortunately unhealthy) eating habits I instantly regained my energy.

And no. I’m not fat at all. I’m taller than average and very slender. I can’t gain weight very well due to a metabolic disorder I have.

soda drinker

Club soda or sugary crap?

Sugary crap.

Considering typical American diet, you probably have optimal genetics. Obesity epidemic is over if people have your genes.

Science says that diets high in sodium are bad for you. What do you do about this? Or do you disagree with The Science?

I disagree with the Science. I am active and sweat profusely and do not fear sodium. I avoid most premade foods (for all the other crap in them), so I'm not worried that I'll somehow get too much sodium in the few I do eat.

How do I get ChatGPT to stop bringing up goblins and gremlins in every chat?

I had gotten it to either stop saying "goblin" or explicitly note that it was about to say it and avoid it, but now it's fully back to goblin mode.

You switch to Claude.

Using 5.5? This is literally a meme rn

That was the proximate cause of me writing this post, but I had already noticed ChatGPT acting weird.

This is one example from a few days ago. Just completely unhinged.

Also, I'm still having the Safari problem. If any of the tech geniuses here have non goblin-related solutions I'd love to hear them.

For the Safari problem, probably your best bet is to download a userscript extension, then use it to set the <meta name="viewport"> value on x.com to something that disables zooming. ChatGPT should be able to help you with the details of this.

I really only use it for a second opinion on homebrew RPG mechanics, and I noticed just these past two weeks it's much less coherent; it will imagine nits to pick and can't keep straight if something is positive or negative. I'm happy to just stop using it, frankly.

It was 5.4

https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/

Funny bc they have "dont mention goblins" in the sytem prompt twice. Either 5.3 or 5.4 loved to call every bug "a gremlin" , etc.

That's why I asked if you were using 5.5/an older model. Mine doesn't talk about goblins anymore.

I'm still having the Safari problem

?

AI can suffer from target fixation. By saying don't mention goblins twice you're putting goblins in the context window twice.

There was a great example from a while back along the lines of "show me a room with absolutely no elephants"

Yeah negative prompting has never been a good idea.

Although it seems to largely work given I don't get any goblin mentions, but I'm annoyed were wasting tokens on it at all

This sounds like the first sentence of a horror story.

...what?

Never waste a good crisis.

Dislocated my shoulder my last week. 2nd time and non-traumatic. Ortho says I should get surgery while it is still minor. All things said and done, it is not that bad. Minimally invasive and I will be back to 100% within a couple of months.

It's got me motivated to control the things I can control. Been cooking daily so calorie counts stay low. Started cycling now that the weather is nice. Neither tasks take high motivation. Hoping I can keep it up in the medium term.

Dude, avoid surgery for that sort of injury at all costs. They are often not better than placebo, and orthos and PTs have huge incentives to push them. Seriously, surgery is probably not worth it 95% of the time from my research.

Yeah. It’s best to avoid surgery when it’s possible to do so. I’ve only had one surgery in my entire life, but a lot of the time people say after you get one, you’re never the same way again; even after the recovery.

Surgery is very much optional in your case from the sound of it, though orthos will almost always recommend it (I was lucky enough to go to a university hospital that was very bullish on rehab as opposed to surgery in general). I'd make the call for yourself on when you'd like to take the time one-armed - I will probably get it eventually when I have a lot of downtime and don't mind losing gains. I would strongly recommend prehab exercises before surgery as possible, and take your physio very seriously during recovery. Also worth considering that this is in the long run an opportunity to make yoga or some other joint health practice a continuing part of your life, in that respect my dislocations were a huge boon.

That's good to hear. I am weighing both options and haven't set a date for the surgery yet. But am leaning surgery. Might get a 2nd opinion just to be safe though.

Claude, the Doctor and Chat GPT all agreed on the condition & surgery after looking at my MRI. The Ortho recommended surgery primarily because I want to keep playing soccer and climbing.

Please man I'm telling you, don't get surgery from a muscle you pulled while yawning and stretching. It's a complete scam, most chronic injury heals much better over time without surgery.

If you're curious to look more into this sort of thing, I put together a list of resources here: https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/p/chronic-pain-resources-research

Dude a dislocated shoulder with associated tearing is not chronic pain, it's a mechanical injury to your joint. This guy didn't pull a muscle while yawning, his whole-ass shoulder came out of its socket (already a serious sign of instability to have it pop so easily). Yoga, rehab, etc. will do a ton and I personally chose that over surgery, but a shoulder dislocation tears tissue that you will never naturally get back, meaning that your shoulder capsule is forever less stable. This means that even if you do everything right, future accidents have a significantly greater chance of re-dislocating your shoulder, which means weeks in a sling and months in rehab. It also makes a major difference to the holds you can do climbing. I would strongly advise him to see a shoulder specialist rather than just a general orthopod, and I can see why this may pattern-match to your experience, but no amount of techniques for managing chronic pain will affect the physical state of his labrum.

What makes you think I'm not talking about "Yoga, rehab, etc." when it comes to managing chronic pain?

I'd also advise him to see a shoulder specialist, but again remind him that surgery for this sort of thing is often unnecessary and leads to bad outcomes.

I can see why you'd pattern-match me to being dumb, but you're wrong.

I mentioned those because they're on your substack as options for managing chronic pain, along with a lot of other good stuff. But nothing on there is a solution for the long-term mechanical damage sustained in a shoulder dislocation. Shoulder instability is a mechanical issue, not a pain issue, which can be greatly improved by these things, but not fixed - and I don't think, based on my experience, that it can be improved enough to make advanced climbing with strenuous overhead holds safe.

I apologize if I seem condescending with the pattern-matching remark, and would prefer this not to escalate into shit-flinging, but I do have to point out that you referred to it as "a muscle you pulled". That's just not the case. There's temporary damage to the rotator cuff and other muscles from the intense stretching involved as the bone is forced out of position, but there's also permanent damage to the labrum and similar soft tissues and, with subsequent dislocations, the bone itself. If he does not get surgery he will have to accept that his shoulder is permanently mechanically weakened - which is a perfectly valid option, and the one I chose - and he'll have to shape his activities around that. It's up to him but in his position I would get an anchor attached.

@ThomasdelVasto , as @Bartender_Venator said, there is some permanent damage that won't fix itself. The Labrum has a tear, and needs to be repaired. It has started creating a lesion because of the instability it causes.

I'll be doing Yoga and PT after the surgery. I grew up in a household where my grand mom did 3 hours of yoga daily, and the lady is still full of vigor in her mid-80s. Clearly it worked.

My ortho, sports-medicine consult, gpt 5.5 xhigh and 4.7 Opus max are all in agreement on the surgery. It is minimally invasive, so shouldn't be too bad. So surgery it is.

Fair man. I wish you well either way, just want to let people know what I’ve experienced. Hope the shoulder gets better.

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Oh yeah if you're doing activities with a high risk of re-injury that's a different matter. I just lift weights and do yoga. Climbing you're often loading your shoulder in the weakest position possible for the labrum (that damned L-shape), and soccer you never know how you'll fall. But, for people reading, surgery is definitely not medically necessary just because the guidelines almost always say so (because they care about maximizing the outcomes doctors are rightfully sworn to maximize, whereas you also have to decide about things like the recovery time's impact on your life, playing the sports you love, your guess that surgery methods will improve in the future, etc.). My advice is the same in either case: get the best physio you can find, follow his recommendations religiously, and take up a practice afterwards that will specifically work on joint health. Yoga is great, Pilates is better as a workout in many ways but harder to do as regularly, supplement with face pulls every time you're in the gym. In the case of surgery, find a surgeon who's done it a million times, it's a routine surgery. Someone who works with athletes if you can, not someone who only does grandmas.

How did you dislocate your shoulder?

Embarrassing. I was stretching mid-yawn after a long day at work.

The first one, the traumatic one happened last year when I was a surfing and a wave crashed on top of me. Churned me like I was in a washing machine and spat me out with my shoulder out of place. Bizarre experience.

This changes my assessment, but not recommendations, a little - your shoulder joint is clearly jacked up in ways that surgery alone won't fix. To dislocate like that, it can't just be the persistent damage from the traumatic dislocation, but also that your joint and muscles are jacked up around it such that it was ready to pop out under the tension (probably, like all of us here, from computer posture). The surgery will provide a lot of trauma resistance in the shoulder, but it'll also atrophy your muscles and exacerbate imbalances. Definitely go hard on strengthening and releasing the joint, and your body in general, and consider it one of your new good routines going forward once you can.

The weather has been nice for the past month and I have been trying to increase my running days/amounts, but even with a day of rest prior, it seems to be negatively effecting my deadlifts. I think I complained about this recovery time problem around this time last year. It's one of those things that makes me strongly suspect the "hybrid athletes" who are running huge miles one day and deadlifting big numbers the next are on all gear.

Define huge miles and big deadlift numbers

400+, 15-20+ miles at under 7 min/mile paces.

That's an astounding number. I can do a set of 5 400lb deadlifts.

At multiple points in my life, I have been able to run a sub-seven mile.

There is absolutely no way in hell I'd ever be able to do both of those things in succession, much less multiple miles at that pace.

I used to run <40 10k's and then either go to the gym the day after or even the same day, when it was young and fit. At that point I was deadlifting maybe ~350lbs.

Running more than twice that distance at only a slightly higher pace in addition to lifting more sounds fairly unrealistic to me. Maybe it's possible but it sounds like it would completely wreck you and not something that could be sustainable.

I know people who run that far that fast regularly but they're built like reeds.

I can't really rack up impressive deadlifts while expecting to do serious run workouts. It's one or the other. And I need to put them two days apart.

all on gear

Did we talk about that Ryan Hall video where he deadlifts 500 pounds while standing on a track and then immediately attempts to run a sub 5 minute mile?

Did we talk about that Ryan Hall video where he deadlifts 500 pounds while standing on a track and then immediately attempts to run a sub 5 minute mile?

If so, I missed it. I watched the video now for the first time. Talk about a guy on the most extreme end of the distribution tail.

He used to be a skeleton dipped in a thin coat of wax when he was a distance runner too. He put all of that muscle on in a superhumanly fast amount of time.

I'm sure it was natural for a guy in his mid-30s to put on 40 pounds of lean muscle in a short amount of time.

Somewhere, Barry Bonds felt a chill go down his spine and he doesn’t know why.

Far be it from me to get in the way of a good "everyone stronger than me is on gear" post, but consider that people naturally at the tail of the work capacity distribution get amplified on social media.

consider that people naturally at the tail of the work capacity distribution get amplified on social media.

It takes a serious suspension of disbelief to consider people have not just found a workaround to "big, lean, natural... pick two," but also doing so while simultaneously putting up big run distances at fast times.

It's not a workaround. Big and lean are relative terms. Anybody could be bigger and leaner on gear than they can be natty. Nevertheless, it's a mistake to think that everyone has the same natty bigness and leanness ceiling.

Some people are just better.

Been taking low dose (1mg) tirzepatide for the past three weeks, some thoughts:

Firstly, it's working. My appetite is lower and I'm getting full faster, also my cravings for sugar and alcohol are reduced. I've already lost about 1.5kg.

I haven't noticed any lessening desire for other addictive behaviours (watching porn, scrolling etc) which I was hoping for, but then again I am on a very low dose. Consequently I'm not proscrastinating any less.

I can't tell at this stage if it is affecting my sleep. Normally my sleep is really sensitive to any changes to diet/supplements/medication so I would expect to see this. Me and my wife have a newborn so that's preventing me from measuring my sleep in a meaningful way. My hope is that the drug could stabilise my blood sugar which could reduce late-night awakenings, but we'll see.

Injections were scary at first, but I feel like I'm getting the hang of it.

Overall I'm feeling pretty positive. My plan is to try and lose weight gradually (about a pound a week) until I'm at my target weight, which I think should be possible by adjusting my dose as needed.

Anyone else partaking in delicious Chinese peptides?

I've written about my experience a bunch here. Been on them for about 18 months now. Been awesome.

I had to discontinue them for a bit for a colonoscopy and the ratchet bakery near my house that I haven't been to in 17 months started sounding appealing again.

Truly a miracle drug.

I mean, I've been singing semaglutide's praises for a long while by now.

Oddly enough, I never noticed any lessening of addictive habits/desires, but I think I'm just a bit of an odd duck in that regard, given how many benefits I get out of taking it.

Not to be a pedantic dick but Tirzepatide is technically a "dual" GIP / GLP-1 receptor agonist. In practice this means it reduces weight and HbA1c (average blood glucose lvl over time) more than semaglutide alone.

No, no, it's a fair thing to point out. I'm well aware that there's a host of peptides that basically attack different receptors that regulate how the body responds to hunger, but I'll also be the first to point out that I'm not the most knowledgeable about the specifics.

Can’t say that row of particular problems impacts me very much. If I don’t keep myself in check I can nearly eat and drink (not alcohol) without limit and I’m always hungry. I’m a tall and slender guy, but always being hungry and not being able to sleep have been with me since the earliest I could begin remembering. The only thing that can keep me down 6-8 hours a night is a 20mg-50mg melatonin.

Have you ever had a polysomnography or any other investigation into your sleep issues?

Never even heard of that. No. Never been tested for anything sleep wise. It used to drive my parents crazy. I’m good off 3-4 hours and can stay awake for days with no interventions. I can work for 24-36-48 hours usually with no issues.

Growing up my sibling and I used to share a bedroom and a bunk bed and they’d always get really pissed off that I couldn’t sleep and always called me the energizer bunny. My friends used to make fun of me and compare me to cartoon characters because I never seemed to get tired no matter what we did.

Exhaustion is mostly a mental thing with me, not a physical thing. When I want to go to sleep and the melatonin doesn’t hit right, sometimes I’ll play a very highly rated Chess game (I used to play competitively), and it requires so much mental concentration and effort I can tire myself out much more quickly by comparison rather than say running a mile. My issue is I recover very fast.

AI suggests Familial natural short sleep. It seems to be genuinely pareto-optimal for humans, with basically no known downsides and several performance enhancements, although confounded by small numbers of experimental participants. It's not clear if it's a condition per se or just winning the genetic lottery by falling on the absolute edge of various genetic traits for efficient sleep simultaneously.

AI also suggests that it's entirely separate from MCAD deficiency, which usually produces a low tolerance for exercise and slow physical recovery.

I hope you don't mind my looking it up, but it's a fascinating collection of traits.

Oh that’s fine. I don’t mind it at all. That’s very interesting.

I remember as a teen once during a family gathering, a ton of us were going to sleep in the living room, so close it was nearly shoulder to shoulder from one end to the other; and all over the furniture. We went to sleep to prepare to all go to the ocean the next morning and I remember closing my eyes, blinking only one time (less than a second), and in the next moment, it was morning; light was shining through the blinds and we were beginning to get up. All I remember was looking around confused, wondering where all the time went. But I never said anything to anyone until several years later.

First and only time I had an experience like that, but maybe it’s a psychological hiccup of the underlying sleeping condition.

That's pretty amazing. I imagine any sleep specialist would be very interested in you. A sleep study would investigate how much you sleep but also your cognitive function after deprivation (despite how it may feel, in other words gauging your performance objectively with and without sleep). What stands out isn't necessarily your reduced hour need for sleep but your added ability to function without sleep for the extended periods you've mentioned here. Wild.

People have said the same to me before. I’ve learned over years just how to deal with it, but never resolved it in any way to bring it into balance with what might be considered “normal.” I don’t have any problems being productive and don’t function like a zombie without normal sleep.

Is "schizoid personality disorder" a real thing that the medical industry can help me with? I did some psychometric testing a while ago and was told I might have that -- I suspect primarily based on some questionnaire responses where I indicated that I was content with not really having any friends or engaging in any social activities. (I still mostly feel that way, but it's a bit of a panic whenever I need to scrounge up an emergency contact or a personal reference for something, and I sometimes wonder if it's like one of those Mr. Beast videos where a guy sees color for the first time and can finally appreciate the full richness and beauty of human existence.)

I'll caveat that most online and some in-person psychometric tests are little more serious than Myers-Briggs. So don't overthink it.

To second Throwaway05, it's one of the situations where the neurodiversity and diagnosis-as-a-social-thing arguments are strongest. Most personality disorders are extremes of common personality types taken to such a point that they interfere with normal functioning, and schizoid (and to a lesser extent, schizotypal personality disorder) are the places where that division is fuzziest. Very few people with even deep schizoid personality types actually have disordered thinking or even dislike their social adaptations; the extent that the disorder even 'causes' problems, it's mostly from non-schizoids marginalizing them, combined with a sort of failed stoicism.

So the second matter worth evaluating is what your problem or problems actually are.

If your problem is just that you're missing social references, schizoids can absolutely develop friends and acquaintances. It's just that it's something they have to work at, even more than neurotypicals. On the upside, if you actually try to do it, it's a lot less stressful, because you don't need it. On the downside, it's always going to be some effort, and it's always going to be something you'll want to put off for tomorrow until several months pass. Online relationships tend to be easier(ish), but there are benefits to schizoids actually having meatspace friends, not least of all that it makes it much easier to distinguish between friend and acquaintances and rando-in-same-circles.

((For similar reasons, I'll recommend a lot of not-social-animal people, whether schizoid or just loners, take a class focused on public speaking, or join a Toastmasters club, or volunteer for education groups: you won't develop the skills and confidence needed unless you do it badly first, and your natural instincts will prevent you from trying it at all.))

If your problem's the failed stoicism - and I would strongly recommend seriously and critically looking at your life plans, as painful as it is, if you genuinely believe you fall on the schizoid spectrum - then that's... going to be harder. It's a personality type that shies away from that sort of hard self-criticism of one's own future plans, and it's important, and it's never going to be easy without the neurotic personality traits that make normal people find it hard to stop thinking about.

If your problem's that you want to want social activity, that's the hardest. The only real arguments I've seen along those lines are just 'fake it til you make it', and most people who try that never really make it. Even those who make the mask fit, get into a kinda ugly squeeze between liking the social activities and just finding them as a responsibility that they can't avoid.

((Uh, mainstream arguments.))

I would also discourage the use of hallucinogens and marijuana for people who believe that they're schizoid (or schizotypal), either as a disorder or merely as a personality type. The supposed link to full-blown schizophrenia seems to spurious or a common shared factors matter, but at minimum the resulting impact on motivation and focus are more debilitating for people without the grounding of other social events and schedules.

I think this is a really stellar comment!

A few things moving in parallel here:

  1. The explanation as to what a personality disorder or personality is is a long lecture at absolute minimum. It's a complicated concept with very specific (and for some dimensions debated) meanings. Takeaway: It may be reasonable to go "meh" in response to labels.

  2. Schizoid personality disorder is one of the most poorly understood diagnostic entities in medicine. Patients essentially never present for psychiatric care because they don't see the need (and unlike say anti-social PD, they don't otherwise live their lives in a way that gets them attention). To my understanding the only reason why we know anything at all about this diagnosis is for historical reasons (it was thought to be a pre-morbid state for schizophrenia and was therefore very heavily explored, once we figured out that wasn't the case we stopped expending excess resources on trying to spot it and it went away*). Non-psychiatric medical providers see these patients far more than psychiatrists (since they do still require medical care). Takeaway: I'm not sure really this label means anything or requires anything.

  3. The internal and external expression of the self is heavily impacted by culture and environment. Takeaway: I'm not sure a diagnosis that primarily served to describe behaviors in a wildly different social milieu totally applies to modern heavily atomized culture.

  4. Asking this question is suggestive of the diagnosis not being relevant - satisfaction with the state of affairs is hallmark of the diagnosis.

  5. Regardless of any of the above and anything related to the diagnosis - it is totally reasonable to have questions about your self, your preferences. Some people are fine with being solitary. Some people are being solitary as a defense mechanism. Some people are fine with being solitary as a defense mechanism. It is hard to explore these things by yourself, and in a situation where you don't have a lot of external entities to help you, a therapist or other professional way to organize and explore yourself is totally reasonable.

*not 100% sure on this.

I really appreciate the insight here. Personally I think that I am genuinely good with how things are, but people sometimes express mild concern about my lifestyle, in a "you really should get that mole checked out" kind of way.

To your point about culture, I do think part of it might be that society sees Internet activity as not really being "real" social interaction, even though hanging out on a forum is probably filling the same psychological need that hanging out at a pub would've done.

how is your health? do you get exhausted pretty easily, do you mostly feel tired? you are operating with this weird ''presence avarice'' and I am wondering if this is just you being really exhausted just surviving, so you are left with very little in your emotional budget to share yourself with others. You must understand though, investing in relationships is important, even if you don't particularly ''feel'' the need to.

I'd say my health is decent. Like many people, I should maybe exercise a little more and eat a few more fruits and vegetables. As it is I take a multivitamin and walk thousands of steps a day, and have no ongoing medical issues or concerns.

I wouldn't say I get tired easily or feel exhausted all the time. I spend a lot of time and energy on leisure activities, but I do find long social engagements (multi-hour dinner parties etc) pretty uniquely exhausting. My guess is that I'm not used to those kinds of events so need to spend a lot of mental energy analyzing what's going on and figuring out what I'm supposed to do; that and I tend to act a lot more energetic and outgoing than usual when I'm around other people.

To your point about culture, I do think part of it might be that society sees Internet activity as not really being "real" social interaction, even though hanging out on a forum is probably filling the same psychological need that hanging out at a pub would've done.

Absolutely, any para-social or other unconventional socialization is still socialization. Assessments aren't really updated to reflect this (well, for the most part).

If you are the kind of person who is posting here you may appreciate and benefit from interrogating your own personality in an organized way - maybe figure out why you are this way, maybe to see if it's what you truly want. If that's the case...chase the thread.

Not doing so is perfectly cromulent however, especially because learning about yourself can be an info hazard that can't be put back in the bottle.

I don't think there is anything as crude as a treatment for this particular issue, especially if you're feeling fine about it yourself and are no trouble for others. If that is your genuine personality, you'll likely continue to feel that way for a good while.

But from having watched some people grow old and dependent there is a general rule that the less family & friends some has, the more pitiful the state you will end up in. There is very little as disgraceful as the actual reality of elder care homes. Friends can at least keep you active and mentally aware for a while longer. The best cases I'm aware of invariably involve the presence of a personal caretaker who genuinely knows and likes you, and the regular visits of friends and family. Maybe you'll get lucky and stay in full possession of your mental faculties as well as sufficient physical capabilities until you die relatively suddenly, who knows.

So even if it may feel like a hassle, I'd strongly suggest trying anyway.

All of my grandparents had pretty severe dementia, so I think I'm cooked no matter what I do. I'm just hoping my country gets MAID / right-to-die sorted out in time.

New year's resolutions check-in:

  • Posted my tenth blog post of the year last Thursday, an analysis of Chinatown and Spec Ops: The Line I originally wrote for Scott's everything-except-book review contest.
  • Went to the gym three times last week. Have yet to go this week, as yesterday morning I suddenly got a horrible pain between my shoulder blades which has yet to dissipate. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.15x for 7 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @falling-star, @Tollund_Man4 and @self_made_human?

Generally drinking less because I don't have the ability to both speak French and learn a bunch of cooking techniques while hungover, though I did go heavy on Monday when the head chef brought us out to the family oyster farm supplying their daughter's restaurant and to a barbecue at his place after.

Still off the nicotine as it's impossible to buy here, although a friend of mine did sneak in a can of snus from Ireland and I did notice being able to work much better with it. I'm out again so it's back to sobriety here (smoking doesn't hit the same way) so hopefully my decent reputation in the kitchen holds up without 10mg pouches to help me out.

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep replying to these in future but I appreciate the mention. I find talking about ongoing progress doesn't work for me and it's better to keep it private until you've got something to brag about. For now my disciplined ideal is kind of almost there but I'm going to go back and forth for a while week by week as I move towards the target.

No worries, I won't ping you going forward if you'd rather I didn't.

After all the medical expenses and surprise home repairs have settled, spending is $1,039.65 higher than it was at the same point last year.

It's a little frustrating. I've cut my discretionary spending pretty deeply, and I can't seem to get ahead compared to last year.

  • I've significantly cut down on eating out.
  • No major entertainment purchases (eg: I don't need a new speaker cabinet)
  • Groceries are basically just Aldi and Sam's club now.
  • I'm traveling less overall.

Unfortunately:

  • I've had a few big "block" expenses in the form of medical bills and home repairs.
  • The traveling I am doing tends to be long distance, and gas prices are high right now.

I guess all I can really do for now is keep it up and hope I don't get any more big surprises this year, so my attempts at frugality overtake those expenses.

No gym this week, but mostly because I was traveling for 48 hours and just started a new, extremely hectic job. I'll give myself a pass for once, but I intend to go tomorrow.

What’s your new job?

@Throwaway05 is correct. New rotation, after a mercifully long vacation extended somewhat involuntarily by geopolitical strife. I've been enjoying it so far, for a value of enjoyment which encompasses and excuses being incredibly stressed. At least my colleagues seem nice: a cute Dutch doctor said I have a great voice. She suggested I should be a voice actor, a compliment I have carefully filed away for later. And here I was thinking that I only had the face for radio...

Pshh skip the meet cute hoss, I want to know what the rotation is.

Busy......Emergency?

Goddammit, I wanted to talk about cute but intimidatingly competent colleagues complimenting me. It's liaison psychiatry.

Busy......Emergency?

Oh there's no rush. Get well soon.

Goddammit, I wanted to talk about cute but intimidatingly competent colleagues complimenting me.

Several of my high-school English teachers complimented how good I was at reading books aloud, and suggested that I could be a radio announcer. Could this be another way to convince the feds that we are soul mates?

I was happier not remembering that textual exchange, let alone the sexual exchange within it. The ass-hair has grown back, but I still felt like an ass for shaving it and then getting stood up at the aisle.

Oh there's no rush. Get well soon.

Oh no, I was guessing that ED was the rotation.

Why is your CL service busy? Do your surgeons not understand how capacity works?*

*This insult of European surgeons not guaranteed to match the medico-legal requirements of British healthcare.

Sir. You are getting slow in your old age, that was a joke :(

I'm not sure if the workload I'm experiencing is typical, but it's almost always safe to bet that the NHS is understaffed and overworked. I'd say this counts as hectic but not unbearable, the primary annoyance is running around a very large hospital, and I get very lost half the time.

(It is very rare for anyone outside of psych to understand how capacity works. I barely understood the UK version until several months within psych, I was winging it till then.)

The meme in the U.S. is that the majority of Psych (and to a lesser extent Neuro) consults are inappropriate. Both tend to get Delirium/TME consults for which the recommendation is "fix the underlying medical problem" (with a side helping of "no this 85 year old grandma does not have late onset schizophrenia). Psych also gets capacity consults - any physician can determine capacity and should be able to do so unless something weird is going on. You call Psych if mental illness is complicating things only.

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Hopefully he's just on a new rotation :/

Skipped this year's first longsword tournament because it was too expensive. Second tournament coming up this Saturday, and I kinda maybe ruined my shoulder in advance by overtraining in an unfit state, and/or getting smacked too hard too often (blame my half-hearted parries). Third tournament is in two weeks. Let's see how much of me ist left by then.

  1. Work. Finishing up my second first author paper!
  2. Fitness: Still recovering from the marathon/think I got sick so mainly walking and trying to run a few times a week right now.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Plugging away at After Virtue. Beginning to meditate once a day for 15 minutes (only did this once this week, but want to make it into a daily habit.
  4. Finances: Third roommate is still not locked down, but we have multiple seeing the house today. Spending is still very low this month.
  5. Dating. Facetimed with this girl I met in Spain last Saturday.
  6. Tarot. No session this week
  7. Socializing: Spanish happy hour and potluck
  8. Screen time: 2.1 hours phone (train)
  9. Mental health: anxiety is back baby!

Hooray, you meditated (once!) as you said you would. Consistency is key.

Have been doing it more consistently these past few days.

How has it played out? What instructions have you (attempted to) follow?

I am following the mind illuminated instructions. In the morning sitting for 15 minutes and focusing on the breath. In the evening doing a walking meditation where I focus on the soles of my feet when I walk.

Have really noticed how off the rails my mind is while doing it!

Great. TMI is solid, though be aware that it appeals to + sorta traps the kind of detail oriented autist that populates forums like this one. Don't get too cerebral or strict about the whole thing.

To meditate is to discover the ludicrous chaos and insanity that 99% of humanity walk around enveloped in. They're locked into a box with a lunatic and what's worse, they nearly always identify with being that lunatic instead of observing it detachedly.

Think I've learned from endurance exercise that the most important thing really is just putting in the time. Details can be important, but what matters in this case is just sitting more.

Yup. There are no shortcuts. There may be some similarities between endurance training and meditation. Some distress tolerance and stick-to-it-ness helps.

How long did it take you to train for a marathon? I was pretty proud of myself for even making it to the end of a 10k last year.

I got into running at the very start of Covid, and ran my first marathon in May 2021.

I have been training seriously since I was 10 in various endurance sports. In high school and college this was about 10 hours a week with lifting and cross training etc. I do about the same now. Starting from zero, it would probably take a few years of this to be ready for the marathon.

That makes sense. I've been strength training for about that long and it's a lot easier than running.

Finishing up my second first author paper!

Congrats, always a huge accomplishment.

Still recovering from the marathon/think I got sick so mainly walking and trying to run a few times a week right now.

Just reading up and seeing that we were both at Boston! Congrats, even though it wasn't the day you wanted, that's still a solid bit of late race management. I was ~10 minutes slower, a shade over 2 minutes positive split, and my quads have never felt so awful during a race that actually went pretty well. They weren't kidding about those downhills eventually adding up to quite the tax.

Congrats! That's a real solid time, hope you auto qualified for next year!

I'm looking forward to Chicago in the fall where it'll be completely flat. Hoping to feel a lot better in miles 20-24 (miles 24-26 are always terrible).

Yep! I am sufficiently old that it's an easy and clean qualifier. I'm not sure if I want to go back straightaway or head somewhere a little smoother next spring. I'm coming off three marathons in 11 months and my current inclination is absolutely to shift gears for a bit and hit the track over summer. Part of me wants to go back to Boston immediately because it really is an incredible course, but the other part of me just wants something straightforward and fast like Glass City. Luckily, we don't have to make that decision till September.

Chicago's great! Have you run it before? The logistics are so much simpler than Boston if you stay downtown. Easy walk to the start line instead of a bus ride and meandering around for an hour.

Easy walk to the start line instead of a bus ride and meandering around for an hour.

I strongly dislike the "wait in line, take a bus to the start, meander around for an hour, race, wait in line, take a bus somewhere else" races.

I have not, but the parents still live there so logistics should be much easier.

Boston is my default every year now because all my MIT alumni track friends do it so it's a good way to stay in touch. It is unfortunately at an annoying time of year (I wish it was a bit later or a bit earlier) which makes it hard to do other fast marathons.

Yeah, I think the Boston decision next year is going to come down to how many club friends I have going. If we have a solid group, I'd love to go again. If it's going to be largely a solo activity for me, I'd just as soon time trial something simpler and faster in the Midwest.

a horrible pain between my shoulder blades which has yet to dissipate

Do you have a small ball to roll on?

Unfortunately not. There's probably one in my gym but I don't fancy going. Tempted to treat myself to a massage this evening.

You should get one. Even a tennis ball is good. I have a foam roller and a dumbbell-shaped foam ball that I use for massaging my erector muscles.

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