The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
It's October, and for the second year in a row I'm abstaining from alcohol. This year I'm trying cannabis, too. This will be the first time since ~2019 I've gone an extended period without either. About two weeks ago I stopped buying the high-concentration cartridges I was used to in preparation. Of course I then burned every last drop I could of the not-yet-spent ones before throwing them all out yesterday. And raiding my golf bag for pre-rolls, which stink to high hell when you walk right back indoors. Alcohol I don't buy anymore unless I want to drink it all, because I drink it all.
Anyone else participating in sober October, aka internet lent?
For me, every month is Sober October. My parents were both problem drinkers, so having negative role models helped, I guess, but really I've just never liked alcohol. It's always tasted like paint thinner to me. I'm told it's an acquired taste, but why intentionally cultivate a bad habit?
I've never tried any other drugs, and I quit soda, with or without sugar, over 20 years ago and haven't really missed it.
I don't know what else is left. Reddit, I guess?
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Personal data, n of 1:
It takes 200 days to experience all of the benefits and the mind habit shift.
30 days is good if you're shooting for a "break"
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You know, I tried the same thing for regular catholic lent, and found that it was so easy it wasn't worth doing. Beyond mildly aiding with a touch of weight loss, I didn't notice much of anything.
Why not keep doing it if it was so easy?
I like it, and I saw few benefits from giving them up.
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I sometimes think about quitting diet soda.
I "accidentally" started drinking about 4 liters/day Coke0 after my kids were born to stay awake. (It felt safer to have a cold soda around babies rather than hot coffee, plus I like the taste better.)
I weaned myself off by drinking the sparkling water from costco. Still expensive, but no more caffeine dependency.
You could buy a machine for turning tap water into carbonated water, they're ~100$. It'd probably pay for itself in a month or two.
I did look into this, and they generally require co2 cartridges and regular cleaning which reduces their cost effictiveness. I also have the goal of cutting the fuzzy drink addiction entirely at some point, and the regular bill reminds me I should be making progress towards the goal.
The CO2 cartridges are kind of expensive if you buy them at retail -- I think they are priced so as to barely pencil out against buying the fuzzy water premade.
However a dive/paintball/welding/fire extinguisher shop can do it for like $2 -- if you are really serious you could plumb the thing to accept a larger welding canister, which would last roughly forever and you just exchange the whole thing at the welding place.
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How much Costco fizzy water were you drinking where it was a notable expense.
I'm "down" to 3ish cans/day. That's still a $10 pack every other week = $250 / year. That feels like a lot of money to spend on water when the tap spits it out for free.
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Quitting it in favor of the real sugary deal, or quitting it in favor of something less flavorful/carbonated like water/tea/coffee?
The latter. What have you done?
I remember I used to guzzle coca cola like crazy, I just liked the taste so much. Especially when working, I had a cola glass or can next to me all the time and took a sip every minute or so. Then my doctor said to me my blood tests show high sugar, and I have diabetics in the family, so I got a bit scared. So I stopped it completely. There were some cravings for a while, but fortunately I am very caffeine resistant, so it was mostly about the sugar thing. In a couple of month is subsided, and now the taste feels completely disgusting for me, I'd much rather drink pure water than that. I still have a bit of a habit of sipping while working, but it's mostly either water or unsugared tea. I tried carbonated sugarless drinks but their fizziness annoys me for some reason.
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I personally quit diet soda as part of quitting caffeine altogether after being an addict during high school/college, so I just went with drinking only water as my source of liquids. I had terrible headaches and trouble staying awake at work for about 2-3 weeks, but after powering through that, it was pretty easy. I have no idea how effective that would be for anyone else, though. One advantage I had is that I really dislike carbonation in liquids and take steps to flatten my soda before drinking it if it's an option, and so it was just the taste and caffeine I missed.
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It might be worth trying just to see how hard it is. I quit alcohol for a month one year and it didn't bother me. I quit my daily coke for a month the next year, and the whole time I felt like a junkie deprived of his fix. Discovering that led me to cut my consumption in half even after the month was up ... which probably delayed the kidney stone that talked me down to my current one can per week. (fine, some weeks it's two, and it's never zero - "junkie deprived of his fix", remember)
Second this. I didn't believe I had a soda problem for a long time, because I truly believed I could stop any time I wanted to. It was only once I actually tried to give it up for the first time that I realized "oh shit I actually can't quit".
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I came back home from chiang mai and it was quite a trip. I felt like I finally grew up as a person. By the end my roommate wrote a goodbye note and the driver started chopping onions or something. I'll take the week off and start working again but I noticed a bunch of things different about me.
Ship fast, daily and think of it all the time
Self explanatory. Also try to not go broke whilst building your mvp. In my case, my roommate had ways to get money regularly so we'd be ok
girls
I went out about 20 times in a months time at night and opened 300 plus girls. Many were attracted to me the moment I started chatting and I'm a social dynamo now. I remember coming here back in 2021, terrible with girls and now I've had more interesting experiences than anyone I know besides one or two guys. I can't imagine why I found my oneitis to even be attractive now and am glad for not settling before.
other social interactions
I was at the airport last night and began vibing with this Estonian guy where we both began playing kanye's music on his phone, then the same with a French guy. Back in chiang mai I stole or tried stealing girls from two guys, both naturals or Chad going by one's lingo, my height but weighed 20-30 kgs more and both forced their Instagrams on me. One took me aside for 10 minutes and told me how awesome I was to talk to. I had guys try to get my Instagram because they liked my vibe lol.
why you should travel
You learn so much more. Sure it's not a primary thing but it's super important. Make money, meditate, get jacked and travel. I'll come back soon again lol
why don't you just stay there? or somewhere in SE Asia. Seems way better for you there than being back in pussy prison america.
I am Indian who lives in India lol. I'd never want to live in SEA if I were a guy living in the west as my ultimate aims are making a whole bunch of money and having a large family.
Can't do either in SEA. SEA is a quality of life improvement for me as India is not just dirt poor, corrupt, hates higher castes (especially mine) but also a place of scarcity in every sense.
I met people from various places in chiang mai and even spent a week alone in pai, something I had never done before in my life, be alone somewhere for a few days straight for a vacation.
How's America pussy prison 😆?
Then I guess I don't understand you. if you really want to start a large family, you need to get married quickly and plant roots somewhere, probably in your home country, even if you don't like it. Travelling to SEA to party is... not going to lead to a good wife and kids back home :/
America is... I don't know man. The best country in the world for making money. The worst for meeting women.
I went to SEA to work with my co founder on my startup with him. SEA because it provides a great quality of life on similar price range as India. I was not there to party and did some drugs for one week of the two months I was there. I want to simply make money and for that I will need to travel to the west since that is where you have the highest probability.
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There's much much worse places than America, lol
Like where? Maybe norway?
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I started taking Berberine a few weeks ago in an effort to control my cholesterol. Here are my blood test results:
Overall, I'm happy. My good cholesterol went up, which lowers my overall risk. And my triglycerides are very low now. My LDL is still very high unfortunately. This might not matter all that much.
The low triglycerides level is great news. I drink more than I should which would in theory cause high trigylcerides.
I'm still undecided on statins. My overall 10 year cardiac event risk is about 1.5% which is well below the 5% threshold at which people typically consider statins. But I know some doctors like Peter Attia like to push statins on even low-risk patients. I might try to find a Life Extension specialist doctor to have a conversation.
Have you had a calcium score done? My LDL was lower than yours but father had a heart attack at 51. My calcium score came back 95%ile for my age so onto statins I went.
The calcium score is relatively inexpensive though. I paid it out of pocket. Not that much reason not to do it.
I haven't. I've thought about it. I suppose there are no downsides except the cost and the very small risk from having a chest CT.
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Berberine is known to interact with other drugs, have you noticed any effects?
I don't take other drugs fortunately. I have noticed bloating from the berberine however.
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So, uh, kind of gross but… having recently returned from some air travel, and going through a few airport bathrooms, is it really the norm for men (and women I guess) to loudly grunt and groan while dropping a deuce?
The amount of loud such noises coming out of the stalls across multiple airport bathrooms quite surprised me, as I’ve never felt the need to make vocalizations while getting my business done.
Is this the common technique, that I somehow failed to acquire? Or is there some kind of correlation I’m missing between people who crap in airports and people who make loud crapping groans?
Noise discipline under duress is really difficult. Shitting in the woods was a problem back in basic for many of my fellow conscripts. Between insects crawling up my bunghole, constipitants in the food, the need to dig your own shithole and the mockery of your peers, it was always more attractive to hold it in as much as possible. But when you finally needed to go, you let out your best karate kiai to gokublast out your ass.
I am INTENSELY curious about guys who needed to crap while under fire. The problem with asking grunts is that they are full of shit about everything, including how they claim they are no longer full of shit.
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Grunting is for weaklings, personally I go with a victorious roar.
The only polite thing to do is cheer when someone roars and a satisfying 'ploop' of a single solid log makes its drop. 'You sunk my battleshit!'
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Completely speculative, but maybe people are more prone to GI distress in the airport?
You have people who are dehydrated because they don't want to get up to urinate on the plane. People who got sloshed because they have anxiety about flying. People who ate things their digestive system isn't used to because that was the only option on the plane, or they came from a place without the food they are accustomed to. There's the factor of holding it because taking an unnecessary dump in an airplane lavatory is both unpleasant and rude. And finally, the possibility on being on your fifth cup of coffee because you had to get up at four AM to catch your flight and still have to go to a meeting this afternoon.
In general, I think you are not supposed to have to push so hard it requires groaning. It seems plausible though, that the selection on people who are so desperate they would use the public toilet also selects for people who are having an irregular bowel movement.
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The toilet stall is the last place where I will care about sensory manners. It's the designated place for pissing and shitting, why would I try to hide the fact that I'm doing exactly that in there? If anything, it's the people that are shooting up in there that should be trying to sound like they are taking a dump. So yes, if I feel the need to grunt or groan when suffering from a stool irregularity in a bathroom I will do exactly that.
Fuck people that don't wipe the seat/sink or use the brush, though.
I think there's a misunderstanding. I'm not worried about manners or complaining. This isn't a judgement thing, it was a curiosity. I'm expressing casual surprise that from the sound of it people regularly make loud vocalizations while crapping, because it sounds like a lot of 'straining', which I don't understand.
I think you just have enviable stool quality. People that are constipated have to strain harder.
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Airports contain many people from different cultures passing through. In some of those cultures, it isn't a faux pas to make loud noises while undertaking ablutions (see snorting while clearing nose, hawking up phlegm, spitting, grunting while defecating, peeing directly into water rather than side of the porcelain to limit splashing noises).
I noticed in the West that there was less of the type of thing you're talking about compared to overseas. While overseas I change my sensory filters to ignore all sorts of things that would ping my normal disgust threshold.
Edit: Also airports give a greater than normal feeling of anonymity. People would feel more free to do something in transit that they wouldn't do in their workplace bathroom for instance.
Ok but like, at home alone are people letting out load grunts while shitting? My surprise isn’t the public aspect, it’s the urge to make noises to begin with
I have no idea. I presume so unless there's some weird exhibitionist kink out there where people are like 'You know what? I'm going to shit really loud in this public toilet so everyone knows that I'm shitting. Oh yeah.. you like that? Oh so dirty.' lmao
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Regardless of growth plate status, can HGH still make your bones thicker/wider at any age? For example, can your vertebrae and femur, and wrist bones all get thicker from HGH treatment? If you had growth stunted would this still work to at least thicken bones after your growth plates fuse?
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