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Comment by spider-mario | Hacker News Reader

> How do you know she isn't experiencing psychosomatic symptoms?

Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate? Especially since her symptoms appeared before she even started measuring air quality.

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>Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate?

I have no clue. Maybe. Maybe not.

What doesn't pass the smell test for me is that the author fixated on what she thinks is the cause of her symptoms for non-rational, arbitrary reasons. She decided her symptoms MUST be the result of her building being built on reclaimed land. Why? Well, she got a consumer sensor that shows her something and therefore that must be it. Maybe whatever that VOC sensor is showing has NOTHING to do with anything she has.

It's reminiscent of conspiracy theory thinking, where the conspiracy theorist encounters some unknown phenomena and instead of saying "I don't know", they decide on a solution (whether that be aliens, or illuminati or living on reclaimed land) and they cherry pick and interpret evidence in a way that supports their ad hoc conclusion.

How do you figure? She apparently had a lot of medical testing that showed something was wrong with her physically but the doctors had no idea what. Sounds like this was long before she knew anything was off with the property.

The article didn't make any concrete accusations and she was just asking for an investigation. She didn't say causation, she said correlation. "I began to think that there was an important correlation between this data and my symptoms." Even when she saw high VOCs, she didn't assume it was the remediation site. " I knew the situation was likely going to be complicated and that the tVOC readings on my personal monitors were not going to be conclusive on their own, but my gut told me something was terribly wrong." She was open to the site not being the cause. "I was thinking: If you don’t want me to be worried about this chemical’s impact to my health, you should tell me exactly why it wasn’t included in the clean-up despite being above residential limits." + "So, what made me sick? While in the end everyone agreed it was VOCs, I may never know for certain if it was the chemicals in the soil or groundwater and, if so, which ones."

Also, she mentioned a few times that doctors, government, and even Irvine Company's public relations person admitted VOCs made her sick, but just didn't know where the VOCs came from.

None of that sounds like a conspiracy theory.

>he didn't say causation, she said correlation. "I began to think that there was an important correlation between this data and my symptoms."

Read on, because she then becomes convinced and send a message to her property manager that starts off with "The chemicals are still pouring out full blast." and starts her crusade until the management company lets her out of her lease (she wonders why they would do such a thing, but from sidelines, it's obvious - they don't want to deal with her anymore because even after they paid a contractor to test her apartment and surrounding area, she's not satisfied).

>She was open to the site not being the cause. "I was thinking: If you don’t want me to be worried about this chemical’s impact to my health, you should tell me exactly why it wasn’t included in the clean-up despite being above residential limits."

Are we reading the same thing? She's already down the rabbit hole by this point. She's asking non sequiturs and setting irrational standards. She wants answers to a thing that has nothing to do with anything she's going through. Again, there were multitude of reports, tests, and assessments that deemed the site safe - she just doesn't believe any of them (almost like she's asserting a consipracy)

>Also, she mentioned a few times that doctors, government, and even Irvine Company's public relations person admitted VOCs made her sick, but just didn't know where the VOCs came from.

Are you sure they did? And if they did, how would they know? And if they didn't, why would they challenge her? They don't know the situation. If you're a government employee tasked with handling her complaint, at some level all you can do is be empathetic and courteous. She seems to mistake this for agreement. None of it is convincing at all.

Again, I have no idea what the cause of symptoms are but the way she became convinced that this MUST be the answer 'smells' off to me.

Her quasi-experiment [1], which resembles an interrupted time series design [2, 3], does tend to support a causal implication of “living in that apartment”. There seems to be something about living in that apartment that is causing those symptoms. From there, hypothesizing that it could be the air contents doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to me.

[1] https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ashley-Gjov...

[2] https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h2750

[3] https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/quasi-experime...

Dude - absolutely. Your brain is a powerful and weird thing, and simply thinking of a thing can influence your autonomic nervous system, changing breathing patterns, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Ask anyone that has general anxiety or a panic disorder.

Anxiety and panic tend to cause an increase in heart rate, though, not a drop. The symptoms also started before she had any suspicion about what could be the problem.

They can manifest in different ways, but tend to increase X, yes.

started before she had any suspicion about what could be the problem

That is so common. As someone who has regular panic attacks, it takes months to admit that there is something wrong with you, that it’s not a form of covid, no you’re not dying, you can breathe even without concentrating, your appendix had already been cut out, and the only thing you need is a psychiatrist. Being smart and able to analyze some random numbers and events only adds to the problem, because you sound reasonable for much longer time. For your entire life you believe that you are a perfect error-free mechanism that cannot be wrong. Of course it takes time to realize that it’s not true (and never was, really).

Sorry, I don’t understand your point. Mine was simply that a belief in toxic air could not have caused the symptoms to appear since she didn’t have that belief yet.

Chances are that the other, core (unconscious) belief caused the symptoms, and then her consciousness made up the toxic air theory to fit everything together, because some VOC counter had some digits on it and there was a burial of unknown waste down the road and something smells at 3 am. E.g. when moved in, she have seen a clock in the hall or a doorbell that subtly reminded her about some event in the past when her self-esteem was hit hard and she felt worthless. Now every time she walks in, it kicks in and causes a set of psychosomatic symptoms. That’s how it works, if this is the case, and that is what I referred to as “so common”. People often talk about “bad” places, bad energy, more psychotic ones may think that it’s their neighbors irradiating them. White coat syndrome is very “popular” as well, because doctors may get associated with harm and pain deep inside. We are constantly attacked by these associations that make us do [strange] choices or have preferences (pen color, perfume smell, facial features, etc), but only hard ones cause sickness, because they make our unconsciousness burn.

It’s very hard to realize that an issue may be completely inside your very smart and logical mind. It must be something in the air, or germs/viruses, or vibrations. I bet that at least one of the doctors suggested her to check her mental health, but we always dismiss that, because we are fine, alright. We are not the type of person who could need that, gosh, that’s laughable. Only idiots and schizophrenics may have mental health issues, not us. Of course this little nuance couldn’t make it into the article.

E.g. in my case it took nine months of occasionally “dying”, a bunch of pricey and unpleasant procedures, then two more weeks of the chronic state and three doctors suggesting it, before I decided to go check my mind. Symptoms rate dropped 50% after the first appointment and 45% more after I completed my first “homework”.

Yeah, anxiety increases heart rate not lowers it. Her heart rate while living there looked to be around 50bpm in the charts, which is apparently "low" -- not just for her personally, but medically low.

High heart rate: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/175241#causes (anxiety)

Low heart rate: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-a-slow-heart-rate-good... (nothing psychological)

As a runner, when I’m in marathon training mode, my rest heart rate is very close to 40. Pro or very serious athletes can have a resting heart rate near 30. It’s actually a great way to tell your current fitness level (if you know your own baselines)

You would need to know a lot more before you worry about 50 being low.

And yes, I had to get an EKG and the doctor raised his eye brow at my heart rate, but I said I run and he immediately Moved on.

> Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate?

Yes, meditation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333930474_Efficacy_...

Also panic attacks can mess up your heart rate quite a bit.

The meditation explanation doesn’t really seem applicable here. The effects obtained through meditation are through the removal of stress, not an increase in it: it would seem doubtful that within days of moving in, she suddenly started meditating and it had all the negative effects that she described instead of the expected benefits and she didn’t make the connection and she stopped meditating and causing this to herself within a week of moving out.

I didn't mean meditation specifically. Just a proof that psychosomatic effect can be that large. I don't think we have enough details to discuss how likely that is or other details.

Google is failing me but someone posted an journal article a while back of a person in a clinical trial who basically “crashed” (heart rate and blood pressure dropped very low) and they started resuscitation efforts until they realize he got a placebo and the symptoms went away.

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