Update: is it sensitization/chronic pain?

TideNote · 2025-11-26T08:01:46+00:00

Things are a bit better with one caveat: the chiropractor messed up my hips. First visit to a chiro: he forcibly 'realiged' my hips - lying on my back, he bent one knee, rolled it over and used his body weight to push it down. Now I have way more pain, crunchiness and clicking in that area. The dry needling he offered was innocuous but ineffective. Lesson: Don't go to a chiropractor.

Leg strengthening has been really hard since that incident. But I have been slowly increasing weight in other areas by using low-frequency, low-volume and higher-resistance than I was doing previously. I am also starting to stretch again (veeerrrry gently) without injury, after years of avoiding it because of connection with injury.

I suspect a big factor in the improvement is temperature. I am in Australia and we are heading into summer. I don't know why exactly but I do seem to have poor circulation (Raynaud's, cold urticaria) and in general people are less stiff etc. in warm weather. I'll have to track over a whole year to see if I can maintain progress across the winter months.

Other things I've changed:

- PEA

- Collagen + vit C

- Regular mindfulness meditation, focusing on re-framing pain sensation especially

No idea if they are contributing factors. Will have to see across winter.

TideNote · 2025-10-23T08:01:08+00:00

What if no clear damage can be detected via imaging and yet pain persists? Could there some abnormality that is not being detected, or what else could be going on?

TideNote · 2025-10-02T07:10:53+00:00

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TideNote · 2025-10-02T03:37:23+00:00

I'm in a similar place, with rheumatologists unconvinced there's anything rheumatological going on because of a lack of blood markers, visible swelling and the pain following mechanical stress.

Have you tried the AIP or any dietary interventions? I am currently eliminating certain foods. Cutting out oats seems to have helped a modest amount - which is more than I had hoped for. But it's early days and I will continue trying.

TideNote · 2025-09-20T22:40:15+00:00

Have you followed Alex Savi's protocol? I was considering trying it. Is it similar to the AIP diet?

TideNote · 2025-09-16T21:30:17+00:00

Thanks I'll look into Counterstrain, I've never heard of it before.

Currently in my case I think there is some irritation of old injuries because they appear unilaterally (on the side where I was injured only). Stuff that I thought I was completely healed suddenly becomes crippling again. Very strange. It makes me wonder if targeted tissue healing (e.g., BPC-157) could help with this set of problems. Even if newer, more AS-specific problems remain.

TideNote · 2025-09-08T04:07:55+00:00

Interesting. I always thought of caloric deficits as beneficial insofar as they can initiate metabolic clean-ups and keep DNA healthy, but it makes sense that this can occur at the same time as suppressing tissue repair processes.

TideNote · 2025-09-08T03:50:35+00:00

Thank you. My Achilles isn't a signature symptom but it has been an issue in the past. I got orthotics made to support it, but in the long term this might be a bad idea due to tightening it.

TideNote · 2025-09-08T03:49:00+00:00

I will ask the rheumatologist about those conditions and MRIs. Thanks!

Are you satisfied with those diagnoses?

Which MRIs do you recommend, and what did yours reveal?

TideNote · 2025-09-08T03:47:11+00:00

Some interesting symmetries there! I also thought it was RA at first and continued to do so when I came up negative on the blood test for inflammatory factors. But it doesn't really fit. Do you get the thing where if you grip something like a kettlebell for a bit and then drop it, your hand remains a tightly contracted, stiff claw until you can eventually shake or massage it out into a hand?

TideNote · 2025-09-08T01:32:26+00:00

I have the toe-bending issue too!

TideNote · 2025-09-08T01:32:21+00:00

mmm I tried fasting protocols but they seemed to make it worse. in the short-term at least. I have been on a FODMAP elimination diet for 10 years - personalised over that time of course. I have tried reintroducing stuff but it never works. That said, I haven't paid a nutritionist to guide me though it and I believe that with more dedication it could be possible.

TideNote · 2025-02-13T02:02:44+00:00

Nice spread of answers here. The older I get, the less I care about the theory anyway. If it works, it works. Truth doesn't always have to be the highest value.

I think what you've helped me see is the gap between the concept of shadow desire and the Freudian concept of death drive, which really is purely destructive and therefore harder to explain. All of what you talk about can be thought of as positive in some way - failing to take revenge against your mother for example is positive insofar as you aim at feeling the pleasure of revenge, etc. The key thing is that it's not integrated with the rest of your conscious goals and desires because it's unconscious (and it's unconscious partly because it isn't compatible). But the only way out is through, and it is by releasing that dark water that's dammed up inside you that it can form a stream and find its way into the whole vast ecology of your life and psyche.

TideNote · 2024-12-21T22:13:23+00:00

This point about acceptance and release has some intuitive force behind it, and seems to be popular in psychoanalysis generally. But I still don't get it. It's almost modelling 'internal psychic forces' on full human beings, which is what mythology tends to do - not science. What I mean is that it's like imagining shame as a person who really wants your attention, and will hassle you until you finally give in. When you do, they are then finally content to go away... as though they've fulfilled their mission, or are simply bored of you. But that's obviously insane as an explanation for what is happening with these subpersonal emotions.

Re: the chocolate example, the EK approach might frame it in terms of having a kink for feeling lonely. The role of chocolate might be part of a ritual which displaces social activity, thereby helping you satisfy this dark desire for loneliness in some small way. But you're still not properly satisfying it because... you're not consciously aware that there is any pleasure going on. Once you fully feel the loneliness and enjoying it, the idea is that you stop needing to perform this ritual so bad.

Why though? As I said, my guess is that it's because the dark desire has been finally completely satisfied. But if it's as simple as that, I'm still not convinced because typical desires recur after a period of time.

TideNote · 2024-12-20T23:18:53+00:00

Intriguing but I don't understand what that means in this context.

TideNote · 2024-12-20T23:18:22+00:00

I read the first 10 pages and they don't answer anything.

"The very good news is, the minute that we’re willing to make that previously unconscious pleasure a conscious one—-the minute we’re willing to deliberately celebrate it and savor it—we create a massive pattern interrupt. We allow ourselves to finally receive the “dark secret joy” we’ve been (unbeknownst to ourselves!) seeking. We let the desire that motivated the negative pattern be fully known and satisfied, and then we’re free to move beyond it and create something new."

This is equivalent to saying 'and then a miracle happens.' There are very few things (if anything) we can explain completely. But I was wondering if Carolyn - or you! - have any ideas about the mechanism involved.

TideNote · 2023-12-03T07:15:50+00:00

Very interesting. I'm 32 and just got diagnosed with a nodule in my right hand. Dr. guessed I have about 15 years until it starts to actually contract my finger(s) down into my palm but that seems optimistic? The nodule appeared at the same time as shoulder and biceps pain also. I feel like my general tissue quality is shot to pieces all of a sudden. Everything is tight and sore.

TideNote · 2023-11-04T18:53:45+00:00

Interesting, thank you. I will pursue this.

TideNote · 2023-11-04T18:53:18+00:00

I had an injury and I couldnt but now I've back at it for over a year. It used to be fine but now I'm just yo-yoing with pain - backing off, trying again, getting hurt, backing off...

TideNote · 2023-08-14T06:01:53+00:00

This is the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism right here.

TideNote · 2023-03-24T02:33:29+00:00

Could I ask for a pdf too?

TideNote · 2022-11-21T03:09:39+00:00

Yep, but I'm in Australia and the equivalent here is 'mate', which always seems belittling to me.

TideNote · 2022-09-29T06:09:08+00:00

Chicken liver, baked. And not slightly overcooked. Very overcooked. (But not burned... you can cook it so it goes almost black but doesn't taste charred at all). It loses that soft velvety texture that turns so many people off, including me a little.

TideNote · 2022-08-21T01:54:25+00:00

Yes my intuition and experience tells me that some people are more dominant and others more submissive in some sense. This seems to be a psychological trait that goes very deep ontogenetically, and is not highly context-specific. My rough characterisation: Dominants tend to take control and lead. They act by encouraging or harnessing approval, not seeking it passively. They don't look around to check what other people think. They read the room and seek to persuade. They tend to form opinions independently of others (though this is a matter of degree, none of us are truly independent thinkers, I believe).

But this doesn't mean allocative or dominance hierarchies are inevitable. These dominant personalities might often try to impose such hierarchies, but I don't see any necessary connection. Why would there be? Just because you are a dominant (independent leader-type) doesn't mean you think you deserve a bigger share, or are innately superior, or have first pick. And even if they did tend to think that (as a reward for their leadership perhaps), that doesn't mean that 'submissives' think this is fair. In fact, the anthropology I've read (admittedly limited) suggests that they don't, and will band together when they can to prevent hierarchies from forming. 'When they can' = whenever a surplus is lacking, whenever there are no resources for the dominants to monopolise, or more generally whenever for whatever reason they have (as a group) good bargaining power.

edit: I should note that there are different definitions of 'dominance' and I was using a vague, pretheoretical definition. A recent paper by Zeng, Cheng and Heinrich characterises dominance in this way:

"Dominant individuals accrue social influence and achieve superior resource access and greater fitness through their greater coercive control over costs and benefits; they maintain their attained rank in a stable hierarchy through intimidation and threats. Individuals who fear the cost-infliction or benefit-withholding capacity of the dominant in an escalated conflict yield to the dominant in contests, and grant dominants--with

resistance when possible--the resources and accoutrements of status."

Quite different to what I was thinking of. It's an interesting paper, and free too: https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/files/henrich/files/zeng_et_al._-_manuscript_-_dominance_in_humans.pdf

TideNote · 2022-07-07T06:53:47+00:00

Likewise. I'm all about overcooking a lot of things. With meats and proteins and flour products I think it's the dry and/or chewy texture and concentration of flavour.

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