My very first blog post ever was Raising Awareness of Dyspareunia. I was never officially diagnosed with it, yet it was definitely a thing I was dealing with at the time. My life has changed drastically since this blog post was written, and I'm happy to say that it's no longer an issue. It turns out that, despite my constant self-talk of "everything is okay", it was definitely not okay and nothing was going to convince my brain otherwise. Now that I've moved on from my not-so-great marriage and dating a couple of other guys, I can safely say that it was my horrible relationship that caused the dyspareunia. This just proved further that women are emotional beings; they need that connection, that love, that commitment (unless you're just horny as crap and find any guy you can find - which is definitely not me), and if you're having issues in your relationship, that can easily carry over into your sex life. It's quite a relief actually because, if you read the blog post, I was pretty depressed about ever being able to find someone to love me with an issue like that (if I ever needed to). It's good to know that it wasn't a permanent thing.
The next one I wrote was Raising Awareness of Gallstones. This is another happy ending. I finally broke down and had a consult with a general surgeon about getting my gallbladder removed, which was mentioned in an update I made to the original post. It cemented my belief that I shouldn't go through with it. I was never having constant, like weekly attacks. They weren't even monthly. They were easily managed with Vicodin. I brought up my concern of that fact that each person (who spoke about their gallbladder removal) had a different experience in the aftermath. Some were perfectly healthy. Some could never eat fatty food again. Some had to basically live their life in the bathroom after every meal. And, I self-diagnosed myself with IBS (which isn't really hard to do, to be honest. I'm surprised I never wrote a "raising awareness" post about IBS), and my biggest fear was that removing my gallbladder would exasperate my condition. The surgeon obviously couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't. He also told me that it was completely my choice. I chose to leave it in.
Anyway, this is all beside the point. Along with not having any gallbladder attacks, I haven't had an IBS attack in a very long time either, and I'm going to contribute this to my healthy diet. My diet is quite low in fat, which has been known to exasperate both conditions. I do believe that I essentially "cured" myself with a good diet, 100%.
The next post in the series was Raising Awareness of Blepharitis, which is basically the inflammation of the eyelids, and is annoying as f*ck to treat and often reoccurs anyway. I only ever had the issue when I was wearing my contacts because that's when it became very noticeable, and I could not treat the issue (with the antibiotic ointment) with my contacts in, so wearing my contacts at all became a chore. There is no cure for it, but a lot of people on forums and other more legit research articles say that doing one thing or another (like taking fish oil supplements) helps decrease attacks. I found that not to be the case, but let me share my "cure" with you. I have been doing these two things for a couple years now and it basically brought my attacks to zero:
I wash over my eyelids during every shower with a Clarisonic brush. The type of face wash I use doesn't seem to matter. I just think using it to wash my eyelids in this manner helps keep the pores from being blocked and the eyelids from getting inflamed.
The second thing I do is use my own mixture of coconut oil/olive oil/vitamin E oil/almond oil/essential oil blend as an after shower moisturizer for my skin and pay special attention to my eyelids. Coconut oil is probably 80% of the blend (so it stays solid at room temperature) and it has anti-microbial properties. I think that helps keep my eyelids clean as well. I've been able to wear my contacts issue-free for a long time. I'm quite confident that I won't have another flare-up. Also, this moisturizer is pretty bomb and I recommend anyone with dry skin to make their own. I also use it in my hair after I shower as well.*
*I wrote this a long time ago (this post has been sitting in my drafts folder forever) but I figured I can keep it for those that might be suffering; because as of August of last year I actually got the LASIK procedure and although I hadn't had a blepharitis attack in a long time, I won't even have to worry about them messing with my contacts ever again!
The last one I wrote about was Raising Awareness of PVCs. There's not really much to mention here besides the fact that I haven't been getting them anymore. It might have something to do with a better sodium to potassium balance.
[Hardly anyone gets enough potassium in their diet even when they're trying - a banana has 400mg, and you need around 4,000mg. Even supplements only give you 99mg because they will disrupt your, um, bowels if you have too much at one time. This is why people complain of getting sick when they're using Keto-based BHB salts that bind with potassium.
Also, off topic here but you know that stuff you drink when you're going to have surgery in order to clear your system? Magnesium citrate? Yeah, too much magnesium will do it too!]
Anyway, besides committing to a standalone potassium supplement and keeping my intake of salt pretty decent, I'm getting more potassium in my diet with avocados and such as well. So I'm hoping that contributes to a healthy heartbeat.
Well, I hope y'all learned something today. I'll keep writing more "raising awareness" blog posts if and when I get new shit going on as I get older. I'm sure it's bound to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment