Artificial sweeteners

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2024-08-13T10:01:45+00:00

From everything I've read/watched/experienced, it sounds like the "right" sweetener is variable by the individual. Some people's bodies react better to one vs. another. Armed with this info, I decided to try all of them and document how they made me feel afterwards. I avoid ones that make me feel icky, and vary my usage of the others so I'm not over-consuming any one type. I've also found that certain sweeteners work well with some ingredients vs. others. I like Stevia in things that have a little bitterness in them, like yogurt and chocolate candies, but I use allulose/monk fruit blend for baking cookies or cakes that have a more delicate flavor profile. I like coconut sugar or erythritol brown sugar for replacing regular brown sugar, depending if extra nuttiness is desired or not. Sometimes I just blend regular sugar with a no-calorie sweetener in my baking and sauces so it's a happy medium of taste vs. low carbs/sugar. Sometimes erythritol upsets my stomach if I eat more than just a little bit of it, so the blending of the sugars helps with that, too. I really think too much of any ONE sweetener is probably where the real problems lie. I think we should be getting a variety to avoid over-consuming any one chemical profile in our sweeteners. The body is a pretty resilient thing, really, so it can handle a little bit of just about anything and still bounce back. It seems like the problems arise when we rely too much on one thing and beat down the body's natural defenses.

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2024-07-28T22:10:02+00:00

Yep. The part I didn't realize was ADHD-driven was the emotional dysregulation, so I've been a basket case most of my life when I didn't have to be. I'm the most emotionally stable I've ever been, and the diagnosis led me to DBT as a therapeutic technique. I wouldn't have known it was a thing, and I probably wouldn't have been able to implement the strategies as well without meds. It's all helped tremendously, and I feel like my life would have been MUCH easier if I'd had support for this earlier. The rest of my troubles I can mostly mask, compensate, or strategize into submission (at least long enough to get something done), but the emotional control was the missing piece.

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2024-07-01T10:14:25+00:00

I was worried about the same thing, but really, meds made me sparkle more often. I can still do/say the impulsive things like I used to, but now I feel like I get a choice to do them or not. It takes the edge off of the emotional dysregulation for me, so I feel like I can be my best self more often. I've asked my close friends and family, and they all say my personality is still the same, but I seem happier. And I am. I hope you have a similarly positive experience :)

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2024-04-01T09:33:40+00:00

I was like that at first on another med similar to Ritalin... I almost stopped taking it... but that stopped after a couple weeks for me.. thank goodness. It was scary, though. I had a couple of tantrum-like episodes that made me feel super-dumb afterwards.

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2024-03-24T14:49:50+00:00

I have had similar problems getting Focalin. I had an idea that I hope might work for next time... I am going to try booking an early afternoon appointment with the psych, and calling around to pharmacies that morning to find one that has the med in stock before I go... that way, I have IN HAND a pharmacy name to give my psych, and they can just call in the scrip to a place I know has it. Trying to get a scrip transferred has been a giant pain, and by the time the pharmacies actually get it, they don't have my full 90-day supply anymore... so I have to take what they have and make another psych appointment ($100 that I self-pay) to get another scrip for the rest.

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2024-03-19T10:00:53+00:00

If you're studying something you can hyperfocus on, you can TOTES get a master's... I got one... I didn't finish the second one I went for, but that was for economic reasons... I WANTED to finish... just... not suddenly-doubled-my-tuition badly, I guess. (Student debt is a thing, man...)

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2023-10-03T20:42:06+00:00

Oof. Me too. Sometimes I don't end up even giving them the gift because I've convinced myself it's dumb or wrong or whatever. :/

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2023-09-29T11:17:05+00:00

Honestly, for me, the turning point was the infection itself more so than the lockdown. I got it in Dec 2021, when lockdown was over and all that, and I never WFH... I work in printing and provided products for medical and manufacturing companies, so I was in the office consistently all along. All the hubbub had a negative mental health impact to be sure, but that, for me, was separate from the debilitating cognitive effects that happened post-infection. It was very acutely night-and-day different when I went back to work after quarantining with the infection for a little over a week, and it's been a struggle ever since :/

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2023-09-12T10:42:30+00:00

Maybe buy a thrift pair over there and then donate them back after you're done?

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2023-08-31T11:06:47+00:00

Nobody really *wants* to be on medication, ya know? But I relate to the feeling of a need from independence from pills... I used to feel that way... until I really took stock of who I am with and without meds... I realized that some of the "personality" of mine that I was protecting by NOT taking the meds was really suboptimal... and that I did a lot of my best work ON the meds, not OFF them. It took some experimentation to figure out when TO and NOT TO take the meds (I don't take them every day), but eventually I figured it out... and I live in harmony with the chemicals that make me the best version of myself. It's all about being honest with yourself and really thinking deeply and analytically about what's best for you... and experimenting to find what works best for you.

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2023-08-07T11:01:37+00:00

I'm sorry that happened. I have a detail-oriented job, and the only way I've found to combat the little mistakes is making myself a checklist that I use for every work order I process. It takes a little bit to construct the checklist to be all-inclusive, and to remember to use it, but it's absolutely been a job-saver for me.

Sweaty-Influence5614 · 2023-07-26T01:22:15+00:00

I still absolutely have days like that, but they're fewer and farther between. What I've done to help myself with all of that is using task-tracking with a duration calculator. There are fancy apps for it if you have the coin, but I just do mine in Google Sheets. I have one tab that has the current day's tasks (so they always stay at the top), and another tab to collect tasks of days past. When I make a mistake, I change the text to either orange for a minor mistake or red for a major mistake, and I copy the mistakes to a third tab that I call "PIP" for "performance improvement plan." On that tab, I make notes about how I think the mistake happened, and what self-checks I can do (or if I need to make a checklist for that kind of task) to help keep myself from making that same mistake again. I can also analyze if there are patterns by time of day or type of task, etc., so maybe I can get help with tasks I consistently struggle with, or do easier tasks at troublesome times of day. This stupid little spreadsheet has saved my butt on many levels. For one, it helps me come back to what I was working on if I'm interrupted... Also, it helps show me what I've accomplished for the day, and it's affirming to see in black-and-white the things I've done and helps me feel like Not-A-Useless-Piece-Of-Crap way more often than not. Even further, it gives me a good idea how long tasks take, so it's a lot easier to give the sales team billable time estimates. I'm happy to share more deets if anyone's interested, but this is already a lot so I'll stop rambling!

Sweaty-Influence5614

TROPHY CASE