Jo's Off Topic Rant

[Fenrir]

Wow. That is sad, Jo. I hope you get the help you need.

[guest509]

  thanks Fenrir.

  Yeah man it is fucking sad. Brutally depressing really. But I'm generally a happy guy. I only stay down for about as long as it takes to write a forum post! :-)

  As far as all of the 'crazy'* diet advice and what not. It is very common for people to look at diet first and try to make recommendations. That's the new fad. When I was first getting sick over 20 years ago the craze was similar but the recommendations were different. It was all about whole grains, now it's about organics and shit. Whatever. I just cut out nearly all processed food and try to eat as much organic as I can find and afford.

  My diet has varied wildly over the years. So has my environment. They have have absolutely ZERO impact. I've been fat. I've been thin. I've exercised daily. I've sat on my ass and did nothing. The only thing that seems to work is rest and lack of stress. If I rest and do nothing I can go a long time without being sick. If I push myself I get sick pretty quickly and stay sick for months and months.

*I call call it crazy, but that does not mean it's not correct or valuable. In this backward town I'm the crazy guy for not drinking soda and thinking Pizza Hut is horse shit.

[guest509]

@Req - Strangely I have not tried Kefir. I'll see if I can get some with my food stamps somewhere. I've not had any drugs in a year now. It's the longest I've gone since about 2002. So hopefully any gut issues are righting themselves. The drugs I take are so harsh my guts take months to get right.

  Have you ever heard of a fecal transplant? If you have bad gut issues it's something to consider. I'll not link it. That's something you'll have to discover on your own. HA!

  Sounds like what I really need is some breast milk. Yep.

  It should be noted that the nature of my health issues at birth meant I never breast fed or was given breast milk. Not once.

  I eat a ton of garlic and asparagus though. Also a lot of strange unprocessed yogurts. And oatmeal. Not so much soybeans. I haven't cut dairy out of my diet in a few years, but when I did I got sicker than hell. 3rd sickest I'd ever been (I rank them, lol).

  I seem to function best eating good breads, cheeses and produce. Meat, milk and fruit is not so much my thing. Though lately I've gotten into organic milks and odwalla soy chocolate milk. Yum.

[Fenrir]

Regarding diet...

[guest509]

  Lewis Black is on to something there. Every new doctor I see claims they are going to improve my health. None do. It's a circus. I just laugh at them. Try to explain I've been sick for forever. But it's always the same. Only one has admitted that I'm in for a lifetime struggle. The rest act like this is a passing phase.
 
  After my last surgery (my 4rth) I didn't improve. I got worse, but the doctor had the balls to say the surgery was successful. She told me she fixed my headaches, so that's a success. However, headaches were never a problem, never mentioned as a symptom. Then she tried the classic "turn it back on you" strategy. She told me I was not improving because I was fat, which happens when your doctor pumps you up with steroids. When I called bullshit she advised me to see a therapist, maybe I was just depressed.

  That's when I threatened to sue for malpractice, for having knowingly recommended and doing an unnecessary surgery.

"What do you mean unnecessary? It was for your headaches."

"No. Headaches were never mentioned as a symptom, and I take copious notes (I wrote down everything and she knew it). Further, if my issues are emotional or weight related, as you are now saying, then the surgery you did was inappropriate."

  She backed down then. Tried to say something encouraging.

  I've refused to pay her bill, it is now several years past due. I'll be bankrupting sometime late summer/early fall. She can go fuck herself. Don't even get me started on why my health insurance wouldn't cover the bill, that's another topic way too long and frustrating to talk about now.

  So yeah I do not trust anyone's medical advice, but at this point I'm willing to try just about anything.

-Jo

[Skeletor]

What an arrogant pretemptious bitch. Well done dude.

[Skeletor]

 Have you ever heard of a fecal transplant? If you have bad gut issues it's something to consider. I'll not link it. That's something you'll have to discover on your own. HA!

Once I saw an MFX video about this.. haha, those crazy girls.

[guest509]

 Have you ever heard of a fecal transplant? If you have bad gut issues it's something to consider. I'll not link it. That's something you'll have to discover on your own. HA!

Once I saw an MFX video about this.. haha, those crazy girls.

Nasty!

[jim]

If they didn't count student loans and medical bills against people's credit, they'd have to invent some kind of new scoring system that went up to 2000.

[Krice]

She told me I was not improving because I was fat, which happens when your doctor pumps you up with steroids.

Well you also need to eat to get fat. Maybe you are blaming your fatness too much on drugs? Besides now when I listen to your ideas about diets it raises a question: what do you eat? These days there are a lot of people who don't know how to eat well. After all we need a little bit of everything so it's not a good idea to follow strict or limited diet.

[guest509]

  When you take prednisone one of the major side effects is weight gain. Your face puffs up and you retain all kinds of fluid and shit. Blow up like a balloon. Also you feel like you are absolutely starving all the time. It's terrible. Not everyone gets that side effect, most do.

  I haven't put on weight in years though. It's been slow to come off, but I put a stop to the gaining once I figured out what was going on. I could drop it much quicker but a restrictive diet weakens me and I get sick almost immediately. So nowadays I just pay attention to portion sizes, eat slow and I've been successful over the long term shedding pounds. I exercise when I'm not too ill, but only moderately. I don't go overboard. The system is too delicate.

  I have altered my diet more times than I can count to either no effect, or negative effect, but since you are curious I'll tell you what I ate today. 1 bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (the best!), 3 microwave burritos, 3 red bulls and some frozen berries and some chicken and broccoli. HA!

  As you can imagine that is hardly a typical day, I'd be dead. I'm not sure I could tell you what a typical day is, I change it up quite a bit, but I never eat microwave burritos and red bull is pretty rare. Sugary cereal though, I'll have that like 2-3 times a week easy. Part of a balanced breakfast. :-)

[Krice]

I change it up quite a bit, but I never eat microwave burritos and red bull is pretty rare. Sugary cereal though, I'll have that like 2-3 times a week easy. Part of a balanced breakfast

Throw away that red bull shit. Drink water and I mean it. Cereals are ok-ish (but if they contain sugar it's bad), but it really looks like you need more protein. I think you would benefit a lot from that protein supplement I suggested. It's good to know that carbs and fats make you hungrier, while proteins will reduce the feel of hunger. With food like that you should also take multi-vitamin-mineral supplement. Most importantly you need to replace that burrito-cereal-crap to real food.

[Skeletor]

I don't want to sound smartass but fats have the opposite effect, they're essential to keep hunger away.
Despite common belief, saturated fats are good as they're very stable (unlike poliunsaturated which should never be consumed cooked/heatened) and also don't get converted in saturated fats again (carbs do).

[Skeletor]

Anyway sorry for contributing to turn your thread into a nutritional-advice one, Jo.

I repeat.. I am very sad about your situation, and also way pissed off about what's going on in this historical time.. looks like some people are more entitled than others in this "era of equality"..

[guest509]

  Oh no biggie. Diet is always what people want to talk about first. I have no problem talking about it because I am confident in my diet. I go after balance and whole foods and it has worked fine. I've been off drugs now almost a year now, but that's nothing to do with diet. It's because I've been doing nothing but resting and surfing the web. Zero stress helps you stay healthy. I still have problems, but I'm off drugs.

  I have found that people quickly want to find out what I'm doing wrong. In order to judge. Like I'm sick because I fucked up or am continuing to fuck up. If I were sick because of mistakes I am making I'd fix them. Changing diet is as simple as a shopping list. I think people are just scared to admit that sometimes there ain't shit you can do. Good people doing good things can just get fucked. It doesn't make them bad and lazy, just sort of unfortunate. Count yourself lucky.

  Worse is that my illness isn't visible. Most days I function pretty well. It's only when I push myself for a day or three that I start getting run down and sick. So it's easy for people to see me and say, "That guy is fine. He's just a whiny little bitch."