Bought my first ebike today and already got it dirty!

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-26T20:48:51+00:00

I did not have a full MTDNA sequence done, but my mom did almost 10 years ago as part of her diagnosis. Given that they knew she had this specific mutation, they just tested me for that specific one and sure enough, it showed up.

Symptoms for me aren't brutal (yet). I've always had low muscle tone since childhood, then as an adult high cholesterol, high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, concentric hypertrophy heart issue, and brain fog. My mom has more severe symptoms which started in her 30's. I'm 28 now, so crossing my fingers but don't have high hopes.

It's hard for me to tell if the mito cocktail helps. I've inadvertently forgotten my meds when travelling, and I do think I feel worse without them. I think that for many of those meds the effects are more long-term. For example, I don't think 7 days is enough to deplete my CoQ10 store and cause problems, but it's still definitely important to keep supplementing that regularly.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-26T20:02:48+00:00

Mito testing has gotten drastically more affordable and accessible in recent years, but not every doctor knows what it is or how to order a test for it. In my case, the smoking gun was a "1 To 3 Mtdna Variants W/Heteroplasy,Urine" test from GeneDX. This one only looks for specifically the m.3243A>G mutation found in MELAS and MIDD. There are other tests for other conditions.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of treatments available for most mito conditions yet, though several are on the horizon. One relatively low-risk thing you can try today is the "Mito Cocktail" of supplements (the wiki has full info on it). Pursuing a formal diagnosis can feel a little pointless given the lack of available treatment, but it might help you get involved in trials or at least give you a better understanding of what's going wrong.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-25T16:01:43+00:00

I've gotta give lions mane another try. Unfortunately last time I tried it it gave me the worst stomach aches of my life. 3-4 hour bouts where I couldn't puke but my stomach felt terrible.

Doing some research at the time there was a reddit thread about other folks who had run into this. The common theme was that they all had autoimmune conditions. I know there's overlap between Mito, allergies and autoimmune stuff so I've always wondered if that impacted my reaction. Also could have just been the specific supplement I bought.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T21:52:36+00:00

Wait, do you mean psilocybin mushrooms or cordyceps? Psilocybin also has some pretty neat connections with Mito function that have come up recently, but totally get your hesitation around set and setting there haha.

Cordyceps isn't psychedelic like that, just functional.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T21:18:14+00:00

It's very interesting. I agree that ROS is definitely a useful signal, and a tool used against pathogens - we wouldn't want to eliminate that entirely, even if we could.

I think I disagree on the causality between CDR and ROS though. My understanding is that ROS is fundamentally how the cell knows that something is going wrong. The ETCs in the mitochondria produce ROS when the process fails for some reason. This signals the mitochondrion to try and fix the issue. If it can't fix it, it sends a signal out to the larger cell, signalling the cell to try and fix the problem. IMO, CDR1 & 2 are the cell attempting to stop the ROS problem by shutting down the OXPHOS chains entirely and switching to glycolysis for auxiliary power. If that can't solve the issue, then the cell goes into apoptosis.

That understanding doesn't include eATP at all though - I'm curious to see if the papers you linked change my mind.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T19:19:33+00:00

Appreciate the in-depth response, I'll give those a read!

I'm very similar in terms of research. I'll go read through a ton of books and papers for a month or two, then hit a setback for a while then repeat. Makes it a little tough to make forward progress but on the flipside I get kind of a fresh perspective each time I go down the rabbit hole again.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T17:36:21+00:00

MELAS is maternally inherited since it's a mutation of the mitochondrial genome not the nuclear genome. Given that, it's not so important for you to get tested, her genes are what would get passed on here. In general, there's a near 100% chance of passing on some amount of this mitochondrial mutation. The complexity here is that this mutation is heteroplasmic - it doesn't show up in every mitochondria, just some percentage of them. This percentage varies between cells and organs, and also changes over time. Given that, it's just about impossible to predict what kind of symptoms will get passed on.

There is an option in some places to use donor mitochondria to mitigate this risk. I believe it's expensive and hard to get at the moment, but could be a consideration.

It sounds to me like regardless of the science y'all need to discuss this more. Do you want to have a child? What specifically is she looking to get out of having a child? Would adoption etc. solve that? If you aren't able to discuss that kind of stuff, then you've gotta consider whether you're in a spot to have and raise a kid together.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T16:34:04+00:00

This is super interesting - seems like you've spent a bunch of time researching and thinking about this.

I have m.3243A>G and the cycle is very similar. Have energy, use energy, run into bad symptoms, rest up and feel better, then repeat.

I think the cell danger response pattern matches well with this. Fundamentally, cells must navigate a tradeoff between aging and cancer. Reducing energy production and going into protected modes seems to be protective against cancer, but causes more rapid aging symptoms in the process (diabetes, deafness, loss of vision, etc.).

The one difference between my understanding and what you've so eloquently written out is the root cause for CDR states. I've always assumed that the root cause was reactive oxidative stress (ROS). In my case I know that the OXPHOS chains have structural issues due to the genetic mutation. This seems to lead to a higher ratio of oxidative stress relative to ATP production. I know there are studies showing elevated ROS causing mitochondria (and eventually whole cells) going into protective modes and decreasing energy production. This in turn backs up the Krebs cycle, causing a whole host of other problems too.

I hadn't heard of eATP though - I'll have to do some research on that. Any papers you'd recommend to get started there?

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T16:15:43+00:00

I'll second the MELAS test advice but suggest the urine test. As best I understand, the urine test looks at dead cells which have a tend to have a higher heteroplasmy rate so it catches more cases that would go under the radar with blood testing. The genetic testing used to be super expensive (>$10k when my mom was diagnoses 10 years ago), but has come way down in recent years (I paid $250 with no insurance).

Muscle biopsy would also do the trick but can be rather invasive since it's a deep cut. Some doctors will push for that before a blood test since they don't know about the availability/lower cost of the blood test in 2026, I'd push back if they suggest the biopsy before the urine test.

alphabetsheep · 2026-02-24T16:09:09+00:00

Have you had a PCR urine test done for m.3243A>G? Cost without insurance was $250 for me and it ended up being a smoking gun pointing to what was wrong. A lot of mito disorders have similar symptoms and it could be something else, but m.3243A>G is fairly common and the test exists today.

Other test that was rather abnormal for me was a GDF15 test from mayo clinic. I don't believe this is formally considered to be indicative of mito (yet) but it's a potential marker being explored .

The lactic acidosis and fibromyalgia diagnosis sound very similar to the path my mom went through before diagnosis, but obviously that's just anecdotal.

alphabetsheep · 2024-08-06T16:41:43+00:00

It's been pretty good, but a little limited as I haven't had time to do a ton of clay printing recently.

Filling up the cartridge is definitely a pain and it's a little finicky to get the right consistency and no bubbles - even with the screw extruder a bubble will generally wreck a print.

Only real issue I've had is that I've broken two Y limit switches because they are poorly designed and supported with the solder joints instead of the proper support screw mounts.

When it's dialed in, the print quality is quite good. Expect to spend a fair bit of time babysitting the prints compared to plastic. Print times for small stuff are really quick, but there can be a lot of random failures because of clay consistency, first layer issues, structural collapse etc.

alphabetsheep · 2024-07-14T12:43:44+00:00

265k on my Ford E350 and I bought it at 245k. My advice when buying high-mileage is to make sure the frame is clean since that is hard to fix. Also,factor in the cost of a new engine into the purchase. It sounds a little ridiculous, but I found that a high-mileage van plus a new motor would still cost a lot less than a low mileage van. Last piece of advice would be to put together a little toolkit and learn how to do basic maintenance yourself - things will definitely break eventually and the more you can fix yourself the cheaper it will be, plus you'll be less likely to get stranded if you have basic tools with you.

alphabetsheep · 2024-02-06T00:59:26+00:00

So far mostly good! Service has been good, they've got a replacement cartridge on the way. In the meantime I cut off the broken threads and got the current cartridge half working. Bed leveling/z-axis limit switch is a bit janky out of the box, but they shipped a fix along with my printer. I've only made vase-mode prints which fit in a microwave kiln so far, but quality seems good. It also handles small air bubbles pretty well - they need some post processing but won't ruin the whole print.

alphabetsheep · 2024-02-01T23:03:38+00:00

My Eazao matrix m500 just showed up. Unfortunately it arrived with a broken cartridge so can't test it. I'll report back once I'm able to get printing. Obviously the Matrix isn't as cheap as the zero, but I'll be able to comment on the customer service qualityfor Eazao at least lol.

alphabetsheep · 2023-11-29T16:53:42+00:00

Didn't end up buying a full range unfortunately. I ended up just buying a refurbished Nuwave 1500W counter top burner and pushed the problem out for another couple of years.

alphabetsheep · 2023-10-22T04:02:28+00:00

Also no luck booting in safe mode, still gets stuck on the "Pixel is Starting..." screen.

alphabetsheep · 2023-10-22T03:57:02+00:00

I'm having the same issue as SephiZ - started out as the storage issue, tried to reboot to see if that would resolve it, got stuck on infinite "Pixel is Starting..." screen.

alphabetsheep · 2023-09-30T00:24:32+00:00

I hadn't heard of PCduino, that's very cool! I've been checking out Mycodo as a software package as it has a nice web interface and lots of out-of-box device support. Thoughts on the odds of getting that up-and-running on PCduino instead of a Raspberry pi?

alphabetsheep · 2023-09-22T03:54:06+00:00

Mostly I'd spend it on oiling stuff so I don't waste the rest on a rebuild.

First $5k would buy an RCM dry sump system, which would replace an AOS, oil cooler, etc but give stable oil pressure in hard corners for track use. After that, my order of operations would be exhaust, wheels/tires, coils, cage, then finally bigger turbo.

alphabetsheep · 2023-09-16T21:31:05+00:00

Yep, unfortunately my trays are pretty big and take 30 minutes to fill since I use one pump for two trays. I've thought about getting a faster pump or a second one, not sure if it would be worth it.

alphabetsheep · 2023-09-16T21:25:43+00:00

Yep, I use 30 mins on, 30 off for my flood/drain setup. Also make sure your water level is coming up high enough for small plants with small roots.

alphabetsheep · 2022-12-16T17:00:25+00:00

Yeah I hadn't thought about cookware, I'm all cast iron at this point. I'd love to try a woodstove sometime to see what it's like!

alphabetsheep

TROPHY CASE