So it's been six weeks since I was sick with a mild 'flu' that I got over relatively quickly.
Happy Valentine's Day!
The only problem?
I still have a lingering cough 6 weeks later.
Let me tell you, my coworkers do not approve.
I've never had a lingering cough that's lasted this long, further leading me to believe that I may have already been subjected to COVID-19 before all the FUD set in. To add to this theory, Sonano county hasn't had a new case of the disease for four days in a row now. I don't believe it's because we are so good at social distancing... I think it's because it already rolled through here pretty hard and no one even knew about it.
Another health issue I'm having.
A while back (my girlfriend says 4-5 months ago) my pinky-finger got really swollen and itchy. It was a bit alarming, but mostly annoying. After a few days the swelling went down and left some really scaly-feeling dry skin behind that was very tough. I promptly forgot about it after it went away fully, like ya do.
Well, it happened again a few days ago.
I have since self-diagnosed this issue as a mild case of arthritic psoriasis.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/psoriasis/symptoms-causes/syc-20355840
Psoriasis
Psoriasis is a common skin condition that speeds up the life cycle of skin cells. It causes cells to build up rapidly on the surface of the skin. The extra skin cells form scales and red patches that are itchy and sometimes painful.
I wouldn't recommend looking at pictures of psoriasis on the web. Pretty gross. I could only find a few pics of mild cases that look like what I have.
The cause of psoriasis isn't fully understood, but it's thought to be related to an immune system problem with T cells and other white blood cells, called neutrophils, in your body.
T cells normally travel through the body to defend against foreign substances, such as viruses or bacteria.
But if you have psoriasis, the T cells attack healthy skin cells by mistake, as if to heal a wound or to fight an infection.
So like...
It's somewhat alarming that people are calling COVID-19 airborne AIDS and I apparently have this immune system problem that seems to be getting worse.
However, I've realized I've had this issue for pretty much a decade now. I found a really old picture of my feet back from 2011 and it's obviously the same shit. At the time I thought it was athlete's foot or something but medication didn't work on it.
Regardless, it is a bit alarming that it's popping up on my hands and wrists now. Over a year ago I believe it popped up on my right wrist very slightly and I had no idea what it was. It randomly seems to go active/inactive and I can still see the inactive spots even though they are skin colored and not red.
So that's fun...
Fortunately, I think there are actions I can take to mitigate this problem.
Psoriasis triggers
* ... * Vitamin D deficiency
So I've always had some weird vitamin D issues in the past. I even had Jaundice as a baby and there is some picture of me in a photo album somewhere with me hanging out in the sun, doing baby things.
So for the past couple days I've made sure to get 5-10 minutes of direct sunlight and my issue cleared up pretty fast without the whole scaly dry skin being left behind... so that's a silver lining I suppose.
Considering how much of a recluse I am it would make sense that I continue to have vitamin deficiencies.
Especially ones potentially related to the sun during cold months... October and November seem to be a pretty bad month for me in general when I take into consideration my recurring seasonal depression and subsequent video game addiction.
I suppose I should eat more fish and mushrooms in addition to more sun.
Did you know mushrooms absorb vitamin D if you leave them in the sun? So weird.
Not good!
Complications
- Obesity. People with psoriasis, especially those with more severe disease, are more likely to be obese. It's not clear how these diseases are linked...
Okay, so that's pretty weird, because my default weight is 180-200, and I was 230-250 for a really long time and had no idea why. Even when I got my job at Amazon I only dropped from 250 to 230 in the first year, despite walking 60 miles a week on average. It was only after drastically changing my diet and going to the gym that I was able to get back down to 180 again more recently.
Cardiovascular disease. For people with psoriasis, the risk of cardiovascular disease is twice as high as it is for those without the disease. Psoriasis and some treatments also increase the risk of irregular heartbeat, stroke, high cholesterol and atherosclerosis.
I was having an irregular heartbeat issue and weird chest pains before I dropped the weight. Also the doctor told me my cholesterol was high, which I thought was strange and was part of the reason I decided to try harder.
There are also several other conditions on the complications list that I was worried about before I read them here. I'll spare the details.
The Cure?
As any doctor will tell you, the best thing we can do is get our bodies to heal themselves. "Proper diet and exercise" is the best advice they give, and they give it often. On this note, even though I walk at least 50 miles a week at work, I still can't remember the last time I sweat from physical activity. I can guarantee it's been over 3 months. Time flies. My diet is slipping as well, but I haven't really thought much of it because my waist size is still a 32 down from 40. Because being thin means you're healthy, right?
Also, we really have no idea how safe the food is that we eat. We're subjected to thousands of trace chemicals/pesticides on the daily in our food, water, and even in the air. There are thousands of variables and no way to track them.
If I was taking this super seriously I would probably go full vegan. Factory farms are absolutely heinous. The savagery of factory farming animals so we can leverage that gross abuse into factory farm people is palpable. If people had to look at the lives lived of the animals they ate... they wouldn't eat them. Ignorance is bliss. See no evil.
Hmmmmm, bacon.
Yeah, but I'm not trying that hard. It is what it is. Let it ride.
Ah well, look on the bright side!
At least CoinMarketCap has a sense of humor...
Or should I say Coin Market Crap? I hear they're being bought out by Binance for $400M... How it could possibly be worth that much... I have no idea, but it can't be good. CZ attacking Steem yet still leaves a sour taste. He is so canceled.
https://coingape.com/binance-acquisition-cmc-400-million-criticized/
No disrespect to Binance, but this isn’t good at all for crypto. CMC is like the independent listing site for all crypto. When you have a crypto exchange/company take it over, who’s saying they will not have implicit biases when listing projects? Whatever though, money talks right.
This acquisition doesn’t make much sense to me. But a simple explanation is that Binance wants to get access to CoinMarketap’s 207.2 million traffic it got in the last 6 months.
Hive powered up.
Yep... I haven't canceled my powerdown yet, but I did power up my last 2 powerdowns that carried over from my Steem dump. I'm still amazed Steem is able to maintain the value that it is. I assume Justin Sun is using his own money to help prop up the price as a matter of honor and saving face in the wake of the shitstorm he has caused. Hopefully he's been dumping Hive to get more Steem. Fingers crossed.
As the master of being a pump/dump false-hype shill man, I really have to wonder if he's somehow going to still make money on this investment. On the other hand, I don't really care because dumping my Steem is more of a political statement than anything else. I might save the last few powerdowns just in case there is a spike after the selling pressure disappears, but other than that I'm quite happy to be getting $500 a week from what I understand is "free money".
Hold my bags, sucker!
Sun continues to double down on censorship, modifying the Steemit API itself to censor content. Now all apps that rely on that API are getting incomplete information from the main node itself... so bad. People are wondering when they'll start censoring the blockchain directly.
On top of that abomination, he continues to dish out 1M coin delegations to abusers, and all the abusers that were sidelined under the old leadership have come back to once again exploit the reward pool. I ask again, who is buying? Who is propping up this price and adding liquidity to the market? It seems like everyone Justin Sun supports is just looking to farm rewards and cash out slowly.
Needless to say, it would be amazing if Steem somehow bled Sun dry and left him penniless. He's already locked in for millions of dollars, and if we dump another 100M coins on him at 17 cents that's potentially 17 million dollars he may never get back if this all blows up in his face. Would be epic, to be sure.
Conclusion
I should probably make a doctors appointment to get a second opinion on my self-diagnosis. You'd think now would be the worst time to do something like that, but considering the reports I've heard, it might be the best time. I talked to someone who had to go to the Emergency Room recently and they said it was completely empty. What a surprise.
Return from Sick! to edicted's Web3 Blog
