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

Same here on the sugar. Neither my wife or I have ever been soda drinkers, I in particular am a "once a year" on pop. Not using any sugar in my holiday meal and they will never know - erythritol. Perfect clean flavor, just takes 30% more by volume. Useless for things that need to carmelize - I've tried to make BBQ sauce but it won't bubble or glaze the same. Fine for pie or cake though.
Calorie cutter #2: we use powdered coffee creamer. There is almost a lb of fat in a large container. I mix it 5/50 with fat-free powdered milk.
Well there's no such thing as bad bbq and all the sauces have some amount of sugar but given a choice I prefer the more peppery tangy types over the sweet types.
Mostly powdered coffee creamer here too though occasionally a little splash of milk or half-n-half. The old lady is a sweet-n-low person. I'm not convinced it's any better for you than sugar, probably just bad in different ways but it is what it is. Ain't worth dying on that hill.
 
I read the report. Good news - your ass is fairly symmetrical. :)

Sorry babe. The weight - less will always result in less daily pain. Can be hard AF to diet when raising a kid(s) - been there. AS you probably know, sugar and insulin spikes cause inflammation. Less fat on you will mean your body can handle the peaks better. #FightingType2Daily.
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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Does swimming cause you an intolerable amount of pain? Because that's good exercise that isn't bone-jarring. Also stuff like brisk walk instead of jog or run, leg lifts instead of situps, etc.
 
Same here on the sugar. Neither my wife or I have ever been soda drinkers, I in particular am a "once a year" on pop. Not using any sugar in my holiday meal and they will never know - erythritol. Perfect clean flavor, just takes 30% more by volume. Useless for things that need to carmelize - I've tried to make BBQ sauce but it won't bubble or glaze the same. Fine for pie or cake though.
Calorie cutter #2: we use powdered coffee creamer. There is almost a lb of fat in a large container. I mix it 5/50 with fat-free powdered milk.
wife does the erythritol or xylitol thing. Its pretty good to be honest. weight for weight same as sugar, doesnt have a weird taste for the most part when mixed.

The only place we (read: she) use added sugar for anything is baking, so its kind of few and far between use

Im far less judicious about my intake of sugar. But i also dont eat any "junk food". No soda, no chips, no candy, etc. Sugar in coffee, and on yogurt with fruit sometimes is about it
 
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Well there's no such thing as bad bbq and all the sauces have some amount of sugar but given a choice I prefer the more peppery tangy types over the sweet types.
Mostly powdered coffee creamer here too though occasionally a little splash of milk or half-n-half. The old lady is a sweet-n-low person. I'm not convinced it's any better for you than sugar, probably just bad in different ways but it is what it is. Ain't worth dying on that hill.
You'll judge people for having modern HVAC, but you put creamer in your coffee?

GTFO with that nonsense.
 
You'll judge people for having modern HVAC, but you put creamer in your coffee?

GTFO with that nonsense.
I was always a straight black coffee guy until I'd been with her for many years. One of those things where given enough time you start turning into each other.
 
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Does swimming cause you an intolerable amount of pain? Because that's good exercise that isn't bone-jarring. Also stuff like brisk walk instead of jog or run, leg lifts instead of situps, etc.
I haven't been swimming in ages, I know that's considered low-impact & it would be easier on the joints, but there are parts that are already pretty badly worn out & so anything hurts.

subchondral bone is the parts of the bones that are typically protected by cartilage, and subchondral sclerosis happens when that subchondral bone is damaged because the cartilage is degraded or absent and the bone rubs against bone and gets fucked up, and then the body tries to repair the damaged bone by building stronger/denser bone in that area (the densities are the sclerosis). in my case, it's for sure happening in my sacroiliac area, which is where the hips and spine are attached to each other, so it's a very central point in my body where just about anything else I do I'm going to feel it in my SI. like it hurts just to sit, or stand, or lay down, and any sort of movement just kind of changes the pain.
 
I haven't been swimming in ages, I know that's considered low-impact & it would be easier on the joints, but there are parts that are already pretty badly worn out & so anything hurts.

subchondral bone is the parts of the bones that are typically protected by cartilage, and subchondral sclerosis happens when that subchondral bone is damaged because the cartilage is degraded or absent and the bone rubs against bone and gets fucked up, and then the body tries to repair the damaged bone by building stronger/denser bone in that area (the densities are the sclerosis). in my case, it's for sure happening in my sacroiliac area, which is where the hips and spine are attached to each other, so it's a very central point in my body where just about anything else I do I'm going to feel it in my SI. like it hurts just to sit, or stand, or lay down, and any sort of movement just kind of changes the pain.
That's what I was wondering. Swimming doesn't have the weight impacting the cartilage, bone joints, etc. but they're nearly all still moving.
 
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Well there's no such thing as bad bbq and all the sauces have some amount of sugar but given a choice I prefer the more peppery tangy types over the sweet types.
Mostly powdered coffee creamer here too though occasionally a little splash of milk or half-n-half. The old lady is a sweet-n-low person. I'm not convinced it's any better for you than sugar, probably just bad in different ways but it is what it is. Ain't worth dying on that hill.
I don't like a super sweet sauce either. Mainly I just like it to dry/thickenss/glaze just enough it's got some good cling.

Wife is constipated a lot . . . I slip the water-soluable fiber Inulin into the coffee creamer and she is none the wiser. *Yes I told her, I don't dose people. She hasn't been backed up in months. :lol:
I mentioned this to @august for Daphne. Inulin is funny, stirred into a glass of water or juice it doesn't turn it into a gel(gross) like most water soluble fiber. Apparently, the little particles individually soak up and hold water but don't attach to each other. White, tasteless to slightly sweet powder.
A really benign product, it's basically the juice of the roots of Artichokes of Jerusleum, a native, US sunflower. Which is known as the "windy potatoes" since it can make you fart a bit. :eek:
 
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so based on my MRI, I'm just unlucky enough to have idiopathic uveitis (bc they can't find a cause for it amongst the known causes) AND advanced osteoarthritis at 35. my follow-up appointment with the rheumatologist is in a couple of weeks but my guess is that it'll be our last visit.

idk if he or my PCP will refer me to ortho for it (& for the herniated lumbar discs seen incidentally on the CT) or if they're just going to say "huh, I guess you have boneitis. welp, ttyl." the rheumatologist was just focusing on the SI because it was visibly fucked up and it could have been up his alley had it been inflammatory (like Ankylosing Spondylitis), but I definitely have other joints that are fucky.

I'm half expecting them to write it off as caused by obesity, and while I understand it can play a role, I do not think I've been SO overweight nor for SO long to have caused this level of degeneration by itself, & some of the other fucky joints include my shoulders & thoracic/cervical spine & hands/fingers, which are not as heavily (get it) involved in carrying around my enormous, bloated frame.

wtf does this mean! KIKIFY IT PLS
 
wtf does this mean! KIKIFY IT PLS
ok so imagine my sacrum shows up for a lapdance and my iliac is SERVING it, just a whole ass tornado of grindage. but imagine that instead of wearing regular clothes, they were both wearing those gross fruit roll-up underwear, so the grindage has worn through the "clothes" and now it's just hot sticky skin on skin and there's nothing to protect against the friction; skin rubs skin until it's raw and breaks. your body tries to build calluses to protect against this neverending grindage, but now that the skin is thicker it hurts to move it, but not moving isn't an option so you just keep cycling through rubbing it raw and getting newer thicker calluses. eventually the whole thing will disintegrate, so you might have to have the lapdancer and lapdancee's lap area fused together to prevent movement/grindage (in other joints/couplings, you might be able to just replace their laps entirely).
 
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ok so imagine my sacrum shows up for a lapdance and my iliac is SERVING it, just a whole ass tornado of grindage. but imagine that instead of wearing regular clothes, they were both wearing those gross fruit roll-up underwear, so the grindage has worn through the "clothes" and now it's just hot sticky skin on skin and there's nothing to protect against the friction; skin rubs skin until it's raw and breaks. your body tries to build calluses to protect against this neverending grindage, but now that the skin is thicker it hurts to move it, but not moving isn't an option so you just keep cycling through rubbing it raw and getting newer thicker calluses. eventually the whole thing will disintegrate, so you might have to have the lapdancer and lapdancee's lap area fused together to prevent movement/grindage (in other joints/couplings, you might be able to just replace their laps entirely).
To help Kiki:
1637867196223.png
 
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ok so imagine my sacrum shows up for a lapdance and my iliac is SERVING it, just a whole ass tornado of grindage. but imagine that instead of wearing regular clothes, they were both wearing those gross fruit roll-up underwear, so the grindage has worn through the "clothes" and now it's just hot sticky skin on skin and there's nothing to protect against the friction; skin rubs skin until it's raw and breaks. your body tries to build calluses to protect against this neverending grindage, but now that the skin is thicker it hurts to move it, but not moving isn't an option so you just keep cycling through rubbing it raw and getting newer thicker calluses. eventually the whole thing will disintegrate, so you might have to have the lapdancer and lapdancee's lap area fused together to prevent movement/grindage (in other joints/couplings, you might be able to just replace their laps entirely).
fuck. I TOTALLY understood this. like visuals and everything.
also omg are you gonna be in a wheel chair or something down the road (also you can get lap dances on a wheelchair ANYWHERE ANYTIME so that's a bonus)
 
fuck. I TOTALLY understood this. like visuals and everything.
also omg are you gonna be in a wheel chair or something down the road (also you can get lap dances on a wheelchair ANYWHERE ANYTIME so that's a bonus)
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).
 
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).
The spots where the cartilage are worn thin can be treated. Microfracture works pretty decently on hips - they go in and drill a bunch of super thin holes through the cartilage that is grinding. This allows bone marrow to rush toward the surface, bring various growth factors, including cartilage regrowth. There are also two types of chondrocyte/cartilage implantation techniques, ACI and MACI. They are also doing stem cells to regrow cartilag. Last is dsplacing the joint but that is impractical - basically disconnecting all tendons and muscles so the joint has zero pressure on the cartilage. It can regrow in 3-6 months under those conditions.
 
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The spots where the cartilage are worn thin can be treated. Microfracture works pretty decently on hips - they go in and drill a bunch of super thin holes through the cartilage that is grinding. This allows bone marrow to rush toward the surface, bring various growth factors, including cartilage regrowth. There are also two types of chondrocyte/cartilage implantation techniques, ACI and MACI. They are also doing stem cells to regrow cartilag. Last is dsplacing the joint but that is impractical - basically disconnecting all tendons and muscles so the joint has zero pressure on the cartilage. It can regrow in 3-6 months under those conditions.
sorry to clarify, I meant that if your body is doing the thing and there's no obvious overarching cause, they can't treat it, it being the OA itself. like, they can treat the acute cause if they find one (often mechanical), and they can do surgical interventions to fix up the damaged spaces, but they can't really treat the OA itself beyond damage control & trying to buy time between grindage. so like, if it happened because of weight, or a sports injury, or being old AF, they can fix the external causes (lose weight, strengthen muscles around the area to increase non-skeletal support) and then surgically fix up the spaces, and that surgical fix is theoretically going to hold for a while because you fixed the cause, or if it's related to old age then maybe you get another long stretch of years before it would be an issue again. in that case, the main fix is fixing the external causes and the cartilage is just trying to get you back to "normal" so you can start over.
but if you're in your mid thirties and your shit has apparently been crumbling for years already and there's no obvious fixable cause, regrowing cartilage would be more of a bandaid situation - if we can't figure out why my shit is grinding in the first place, chances are good I'll grind through the expensive new cartilage, too, and be back where I started, less the money and time for surgery and recovery.
 
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sorry to clarify, I meant that if your body is doing the thing and there's no obvious overarching cause, they can't treat it, it being the OA itself. like, they can treat the acute cause if they find one (often mechanical), and they can do surgical interventions to fix up the damaged spaces, but they can't really treat the OA itself beyond damage control & trying to buy time between grindage. so like, if it happened because of weight, or a sports injury, or being old AF, they can fix the external causes (lose weight, strengthen muscles around the area to increase non-skeletal support) and then surgically fix up the spaces, and that surgical fix is theoretically going to hold for a while because you fixed the cause, or if it's related to old age then maybe you get another long stretch of years before it would be an issue again. in that case, the main fix is fixing the external causes and the cartilage is just trying to get you back to "normal" so you can start over.
but if you're in your mid thirties and your shit has apparently been crumbling for years already and there's no obvious fixable cause, regrowing cartilage would be more of a bandaid situation - if we can't figure out why my shit is grinding in the first place, chances are good I'll grind through the expensive new cartilage, too, and be back where I started, less the money and time for surgery and recovery.
True. And OA is difficult. Weight, hormones, nutrition, yada, yada.
 
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True. And OA is difficult. Weight, hormones, nutrition, yada, yada.
yeah, I feel like there has to be SOMETHING making my shit crumble this badly at my age, but that something could just be something dumb like shitty genes or whatever that I can't do dick about. hopefully we can keep looking and figure something out if for no other reason than so I can make sure this doesn't happen to Daphne. even just having a OA diagnosis at this age is SOMETHING because it'll theoretically help her get taken more seriously than I was if she starts having back or joint issues at an early age. when I first started complaining about my back/SI/joints, I got sent to Ortho who did a few x-rays and basically said I'm too young to have problems and the x-rays were fine. my mom has AS and degenerative disc disease, but she wasn't diagnosed with those until right around that time, and I didn't find out about it until I mentioned my doctors raising the possibility of AS this year. at the point I was originally seeing ortho, we knew she had had back problems and surgeries, but as far as we knew at that time, it all related back to an injury she had had. even now, it's a lot of chicken/egg stuff with her in terms of figuring out what damage was always going to happen to some degree & how much was solely because of or exacerbated by the injury. and like, with the herniated discs I have, did the funky SI & immobility lead to my discs getting fucked up, or did my discs get fucked up first and it made my SI sit wrong and wear? bodies are fascinating and stupid.
 
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