But given that I've spent my life with a set of challenges, this crisis has given me space to sort out what parts of it are ME and what parts are issues needing to be fixed. That's pretty valuable.
Even better, I don't think we'll ever go back to boisterous 'forced socializing or you are a bad person!' attitudes. There are now conditions attached, and that's reasonable (and opens the door to conditions like 'I don't have coronavirus, but when I socialize like you guys do I panic')
My hope for cultural change post pandemic is that the shift towards remote work will persist after it's over. I love being an engineer but I can't stand working in an open office or commuting 2 1/2 hours a day.
It's anecdotal and I have no idea how widespread this is or why it happens, at least to people for whom self-isolation didn't work in the past. I can only imagine that the isolation may relieve some of the social pressure without leaving you with the feeling that you have to go to extraordinary measures to achieve it, it doesn't feel so self inflicted like self-isolation does under regular conditions. Now it's an external cause and applies to everybody.
Compared to say living in 1000 AD. Family units are smaller, life is more fast paced and it’s way more complicated with all the credit cards, the often difficult legal system, and ever present “connection” to one another through messaging and social media. During this pandemic I’ve deleted all my social media accounts and even though I’m less “connected” now, I feel much better than before and the world even feels more real to me.
(I'm not trying to push this too far: I assume it mostly applies to people who have enough control over their lives to take the necessary precautions, and who are fortunate enough that the threat to them and their loved ones remains a possibility rather than a tragic reality. And I know that the exact opposite can happen: sometimes external threats just multiply the pre-existing anxiety and make it even harder to cope.)
i.e. for parameter X which typically ranges between x and x' and for which people estimate themselves at x1, they typically severely underestimate the size of the range (x,x') and conclude that x1 is outside it, when it's really inside it.
I was diagnosed as bipolar 2 a few years ago, and I just assumed the mood swings I dealt with were normal. Doesn't everyone occasionally get too enthusiastic during a meeting? Or call in sick because they can't get out of bed? Turns out no, everyone has mood swings from time to time but mine were more predictable and severe enough they were preventing me from doing the things I wanted to. Hence the diagnosis and medication.
This is why mental health professionals are important. It can go both ways -- sometimes folks are just neurotic and overanalyzing themselves, and sometimes they're oblivious to the mental illness they do have. Medication and life changes help, but the first step is to see a professional who can help you sort through whether your mood issues rise to the level of clinical or not.
Trauma is a huge factor in mental illness as well, so much so that the definition of a “healthy individual” can only be really anchored to a specific point in time. Some things that rise to the level of clinical (anxiety, depression, BPD, PTSD, DPD) are largely seen as the result of trauma and/or some hereditary predisposition.
There’s something to be said for the anonymity of large urban center.
Small towns make your business everyone's. There's a desperation for gossip that's just gross to me, and worse, if you don't play along, you're an outcast. Which worked fine for me, except it makes you a target for local shitheads.
I get why others might like it if they're social extroverts who fit whatever local majority-normal is, if not, a city is a far better place to live.
I hope to own 5 wooded acres, so I don't even have to see anyone.
Then memories over past mistakes took over, and I started obsessing on every little bad thing I've ever done. As time went by these thoughts filled my head for the most of the day, and because of quarantine restrictions, I wasn't able to do much to shake them off. Anybody else experienced something similar?
However, it's been hard to witness and deal with the effects I've seen on other people. My roommate has been extremely stressed out. It makes me feel sad to see all the restaurants and bars that are closed down, and normally busy districts deserted at 6:00 on a Friday. I feel bad for people who have no choice but to continue working in high-risk jobs, and those whose businesses will be interrupted for quite some time, such as concert organizers. And, of course, for the hundreds of thousands of people who have died and their families.
I keep stumbling upon anecdotes of significantly improved states of mind since going keto/carnivore. Have you found any discussions putting forward a proposed mechanism behind these reportings?
The biggest culprit for gout is definitely carbs (sugar) and dehydration in my opinion and the carnivore diet and/or keto pretty much takes care of that, it eliminates the carbs and meat in my experience makes you drink a lot of water.
It is also a lot easier to maintain your weight (also very important in the gout equation) on carnivore, I find it really hard to over eat, you hit satiety fast and I find that there is a lot less noise in the hunger signals. My stomach now days only makes itself reminded when I truly need energy, no "fake" cravings.
My mental state also seem clearer, I find fat to be a smoother source of energy then carbs. Fat is a slow stable burn while carbs is a violent explosive burn, which is cool every now and then but you pay a price for it.
Citation? Because isn't gout generally thought by the medical establishment to be caused by high-protein, low vegetable diets that raise uric acid?
The carnivore diet stuff is just straight up garbage fad dieting except it sounds cool or whatever so it appeals to insecure dudes. No real substance to it, and everyone I’ve ever seen promote just spits out the same bullshit claims as every other fad diet testimonial (“no more brain fog”)
Unless you’ve been instructed to by an actual doctor, switching to a meme internet diet promoted by morons like Jordan Peterson is probably not a great idea.
If it works for people so what? Personally, I would never go that far but it seems like most people aren't getting enough protein and could use a bump.
You can see people you care about getting sick by buying into that absurd diet.
Or you care about society in general, as you are part of it.
It's also possible to care about strangers in general - it's empathy.
I don't understand how it is a garbage diet either? You get all the nutrients you need while eliminating pretty much everything else. That to me sounds like an excellent starting ground to then build upon and figure out what YOUR gut is cool with.
If you have a deficiency of, say, magnesium - that won't be fixed by eating more meat or less sugar, but it might give you strange cravings or bad moods. And if you have a gut that is working inefficiently, it might not adapt well to a high fat diet. And this translates into "bad and good diets", because eating differently reduces the symptoms.
But if your body is generally taking in things efficiently, its macronutrient requirements are going to be mostly proportional to your energy use, and then you can have relatively more protein or relatively more carbs without many ill effects.
So IMHO a decent starting place for dietary change is not really diet itself, but to take a multivitamin, start intermittent fasting, and to get some daily light, full-body exercise. These things start up the flywheel of reducing ongoing deficiencies and increasing selective pressure on the gut.
I'm not a medical person, I got my first gout attack around 24 (33 now) and since then I had at least one major flare up (lasting weeks) every year + a few minor once per year. 2018 I had the mother of all flare ups in my knee, I thought I had experience pain but oh my lord that was pain on a whole nother level. That made me take extreme measures dietary wise and I've been gout free since (knock on wood).
>Citation? Because isn't gout generally thought by the medical establishment to be caused by high-protein, low vegetable diets that raise uric acid?
As I've heard from the person doing carnivore this diet is low-protein and high-fat one.
The point of the article is that we have five appetites, not one: protein, carbs, fats, sodium and calcium.
Then:
"The thing about ultra-processed foods is that they tend to be low in protein – which is expensive – and high in cheap carbs and fats. It is these foods that have largely been responsible for the dilution of protein in Western diets since the 1960s. And the more ultra-processed foods people eat, the more calories they need to consume to get the target intake of protein, with disastrous consequences."
So, get your protein (nuts,meat, fish, dairy, etc, etc) in and the rest should follow naturally. Once you fix up your protein intake, you may find that you fix other diet related snags as well. This is another telling quote:
"Intriguingly, in our experiments with people, we found that most of the extra calories eaten by those on a low-protein diet came from savoury snacks, especially those that tasted of umami, the signature flavour of protein. Protein-deprived subjects were craving things that tasted like protein, even though they were made of carbs. Our food environment is awash with such umami-flavoured carbs and fats, which we call “protein decoys”: crisps, instant noodles, crackers and so on."
I don't think I have overdone it on the quotes but the message is quite clear. You may need this to join the dots:
"Ultra-processed foods make us fat, but not because we have strong appetites for the fats and carbs they contain, as is often thought to be the case. Rather, it is because our appetite for protein is stronger than our ability to limit fat and carb intake."
And if you have to live with one, you know that the first few weeks were bliss, until they started getting antsy and began offloading their nervous energy on you. Can't win.