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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3002 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 7, 2022

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So I started feeling really sick in the early morning hours of December 3 (extremely bad sore throat, uncontrollable coughing, pounding head, aching muscles, etc) and started suspecting COVID. Yesterday I finally got around to taking a RAT test. Coughed some sputum into a tube, mixed it with the buffer, squeezed two drops of the mixture onto the specimen well, and it came back positive.

It isn't affecting me as badly as I expected especially considering that I'm immunocompromised - it absolutely hit like a train early on, but the worst of the symptoms seem to have dissipated within the first two to three days of experiencing them. The most annoying part of it at this point is the low-level brain fog and the stress of trying not to cough or to otherwise spread it when I do have to go out in public, both of which are to be expected and are not particularly unique aspects of COVID.

During this period I've been staying inside for the most part and playing online chess and Scrabble with random internet people. And trying to learn Blender. I'm halfway towards making a donut in it.

EDIT: I just had breakfast, and can conclude that my sense of taste is definitely gone now or at least diminished. It's very surreal to eat a burger and receive all the textural input without the accompanying taste you would associate with it. It's a profoundly neutral experience.

My personal advice, while it’s an active infection, is to take vitamin D at least twice a day, and if possible without freezing or interacting within 6 feet of people, take a 15 min walk in sunlight with bare arms and neck daily.

Zinc is a vital part of the immune system, and the worst COVID outcomes are people low in zinc and D. I took two zinc gluconate pills at breakfast and one each with lunch and dinner. (Zinc on a bare stomach results in vomiting.)

I also took 1 cup (1/4 liter) tonic water at those same meals, because hydroxychloroquine is a form of quinine (which tonic water has), and even Fauci said chloroquine (HCL’s precursor) helps tremendously with SARS, while banned doctors say HCL unlocks the body’s ability to use dietary zinc against SARS-CoV-2.

My bout with Omicron barely lasted two days on this protocol, and I felt great afterward.

As for losing smell/taste, it sucks, and then when it comes back, it sometimes comes back wrong. I smelled nothing for three months after Delta, and then a day after we got our carpets cleaned, everything smelled like carpet cleaner. People recommend getting a variety of essential oils and other smelly things; I used a variety of cheap cough drops, each a different flavor/smell, right before eating meals. I believe they anesthetized the irritated/inflamed nerves long enough for me to smell subtler things. I never lost taste, but if I had, I’d’ve tried “miracle fruit”:

Synsepalum dulcificum, or the miracle fruit plant, is a tropical plant that overwinters in southern Florida. It produces red berries that contain a glycoprotein called miraculin that change the way food tastes, primarily turning sour into sweet.

The most annoying part of it at this point is the low-level brain fog and the stress of trying not to cough or to otherwise spread it when I do have to go out in public, both of which are to be expected and are not particularly unique aspects of COVID.

Do you put on a mask?

Do you put on a mask?

I do, yes.

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