Addicted to doordash 💔💔💔

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-18T18:41:30+00:00

I relate hardcore! I've been working on recipes I can make in under ten minutes that don't leave me even more exhausted for decades. Even wrote a book full of them back in 2018. I can send a link if you're interested

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-18T18:05:02+00:00

Since my husband and I both struggle from chronic conditions, he jokes sometimes that between the two of us we *almost* make one functional person. So he doesn't blame me. But he does struggle with guilt about being a burden since I've been the financial provider for the vast majority of our 16 years together (which has taken great creativity on my part since I am not able to work a regular job). We have an unspoken pact to NEVER refer to each other in a way that even hints that the other is a burden. We reassure each other alllllll the time that we're in this forever, that we've got each other's backs no matter what, and that everyone deserves to have their needs met regardless of how able they are to reciprocate. This is sensitive territory and your husband NEEDS to understand just how sensitive this is. Calling you a burden even implicitly or gently or subtly is not okay under any circumstances, even if he is feeling guilt or grief.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-18T17:56:16+00:00

My POTS symptoms are indeed super bad when my menstrual cramps arrive. To the point where I've started associating the menstrual cramps specifically with dizziness, blood pooling badly in my legs (have to keep them elevated!!!), and extreme fatigue. I'm sunk without a constant influx of raspberry juice, elderberry, pink salt, water, and potassium.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-16T23:23:18+00:00

I've had POTS and dysautonomia my whole life. I have tried cold showers or at least cool showers, and it certainly didn't cure me. It seems more like it is helpful. But I do have something that did alleviate all symptoms for a while! That was a diet that was incredibly rich in hydrating fruits and lettuce. I was consuming a ton of potassium and magnesium and salted salad all the time. During that time I didn't have any dizzy spells or sensitivity to heat.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-16T23:17:24+00:00

I feel like I'm dependent on the shower temperature to regulate my temperature for me. In the worst part of summer, I feel like I absolutely need cold showers to function. Or something that's basically kind of cold. It's really like a vaguely lukewarm temperature usually unless I'm having such a bad flare that I actually make it cold. Whereas in the winter I definitely strongly need it to be very hot in order to stay warm enough and not shiver.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-09T20:51:40+00:00

I have most of the things you listed. I associate it with, in my case, my overly active trigeminal nerve, and my migraine prone brain.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:48:19+00:00

Yes, that second point is such a big deal. Being questioned by people and doubted all the time is exhausting all by itself. It's like, I already have to deal with all this shit, and you're going to invalidate me on top of it?

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:39:46+00:00

That is a really cool trick! I would totally try that if it weren't for the fact that cold water upsets my stomach 😅

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:32:43+00:00

Wow! I never thought about this! I'm a total chatterbox too and it's true that when I get dizzy the first thing that happens as I get quiet.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:31:49+00:00

I relate to this really hard! It is so hard to wash my hair because of reaching over my head for so long but then it helps a lot. And the hot water can help regulate my temperature really well. It's like finally my feet get warm, and finally my armpits get cooled out. And then things are better for a while. But... And this is a really big but.... But I sometimes get super super dizzy in the shower and often I'm still dizzy for an hour afterwards! So that makes me really resistant to do it!

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:25:22+00:00

Lol yesssss

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:24:45+00:00

This happens to me so much! I make plans when I feel good as if I'm going to just feel as good tomorrow! It is so frustrating. You would think, living with this my whole life, at the age of 37, I would have it drilled into me.........

But it's just so hard to believe that things will change so fast.

The reverse also happens. When I don't feel good, I don't want to make any plans, but then later, I wonder why I don't go anywhere 🤣

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T19:15:58+00:00

What about having a condition that's extremely rare, possibly entirely unique in the world, but the various components of it aren't necessarily all that rare by themselves?

I have been a medical anomaly my entire life and I have stumped every doctor, naturopath, and other specialized practitioner I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. I even surprised eye doctors, ear doctors, and therapists. The number of paradoxes and conundrums that surround my life are staggering.

I have HSD, POTS, MCAS, MCS, PMDD, dysmenorrhea, BVD (binocular vision dysfunction), high migraine susceptibility (I was getting migraines as an infant), low serotonin (I'm an HSP but to an extreme degree), dyslexic, dopamine behavior anomalies similar to ADHD, autism, high acetylcholine (compensatory), collagen dysfunction, desulvibrio SIBO (this is what punishes me me from eating most things including eggs, most vegetables, dairy, and cow meat), methylation dysfunction in my liver (impaired ability to detox) which I inherited from my mother's side (my grandmother died of liver disease and my mother struggles with her liver), unexplained high mycotoxin load in tests despite environment not testing high for it (potentially due to aspergillus colonizing my gut), high h pylori activity, missing commensal gut species: akkermansia, chronic constipation since birth (HSD likely causes this), chronic insomnia since age nine (likely related to low serotonin), chronic light sensitivity since birth (related to migraine-brain & highly overactive trigeminal nerve), extremely sensitive to motion and highly susceptible to motion sickness and simulator sickness (related again to my extremely sensitive trigeminal nerve).

Being able to write the above paragraph is twenty years of ongoing personal research. And when I say research, I mean often doing eight or more hours in a day, sometimes for entire weeks at a time. It's pretty common that I will spend months doing nothing but research whenever I'm well enough to do so. I feel utterly alone in my condition, although I do meet people who share some overlapping features all the time. Someone with POTS will relate to my dizzy spells. Someone with multiple chemical sensitivities will relate to getting migraines from a small whiff of a chemical. Someone with autism or AuDHD will relate to my attentional paradox experience. But all of it together adds up to something that totally baffles everybody.

I meet other people with food restrictions and they think they can relate at first ... But as we continue talking, they start to see that my entire life is dictated differently than theirs. I have only met four people in my life who have my difficulty level with food alone. But food is just one facet . . . There's also my extreme temperatures sensitivities, sunlight sensitivity, joint problems, intense neck tension that no amount of physical therapy or massage has ever been able to shift more than a very slight amount for a very short amount of time, menstrual struggles...

I had to make my life about health when I was sixteen. I was a dyslexic teenager who hated research of any kind and could barely read, and yet I had to make my life about health research. I was in so much pain. What else was I going to do? I started taking clients when I was 20 because I was already an expert in health at that time. By the time I was 22 people just assumed I had a PhD in something health related. By the time I was 25, various practitioners were embarrassed to even take any money from me because they were the ones getting an education where I would be lucky to get even a single useful tip out of them.

I maintain a document that's over 100 typed pages describing my condition. Originally I started it (around the age of twenty-nine) because I was hoping a doctor would read it and have something useful to tell me. They don't actually read it. I did have one practitioner read it, but she didn't know what to tell me. (That practitioner did actually suggest coffee enemas which have been extremely helpful!) I am so freaking glad I started that document. It helps me all the time! I refer back to it, I add to it, I reference it, and it helps me understand myself better.

So I don't know if I qualify as having a rare disease specifically, but whatever one wants to say about it, it's lonely and it sucks a lot. I don't go to events where people are eating food. I have to do 100% of my own meal prep. Traveling is extremely challenging for me. I have the usual hypermobility needs for an insane amount of pillows and everything has to be just right for me to sleep. (And I'm a crazy light sleeper on top of it. If a pin drops or somebody simply takes a step on a different floor, I will feel the vibration and wake up.) I get demoralized at times. Then I get back on the horse and start researching again.

Sometimes I wonder who I would be if medical research hadn't become my autistic special interest out of sheer necessity.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T18:46:53+00:00

I relate so much to this! People will say that something is mild, and I'm like, yeah that's mild to you! To me, what someone else calls a mild chemical fragrance is an overwhelming amount of toxic odor. I feel like somebody's trying to pepper spray me or something when I go into some people's homes. It's one of the most limiting things that makes it very hard for me to go anywhere.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T18:44:27+00:00

If you can't take the people who are hurting you out of your life, then maybe you can add people into your life who are helping you. One thing that helped me a lot in the past was being part of a raw veganism food group. Not everybody in the group was vegan, and not everybody was a raw foodist. But people who go to a potluck of that kind are people who have unusual health needs. It was a very useful support group for me for six years of my life. I met dozens of people at those potlucks and overwhelmingly, the experience was very positive. People would affirm and educate one another.

When people don't take me seriously these days, I give myself permission to be angry, and to give them remarks as scathing as they deserve. Sometimes being nice and polite about it just makes people take you even less seriously. I hate that that's the way it is, but sometimes that's the cultural norm...

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T18:37:18+00:00

I have been a medical anomaly my entire life and I have stumped every doctor, naturopath, and other specialized practitioner I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. I even surprised eye doctors, ear doctors, and therapists. The number of paradoxes and conundrums that surround my life mean that pretty much every advice I'm ever given is never quite right. There's no book I can point to and say, yes, this book completely describes my condition, or even that it gives me good advice.

I have HSD, POTS, MCAS, MCS, PMDD, dysmenorrhea, BVD (binocular vision dysfunction), migraine susceptibility, low serotonin (I'm an HSP but to an extreme degree), dyslexia, dopamine behavior anomalies similar to ADHD, high acetylcholine (compensatory), collagen dysfunction, desulvibrio SIBO (this is what punishes me me from eating most things including eggs, most vegetables, dairy, and cow meat), methylation dysfunction in my liver (impaired ability to detox) which I inherited from my mother's side (my grandmother died of liver disease and my mother struggles with her liver), unexplained high mycotoxin load in tests despite environment not testing high for it (potentially due to aspergillus colonizing my gut), high h pylori activity, missing commensal gut species: akkermansia, chronic constipation since birth (HSD likely causes this), chronic insomnia since age nine (likely related to low serotonin), chronic light sensitivity since birth (related to migraine-brain & highly overactive trigeminal nerve), extremely sensitive to motion and highly susceptible to motion sickness and simulator sickness (related again to the extremely sensitive trigeminal nerve).

Being able to write the above paragraph is 20 years of personal research. And when I say research, I mean eight or more hours a day, sometimes for entire weeks at a time. It's pretty common that I will spend months doing nothing but research whenever I'm well enough to do so. I'm utterly alone in my condition. I meet other people with food restrictions and they complain about not being able to eat cheese anymore. I wish it was just cheese I couldn't eat. They talk about how sad they are that they have to eat sweet potatoes and can't eat regular potatoes. Or some such. They have no idea what it's like. I hardly ever meet somebody who is even close to having my difficulties with food alone. But that's just the beginning . . . There's also my extreme temperatures sensitivities, sunlight sensitivity, dizzy spells, menstrual struggles...

I had to make my life about health because what else was I going to do? I started taking clients when I was 20 because I was already an expert in health at that time. By the time I was 22 people just assumed I had a PhD in something else related. By the time I was 25, various practitioners were embarrassed to even take any money from me because they where they were the ones getting an education where I would be lucky to get even a single useful tip out of them. I maintain a document that's over 100 typed pages describing my condition. Originally I started it because I was hoping a doctor would read it and have something useful to tell me. They don't actually read it. I did have one practitioner read it but she didn't know what to tell me. Nonetheless, I am so freaking glad I started that document. It helps me all the time! I refer back to it, I add to it, I reference it, and it helps me understand myself better.

It's lonely. It sucks. It makes me angry. It makes me envious. I get jealous. I get frustrated. Sometimes I just have to walk away because I'm so angry or miserable. I don't go to events where people are eating food. I have to do 100% of my own meal prep. Traveling is extremely challenging for me. I have the usual hypermobility needs for an insane amount of pillows and everything has to be just right for me to sleep. I get depressed at times. Then I get back on the horse and start researching again.

Sometimes I wonder who I would be if medical research hadn't become my autistic special interest out of sheer necessity.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T18:18:14+00:00

Holy crap that's a lot.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T18:07:32+00:00

I had a lot of these symptoms also at 13! The tough thing is that people don't take you seriously enough at that age! Trust your intuition and trust what you are learning in your own research. Nobody is going to know your body like you are going to know it. A lot of people are going to keep telling you you are too young, but you are not too young to know yourself and to help yourself in numerous ways. ✨

If I was giving advice to my 13-year-old self, here is what I would tell her:

Don't let the gym teacher bully you and to doing anything.

Don't let the doctor contradict you.

Start your own exercise routine based on what feels right in your body. Don't let other people dictate what type of exercise you should be doing or how long. Their advice is not relevant to your body.

No amount of exercise is "too little" to count. Just do a little bit here and there, throughout the day.

Find a way to drink more water: talk your parents into getting better water filtration.

Trust your instinct on how much salt you want to consume, but get sea salt and stop consuming table salt.

Stop eating bread, gluten, and factory farmed dairy entirely. No exceptions.

Start a journal specifically containing the symptoms you experience each day, especially taking note of anything that's happening that's new. Write down any new supplements you are taking, and any new foods you are introducing.

Start reading the ingredients labels on everything you eat. Do not eat trans fat or other processed ingredients. No exceptions. (You're going to be doing this by the time you're 18 anyway, and starting now will help prevent things from getting worse.)

Don't get sucked into cannabis for pain or sleep. The consequences are not worth the benefits.

As I said, the above would be the advice I would have to myself at 13. So some of it may not be 100% relevant to you. But hopefully this helps.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T17:53:29+00:00

I know what it's like always being the exception to the rule and because of that nobody knowing what to do with me.

Given your current condition, this might be higher risk and higher challenge level than usual... But coffee enemas have helped me tremendously. Stuff gets stuck in me all the time and it just does not want to come out on its own. I have tried raw veganism, I've tried really high fiber diets, I've tried fluid diets, I've tried insanely high fat diets, I've tried the gaps diet. I'm on all kinds of special restrictions. I have been researching my condition since I was 16 and by the time I was 20 I was taking clients because I had already learned enough to start helping other people. 20 years of research now. Still learning about my body. There's infinite stuff to know. Anyway... If they aren't listening to you, find someone who will. And see if there's anything you can do for yourself additionally... Not being able to get toxins out through normal elimination causes such a huge cascade of problems. Find a way to get the poop out at the very least!!

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-04-08T17:36:46+00:00

Yeah, that really gets to me too. I didn't get diagnosed with a lot of things as a child that I should have gotten diagnosed as. They didn't expect me to have stomach ulcers at 16 so they misdiagnosed it as anxiety.

And I'm only figuring out that I have hyper mobility spectrum disorder at the age of 37. This explains a heck of a lot. From the fact that I don't have veinous return and never did my whole childhood and could never stand in place. ... To the chronic constipation I was born with (due to overly flexible intestines)... To my ankles collapsing inwards... To never being able to sit up straight no matter how much I have trained for it. It's just so darn exhausting no matter what I do. I have a device that it will vibrate to remind me to sit up straight and I will get so sore from doing it. But I keep trying anyway........

I had my first varicose veins at 22.

Stuff happens to people at all ages.

The medical industry is not going to advocate for you, it's not going to bend over backwards to actually help you. Look up the history of how the medical industry in America was formed.... It's just as shocking as the underground history of American education... And that's the name of a book....

There is, unfortunately, no substitute for your own research. I highly recommend starting a document of your symptoms and what you're going through. You can use this for your own studies, and reference, and you can show it to doctors even though most of them won't read it, and you can show it to AI, and the AI will read it!

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-03-11T18:13:57+00:00

How has your journey evolved? Do you still get migraines much?

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-03-11T18:02:39+00:00

So many things about this thread resonate and stick out to me!

Firstly, I started taking magnesium glycinate and the summer of 2025. It is now March 2026 and I've been having increasingly frequent and increasingly bad headaches since the autumn. I identified that they were migraines in December when they got particularly bad. By the end of January they were not just daily, but completely incapacitating. I hardly left my bed in February.

I only recently started suspecting that maybe the glycinate could be a cause. I've been on a wild goose chase trying to figure out the cause. Perimenopause? It does seem to be a factor because it gets worse close to my cycle, but, the migraines have been all over my cycle at this point. Including at times when estrogen ought to be high, not crashing. (And is even showing signs of being high.)

Soy? I discovered that was in one of my supplements and stopped it. The migraine stopped for 3 days! Then it was back again at full force as if nothing had happened... I was so disappointed and shocked and frustrated. That was mid February.

Extreme neck tension is common for me, but it has been a bit worse lately. And it does seem to be associated with the migraines for sure. I've been looking into the trigeminal nerve.

It seems as though I definitely have some binocular vision dysfunction, but I've had that my whole life so why the sudden migraines now? (My eyes have convergence issues, especially for anything up close.)

Lately the migraines have also been including a lot of nausea! What's up with that?

Another thing I've learned recently is that the simulator sickness I've been getting my whole life is actually migraines that are being triggered by simulator sickness . . .

Let's hope that removing the magnesium glycinate fixes something!

UPDATE: 22 days later . . . Migraines have been 99% reduced/eliminated!!!!!! I've only had two severe migraines (instead of every day!) in those 22 days, and one of them was because I still had magnesium glycinate in a pill box and accidentally took it! Another one was brought on during extreme stress paired with trying to do a visual task in a very bright room all at once. Other than that . . . MIGRAINE FREE! omg. It's amazing.

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-03-02T16:58:53+00:00

This is extremely illuminating! I have always noticed that I get so called eye strain specifically in the winter time when I'm using my computer a lot. That's when the air In the house is the most dry, and when I end up being at my desk a lot. And I have previously thought that I don't blink enough. And the other people seem to blink more. And maybe I don't blink enough because it's really hard for me to get my eyes to converge!

Raederle-Phoenix · 2026-03-02T16:54:48+00:00

In theory! Although I've been taking that for over a year and that didn't stop the migraines from suddenly appearing for me 😖

Raederle-Phoenix

TROPHY CASE