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Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

373 points by glasscannon 1y ago

glasscannon 1y ago
I recently decided to go all in on addressing chronic pain - a condition which affects an estimated 1/5 adults in the US[1] and nearly the same proportion in my country of Australia. This is the first of several blog posts exploring this invisible condition. If you're passionate about this space feel free to reach out, thanks! [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7215a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7215a1.htm [data from 2021] - [Edit] Thanks so much everyone! Excited to get the next article out soon!
- eloycoto 1y ago
  Awesome!I had two tumours in my hip and I lost around 90% of a few muscles. Pain is my friend since I started this journey, and I need to say, that learn how to deal with that should be the first treatment! I'll read this blog with love! Thanks
- j_bum 1y ago
  Hi Dan, I wanted to share a few links to articles on pain and circadian rhythms that I wrote during my PhD. Would love to connect if you have any questions. [0] Circadian rhythms and pain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014976342100347X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497... [1] The disruptive relationship among circadian rhythms, pain, and opioids: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1109480/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/1... [2] Circadian rhythm disruption exacerbates pain behavior in male mice: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030645222030172X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...
  - glasscannon 1y ago
    Would love to connect/chat. Will read over these in the meantime.
- agumonkey 1y ago
  Hi, thanks for the thread, what are the websites you follow the most to read about this topic ? Sometimes I wish there was a medHN
  - glasscannon 1y ago
    agumonkey I love this - maybe it's about time a wellness/health "HN" was started. We're living in a time of chronic health dysfunction and lack of clarity. DM (and/or anyone else) if you'd like to jam For my recovery my reading/listening was focused on people like Dr Schubiner, Alan Gordon and some folks in Aus like Lorimer Moseley. I'm engaging more in linking research studies in now as I experienced a lot of people (often not practitioners) making claims without links to evidence (likely to keep things simple), which made my logical brain skeptical orignally and slowed my entry to this field
    - agumonkey 1y ago
      Thanks for the answer, I'll ping you.
- go_elmo 1y ago
  I did a 10 day insight-meditation retreat and experienced how pain is triggered by the mind first hand. This is impressive to me and id be curious what your perspective is
tdn291 1y ago
Great article, will watch your developments with great interest!
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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twodave 1y ago
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says different is selling something.
- mkoubaa 1y ago
  Buddhist?
  - MarkusWandel 1y ago
    Dread Pirate Roberts
    - RickJWagner 1y ago
      Prince Humperdinck: First things first, to the death. Westley: No. To the pain.
    - twodave 1y ago
      Yes, and honestly probably the deepest line in the film (though plenty others are often quoted in my family). I think there is a lot of strength that comes from waking up and doing the “hard” thing, whatever that is. I’ve had injuries, unexplained health issues, mental health issues, high stress, etc. I have found that for me, at least, refusal to let these things break me and meeting them head-on has been a positive overall for my quality of life. To abstract it away some, I grew up hearing a lot of family members say things like, “I can’t do X anymore because of Y.” I just refuse to allow any of those damn Ys to kill off my beloved Xs, as far as I am able, despite whatever temporary pain or difficulty it may require me to go through. Sometimes telling the Ys to shut the hell up makes them go away completely. And when it doesn’t, sometimes I just have to be okay “embracing the suck” in order to prevent the Ys from bossing me around.
bigbacaloa 1y ago
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incomingpain 1y ago
>Pain Reprocessing Therapy I asked chatgpt to explain this to me and it did a poor job. Generally speaking in my friend group. Chronic pain used to be opiods; though long ago medical cannabis came along. I couldnt tell you how many people i know who arent stoners who got into the cbd thing and fully got off opiods. 1 addiction for another, but at least cannabis has far less negatives. >If you don’t have chronic pain and you’re just here for vibes and to see some cute brains, I really appreciate you . The problem, CBD never fixes the pain. ~8 hours later you need more. There's no business case for solving chronic pain. Here's my take. 1. There can be cases where there's something legitimately physically wrong causing chronic pain. In detroit I had a friend who got shot with birdshot, a tiny pellet was in his spine that surgeons didnt want to go after but there's no getting away from that pain. If this is the case, you're not seeking explanation. 2. There's stress/emotional pain. "The body keeps the score" by Bessel van der Kolk. He's big on EMDR and yoga. Your achilles pain and such absolutely could be, Probably something like 'change or abandonment' one of my favourites for yoga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhJ63OQ7Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhJ63OQ7Ww Do that 23 minute video and see if it helps. 3. Mindfulness meditation. Get into the most comfortable position possible. Dont move; and far more difficult dont think. Your mind will wander. If the pain is in your achilles. The only thing you're doing is monitoring the pain. What's the exact shape of the pain? Is it 4 inches long or is it only 2 inches? Is it sharp like a knife, or is it round in shape? Do you have any taste, smell, or sound from it? You need to wait as long as you have to, maybe it only makes a sound every 2 minutes, you have to wait and your focus is only on waiting for the sound and nothing else. 4. Yoga nidra or progressive muscle relaxation. Start at your toes, you try to flex the muscles to the maximum and hold for 5 seconds, release. then do your feet, ankles, legs, every muscle has to have been flexed and held for 5 seconds. Then when you're done, you simply do nothing at all. dont even focus on anything; maybe your breath at most.
- glasscannon 1y ago
  > The problem, CBD never fixes the pain. ~8 hours later you need more. 100%, medication plays a great role in providing comfort and support but it can be ineffective (and often harmful) if relied on solely for recovery from (neuroplastic) chronic pain. > There's no business case for solving chronic pain It seems some parties may be incentive aligned (e.g. insurers in Australia) - though I'm still navigating this space to find an approach which makes solving the root cause viable. Keen for your thoughts. > 1. Sorry to hear about your friend. This is often referred to as a structural diagnosis - i.e. where a knowledgable/proficient doctor has diagnosed there is legitimate tissue (nociceptive) or nerve (neuropathic) damage. > 2. Yep! This is what the series will be targeting, data points to a substantial percentage of chronic pain sufferers solely (or partially in comorbidities) being impacted by psychological disorder (otherwise known as neuroplastic pain / TMS / and a few other names!). There are a lot of causes and factors which have been shown in research to date, but largely it's adverse childhood experience, stress, personality traits, and more. Will check out that vid! > 3. Related to this, there is an exercise called somatic tracking which has helped many people (including myself) - during it people often notice pain shifting throughout your body. This was a big turning point for me seeing how my mind behaves in real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1D_UvzIDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1D_UvzIDA
ekianjo 1y ago
> Before moving forward - I’m not a doctor. Just a bit of a nerd with a blog. Please do not sue me or use these posts as a replacement for medical care. unnecessary disclaimer here. when it comes to chronic pain treatment doctors are mostly useless or even harmful, proposing surgeries or drugs that will do more bad than anything else because they have no interest in learning how to customize their approach and will parrot and prescribe what they heard from medical representatives. Remember, the opoids crisis was enabled by doctors in the first place.
- glasscannon 1y ago
  Heavily agree much destruction has come from overprescription. With this note I'm just seeking to cover my bases and be transparent with readers who don't know me.
- qualeed 1y ago
  It's not unnecessary to tell people you aren't a doctor when people may reasonably believe you are a doctor in the absence of such a disclaimer.
  - ekianjo 1y ago
    I was not focusing on the 'not. a doctor' part, rather the 'seek medical care' as being bad advice when dealing with chronic pain
- xyst 1y ago
  It was enabled by doctors but they were deceived by Purdue Pharma and Sackler family. They also deceived the (understaffed) FDA, paid off researchers to get their exact wording approved. Purdue used their wealth and influence to launch a nationwide campaign and lobbyist group advocating that mistreatment/mismanagement of patient pain will lead to litigation. Those stupid pain face charts you see at hospitals, physician offices. Purdue marketing, nothing else. Everybody is shitty here. This is what happens when a market has loose regulations.
  - ekianjo 1y ago
nwienert 1y ago
As someone who had years of undiagnosable pain and after many years (and more than one doctor trying to suggest it was all in my head) I just want to say to anyone reading who has it - Don’t let yourself be gaslit that it’s all mental. It seems some do have that, but there are also many hard to diagnose and completely valid physical health conditions that cause terrible chronic pain. And don’t give up on trying to find out what they are. Once I did, I was able to largely manage mine, and more importantly, to stop constantly questioning my own sanity.
- CoastalCoder 1y ago
  Would you mind sharing a little detail about what the physical malady turned out to be, and why it took so long to diagnose? Sounds like an interesting medical mystery.
  - marcinzm 1y ago
    Not OP but similar story with someone I know. Five years of many specialists that always ended in "all the tests are negative so it must either be fibromyalgia or psychological." Doctors never helped but eventually they empirically found that abilify and rexulti in very low doses (ie: half the minimum) made it just go away. Empirically based on the reaction to various medications it was probably some type of dopamine imbalance or issue. There's other case studies of similar reactions to abilify and chronic pain but not many. Extra fun fact, a deep research AI nowadays will actually suggest this as one of the treatments given a few paragraphs of information on the symptoms/medications tried/etc.
    - nwienert 1y ago
      Dopamine can help autoimmune issues - if they haven’t seen a rheumatologist I’d recommend it.
  - nwienert 1y ago
    Combination of two autoimmune conditions, one Ehlers Danlos. Actually EDS is interesting because it became a fad I guess on TikTok to claim you had it like Tourette’s, further exacerbating the above issue. It’s got a wide spectrum. My dad had it so lightly he was just considered “double jointed”. I gained a further thing from mom’s side, which seemed to interplay poorly. Spent 19-26 basically having extreme nausea and vomiting episodes every month or two, often having to go to the hospital to stop it. Had other weird symptoms and pains before that and during too. Did every scan, met tons of specialists. Kept getting referred down the GI side, had gallbladder removed for no reason. At one point I was convinced it was psychological. This was after a second doctor suggested it. It sent me down a dark path for a few years of trying to figure out what was wrong with me - didn’t help my mental state was terrible from all the uncertainty, and I had developed anxiety about eating since basically any meal could end up in hours of extreme pain. I was a total wreck. Then it just cleared up finally at 26. It wasn’t until years later I got the EDS diagnosis, and then a genetic test showed the other immune condition. When looking at the two lists of symptoms it was such an intense moment in my life, finally having closure.
NoTranslationL 1y ago
I make an app called Reflect [0] that’s designed to track things like chronic pain and help you get to the root cause with self guided experiments. I’ve used it for my own pain symptoms, especially joint pain. Happy to answer any questions. Wish you the best on your journey. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id6463800032 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
- glasscannon 1y ago
  Amazing, I'll take a look at it. Thanks!
  - pbronez 1y ago
    Another option for this is Bearable. I used it for headaches a while ago and it worked well: https://bearable.app/ https://bearable.app/ Here’s an actual peer reviewed study evaluating a pile (over 1000!) symptom tracking apps, including Bearable. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452109420302657 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245210942...
    - glasscannon 1y ago
      Awesome study - thanks for the link!
    - Jonovono 1y ago
      I've been using Bearable too. It's great and price is awesome, but data entry is so slow
sydbarrett74 1y ago
Thank you for sharing your story, and congrats on your endeavour.
superb-owl 1y ago
related: https://x.com/mxslk/status/1940832698366619681 https://x.com/mxslk/status/1940832698366619681
mattgreenrocks 1y ago
I’ve been dealing with chronic reflux for about 8 mos now. On PPIs and they don’t seem to do much. But once I get away from my typical routine of work/dadding then all the symptoms vanish, even to the point of being able to eat foods that are not good for reflux: spicy things, tomatoes, a bit of coffee. In my case, this is absolutely a downstream symptom of something mind-body. Already been scoped and got a diagnosis of visceral hypersensitivity, which is medical speak for “nerves in esophagus are too sensitive.” The question of why is out of scope. In this case, docs just don’t know why. (I think it kinda pisses them off not know, tbh). And finding out is not really in their wheelhouse. I’ve made some life changes (new job) to see what happens here. But I also have to be prepared for the possibility that it doesn’t fix it. Been working through The Body Keeps The Score as well. Looking forward to seeing what the author discusses here.
- justinrubek 1y ago
  I seem to have something very similar going on. I'm on the early end of trying to understand it. Coffee was the first indicator because it'd ruin my day to drink some. I hope the best for us.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Have you tried H2 blockers? And as you have said, avoid anything that increases stomach acid production (such as caffeine or even tea, along with spicy food). You might also have success with Venter[1] (Sucralfate). [1] https://www.medicinesfaq.com/brand/venter https://www.medicinesfaq.com/brand/venter
  - mattgreenrocks 1y ago
    Yep. I track which foods affect that and try not to stack them. In addition, I take famotidine in the evening with two different antihistamines. I suspect I have a histamine intolerance behind it all, as it tends to be comorbid with ehlers-danlos.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
Aurornis 1y ago
> For the next 4 years, I continued to accumulate weird and persistent pains in different parts of my body. Anyone who is accumulating weird pains in random, different locations should definitely pursue some of these alternative explanations. Another sign that these techniques are appropriate is if the pains come and go depending on your mood or situation (worse when working, disappear when doing something fun) or are prone to suggestion (someone talks about their back pain and then you have back pain for the following days or weeks). However, I’m also getting tired of the people who benefit from this techniques deciding that their explanation for chronic pain covers everyone. It’s a huge trend in parts of tech Twitter right now to apply these theories to all chronic pain. A small number of people who had unexplainable pain and addressed it through meditation, therapy, and similar techniques are now pushing it as a far more universal explanation. It really needs to be applied to the appropriate situation, not used as a universal treatment for chronic pains. This parallels similar trends with topics like PTSD, where a smaller group of people have benefited from therapy that addresses past trauma and now they’re trying to export the theory that past trauma and PTSD is the explanation for all psychological ills. Again, matching the right treatment to the condition is critical and being open-minded is important, but beware of people who are preaching that doctors are misinformed and you should subscribe to their app, blog, newsletter, or course instead.
- glasscannon 1y ago
  On your first point, the moving of symptoms is not uncommon in patients with chronic pain - and yes definitely a sign something not normal is going on! On the second, I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread (on a different comment) that it's critical to determine if a structural cause is at play (i.e. tissue/nerve damage or something else causing inflammation). It is unfortunate however that many doctors are not familiar with modern pain science so I'm hoping spreading awareness via patients (and some practitioners) will change this. In the next few blog posts this very thing will be discussed (i.e. exploring when it's likely something is mind related vs the body [though I will focus primarily on the former in this series] - as you're 100% correct sometimes it's the body and sometimes it's the mind, and sometimes it's both!).
- bravesoul2 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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aspbee555 1y ago
I felt like I was dying at 35 years old, my body was completely betraying me, exhausted, constant pain, no life as absolutely no energy on days off and still exhausted starting the next week. Even years in the Army never left me feeling like that I had no idea it was the misery of the IT job that was causing most of my pain and suffering, and it had nothing to do with the job itself, it was the endless insanity of everyone else around me doing exactly what they were informed would cause problems instead of having discussions with people that actually knew how shit worked. I was endlessly picking up everyone elses mess and treated worse than a pile of shit all because people were incapable of having a speck of respect for other people since all their hatred for computers fell on me I GTFO of the career of misery and took half a decade to finally start feeling better I have now spent years and countless hours working on software and I greatly enjoy doing this work again and find I get even more done than I used to simply by doing life the way I need to instead of how some backwards/abusive control freak "needs it done"
- jdbsbsndn 1y ago
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  - roarcher 1y ago
    What a bizarre and unnecessary comment.
    - aspbee555 1y ago
      I have to admit it annoyed me for a moment, but it is an honest thing I have to have ask myself as part of my analysis of a situation, ie. AITA, in this instance, not at all
  - aspbee555 1y ago
    the owner instructed everyone not to talk to me, I found out years later if it was a me problem then they would not have let the then president of the company go for working with me I was not the one with communication problems but people are really good at blaming me for their own problems
Adrig 1y ago
I've dealt with chronic illnesses for the past 10+ years now. It's such a hard path. I recently found out after a violent burn-out that a significant cause was chronic stress and its psychosomatic symptoms. It made me have a hard look at the topic, and I'm gradually adjusting to solve the issue. If I get better, I'm tempted to do as OP and spend more time working on this issue for others. It seems so much more impactful than grinding the tech / startup life.
- glasscannon 1y ago
  Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to chat Adrig (my contact is in my profile), wishing you the best of luck.
- accrual 1y ago
  > I recently found out after a violent burn-out that a significant cause was chronic stress and its psychosomatic symptoms. Thanks for sharing. I am walking down this path as well. In my experience I can tell I'm deeply out of alignment and it wreaks havoc on the body. My soul says to X but my mind says do Y, it's safer, maintains a stable status quo, income, and relationships, etc., even though it's slowly killing me.
  - Adrig 1y ago
    It's definitely a difficult time to deal with these issues, especially when the world appears so unstable. But we eventually have to face the music one way or another. Best of luck!
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I was just talking to a friend of mine, yesterday, about what happened to me. In 2017, I was laid off of my job (of almost 27 years). I immediately started looking for work. Since the company I worked for, was a marquee-name company, I assumed that it wouldn't be hard. Boy, was I in for a shock. I almost immediately learned that no one in tech, is interested in hiring a 55-year-old, regardless of their pedigree. I could have gotten a job, but those companies made it clear that I would be treated quite badly. So I made the decision to just throw in the towel and retire. I had the means, but I would have liked to have at least another ten years of salary. I have never had any intentions of stopping working, though. I love developing software. It's a hobby and a personal passion; not just a job. I was really pissed off at the treatment. I suffered great butthurt. But in the long run, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. I never realized how much stress I was under, while working. I sincerely believe that, if I had kept working, it would have killed me. I have no intentions of returning to the rodent rally; even though I'm quite good at what I do, thanks to all the learning that I've done, in the last eight years. I now work every day (my GH Activity Graph is quite green), and do a fairly good job on my chosen projects, but I no longer feel that awful weight on my soul. Sometimes, the only way that we learn how much pain we are in, is to stop suffering it for a while.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  As someone who will, eventually, hit that age, I would love to hear more about that treatment? My own impression is that the software industry is one of the industries where experience and qualifications are completely divorced. So from my perspective one is really always back at square 0 when looking for jobs - including the need to prove oneself and stay humble.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Well, I found that independent recruiters were the worst. They all ghosted me. A couple actually hung up on me, as soon as they learned my age. In-house recruiters and managers were much better, but the interview process generally derailed, as soon as one single tecchie got involved. I actually had one refuse to look at my [extensive] code portfolio, because "I probably faked it." One of the luxuries that I had, which I am eternally grateful for, is that I don't have to eat shit. If reacting badly to that kind of treatment is "not humble," then guilty as charged. I should add that I am a high school dropout, with a GED, and no matriculated education. Despite that, I ran a "skunkworks" team, employing some very good engineers, and was kept on by a very demanding Japanese corporation, where I was given an insane level of trust. I'm pretty used to having to prove myself. I've spent almost my entire career, looking up noses. Someone with my background won't make it far, unless I know how to work well with un-humble people, and deliver the goods. I never was given much latitude. I wasn't really allowed to fail.
quicktemp42 1y ago
I’ve been struggling with chronic pain for almost eight months. It started when my orthodontic treatment caused the root of one of my teeth to break—it had already been weakened from a previous injury. The extraction was straightforward and only took 10 minutes, and I had an implant placed (with a temporary crown attached to my braces). Healing went smoothly, and the CT scans looked fine. But soon after, I developed constant headaches that never went away. At first, I assumed they were related to the procedure, but everything had healed well, and multiple check-ups didn’t reveal anything. Since then, my braces have been removed, but the daily headaches persist. Occasionally, I also feel a strange “foreign object” sensation around the implant site. A follow-up CT scan of the implant showed perfect integration with the bone. I’ve also had other tests done, including a head MRI. Medically, everything appears normal. It’s getting really hard to manage—painkillers don’t help at all. Has anyone experienced something similar or have any idea what to try next? I’m even considering having the implant removed, despite there being no medical reason for it.
- accrual 1y ago
  Not a physician but how long have you had symptoms for? I've had dental work that took much longer than expected to heal. The pulp in the teeth are quite sensitive and can inflame easily, and that inflamation has nowhere to go (being bound by the hard sides of your teeth and jaw), which can lead to constant pain. I once had a routine filling that took about 3 months to stop aching and I had to take ibuprofen every day during that time to be able to focus. Per the dentist, constant aching pain = it's slowly healing, leave it alone. Sharp intense pain = pulp is dying, need root canal. Granted, this is pain the mouth and not in the head like you described. If it's been a while and it's still bothering you, I'd definitely consider having it removed too. It would suck to remove it and still have the headaches, but at that point you can start looking at other causes.
  - quicktemp42 1y ago
    It has been eight months and there is no tissue damage. Allergic reactions to implant materials are rare and usually stop an implant from fusing with the bone, but mine has integrated perfectly. I would consider removing it, except it is my upper central incisor... I kept waiting for braces to be removed etc but I'm running out of options now.
kianN 1y ago
“As pain becomes chronic, it is increasingly associated with activity in the affective and motivational systems tied to avoidance and less closely tied to systems encoding nociceptive input” [1] I’ve been on the slippery slope of chronic pain. Minor post surgery issues caused me to change my routine and avoid certain activities which only exacerbated the issues, which led to more avoidance. Eventually I couldn’t walk. The American medical system is very focused on avoiding health issues that show up on mri, rather than quality of life health. But quality of life issues quickly become serious. I think the middle ground of activity: not all out intense as if you are healthy, but also not avoiding movement is so challenging to find for many people but also so crucial. A lot of chronic pain for myself and I suspect for many others could be avoided with short and quick combination of therapy and daily movement. So simple but so challenging to effectively identify and allocate resources. Not suggesting this is the total solution but it’s the pathway that I took to return to activity and I’ve seen it help a number of my friends as well. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482298/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482298/
- kccqzy 1y ago
  > Minor post surgery issues My wife has had two surgeries and each time she had a minor post surgery issue. One of them was an area that was tender to touch; another was chronic pain. Neither was mentioned as a possible side effect of the surgery by the surgeon. The main takeaway even if a bit extreme here is avoid all surgeries unless absolutely necessary.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    Depending on the underlying issue, delaying a surgery could easily lead to needing an even more invasive or extensive procedure, with worse complications or side effects. A blanket avoidance of all surgeries is a great way to be even more miserable. Anecdotal case: My wife broke her arm some 10 years ago or so. She was really upset about potential recovery time, insurance copayments and such, especially since she was (at the time) a single mother. The doctor suggested setting it and letting it heal on its own, which was absolutely the wrong call. Had she gotten surgery straight away, she would have recovered by the time she actually ended up getting surgery. I've often wondered if there wasn't a malpractice case that could have been made, but it was before we met so that's lost to time.
paulcole 1y ago
This should be a show HN.
nico 1y ago
For people on the spectrum here, just want to add to the thread the term Fibromyalgia It seems to be relatively common and under diagnosed. Also somehow controversial and not fully understood However, looking into it might shed some light on some issues of chronic pain and potential ways to address it
ck2 1y ago
Low‐Dose Naltrexone aka LDN not a cure and barely a treatment but it's one of the only tools in the toolbox Modulates endorphin receptors (by blocking them for a little while) Not only causes the body to produce more endorphins to reduce pain but is actually proven in studies to make the ion channels work better if dysfunctional https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Low-Dose+Naltrexone https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Low-Dose+Naltrexone https://reddit.com/r/LowDoseNaltrexone https://reddit.com/r/LowDoseNaltrexone
tomfucksdan 1y ago
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doddpronter 1y ago
It's crazy how much your physical health is tied to mental happiness/lack of stress. I had a friend that during his most stressful period as a 24 year old in Investment Banking had strep throat 4 times in 2 months. Several doctor visits concluded that it was the long hours and insane amount of stress that was severely crushing his immune system. Moral of the story is love what you do and take care of yourself: nothing is as important as your own health and happiness
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  Did your friend leave IB after this diagnosis, or did he tough it out? To me that's the real question. I think either option is defensible, depending on what one values in life. I've known certain people who pulled 80 hour work weeks for years only to give away double-digit percentages of their salaries to charity, because that was what was important to them, and I don't think they were wrong for doing that, just making choices at a margin I would find intolerable far earlier.
- godot 1y ago
  I think most people underestimate how much of their immune system depends on their sleep. Sleep quality, amount (hours) of sleep, time in bed, all of it -- they matter. In stressful periods, it's likely not stress crushing the immune system, it's the indirect relationship that stress causes bad quality sleep and low amount of sleep, that in turn crushes the immune system. If, even if under stress, you manage to work out a system/habit that allows you to get proper sleep, you'd likely be ok.
- noident 1y ago
  > I had a friend that during his most stressful period as a 24 year old in Investment Banking had strep throat 4 times in 2 months He may need his tonsils out. I got mine out in my 30s. It was 3 painful weeks to recover but my quality of life is a lot higher.
srshihab 1y ago
No idea
srshihab 1y ago
Hi
varispeed 1y ago
Why this has so many upvotes? This is very much a wall of text with just waffle and very little substance. The "mind-body" thing is a great tool for doctors who are into abuse and take pleasure in having power over their patients. "You are still having chronic pain, because you are not working hard enough!" "No, I will not prescribe you medication. The pain is in your head!" Oh and abusive partners also love this crap. You have a flare up? No you don't! You are just a lazy slob who doent't want to work and is whinging like a little baby. Stop imagining your pain! GTFO with this crap.
- xyst 1y ago
  It has many upvotes because HN loves to think of itself as "against the establishment." The alternative medicine folks tend to think this. In reality , nothing more than grifters. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a book or "masterclass" pitch at the end of this series.
timmyers 1y ago
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foobiekr 1y ago
I have a pretty severe back injury - double pars fracture and significant spondylolisthesis from an accident (not a car accident). For many years i was in incredible pain, but it just kept going, sometimes getting a lot worse. When this happened I would go get some imaging done to make sure there weren't degenerative changes that needed to be addressed - you should never, ever get back surgery if you don't need it, so I am cautious about it. But I noticed something, all on my own, and that is that it seemed to correlate with periods of intense stress. I still have a ton of stress, but recognizing that actually kind of made a tremendous difference. I hesitate to add a link to this on the thread, but there is an interesting story around chronic pain actually being psychological and there are now some high quality studies coming out. https://journals.lww.com/painrpts/Fulltext/2021/09000/Psychophysiologic_symptom_relief_therapy_for.13.aspx https://journals.lww.com/painrpts/Fulltext/2021/09000/Psycho... I especially hate to link to LessWrong but this is an actually decent thread on the topic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-body-vicious-cycle-model-of-rsi-and-back-pain https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-b... I didn't know about any of this and had never been exposed to any of it when I drew my conclusions and started to feel less pain. Don't get me wrong, there are still things that will set my back off, but now I probably go actual years without even thinking about it.
- polishdude20 1y ago
  Along those lines is this excellent website: https://www.painscience.com/ https://www.painscience.com/
- gleenn 1y ago
  "You should never, ever get back surgery" sounds like that easily could be wrong. It's annoying to have to always caveat but talking to a (good) doctor is important when making such decisions and not relying on tech forum advice necessarily. I know someone who said they went in for back surgery and walked out feeling permanently cured from the specific problem they had and the pain was completely gone. Details matter. Always consult experts when possible.
  - matwood 1y ago
ArthurStacks 1y ago
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littlexsparkee 1y ago
I dealt with mobility issues the last 2.5 years after turf toe (healed after 1 year and then reinjured), didn't realize how crucial strengthening was after losing muscle resting, then after research found out how critical loading tendons is to having them repaired. I left my stable job a couple of months ago to dedicate myself to getting my life back. I'd let thumb RSI simmer for a long time too, even though I got to the point where I could do most things with Talon (friction made me get lazy occasionally). The hardest part is mental - the ups and downs, isolation, not knowing what to do to fix yourself, feeling like your body is betraying you and the lack of help from the medical system besides some basic scans and generic advice. I'm glad that I had a cushion so that I haven't had to stress too much taking time off. To folks dealing with physical pain, I recommend: Built From Broken by Scott Hogan, Rehab Science by Tom Walters. For joint issues these may help: celadrin, pro-resolving mediators, red mineral algae w/ aquamin, natural eggshell membrane, collagen peptides w/ fortigel.
godot 1y ago
I'd be curious to follow along and read more. My experience is that everyone's body is quite different and what causes chronic issues with everyone can be quite different. That's not to say his observations and solutions won't be useful to others, but it's another good anecdote to understand and things worth trying for others having similar issues. I myself for example have had headache and migraine issues for more than 25 years. I understand deeply an incredible amount about what causes my migraines, how they feel, how I help with it, and so on. I understand migraines more than anyone else I ever know in my life because I observe, pay attention, study, and try different things so much. I understand it more than most doctors I talk to. But I also know that everyone's migraines are a little different and not everyone gets triggered by the same things (though there's a lot of overlaps) and my solutions may not help for everyone. I'd totally write something like this for migraines if I had the time (I don't :( ).
xyst 1y ago
Very odd pipeline from rank and file tech employee to wellness and alternative medicine "influencer". Ticks all the boxes: - not a doctor - not a physical therapist - offering tips to solve your pain that somehow nobody could - emphasizing a single "landmark" study with no other context - results based off of personal experience Guy is trying to become the RFK Jr of Aussie land.
zermelo44 1y ago
Thanks for posting. I look forward to following along. I have had chronic pain and other annoying functional neurological symptoms for the past 4 years. It started about halfway throughout my PhD. I was born with congenital torticollis (fibrosis of the right sternocleidomastoid muscle) and had surgery for this twice when I was young. I also had 3 other surgical procedures for different reasons as a child. Because my pain started in my neck and shoulder, I was set on believing that my previous surgeries were the cause of my pain. But as I learned more, meditated more, did yoga more, and faced pushback (and lots of confusion) from health professionals, it became clear that my symptoms are mainly "mind-body" (I hate that dualistic term). I'd be very interested in talking more.
mgz18 1y ago
When I was 34, I was laying in bed one night and noticed that muscles all over my body were twitching. It didn't go away. A month later I went to a neurologist in my hometown in the midwest for a workup that culminated in a EMG-NCV study (the neurologist doing that study asked if I liked the NY Yankees.. "I do not.. and I've definitely never heard of Lou Gehrig.. so let's get on with it.."). Ultimately he congratulated me on having no signs of ALS or any other neurodegenerative disease and told me to "live your life." He hadn't seen the widespread persistent muscle twitching I was experiencing before. Six months later, I went to another neurologist, this time at Stanford. She did another workup and said the same things as the first guy, except she added, "yeah, we see this fairly often." The diagnosis was "Benign Fasciculation Syndrome" (BFS), aka "we don't know what caused everything to start twitching or how to stop it, but it won't progress and kill you." What really struck me was that 1) the midwestern neurologist seemed to have never seen symptoms like mine, whereas the Stanford neurologist had seen them often, and 2) the Stanford neurologist linked it to poorly managed anxiety. At the time I was five years into a data scientist role at a big tech company in the bay area (now it's two year later - the symptoms improved somewhat but are still there). I definitely had burnout and mental health problems and was in denial about them ("I have all these great perks, how could my work be causing my mental health issues?"). The best thing you can say about BFS is it isn't physically painful; I am definitely not equating it with the chronic pain issues that others have described on this thread, which seem much tougher. It's another one of those things that has no known cure (diet / lifestyle / mental health improvements help somewhat), is only vaguely understood ("your nerves are oversensitive"), is linked to mental health issues, and seems overrepresented in the bay area (maybe in other tech/urban centers too, I don't know). Two years in, I don't have any answers, just wanted to share in case it's helpful to anyone.
pstuart 1y ago
The mind/body part for dealing with chronic pain is vital to embrace, but isn't always enough. Finding ways to "attack" pain would be a relief to millions. The best I've been able to find is kratom, but that's not without its concerns -- drug laws are no friend to pain patients (let alone society as a whole). Pro tip: get a shingles vaccine if you are able to -- postherpetic neuralgia is no fun.
amai 1y ago
tldr; Pain Reprocessing Therapy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ As stated at the end, the authors of the study have a lot of conflicting interests.
- glasscannon 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing the link - this one goes into more depth: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... I can't comment on the conflict of interest as I do not know the practitioners personally, but from additional/supplementary research in this space as well as the massive amount of people this work has appearerd to help recover (look at reviews/discussion for books like the 'The Way Out') - it does seem to be having a big impact. I'm aiming to link supplementary research in follow-on articles (e.g. the relation b/w pain and injury where nociplastic pain is present, the impact of psychological factors on pain etc) to paint a comprehensive (yet digestible) picture.
  - amai 1y ago
    You are sharing exactly the same article I already did. It has the same information, it is just a different url.
keysdev 1y ago
I highly recommend look at Susan Luschas web site. [1] She is also a former tech person who is doing deep dive into debugging health. Much chronic pain maybe dental and organ related. 1. https://debugyourhealth.com/ https://debugyourhealth.com/
storus 1y ago
If your pain stems from covid, try high doses of thiamine or alternatively TTFD. Quite a few people reported feeling great for the first time in ages after a single high dose and there seem to be some studies showing pain disappearance in fibromyalgia.
anon1685212382 1y ago
Since I became 30yo, I suffered various health issues. I see people much older than me including my parents who were in much better shape, and I kept thinking what was wrong with me. I’m 37yo now and in almost the best shape of my life, and there was so much I learned - I’m sharing here in case it can help others. First: With the exception of extreme health issues (e.g. Cancer), you likely have a good chance of resolving your health issues. Don’t be discouraged by your chronic pains and think you have to now live with the pain or health issues for the rest of your life. Tackle your health issues like any other engineering problem: understand the problem, make a plan, execute, monitor progress, and iterate over this process (e.g. revise your plans). If you do not take action, nothing will change. Second: Stress is a killer. I’ve had to visit the emergency room twice because I thought I either had a heart attack or I was dying from high blood pressure. I was way too into my work (due to both passion and commitment), that delays with my projects gave me high mental pressure. Upon re-evaluating my life, I asked myself: which is more important, my work or my health? Once I started prioritizing my health and started pushing back on unreasonable timelines, my stress is gone and none of the chest pain, headache, and high blood pressure issues have come up again. Last but not least: Your body is a very complex machine and you need to learn how to use it correctly. I had a very sedentary lifestyle and had many chronic pains, e.g. heels, ankles, knees, hip, elbow, wrist, etc. My body was so weak that I even injured my neck and back once just by sleeping in a not-so-great position. I found an awesome PT who specialized in holistic physical therapy and he helped address issues from my feet all the way to my neck. I am now able to resume all the activities from my younger days such as DDR & tennis. There’s too much to explain here but I have two key takeaways: one is my body was extremely tight & inflexible and PNF treatment from my PT was needed for recovery, and another is I just didn’t know my body and muscles well. I did not know how various muscles work, how to use my body & muscles effectively, and what exercises to do and their correct form. Learning and doing the exercises properly and frequently changed my life. Btw: I highly do NOT recommend all the YouTube fitness videos - you simply just cannot tell if what they’re saying is correct and whether their suggestion is even the correct remedy for your problem. That is all. I wish everyone good luck in addressing their chronic pain!
algo_lover 1y ago
Why do all such articles never talk about the meat of the solution? Why do I always feel like I'm being sold something. Why is it so hard to explain the solution briefly, or directly present it to me upfront. Why does it need so much of mystery around it? In this article the OP does not even mention "Pain reprocessing theory" which is what they seems to be talking about (based on the study they have linked)
- 762236 1y ago
  As someone who has overcome chronic pain, and frequently foils acute pain from turning into chronic pain, I started daily joint-mobility exercises from Kelly Starrett's Supple Leopard book (and his MWOD videos on YouTube) to achieve this. Physical therapy needs daily, incremental progress, which you can do yourself.
  - specialist 1y ago
    Agreed. Yes and: Kelly's freq collaborator Jill Miller (author of The Roll Model, TuneUp Fitness, etc.).
- pedalpete 1y ago
  I've been guilty of this myself for our neurotech sleeptech company, and I still owe HN a better blog post clarifying our positioning. I think there are a few reasons you see this in health/medical community. 1) just helping people understand a different view of the problem is often enough for one blog post. Stuffing new way to look at solution and new solution together can sometimes be a bit much. 2) we have to be cautious from a regulatory perspective about what we say, and sometimes in being too cautious don't give the people who REALLY want to understaned the processes enough to go on. For our company, I used to say things like "we can increase the synchronous firing of neurons which results in reduced 15^% drop in early night cortisol, and 14.5% increase in hrv....". But prior to regulatory approvals, we can't point directly to neurological or physiological processes, which means we kinda end up talking around the solution a bit. 3) in marketing, they want to connect and build an audience, so they are dripping more information over time. One post gets feedback and interest from one group, then you do another, and another. It's about building the community and connecting with people, not just a "here's a problem, do the thing, thanks". If you are trying to build a business, you probably need to get in front of people 7-8 times, particularly if you're taking a new approach to a problem, to build trust and brand recognition. It's not the best, but it is the way the world works.
monkeyelite 1y ago
Another post reflecting the aging HN population.
ThinkBeat 1y ago
He decided he could monetize his recovery by selling the "the cure" on a newsletter basis and using organic growth to make more money. As he does point out he is not a doctor and his solution is not backed by extensive medical studies. He could just write a document laying it all out, and letting people download it, easier for everyone. (and try to get some researchers do the chekcing). This is damn close to snakeoil.
- glasscannon 1y ago
  I appreciate your skepticism. > by selling the "the cure" on a newsletter basis and using organic growth to make more money. I am not selling anything, the information from what is happening -> to how to recover (if it is relevant to you) is and will be freely available on this substack. It is not paywalled and I'm not intending for it to be. Additionally where are you quoting "the cure" from? I will be sharing information for people to use to self assess if it applies to them. Recovery from chronic pain is rarely simple as your quote implies - instead it requires daily concentrated effort. > his solution is not backed by extensive medical studies. Please read this study from 2021: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ > He could just write a document laying it all out, and letting people download it, easier for everyone. Readers are more than welcome to download an offline copy from their browser if they'd prefer to consume it that way. > (and try to get some researchers do the chekcing). This is a valid point and I'll see how I can integrate it into future pieces, even if it's just collaborating with (legitimate) researchers. Thanks. Something to understand is until yesterday no one knew I was in this space. Me DM'ing a researcher and asking them to vet my writing would likely have at best resulted in them letting me know they're busy. That likely isn't the case anymore. > This is damn close to snakeoil. Happy to discuss this in more depth. I don't see which part is comparable to snakeoil.
halayli 1y ago
Prolonged stress is often a major contributor to cp. The problem is that after being stressed for a long period we no longer feel the weight until it's fully lifted which requires taking some time off and the majority of us are not in a position to do that.
catchcatchcatch 1y ago
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bGl2YW5j 1y ago
What a coincidence! I’m also in Australia and have just finished a self-imposed 8 month holiday from the tech world BS you describe. I started the holiday super jaded with the idea of working in tech forever. I spent my time on everything but tech. Recently my passion has been reignited and I’ve got more clarity around what it is about tech and my career I enjoy, and what I want from my future. Now, I’m working on a healthcare service for chronic disease.
alshival 1y ago
I feel you. Used to work 16 hours a day. I quit my job and started freelancing. These days, I only commit 20 hours a week to work. Still make enough to pay my bills and live a little, but I won't be getting a boat anytime soon. But with that extra time, I go to the gym, play video games, or blast the neighborhood using my brand spanking new Eric Clapton Pewder Strat. I have 15 years in data, and 10 years in machine-learning. Back in 2016, I couldn't find a job doing machine-learning. These days, I don't worry anymore about finding work. Things have improved.
wysewun 1y ago
Have had long term chronic pain. Think possibly due to a combination of tendinitis and lack of movemen as a dev Our bodies aren’t meant to be in one position for that long no matter the ergonomics unless you know what you’re doing. Lots of people mock tiktok for the dancing but in observing the dances, I’ve grown an appreciation for full range of movement and trying to increase range of motion in the joints I was able to find some exercises that helped in this to decompress but I can go into more detail if people want
mieubrisse 1y ago
YES! I'm experiencing a separate-but-related problem to do with myopia, and my eyes perpetually getting longer (likely due to the long hours of computer use). I wish I could go back to completely undistracted building, but I realize now that I was a bit addicted and that level of intensity was hurting me. Now what occupies my waking hours is, "How can I debug this failing system?"
rickvidallon 1y ago
Any pixel pushers out there experience PMR? aka Polymyalgia rheumatica
andy_nguyen 1y ago
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heraldgeezer 1y ago
Weight needs to be mentioned more. Even in Europe 50% or so are overweight or obese.
bentt 1y ago
Are you familiar with Dr. John Sarno's work and if so, how does it relate to what you'll be writing about?
pid1wow 1y ago
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butterisgood 1y ago
I mean… tech jobs are already there TBH.

373 points by glasscannon 1y ago

I recently decided to go all in on addressing chronic pain - a condition which affects an estimated 1/5 adults in the US[1] and nearly the same proportion in my country of Australia. This is the first of several blog posts exploring this invisible condition. If you're passionate about this space feel free to reach out, thanks! [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7215a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7215a1.htm [data from 2021] - [Edit] Thanks so much everyone! Excited to get the next article out soon!

eloycoto 1y ago
Awesome!I had two tumours in my hip and I lost around 90% of a few muscles. Pain is my friend since I started this journey, and I need to say, that learn how to deal with that should be the first treatment! I'll read this blog with love! Thanks
j_bum 1y ago
Hi Dan, I wanted to share a few links to articles on pain and circadian rhythms that I wrote during my PhD. Would love to connect if you have any questions. [0] Circadian rhythms and pain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014976342100347X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497... [1] The disruptive relationship among circadian rhythms, pain, and opioids: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1109480/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/1... [2] Circadian rhythm disruption exacerbates pain behavior in male mice: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030645222030172X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...
- glasscannon 1y ago
  Would love to connect/chat. Will read over these in the meantime.
agumonkey 1y ago
Hi, thanks for the thread, what are the websites you follow the most to read about this topic ? Sometimes I wish there was a medHN
- glasscannon 1y ago
  agumonkey I love this - maybe it's about time a wellness/health "HN" was started. We're living in a time of chronic health dysfunction and lack of clarity. DM (and/or anyone else) if you'd like to jam For my recovery my reading/listening was focused on people like Dr Schubiner, Alan Gordon and some folks in Aus like Lorimer Moseley. I'm engaging more in linking research studies in now as I experienced a lot of people (often not practitioners) making claims without links to evidence (likely to keep things simple), which made my logical brain skeptical orignally and slowed my entry to this field
  - agumonkey 1y ago
    Thanks for the answer, I'll ping you.
go_elmo 1y ago
I did a 10 day insight-meditation retreat and experienced how pain is triggered by the mind first hand. This is impressive to me and id be curious what your perspective is

tdn291 1y ago

Great article, will watch your developments with great interest!

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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twodave 1y ago

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says different is selling something.

mkoubaa 1y ago
Buddhist?
- MarkusWandel 1y ago
  Dread Pirate Roberts
  - RickJWagner 1y ago
    Prince Humperdinck: First things first, to the death. Westley: No. To the pain.
  - twodave 1y ago
    Yes, and honestly probably the deepest line in the film (though plenty others are often quoted in my family). I think there is a lot of strength that comes from waking up and doing the “hard” thing, whatever that is. I’ve had injuries, unexplained health issues, mental health issues, high stress, etc. I have found that for me, at least, refusal to let these things break me and meeting them head-on has been a positive overall for my quality of life. To abstract it away some, I grew up hearing a lot of family members say things like, “I can’t do X anymore because of Y.” I just refuse to allow any of those damn Ys to kill off my beloved Xs, as far as I am able, despite whatever temporary pain or difficulty it may require me to go through. Sometimes telling the Ys to shut the hell up makes them go away completely. And when it doesn’t, sometimes I just have to be okay “embracing the suck” in order to prevent the Ys from bossing me around.

bigbacaloa 1y ago

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incomingpain 1y ago

>Pain Reprocessing Therapy I asked chatgpt to explain this to me and it did a poor job. Generally speaking in my friend group. Chronic pain used to be opiods; though long ago medical cannabis came along. I couldnt tell you how many people i know who arent stoners who got into the cbd thing and fully got off opiods. 1 addiction for another, but at least cannabis has far less negatives. >If you don’t have chronic pain and you’re just here for vibes and to see some cute brains, I really appreciate you . The problem, CBD never fixes the pain. ~8 hours later you need more. There's no business case for solving chronic pain. Here's my take. 1. There can be cases where there's something legitimately physically wrong causing chronic pain. In detroit I had a friend who got shot with birdshot, a tiny pellet was in his spine that surgeons didnt want to go after but there's no getting away from that pain. If this is the case, you're not seeking explanation. 2. There's stress/emotional pain. "The body keeps the score" by Bessel van der Kolk. He's big on EMDR and yoga. Your achilles pain and such absolutely could be, Probably something like 'change or abandonment' one of my favourites for yoga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhJ63OQ7Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhJ63OQ7Ww Do that 23 minute video and see if it helps. 3. Mindfulness meditation. Get into the most comfortable position possible. Dont move; and far more difficult dont think. Your mind will wander. If the pain is in your achilles. The only thing you're doing is monitoring the pain. What's the exact shape of the pain? Is it 4 inches long or is it only 2 inches? Is it sharp like a knife, or is it round in shape? Do you have any taste, smell, or sound from it? You need to wait as long as you have to, maybe it only makes a sound every 2 minutes, you have to wait and your focus is only on waiting for the sound and nothing else. 4. Yoga nidra or progressive muscle relaxation. Start at your toes, you try to flex the muscles to the maximum and hold for 5 seconds, release. then do your feet, ankles, legs, every muscle has to have been flexed and held for 5 seconds. Then when you're done, you simply do nothing at all. dont even focus on anything; maybe your breath at most.

glasscannon 1y ago
> The problem, CBD never fixes the pain. ~8 hours later you need more. 100%, medication plays a great role in providing comfort and support but it can be ineffective (and often harmful) if relied on solely for recovery from (neuroplastic) chronic pain. > There's no business case for solving chronic pain It seems some parties may be incentive aligned (e.g. insurers in Australia) - though I'm still navigating this space to find an approach which makes solving the root cause viable. Keen for your thoughts. > 1. Sorry to hear about your friend. This is often referred to as a structural diagnosis - i.e. where a knowledgable/proficient doctor has diagnosed there is legitimate tissue (nociceptive) or nerve (neuropathic) damage. > 2. Yep! This is what the series will be targeting, data points to a substantial percentage of chronic pain sufferers solely (or partially in comorbidities) being impacted by psychological disorder (otherwise known as neuroplastic pain / TMS / and a few other names!). There are a lot of causes and factors which have been shown in research to date, but largely it's adverse childhood experience, stress, personality traits, and more. Will check out that vid! > 3. Related to this, there is an exercise called somatic tracking which has helped many people (including myself) - during it people often notice pain shifting throughout your body. This was a big turning point for me seeing how my mind behaves in real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1D_UvzIDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1D_UvzIDA

ekianjo 1y ago

> Before moving forward - I’m not a doctor. Just a bit of a nerd with a blog. Please do not sue me or use these posts as a replacement for medical care. unnecessary disclaimer here. when it comes to chronic pain treatment doctors are mostly useless or even harmful, proposing surgeries or drugs that will do more bad than anything else because they have no interest in learning how to customize their approach and will parrot and prescribe what they heard from medical representatives. Remember, the opoids crisis was enabled by doctors in the first place.

glasscannon 1y ago
Heavily agree much destruction has come from overprescription. With this note I'm just seeking to cover my bases and be transparent with readers who don't know me.
qualeed 1y ago
It's not unnecessary to tell people you aren't a doctor when people may reasonably believe you are a doctor in the absence of such a disclaimer.
- ekianjo 1y ago
  I was not focusing on the 'not. a doctor' part, rather the 'seek medical care' as being bad advice when dealing with chronic pain
xyst 1y ago
It was enabled by doctors but they were deceived by Purdue Pharma and Sackler family. They also deceived the (understaffed) FDA, paid off researchers to get their exact wording approved. Purdue used their wealth and influence to launch a nationwide campaign and lobbyist group advocating that mistreatment/mismanagement of patient pain will lead to litigation. Those stupid pain face charts you see at hospitals, physician offices. Purdue marketing, nothing else. Everybody is shitty here. This is what happens when a market has loose regulations.
- ekianjo 1y ago

nwienert 1y ago

As someone who had years of undiagnosable pain and after many years (and more than one doctor trying to suggest it was all in my head) I just want to say to anyone reading who has it - Don’t let yourself be gaslit that it’s all mental. It seems some do have that, but there are also many hard to diagnose and completely valid physical health conditions that cause terrible chronic pain. And don’t give up on trying to find out what they are. Once I did, I was able to largely manage mine, and more importantly, to stop constantly questioning my own sanity.

CoastalCoder 1y ago
Would you mind sharing a little detail about what the physical malady turned out to be, and why it took so long to diagnose? Sounds like an interesting medical mystery.
- marcinzm 1y ago
  Not OP but similar story with someone I know. Five years of many specialists that always ended in "all the tests are negative so it must either be fibromyalgia or psychological." Doctors never helped but eventually they empirically found that abilify and rexulti in very low doses (ie: half the minimum) made it just go away. Empirically based on the reaction to various medications it was probably some type of dopamine imbalance or issue. There's other case studies of similar reactions to abilify and chronic pain but not many. Extra fun fact, a deep research AI nowadays will actually suggest this as one of the treatments given a few paragraphs of information on the symptoms/medications tried/etc.
  - nwienert 1y ago
    Dopamine can help autoimmune issues - if they haven’t seen a rheumatologist I’d recommend it.
- nwienert 1y ago
  Combination of two autoimmune conditions, one Ehlers Danlos. Actually EDS is interesting because it became a fad I guess on TikTok to claim you had it like Tourette’s, further exacerbating the above issue. It’s got a wide spectrum. My dad had it so lightly he was just considered “double jointed”. I gained a further thing from mom’s side, which seemed to interplay poorly. Spent 19-26 basically having extreme nausea and vomiting episodes every month or two, often having to go to the hospital to stop it. Had other weird symptoms and pains before that and during too. Did every scan, met tons of specialists. Kept getting referred down the GI side, had gallbladder removed for no reason. At one point I was convinced it was psychological. This was after a second doctor suggested it. It sent me down a dark path for a few years of trying to figure out what was wrong with me - didn’t help my mental state was terrible from all the uncertainty, and I had developed anxiety about eating since basically any meal could end up in hours of extreme pain. I was a total wreck. Then it just cleared up finally at 26. It wasn’t until years later I got the EDS diagnosis, and then a genetic test showed the other immune condition. When looking at the two lists of symptoms it was such an intense moment in my life, finally having closure.

NoTranslationL 1y ago

I make an app called Reflect [0] that’s designed to track things like chronic pain and help you get to the root cause with self guided experiments. I’ve used it for my own pain symptoms, especially joint pain. Happy to answer any questions. Wish you the best on your journey. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id6463800032 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...

glasscannon 1y ago
Amazing, I'll take a look at it. Thanks!
- pbronez 1y ago
  Another option for this is Bearable. I used it for headaches a while ago and it worked well: https://bearable.app/ https://bearable.app/ Here’s an actual peer reviewed study evaluating a pile (over 1000!) symptom tracking apps, including Bearable. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452109420302657 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245210942...
  - glasscannon 1y ago
    Awesome study - thanks for the link!
  - Jonovono 1y ago
    I've been using Bearable too. It's great and price is awesome, but data entry is so slow

sydbarrett74 1y ago

Thank you for sharing your story, and congrats on your endeavour.

superb-owl 1y ago

related: https://x.com/mxslk/status/1940832698366619681 https://x.com/mxslk/status/1940832698366619681

mattgreenrocks 1y ago

I’ve been dealing with chronic reflux for about 8 mos now. On PPIs and they don’t seem to do much. But once I get away from my typical routine of work/dadding then all the symptoms vanish, even to the point of being able to eat foods that are not good for reflux: spicy things, tomatoes, a bit of coffee. In my case, this is absolutely a downstream symptom of something mind-body. Already been scoped and got a diagnosis of visceral hypersensitivity, which is medical speak for “nerves in esophagus are too sensitive.” The question of why is out of scope. In this case, docs just don’t know why. (I think it kinda pisses them off not know, tbh). And finding out is not really in their wheelhouse. I’ve made some life changes (new job) to see what happens here. But I also have to be prepared for the possibility that it doesn’t fix it. Been working through The Body Keeps The Score as well. Looking forward to seeing what the author discusses here.

justinrubek 1y ago
I seem to have something very similar going on. I'm on the early end of trying to understand it. Coffee was the first indicator because it'd ruin my day to drink some. I hope the best for us.
johnisgood 1y ago
Have you tried H2 blockers? And as you have said, avoid anything that increases stomach acid production (such as caffeine or even tea, along with spicy food). You might also have success with Venter[1] (Sucralfate). [1] https://www.medicinesfaq.com/brand/venter https://www.medicinesfaq.com/brand/venter
- mattgreenrocks 1y ago
  Yep. I track which foods affect that and try not to stack them. In addition, I take famotidine in the evening with two different antihistamines. I suspect I have a histamine intolerance behind it all, as it tends to be comorbid with ehlers-danlos.
  - johnisgood 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

> For the next 4 years, I continued to accumulate weird and persistent pains in different parts of my body. Anyone who is accumulating weird pains in random, different locations should definitely pursue some of these alternative explanations. Another sign that these techniques are appropriate is if the pains come and go depending on your mood or situation (worse when working, disappear when doing something fun) or are prone to suggestion (someone talks about their back pain and then you have back pain for the following days or weeks). However, I’m also getting tired of the people who benefit from this techniques deciding that their explanation for chronic pain covers everyone. It’s a huge trend in parts of tech Twitter right now to apply these theories to all chronic pain. A small number of people who had unexplainable pain and addressed it through meditation, therapy, and similar techniques are now pushing it as a far more universal explanation. It really needs to be applied to the appropriate situation, not used as a universal treatment for chronic pains. This parallels similar trends with topics like PTSD, where a smaller group of people have benefited from therapy that addresses past trauma and now they’re trying to export the theory that past trauma and PTSD is the explanation for all psychological ills. Again, matching the right treatment to the condition is critical and being open-minded is important, but beware of people who are preaching that doctors are misinformed and you should subscribe to their app, blog, newsletter, or course instead.

glasscannon 1y ago
On your first point, the moving of symptoms is not uncommon in patients with chronic pain - and yes definitely a sign something not normal is going on! On the second, I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread (on a different comment) that it's critical to determine if a structural cause is at play (i.e. tissue/nerve damage or something else causing inflammation). It is unfortunate however that many doctors are not familiar with modern pain science so I'm hoping spreading awareness via patients (and some practitioners) will change this. In the next few blog posts this very thing will be discussed (i.e. exploring when it's likely something is mind related vs the body [though I will focus primarily on the former in this series] - as you're 100% correct sometimes it's the body and sometimes it's the mind, and sometimes it's both!).
bravesoul2 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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aspbee555 1y ago

I felt like I was dying at 35 years old, my body was completely betraying me, exhausted, constant pain, no life as absolutely no energy on days off and still exhausted starting the next week. Even years in the Army never left me feeling like that I had no idea it was the misery of the IT job that was causing most of my pain and suffering, and it had nothing to do with the job itself, it was the endless insanity of everyone else around me doing exactly what they were informed would cause problems instead of having discussions with people that actually knew how shit worked. I was endlessly picking up everyone elses mess and treated worse than a pile of shit all because people were incapable of having a speck of respect for other people since all their hatred for computers fell on me I GTFO of the career of misery and took half a decade to finally start feeling better I have now spent years and countless hours working on software and I greatly enjoy doing this work again and find I get even more done than I used to simply by doing life the way I need to instead of how some backwards/abusive control freak "needs it done"

jdbsbsndn 1y ago
[flagged]
- roarcher 1y ago
  What a bizarre and unnecessary comment.
  - aspbee555 1y ago
    I have to admit it annoyed me for a moment, but it is an honest thing I have to have ask myself as part of my analysis of a situation, ie. AITA, in this instance, not at all
- aspbee555 1y ago
  the owner instructed everyone not to talk to me, I found out years later if it was a me problem then they would not have let the then president of the company go for working with me I was not the one with communication problems but people are really good at blaming me for their own problems

Adrig 1y ago

I've dealt with chronic illnesses for the past 10+ years now. It's such a hard path. I recently found out after a violent burn-out that a significant cause was chronic stress and its psychosomatic symptoms. It made me have a hard look at the topic, and I'm gradually adjusting to solve the issue. If I get better, I'm tempted to do as OP and spend more time working on this issue for others. It seems so much more impactful than grinding the tech / startup life.

glasscannon 1y ago
Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to chat Adrig (my contact is in my profile), wishing you the best of luck.
accrual 1y ago
> I recently found out after a violent burn-out that a significant cause was chronic stress and its psychosomatic symptoms. Thanks for sharing. I am walking down this path as well. In my experience I can tell I'm deeply out of alignment and it wreaks havoc on the body. My soul says to X but my mind says do Y, it's safer, maintains a stable status quo, income, and relationships, etc., even though it's slowly killing me.
- Adrig 1y ago
  It's definitely a difficult time to deal with these issues, especially when the world appears so unstable. But we eventually have to face the music one way or another. Best of luck!

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I was just talking to a friend of mine, yesterday, about what happened to me. In 2017, I was laid off of my job (of almost 27 years). I immediately started looking for work. Since the company I worked for, was a marquee-name company, I assumed that it wouldn't be hard. Boy, was I in for a shock. I almost immediately learned that no one in tech, is interested in hiring a 55-year-old, regardless of their pedigree. I could have gotten a job, but those companies made it clear that I would be treated quite badly. So I made the decision to just throw in the towel and retire. I had the means, but I would have liked to have at least another ten years of salary. I have never had any intentions of stopping working, though. I love developing software. It's a hobby and a personal passion; not just a job. I was really pissed off at the treatment. I suffered great butthurt. But in the long run, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. I never realized how much stress I was under, while working. I sincerely believe that, if I had kept working, it would have killed me. I have no intentions of returning to the rodent rally; even though I'm quite good at what I do, thanks to all the learning that I've done, in the last eight years. I now work every day (my GH Activity Graph is quite green), and do a fairly good job on my chosen projects, but I no longer feel that awful weight on my soul. Sometimes, the only way that we learn how much pain we are in, is to stop suffering it for a while.

tossandthrow 1y ago
As someone who will, eventually, hit that age, I would love to hear more about that treatment? My own impression is that the software industry is one of the industries where experience and qualifications are completely divorced. So from my perspective one is really always back at square 0 when looking for jobs - including the need to prove oneself and stay humble.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Well, I found that independent recruiters were the worst. They all ghosted me. A couple actually hung up on me, as soon as they learned my age. In-house recruiters and managers were much better, but the interview process generally derailed, as soon as one single tecchie got involved. I actually had one refuse to look at my [extensive] code portfolio, because "I probably faked it." One of the luxuries that I had, which I am eternally grateful for, is that I don't have to eat shit. If reacting badly to that kind of treatment is "not humble," then guilty as charged. I should add that I am a high school dropout, with a GED, and no matriculated education. Despite that, I ran a "skunkworks" team, employing some very good engineers, and was kept on by a very demanding Japanese corporation, where I was given an insane level of trust. I'm pretty used to having to prove myself. I've spent almost my entire career, looking up noses. Someone with my background won't make it far, unless I know how to work well with un-humble people, and deliver the goods. I never was given much latitude. I wasn't really allowed to fail.

quicktemp42 1y ago

I’ve been struggling with chronic pain for almost eight months. It started when my orthodontic treatment caused the root of one of my teeth to break—it had already been weakened from a previous injury. The extraction was straightforward and only took 10 minutes, and I had an implant placed (with a temporary crown attached to my braces). Healing went smoothly, and the CT scans looked fine. But soon after, I developed constant headaches that never went away. At first, I assumed they were related to the procedure, but everything had healed well, and multiple check-ups didn’t reveal anything. Since then, my braces have been removed, but the daily headaches persist. Occasionally, I also feel a strange “foreign object” sensation around the implant site. A follow-up CT scan of the implant showed perfect integration with the bone. I’ve also had other tests done, including a head MRI. Medically, everything appears normal. It’s getting really hard to manage—painkillers don’t help at all. Has anyone experienced something similar or have any idea what to try next? I’m even considering having the implant removed, despite there being no medical reason for it.

accrual 1y ago
Not a physician but how long have you had symptoms for? I've had dental work that took much longer than expected to heal. The pulp in the teeth are quite sensitive and can inflame easily, and that inflamation has nowhere to go (being bound by the hard sides of your teeth and jaw), which can lead to constant pain. I once had a routine filling that took about 3 months to stop aching and I had to take ibuprofen every day during that time to be able to focus. Per the dentist, constant aching pain = it's slowly healing, leave it alone. Sharp intense pain = pulp is dying, need root canal. Granted, this is pain the mouth and not in the head like you described. If it's been a while and it's still bothering you, I'd definitely consider having it removed too. It would suck to remove it and still have the headaches, but at that point you can start looking at other causes.
- quicktemp42 1y ago
  It has been eight months and there is no tissue damage. Allergic reactions to implant materials are rare and usually stop an implant from fusing with the bone, but mine has integrated perfectly. I would consider removing it, except it is my upper central incisor... I kept waiting for braces to be removed etc but I'm running out of options now.

kianN 1y ago

“As pain becomes chronic, it is increasingly associated with activity in the affective and motivational systems tied to avoidance and less closely tied to systems encoding nociceptive input” [1] I’ve been on the slippery slope of chronic pain. Minor post surgery issues caused me to change my routine and avoid certain activities which only exacerbated the issues, which led to more avoidance. Eventually I couldn’t walk. The American medical system is very focused on avoiding health issues that show up on mri, rather than quality of life health. But quality of life issues quickly become serious. I think the middle ground of activity: not all out intense as if you are healthy, but also not avoiding movement is so challenging to find for many people but also so crucial. A lot of chronic pain for myself and I suspect for many others could be avoided with short and quick combination of therapy and daily movement. So simple but so challenging to effectively identify and allocate resources. Not suggesting this is the total solution but it’s the pathway that I took to return to activity and I’ve seen it help a number of my friends as well. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482298/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482298/

kccqzy 1y ago
> Minor post surgery issues My wife has had two surgeries and each time she had a minor post surgery issue. One of them was an area that was tender to touch; another was chronic pain. Neither was mentioned as a possible side effect of the surgery by the surgeon. The main takeaway even if a bit extreme here is avoid all surgeries unless absolutely necessary.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  Depending on the underlying issue, delaying a surgery could easily lead to needing an even more invasive or extensive procedure, with worse complications or side effects. A blanket avoidance of all surgeries is a great way to be even more miserable. Anecdotal case: My wife broke her arm some 10 years ago or so. She was really upset about potential recovery time, insurance copayments and such, especially since she was (at the time) a single mother. The doctor suggested setting it and letting it heal on its own, which was absolutely the wrong call. Had she gotten surgery straight away, she would have recovered by the time she actually ended up getting surgery. I've often wondered if there wasn't a malpractice case that could have been made, but it was before we met so that's lost to time.

paulcole 1y ago

This should be a show HN.

nico 1y ago

For people on the spectrum here, just want to add to the thread the term Fibromyalgia It seems to be relatively common and under diagnosed. Also somehow controversial and not fully understood However, looking into it might shed some light on some issues of chronic pain and potential ways to address it

ck2 1y ago

Low‐Dose Naltrexone aka LDN not a cure and barely a treatment but it's one of the only tools in the toolbox Modulates endorphin receptors (by blocking them for a little while) Not only causes the body to produce more endorphins to reduce pain but is actually proven in studies to make the ion channels work better if dysfunctional https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Low-Dose+Naltrexone https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Low-Dose+Naltrexone https://reddit.com/r/LowDoseNaltrexone https://reddit.com/r/LowDoseNaltrexone

tomfucksdan 1y ago

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doddpronter 1y ago

It's crazy how much your physical health is tied to mental happiness/lack of stress. I had a friend that during his most stressful period as a 24 year old in Investment Banking had strep throat 4 times in 2 months. Several doctor visits concluded that it was the long hours and insane amount of stress that was severely crushing his immune system. Moral of the story is love what you do and take care of yourself: nothing is as important as your own health and happiness

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
Did your friend leave IB after this diagnosis, or did he tough it out? To me that's the real question. I think either option is defensible, depending on what one values in life. I've known certain people who pulled 80 hour work weeks for years only to give away double-digit percentages of their salaries to charity, because that was what was important to them, and I don't think they were wrong for doing that, just making choices at a margin I would find intolerable far earlier.
godot 1y ago
I think most people underestimate how much of their immune system depends on their sleep. Sleep quality, amount (hours) of sleep, time in bed, all of it -- they matter. In stressful periods, it's likely not stress crushing the immune system, it's the indirect relationship that stress causes bad quality sleep and low amount of sleep, that in turn crushes the immune system. If, even if under stress, you manage to work out a system/habit that allows you to get proper sleep, you'd likely be ok.
noident 1y ago
> I had a friend that during his most stressful period as a 24 year old in Investment Banking had strep throat 4 times in 2 months He may need his tonsils out. I got mine out in my 30s. It was 3 painful weeks to recover but my quality of life is a lot higher.

srshihab 1y ago

No idea

srshihab 1y ago

varispeed 1y ago

Why this has so many upvotes? This is very much a wall of text with just waffle and very little substance. The "mind-body" thing is a great tool for doctors who are into abuse and take pleasure in having power over their patients. "You are still having chronic pain, because you are not working hard enough!" "No, I will not prescribe you medication. The pain is in your head!" Oh and abusive partners also love this crap. You have a flare up? No you don't! You are just a lazy slob who doent't want to work and is whinging like a little baby. Stop imagining your pain! GTFO with this crap.

xyst 1y ago
It has many upvotes because HN loves to think of itself as "against the establishment." The alternative medicine folks tend to think this. In reality , nothing more than grifters. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a book or "masterclass" pitch at the end of this series.

timmyers 1y ago

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foobiekr 1y ago

I have a pretty severe back injury - double pars fracture and significant spondylolisthesis from an accident (not a car accident). For many years i was in incredible pain, but it just kept going, sometimes getting a lot worse. When this happened I would go get some imaging done to make sure there weren't degenerative changes that needed to be addressed - you should never, ever get back surgery if you don't need it, so I am cautious about it. But I noticed something, all on my own, and that is that it seemed to correlate with periods of intense stress. I still have a ton of stress, but recognizing that actually kind of made a tremendous difference. I hesitate to add a link to this on the thread, but there is an interesting story around chronic pain actually being psychological and there are now some high quality studies coming out. https://journals.lww.com/painrpts/Fulltext/2021/09000/Psychophysiologic_symptom_relief_therapy_for.13.aspx https://journals.lww.com/painrpts/Fulltext/2021/09000/Psycho... I especially hate to link to LessWrong but this is an actually decent thread on the topic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-body-vicious-cycle-model-of-rsi-and-back-pain https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-b... I didn't know about any of this and had never been exposed to any of it when I drew my conclusions and started to feel less pain. Don't get me wrong, there are still things that will set my back off, but now I probably go actual years without even thinking about it.

polishdude20 1y ago
Along those lines is this excellent website: https://www.painscience.com/ https://www.painscience.com/
gleenn 1y ago
"You should never, ever get back surgery" sounds like that easily could be wrong. It's annoying to have to always caveat but talking to a (good) doctor is important when making such decisions and not relying on tech forum advice necessarily. I know someone who said they went in for back surgery and walked out feeling permanently cured from the specific problem they had and the pain was completely gone. Details matter. Always consult experts when possible.
- matwood 1y ago

ArthurStacks 1y ago

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littlexsparkee 1y ago

I dealt with mobility issues the last 2.5 years after turf toe (healed after 1 year and then reinjured), didn't realize how crucial strengthening was after losing muscle resting, then after research found out how critical loading tendons is to having them repaired. I left my stable job a couple of months ago to dedicate myself to getting my life back. I'd let thumb RSI simmer for a long time too, even though I got to the point where I could do most things with Talon (friction made me get lazy occasionally). The hardest part is mental - the ups and downs, isolation, not knowing what to do to fix yourself, feeling like your body is betraying you and the lack of help from the medical system besides some basic scans and generic advice. I'm glad that I had a cushion so that I haven't had to stress too much taking time off. To folks dealing with physical pain, I recommend: Built From Broken by Scott Hogan, Rehab Science by Tom Walters. For joint issues these may help: celadrin, pro-resolving mediators, red mineral algae w/ aquamin, natural eggshell membrane, collagen peptides w/ fortigel.

godot 1y ago

I'd be curious to follow along and read more. My experience is that everyone's body is quite different and what causes chronic issues with everyone can be quite different. That's not to say his observations and solutions won't be useful to others, but it's another good anecdote to understand and things worth trying for others having similar issues. I myself for example have had headache and migraine issues for more than 25 years. I understand deeply an incredible amount about what causes my migraines, how they feel, how I help with it, and so on. I understand migraines more than anyone else I ever know in my life because I observe, pay attention, study, and try different things so much. I understand it more than most doctors I talk to. But I also know that everyone's migraines are a little different and not everyone gets triggered by the same things (though there's a lot of overlaps) and my solutions may not help for everyone. I'd totally write something like this for migraines if I had the time (I don't :( ).

xyst 1y ago

Very odd pipeline from rank and file tech employee to wellness and alternative medicine "influencer". Ticks all the boxes: - not a doctor - not a physical therapist - offering tips to solve your pain that somehow nobody could - emphasizing a single "landmark" study with no other context - results based off of personal experience Guy is trying to become the RFK Jr of Aussie land.

zermelo44 1y ago

Thanks for posting. I look forward to following along. I have had chronic pain and other annoying functional neurological symptoms for the past 4 years. It started about halfway throughout my PhD. I was born with congenital torticollis (fibrosis of the right sternocleidomastoid muscle) and had surgery for this twice when I was young. I also had 3 other surgical procedures for different reasons as a child. Because my pain started in my neck and shoulder, I was set on believing that my previous surgeries were the cause of my pain. But as I learned more, meditated more, did yoga more, and faced pushback (and lots of confusion) from health professionals, it became clear that my symptoms are mainly "mind-body" (I hate that dualistic term). I'd be very interested in talking more.

mgz18 1y ago

When I was 34, I was laying in bed one night and noticed that muscles all over my body were twitching. It didn't go away. A month later I went to a neurologist in my hometown in the midwest for a workup that culminated in a EMG-NCV study (the neurologist doing that study asked if I liked the NY Yankees.. "I do not.. and I've definitely never heard of Lou Gehrig.. so let's get on with it.."). Ultimately he congratulated me on having no signs of ALS or any other neurodegenerative disease and told me to "live your life." He hadn't seen the widespread persistent muscle twitching I was experiencing before. Six months later, I went to another neurologist, this time at Stanford. She did another workup and said the same things as the first guy, except she added, "yeah, we see this fairly often." The diagnosis was "Benign Fasciculation Syndrome" (BFS), aka "we don't know what caused everything to start twitching or how to stop it, but it won't progress and kill you." What really struck me was that 1) the midwestern neurologist seemed to have never seen symptoms like mine, whereas the Stanford neurologist had seen them often, and 2) the Stanford neurologist linked it to poorly managed anxiety. At the time I was five years into a data scientist role at a big tech company in the bay area (now it's two year later - the symptoms improved somewhat but are still there). I definitely had burnout and mental health problems and was in denial about them ("I have all these great perks, how could my work be causing my mental health issues?"). The best thing you can say about BFS is it isn't physically painful; I am definitely not equating it with the chronic pain issues that others have described on this thread, which seem much tougher. It's another one of those things that has no known cure (diet / lifestyle / mental health improvements help somewhat), is only vaguely understood ("your nerves are oversensitive"), is linked to mental health issues, and seems overrepresented in the bay area (maybe in other tech/urban centers too, I don't know). Two years in, I don't have any answers, just wanted to share in case it's helpful to anyone.

pstuart 1y ago

The mind/body part for dealing with chronic pain is vital to embrace, but isn't always enough. Finding ways to "attack" pain would be a relief to millions. The best I've been able to find is kratom, but that's not without its concerns -- drug laws are no friend to pain patients (let alone society as a whole). Pro tip: get a shingles vaccine if you are able to -- postherpetic neuralgia is no fun.

amai 1y ago

tldr; Pain Reprocessing Therapy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ As stated at the end, the authors of the study have a lot of conflicting interests.

glasscannon 1y ago
Thanks for sharing the link - this one goes into more depth: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... I can't comment on the conflict of interest as I do not know the practitioners personally, but from additional/supplementary research in this space as well as the massive amount of people this work has appearerd to help recover (look at reviews/discussion for books like the 'The Way Out') - it does seem to be having a big impact. I'm aiming to link supplementary research in follow-on articles (e.g. the relation b/w pain and injury where nociplastic pain is present, the impact of psychological factors on pain etc) to paint a comprehensive (yet digestible) picture.
- amai 1y ago
  You are sharing exactly the same article I already did. It has the same information, it is just a different url.

keysdev 1y ago

I highly recommend look at Susan Luschas web site. [1] She is also a former tech person who is doing deep dive into debugging health. Much chronic pain maybe dental and organ related. 1. https://debugyourhealth.com/ https://debugyourhealth.com/

storus 1y ago

If your pain stems from covid, try high doses of thiamine or alternatively TTFD. Quite a few people reported feeling great for the first time in ages after a single high dose and there seem to be some studies showing pain disappearance in fibromyalgia.

anon1685212382 1y ago

Since I became 30yo, I suffered various health issues. I see people much older than me including my parents who were in much better shape, and I kept thinking what was wrong with me. I’m 37yo now and in almost the best shape of my life, and there was so much I learned - I’m sharing here in case it can help others. First: With the exception of extreme health issues (e.g. Cancer), you likely have a good chance of resolving your health issues. Don’t be discouraged by your chronic pains and think you have to now live with the pain or health issues for the rest of your life. Tackle your health issues like any other engineering problem: understand the problem, make a plan, execute, monitor progress, and iterate over this process (e.g. revise your plans). If you do not take action, nothing will change. Second: Stress is a killer. I’ve had to visit the emergency room twice because I thought I either had a heart attack or I was dying from high blood pressure. I was way too into my work (due to both passion and commitment), that delays with my projects gave me high mental pressure. Upon re-evaluating my life, I asked myself: which is more important, my work or my health? Once I started prioritizing my health and started pushing back on unreasonable timelines, my stress is gone and none of the chest pain, headache, and high blood pressure issues have come up again. Last but not least: Your body is a very complex machine and you need to learn how to use it correctly. I had a very sedentary lifestyle and had many chronic pains, e.g. heels, ankles, knees, hip, elbow, wrist, etc. My body was so weak that I even injured my neck and back once just by sleeping in a not-so-great position. I found an awesome PT who specialized in holistic physical therapy and he helped address issues from my feet all the way to my neck. I am now able to resume all the activities from my younger days such as DDR & tennis. There’s too much to explain here but I have two key takeaways: one is my body was extremely tight & inflexible and PNF treatment from my PT was needed for recovery, and another is I just didn’t know my body and muscles well. I did not know how various muscles work, how to use my body & muscles effectively, and what exercises to do and their correct form. Learning and doing the exercises properly and frequently changed my life. Btw: I highly do NOT recommend all the YouTube fitness videos - you simply just cannot tell if what they’re saying is correct and whether their suggestion is even the correct remedy for your problem. That is all. I wish everyone good luck in addressing their chronic pain!

algo_lover 1y ago

Why do all such articles never talk about the meat of the solution? Why do I always feel like I'm being sold something. Why is it so hard to explain the solution briefly, or directly present it to me upfront. Why does it need so much of mystery around it? In this article the OP does not even mention "Pain reprocessing theory" which is what they seems to be talking about (based on the study they have linked)

762236 1y ago
As someone who has overcome chronic pain, and frequently foils acute pain from turning into chronic pain, I started daily joint-mobility exercises from Kelly Starrett's Supple Leopard book (and his MWOD videos on YouTube) to achieve this. Physical therapy needs daily, incremental progress, which you can do yourself.
- specialist 1y ago
  Agreed. Yes and: Kelly's freq collaborator Jill Miller (author of The Roll Model, TuneUp Fitness, etc.).
pedalpete 1y ago
I've been guilty of this myself for our neurotech sleeptech company, and I still owe HN a better blog post clarifying our positioning. I think there are a few reasons you see this in health/medical community. 1) just helping people understand a different view of the problem is often enough for one blog post. Stuffing new way to look at solution and new solution together can sometimes be a bit much. 2) we have to be cautious from a regulatory perspective about what we say, and sometimes in being too cautious don't give the people who REALLY want to understaned the processes enough to go on. For our company, I used to say things like "we can increase the synchronous firing of neurons which results in reduced 15^% drop in early night cortisol, and 14.5% increase in hrv....". But prior to regulatory approvals, we can't point directly to neurological or physiological processes, which means we kinda end up talking around the solution a bit. 3) in marketing, they want to connect and build an audience, so they are dripping more information over time. One post gets feedback and interest from one group, then you do another, and another. It's about building the community and connecting with people, not just a "here's a problem, do the thing, thanks". If you are trying to build a business, you probably need to get in front of people 7-8 times, particularly if you're taking a new approach to a problem, to build trust and brand recognition. It's not the best, but it is the way the world works.

monkeyelite 1y ago

Another post reflecting the aging HN population.

ThinkBeat 1y ago

He decided he could monetize his recovery by selling the "the cure" on a newsletter basis and using organic growth to make more money. As he does point out he is not a doctor and his solution is not backed by extensive medical studies. He could just write a document laying it all out, and letting people download it, easier for everyone. (and try to get some researchers do the chekcing). This is damn close to snakeoil.

glasscannon 1y ago
I appreciate your skepticism. > by selling the "the cure" on a newsletter basis and using organic growth to make more money. I am not selling anything, the information from what is happening -> to how to recover (if it is relevant to you) is and will be freely available on this substack. It is not paywalled and I'm not intending for it to be. Additionally where are you quoting "the cure" from? I will be sharing information for people to use to self assess if it applies to them. Recovery from chronic pain is rarely simple as your quote implies - instead it requires daily concentrated effort. > his solution is not backed by extensive medical studies. Please read this study from 2021: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34586357/ > He could just write a document laying it all out, and letting people download it, easier for everyone. Readers are more than welcome to download an offline copy from their browser if they'd prefer to consume it that way. > (and try to get some researchers do the chekcing). This is a valid point and I'll see how I can integrate it into future pieces, even if it's just collaborating with (legitimate) researchers. Thanks. Something to understand is until yesterday no one knew I was in this space. Me DM'ing a researcher and asking them to vet my writing would likely have at best resulted in them letting me know they're busy. That likely isn't the case anymore. > This is damn close to snakeoil. Happy to discuss this in more depth. I don't see which part is comparable to snakeoil.

halayli 1y ago

Prolonged stress is often a major contributor to cp. The problem is that after being stressed for a long period we no longer feel the weight until it's fully lifted which requires taking some time off and the majority of us are not in a position to do that.

catchcatchcatch 1y ago

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bGl2YW5j 1y ago

What a coincidence! I’m also in Australia and have just finished a self-imposed 8 month holiday from the tech world BS you describe. I started the holiday super jaded with the idea of working in tech forever. I spent my time on everything but tech. Recently my passion has been reignited and I’ve got more clarity around what it is about tech and my career I enjoy, and what I want from my future. Now, I’m working on a healthcare service for chronic disease.

alshival 1y ago

I feel you. Used to work 16 hours a day. I quit my job and started freelancing. These days, I only commit 20 hours a week to work. Still make enough to pay my bills and live a little, but I won't be getting a boat anytime soon. But with that extra time, I go to the gym, play video games, or blast the neighborhood using my brand spanking new Eric Clapton Pewder Strat. I have 15 years in data, and 10 years in machine-learning. Back in 2016, I couldn't find a job doing machine-learning. These days, I don't worry anymore about finding work. Things have improved.

wysewun 1y ago

Have had long term chronic pain. Think possibly due to a combination of tendinitis and lack of movemen as a dev Our bodies aren’t meant to be in one position for that long no matter the ergonomics unless you know what you’re doing. Lots of people mock tiktok for the dancing but in observing the dances, I’ve grown an appreciation for full range of movement and trying to increase range of motion in the joints I was able to find some exercises that helped in this to decompress but I can go into more detail if people want

mieubrisse 1y ago

YES! I'm experiencing a separate-but-related problem to do with myopia, and my eyes perpetually getting longer (likely due to the long hours of computer use). I wish I could go back to completely undistracted building, but I realize now that I was a bit addicted and that level of intensity was hurting me. Now what occupies my waking hours is, "How can I debug this failing system?"

rickvidallon 1y ago

Any pixel pushers out there experience PMR? aka Polymyalgia rheumatica

andy_nguyen 1y ago

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heraldgeezer 1y ago

Weight needs to be mentioned more. Even in Europe 50% or so are overweight or obese.

bentt 1y ago

Are you familiar with Dr. John Sarno's work and if so, how does it relate to what you'll be writing about?

pid1wow 1y ago

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butterisgood 1y ago

I mean… tech jobs are already there TBH.