Healthy Obsessions The Adventures of a Mild Obsessive Compulsive

Tag Archives: Health

Celiac Disease Doesn’t Go Away

There’s no outgrowing it. It’s not a childhood disease. It’s for life. If you have it now, you will have it tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and next century – should you be lucky enough to live so long.

I’ve had several people tell me, now, that they had celiac disease when they were kids, but they outgrew it. And it drives me bonkers. I try to tell them, no, you should get checked. But they don’t want to hear it.

They are absolutely confident, in a way only the blindly faithful can be, that they do not have celiac disease (and I have been guilty of this, too). And meanwhile they have any of a dozen different symptoms that can result from celiac. I feel like I’m watching someone drowning, and I’m reaching out to grab them and drag them back to shore, but they keep telling me, No, no, the water’s warm.

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Did you know AAA got prescription discounts?

Because I sure didn’t. That was a nifty discovery. Of course, you have to be a AAA member. I should tell my folks about this; they’ve been members for years, and not all of the meds my mom is on for her cancer treatments are covered by insurance.

There. Just texted my father. And made the interesting typo of Rxpensive in place of expensive. Fitting, don’t you think?

Here’s the link to search in your area for participating pharmacies.

 

(Man, does that entry sound like an ad. It isn’t. I get nothing from AAA for this.)

Explaining Celiac Across a Language Barrier

It’s after my Wednesday evening acupuncture session, and I’m trying to explain to my acupuncturist that, while I’d really like to take the herbs she’s giving me, I need to make sure there isn’t any gluten in the pills.

I kinda figured this would be problematic. Her English is good enough for most things, but there have been times when she’s had to call in the man working the front desk to translate (I’m assuming he’s an acupuncturist in training, because he seems to know his stuff pretty well). In this case, he was at a loss, too.

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Sleep Tracking Poll

I am curious about how other people think about this sort of stuff. Do you find it interesting? Boring? Of value? Problematic? Indication of societal decline and the end of days?

Sleep seems like a problematic area for most of the people I know. I wonder if this extends as far into the general population as I think it does. From all the articles and websites dedicated to the topic, you’d think so. But then, you rarely hear from people when they’re happy; you most often hear from them when they have a complaint (if nothing else, working in video gaming has taught me that).

At any rate, I’m curious to see how many people find tracking of value.

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Fitbit & Zeo Graphs

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, and, honestly, because I am feeling too tired to do much of a write up on anything today… The sleep graphs from last night, starting with the fitbit.

 

Fitbit Graph for 10-27-2010

And now the Zeo:

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The Day After Turbinate Reduction

 

Turbinate Reduction (snagged from Atlanta Snoring Institute)

 

It felt very weird. Not painful, but weird. The whole process took less than an hour.

Step 1

The doctor’s assistant numbed the inside of my nose using lidocaine on a q-tip.

Step 2

The doctor injected a local anesthetic twice on both sides. That’s when I started feeling light headed. It’s apparently very common for patients to faint at that point, since the injections are taking place in an area with a lot of nerves.

Dr. Robson Capasso (who introduces himself by his first name, which I like) tilted the chair back for me as soon as I said I was feeling light headed (which nicely prevented me from falling out of the chair, yay). He had a resident shadowing him, and so he was explaining as he did things (and you know how awesome I find that).

Step 3

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Turbinate Reduction, Because Breathing is Fun

Today at 3:00 I’ll be sitting in an exam room at the Stanford Sleep Clinic, essentially getting the inside of my nose cooked. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

It’s called radiofrequency turbinate reduction. My boyfriend got it done, also, as part of his general sleep apnea surgery four or five years ago (his surgery worked; sadly, I am not a candidate for that same surgery since I do not have the same structural cause).

But back to the procedure itself. To quote obstructednose.com:

All of these methods aim to shrink the underlying turbinate by applying heat to the surface lining of the turbinate and creating a lesion. A probe is inserted into the turbinate tissue between one and six times, while the needle is heated and the underlying tissue is shrunk.

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Acupuncture for Sleep Apnea?

Edward Burnes-Jones' Sleeping Beauty

Wouldn’t that be nice?

In my obsessive googling of those terms, I came across an interesting article abstract.

It’s not conclusive, not by a long shot. And I wish I had access to the full article, but since I’m no longer university faculty, I no longer have access to those databases. I hear that I could just go to the Stanford Medical Library and plop myself down there to do research. Can’t take any materials, but could at least read them on site.

Wait a minute. Scratch that. Sono.org, you have come to my rescue! Voila.

It’s a small study. Only 26 completed it, and that’s hardly a sufficient sample size. Then again, with this sort of thing you’re already limited by access to patients with sleep apnea who are willing to try acupuncture and (likely) don’t have other medical issues going on to cloud results. Not a huge group. Of course, we also need studies like this to prove that it’s worth the investment to do larger studies.

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Acupuncture = Awesome

It actually helped. A lot.

I don’t understand the mechanism of action. But after my appointment on Friday, I had about 30 degrees more rotation in my neck and the pain was significantly decreased. I went again today, and I now have full rotation (no, not Exorcist level rotation, I mean standard side to side human rotation).

I’ve been told that the acupuncturist can treat my sleeping difficulties, and my menstrual problems, and my allergies, and my pain. I’d really like to believe this, because dear lord do I want those problems fixed. But I truly don’t understand the *how* of it. Unless…

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Called the Acupuncturist

Just made my first ever acupuncture appointment. For tomorrow. It’s ridiculous how freaked out I was about just calling. *sigh* Social anxiety, I haz it.

The needles, I should note, do not freak me out. The talking to someone I don’t know over the phone, that terrifies me. Sometimes. Apparently today.