Ontopic Health Thread: post your AIDS, diseases and infekshunz here.

august said:
for osteoarthritis, there's nothing you can really do to TREAT it. you might need to have surgeries depending, or you can take pain meds (this includes garden variety NSAIDs), or you can get steroid injections into the joint, but that's about it for after the fact. you can work on losing weight to minimize grindage of weight-bearing joints. if you can figure out what, if any, specific cause there is you can try to fix it to make it grind less going forward but idk why my bones be grinding to begin with. I have pain in my knees and feet, too, but the damage isn't as bad yet bc sclerosis wasn't as evident on the x-rays I've had of them in the last couple of years (for pain & after injury) wheres the sclerosis on the SI was bad enough to show up on the x-ray. I also have pain and audible popping/grindage in my shoulders but I haven't had imaging on them since high school.

one initial thing they thought the SI issue could be was condensans condensans ilii, which is a super mild form of that that's common in post-partum people because the relaxins your body makes to get your ligaments loosey goosey so you can slide a head & body out through it can cause the bones to temporarily rub, but the CT & MRI showed that it was too fucked up & extensive for it to be that.

at this point, I won't know more until I talk to the rheumatologist and see what he thinks next steps should be, & I'm planning to visit my PCP after that visit as well to I guess debrief from that lol and also because it's time to revisit the ADHD meds - if you're on a scheduled substance, you're supposed to check in at least once a year so they can make sure you're doing OK on it and they have you re-sign a med contract. they may also do a drug test, they're not super adherent about that unless they have cause for concern but I'd be fine if they did one - it's usually checking both for presence of prescribed med to make sure you're actually taking it, as well as the standard absence of other drugs (recreational as well as prescription, assuming you do not have a prescription for the others). they do/did a bunch more frequent visits during the initiation phase of the meds, but once you've established that it's working as intended and you're not having any funky issues they push the routine visits out to once a year (but you can always schedule a visit sooner if needed).
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could you have lupus too?
 
TuhMollie said:
could you have lupus too?
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it's unlikely as all of the blood tests we've done so far don't show any signs of it. there can be a possibility of a seronegative version of some things that are normally seropositive (meaning it doesn't show up on bloodwork even though typically it would), but the fact that ALL of the blood tests for autoimmune and/or inflammation have been negative make it less likely than any one particular negative test alone.
 
NukesII said:
Went off my asthma steroid two months ago. My eyes feel great!
My lungs not so much. Going back on my asthma inhaler next week.
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mannnnnnn ok so this is related but a little off topic - I don't personally have asthma, but one of the quality measures we are supposed to follow that I help track at work is ratio of prescribed/dispensed asthma controller meds to rescue inhalers, and over and over again what I'm seeing is that the controller meds are way too goddamn expensive, so people get stuck not being able to afford the controller meds and just keeping their rescue inhaler Rx current. does that track with your experience at all? I know not everybody's going to have the same experience but most of what I'm doing is passively scouring charts so I'm always stoked to have the opportunity to actively get feedback on this stuff.
 
august said:
it's unlikely as all of the blood tests we've done so far don't show any signs of it. there can be a possibility of a seronegative version of some things that are normally seropositive (meaning it doesn't show up on bloodwork even though typically it would), but the fact that ALL of the blood tests for autoimmune and/or inflammation have been negative make it less likely than any one particular negative test alone.
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august said:
mannnnnnn ok so this is related but a little off topic - I don't personally have asthma, but one of the quality measures we are supposed to follow that I help track at work is ratio of prescribed/dispensed asthma controller meds to rescue inhalers, and over and over again what I'm seeing is that the controller meds are way too goddamn expensive, so people get stuck not being able to afford the controller meds and just keeping their rescue inhaler Rx current. does that track with your experience at all? I know not everybody's going to have the same experience but most of what I'm doing is passively scouring charts so I'm always stoked to have the opportunity to actively get feedback on this stuff.
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Yep. Retail price of one Ventolin actuator is somewhere approaching $400. I take a large dose (120 micrograms? Or 180? I'll have to look) and the actuator holds 120 doses. Says twice a day but I'm fine with one.
I find that when I'm thin and completely off dairy my asthma is minimal.
But inflammation happens anyways.
Insurance has a deductible. It gets cheap by the end of the year. So the real trick is keep the prescription active and fill it as often as possible at the end of the year. The price evens out a lot if you play counter actuary and try and hack the insurance actuaries.
 
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august said:
my ADHD meds suppress my appetite a bunch so I mostly forget to eat all day & then just have a small dinner, & I've lost like 50lbs. I know poor nutrition can also cause issues, but my bones & joints & back have been bothering me for as long as I can remember, going back to high school even, and they've bothered me throughout all of my fluctuating BMIs and with all degrees of nutrition as well as exercise/lifestyle.

exercise is the hard one for me lately, and figuring out what's causing my shit to fall apart is theoretically gonna be helpful because it will help determine what kind of exercise is going to do the most good for it, because my body hurts so exercise is particularly unpleasant, so I gotta figure out what kind of exercise is worth paying a little pain into that will help decrease future pain bc of strengthening appropriate muscles but also does not add to future pain by doing more bone-grinding.

if they go with plain old OA, they might want me to do PT/OT and fuck me running that shit is expensive. and it's *technically* worth it and long-term it's cheaper and better for you than needing to get things replaced or fused, but between the actual cost of it & the time-cost/lost work hour & wages to get to appointments, it's a lot.
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I'm late to the party here, but just want to point out that exercise is pretty much useless for weight loss.
 
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More calories out than in is obviously the solution. But the more exercise, especially weights you do, the more muscle you have that is passively burning all the time.

Also, that disincludes your body doing fucky things like diabeetus and other non-idealities of the human endocrine system.
 
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fly said:
I'm late to the party here, but just want to point out that exercise is pretty much useless for weight loss.
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fair, but exercise can have other benefits, and with bone/joint stuff it kind of depends on what the issue is as to whether and what kind of exercise will help. like for AS (which is the one I probably do not have), exercise apparently actually really helps loosen your shit up, you just have to get past the stiffness hump. but like, if your shit is already grinding bone on bone, you have to tread more carefully so you don't do more damage. and in places where it isn't tyet bone on bone, the exercise can help encourage your body to keep your bursa filled or whatever.
 
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august said:
fair, but exercise can have other benefits, and with bone/joint stuff it kind of depends on what the issue is as to whether and what kind of exercise will help. like for AS (which is the one I probably do not have), exercise apparently actually really helps loosen your shit up, you just have to get past the stiffness hump. but like, if your shit is already grinding bone on bone, you have to tread more carefully so you don't do more damage. and in places where it isn't tyet bone on bone, the exercise can help encourage your body to keep your bursa filled or whatever.
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I always have great shits right after I finish running.

So yeah, I agree that there are other benefits.
 
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august said:
fair, but exercise can have other benefits, and with bone/joint stuff it kind of depends on what the issue is as to whether and what kind of exercise will help. like for AS (which is the one I probably do not have), exercise apparently actually really helps loosen your shit up, you just have to get past the stiffness hump. but like, if your shit is already grinding bone on bone, you have to tread more carefully so you don't do more damage. and in places where it isn't tyet bone on bone, the exercise can help encourage your body to keep your bursa filled or whatever.
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Yes, there are countless benefits to exercise. But the best health benefit is to not be overweight. And it's arguably easier to lose weight when you aren't also adding in exercise.
 
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fly said:
Yes, there are countless benefits to exercise. But the best health benefit is to not be overweight. And it's arguably easier to lose weight when you aren't also adding in exercise.
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yeah idk if you missed my earlier bit about it, but most of the weight I've lost this year has been unintentional (I'm not complaining tho) bc my ADHD meds suppress my appetite & I've been forgetting to eat all day, so I pretty much just have dinner since that's the one meal we all eat together. we've also been doing meal delivery thingies for most of our dinners, so I've been making sure the one meal I do get is generally at the very least more nutritious than the quicky garbage we made when we were "cooking."

but also I mentioned exercise in my post specifically in relation to my shitty joints, since that was my whole reason for posting :p
 
august said:
yeah idk if you missed my earlier bit about it, but most of the weight I've lost this year has been unintentional (I'm not complaining tho) bc my ADHD meds suppress my appetite & I've been forgetting to eat all day, so I pretty much just have dinner since that's the one meal we all eat together. we've also been doing meal delivery thingies for most of our dinners, so I've been making sure the one meal I do get is generally at the very least more nutritious than the quicky garbage we made when we were "cooking."

but also I mentioned exercise in my post specifically in relation to my shitty joints, since that was my whole reason for posting :p
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Yeah, unsurprisingly I only skimmed. You had mentioned exercise hurting, and my reply to that was - skip it! You'll lose more weight without it. But clearly that's not the whole story. :p
 
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fly said:
Yeah, unsurprisingly I only skimmed. You had mentioned exercise hurting, and my reply to that was - skip it! You'll lose more weight without it. But clearly that's not the whole story. :p
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lol no worries, I do be posting walls o text and it's a lot to catch up on :fly:
 
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