Aly

@PrinceVogel anthropology.fas.harvard.edu/people/anya-be… Re: transhumanism/immortality. I took her class on this topic and it was life-changing, despite me already being in ~ the most transhumanist/immortalist spaces

Who would your dream attendees for a world class anthropology conference be?

I *do* think people are grasping at “physical” diagnoses. It’s the reasonable thing to do! They fit the diagnostic criteria, their doctor diagnoses them, and it gives relief to have a cause for XYZ thing. The vast majority of people will never question the validity of those diagnostic criteria or question their doctor’s incentives. The notion of issues being psychosomatic is heavily stigmatized, and no one’s first instinct is to attribute their issues to psychosomatic origins when they can instead get (apparently properly) diagnosed with something that is not heavily stigmatized. If there’s no distinction in diagnostic criteria between psychosomatic versus, say, purely genetic origins for a given disease, then why would someone who was diagnosed with that disease be like “but what if I’m actually psychosomatic!” For example, in hEDS, there are likely tons of genetic causes, but these aren’t known yet, so there is currently no distinction between people who fit the vague diagnostic criteria but don’t have a clear genetic cause and people who actually do have some yet-undiscovered genetic cause. All people diagnosed with hEDS can avoid stigma because there are yet-undiscovered genetic causes that each person may or may not actually have. So it would be really unusual for a normal person to be like “but maybe *I* don’t actually have a yet-undiscovered mutation and I’d actually heal by doing something totally different!”). Also science has a very poor understanding of psychosomatic disease. In the event you DID go to a doctor and say that you’re concerned your disease might be psychosomatic, they won’t have a clue what to do and probably will laugh at you. Maybe send you to a psychiatrist who also won’t know what to do (except diagnose you with anxiety, perhaps). My take is that we should actually figure out what to do with psychosomatic disease, which is also physical/real and demanding treatment, but meaningfully physically different, demanding *different forms* of treatment that are currently unknown/inaccessible to conventional medicine (for the most part).

@alysoncogene @AlexKrusz I would agree with that part and also that some people are simply looking for their "vitamin." I'm just exhausted of commentary suggesting that most patients are either misdiagnosing or grasping at "physical" diagnoses--and that was the post's vibe, IMO.

Why is everyone chronically ill nowadays despite being young and apparently healthy? (My take as a person who went through the chronic illness “pipeline”) Everyone’s searching for the “Vitamin”. People are struggling, and everyone wants to displace their failures onto a Vitamin Deficiency (esp. young people). For the first time, we live in a sciencey enough society where this is considered super reasonable: it’s widely frowned upon to tell people with *diagnosed physical ailments* to “just get over it”, so if you can get a medical diagnosis, you’re somewhat exempt from criticism. Cue the TikTok gurus, functional medicine ppl, “do their own researchers”, etc. and the broken healthcare systems that enable them. The kicker is that, nowadays, people can go to a mainstream doctor and have bogus meme-diagnoses validated! Why? Because medicine is now “the patient is always right”. If Drs don’t validate patients’ TikTok disorders (hEDS, MCAS, chronic Lyme, mold toxicity, AuDHD, the list goes on) then they get bad reviews. And they get FIRED! They really do. Like seriously. Doctors are pretty scared of bad reviews (especially ones that accuse them of gaslighting or lack of knowledge). Your doctor is heavily incentivized to validate you! (Also related to a lack of time to correct you. And also less true for clinicians in private practice, except for functional/alt medicine who make $$$ off of validating you.) Intriguingly, the diagnoses that trend on TT: - have nonspecific symptoms (fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, etc) - have no biomarkers/nonspecific biomarkers - don’t cause apparent harm to the patient to diagnose, so you might as well diagnose them so they’re satisfied - have kinda arbitrary diagnostic criteria - are very newly described/speculative/extremely rare before becoming a meme, so providers aren’t educated on them and defer to patient’s knowledge for fear of being a gaslighter Many of these trending diseases are real, and they used to mean something! Many are also not super real (or prevalent/relevant), and it’s a shame that vulnerable people are being misled. The consequences of the TikTokification of medicine include: - lifelong relentless health anxiety for a sizable chunk of all apparently-physically-healthy young people - widespread disbelief of genuine disability and stigmatization of accommodations - massive costs to society when a significant proportion of young people now have insane medical bills (these chronic illness workups take literally years and enormous amounts of money) - NOT ADDRESSING THE ACTUAL PROBLEMS WHICH ARE LEADING PEOPLE TO OPT OUT OF SOCIETY People’s minds and bodies are (not unreasonably!) giving up, and we’ve convinced them that these diagnoses are the reason why. It turns out that’s a very profitable grift for many… Of course new conditions come about, and we do actually learn things—notably Covid happened, and post-viral illness is real, etc. Many of these trending conditions are indeed real and some people are suffering from them. Many people are indeed living with undiagnosed conditions that would be their “Vitamin” if discovered and treated (the most common culprits aren’t super trendy). But I’m talking about the obvious social contagion that is apparently-healthy people being funneled into a bogus TikTok diagnostic pipeline, which is then validated by doctors with the wrong incentives, which then happens to exempt people from certain unwanted feelings or responsibilities—which is actually bad for them and for society! I’m passionate about this because I used to have some awful and *very visible* health issues, and I fell into many of these disease rabbit holes (and was heavily validated by tons of doctors in each speculation). After years of looking into pretty much all of them, I’m very angry at how manufactured most of them are! After 10 years or so, my symptoms resolved on their own once I finally gave up trying to find a cause.

@hsullivan34 @AlexKrusz I also used the quotes because the notion that psychosomatic origins are “less real” is untrue. Both origins are physical/real. But they are physical in different ways which presumably would necessitate different treatments.

@alysoncogene @AlexKrusz How would a "psychosomatic" disorder be different than the "physical, real" diagnoses you have in mind? Your post actually suggests that you don't understand these disorders at all.

@ArtirKel But self-questioning introspective TPOT are rare in society!!! xD

@alysoncogene Some people actually do this lol x.com/jonwu_/status/…

Or ideally IMO they prevent the issue in the first place by being aware of this phenomenon. Part of why it works is bc people convince themselves that they actually have the disease and that their diagnosis by a doctor “proves it”. So knowing that this is all kinda fake and seeing it from the meta level could be helpful

@alysoncogene oh me neither! Some people might need to work with a skilled other person to help them actually make the issue go away. Just like some people can therapize themselves and others can't

Many have said this. But I don’t mean to imply that most ppl can fix this themselves—I’m pointing out the various diagnoses that are being dished out in order to control a broader problem in society. The solution might involve such methods for some people. But I really think most people won’t have the desire and/or are trapped inside the “reality” of their diagnosis because they don’t understand the fallibility of medicine. Why would people WANT to stop having a condition which they can blame all their problems on (a big problem being young ppl’s downward mobility vs. their parents/grandparents)? Having a lifelong chronic condition is less limiting than bearing the shame of reality for many people

@alysoncogene What you describe there is something many people have said about Sarno's method and chronic pain, that one can just make it go away

@catehall @Grimezsz I would really love this rec!

@Grimezsz I saw someone who specializes in TRT for women

A short thread on how testosterone therapy dramatically improved my quality of life as a 40 yo cis woman. I’ve been slacking on blogging about this for a while — if this post gets 1k+ likes I’ll write it. 🧵

@Illusionist999 In the answer I gave to my own rhetorical question, I’m discussing specific conditions which are not due to Covid/LC.

@alysoncogene The answer to your question is pandemic, Covid and Long Covid led to an increase in disability and chronic illness, including in young population.

@liamsLCjourney Psychosomatic ≠ not real. And there is clearly a trend re: certain disorders which goes far beyond destigmatization. You are unable with many trending dx to conclude who’s psychosomatic because the diagnostic criteria fit their case, as well. That’s the whole point.

They were always chronically ill, it just wasn't OK to talk about it and there weren't options for care so people just felt sick a lot and had to deal with it. Now there are options for care and awareness so people are getting diagnosed even though that also comes with a sliver of people who are psychosomatic (but it's a minority, in my observation). As someone who is actually chronically ill (with biomarkers), I'd much rather have this reality :)

@mousemastery Yeah. No ability/incentive to look at the bigger picture. We just siloed every organ. And exactly—it’s now in patients’ hands to understand their health over their lifespan and put together the “big picture”. No one else will advocate for you in that sense.

Gotcha. Yeah. After a few years trialing meds, I asked my psychiatrist if I could be eating differently to support my brain. She said, “Ummm, what about rotisserie chicken? That’s so easy for lunch.” Last appointment. I quit my meds cold turkey. Having an individual family doctor who treated you over the course of your lifespan disincentivized this parasitic “specialist” style of practicing medicine

@AlexKrusz Yes! Psychosomatic disorders are physical, real, seemingly quite prevalent, and worthy of scientific study and the development of adequate treatment interventions. The stigma makes people want a “physical”, “real” diagnosis.

@alysoncogene we're barely beginning to understand psychogenic / mindbody illnesses. even aside from actual infection, the confluence of pandemic stresss and social change/remote work etc caused this in a lot of people including myself. predictive processing is huge

@mousemastery By biased I actually mean “incentivized”. We are incentivized to tell people we have answers that we actually don’t have. And no one bothers to look deeper, or to put that patient’s story into (cultural) context.

@alysoncogene Are you confident in determining who needs diagnostics/treatment vs. who needs to just snap out of it?

@mousemastery No! And I’m pointing out that it seems no one is, even medical doctors! This is the crux of the problem—that we’re biased towards diagnosing and/or treating conditions for which we have very poor diagnostic criteria and/or treatment protocols. Rather than looking deeper.

More psychoactive plants :) Atropa belladonna (atropine, scopolamine, hyoscyamine) Piper methysticum (kavalactones) Piper betle (technically not psychoactive on its own, but used to wrap Areca nuts to make betel quid)

Khat, or as I like to call it “Wellbutrin’s great-great-grandfather”! Wellbutrin (bupropion) is the only synthetic cathinone approved by the FDA. You may also know synthetic cathinones by their common name—“bath salts”. :)

MoldCo even FLAUNTS on their website that their system is entirely based off the research of this one guy (which is low-impact and also debunked by immunology/toxicology authorities)! So nuts.

TIL the trending “mold toxicity” and surrounding “diagnosis and treatment” industry was made up by ONE grifter, Dr. Richie Shoemaker. He founded MoldCo, which makes $107-313/mo per patient. All it takes is one scammer and a dream…

So I just did a deep dive and literally all of these claims come back to this one guy Dr. Richie Shoemaker who’s created a whole (profitable) cult surrounding CIRS, which he invented and which every legitimate authority finds to be a total quackery. He writes books to shill his protocol. Oh—and he’s the founding physician @ moldco! He even admitted himself that the HLA thing is questionable (see below). Even CIRS practitioners don’t favor the HLA testing gimmick. As for the 80% claim, that’s from Shoemaker’s appearance in Jordan Peterson’s podcast and is also BS, stemming from a false interpretation of (again) one of Shoemaker’s proprietary datasets which is completely sampling biased bc the ERMI tests were ordered by mold suspecting ppl and not at random. But he of course doesn’t consider this in his profitable interpretation… All it takes is one scammer! biotoxinjourney.com/deciphering-hl… aaaai.org/allergist-reso…

@alysoncogene @chrislakin 80% comes from EPA with their ERMI work. You can use Grok to look into mold HLAs. It's 20-25% of the population. Muting you for suspected severe cognitive dissonance

Having a lifelong illness without realizing you have a lifelong illness is wild. I was literally like “Maybe I just have to eat beef, goat butter, and nothing else for the rest of my life.” No— I had a mold infection