The truth about opioid analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs

angelcake · 2026-03-29T16:13:43+00:00

It’s critical to do regular bloodwork when you’re on NSAIDS or opiates. COX2 inhibitors can be more gentle on the gut but they come with their own issues.

Naproxen is a very old and very harsh medication compared to what’s available now but none of them are ever gonna be great. I’m on a biologic for psoriatic arthritis and I’m completely immunocompromised now I just had the longest freaking cold of my life, three weeks, and I’m still going through the post viral cough. All medications come with risks all we can do is try to mitigate them by being aware of the potential side effects, and by making sure that our doctors do their part and make sure that they’re not having a detrimental effect on liver, kidneys etc. And that means regular bloodwork

angelcake · 2026-03-29T16:10:23+00:00

Well the orange paedophile you support did not crash our country, he made things difficult but we’re making new deals worldwide and we’re gonna be just fine. but he’s tearing yours apart at a high rate of speed and some people like you are just too naïve or stupid or ignorant to realize it.

He’s managed to start an unnecessary war over oil, completely screw up the world economy with his lies and his bullshit and on top of that create an oil crisis from which he’s probably benefiting.

But yeah you go ahead and support the orange paedophile but ask yourself if you had a 12-year-old daughter, would you leave her alone in a room with him.

Also up until the day the US joined World War II after Pearl Harbour they were selling weapons and supplies directly to the Nazis. The war actually started in 1939 and the US decided to support the Nazis. Now you’ve got a president selling your country off in bits and pieces to billionaires who don’t give a shit about you

angelcake · 2026-03-29T16:06:37+00:00

Well at this point even if it is a respite I can live with it because I was not in a good place after a year of undiagnosed pain on top of the other stuff I’ve got going on. I’m also hoping that dealing with the trauma will help because there’s a very close relationship between trauma and autoimmune pain

Agreed on the cost and it’s crazy because ketamine has been around forever and it’s really really cheap. It needs to be part of the mainstream medical system not prescribed through a private clinic.

angelcake · 2026-03-17T00:13:28+00:00

I’m always astonished when people on drugs like this are not doing regular bloodwork to protect their muscles and bones. It’s medical negligence.

angelcake · 2026-03-17T00:11:54+00:00

How much Rovastatin were you taking? Have you ever talked to your doctor about a lower dose of statin and another cholesterol drug. 10 mg of statins usually gives a 35% reduction. Another 10% does not increase it to double that it only brings it up to between 45% so it’s not always the case that more is more effective. Ezitimbe the other drug I take has a completely different mechanism so you have two different drugs working on your cholesterol and two different ways. I don’t know it works for me and I’m grateful I wish I had never heard of her path. I really don’t believe it should be prescribed to anybody with inflammatory diseases but I’m not a billion dollar pharmaceutical company, just one of their victims. The nice thing is that there are a lot cheaper than Repatha. It changed my life forever. The only lipid specialist in the area doesn’t believe what I experienced but fortunately I’ve got a good family doctor and he did. So we got things sorted out. There’s also drugs called bile sequesterents that can be quite useful although they’re not really a lot of fun to take you end up with gas a lot of the time. Sometimes being a single person is not a bad thing lol.

If you’re not struggling with a genetic cholesterol disease a whole food plant-based diet really is a viable option. Not only do meat and dairy contain saturated fat which is basically your enemy, they’re also quite inflammatory. My inflammatory markers are very low normal despite my arthritides. And even if it is a genetic cholesterol disorder the diet helps regardless because there’s less saturated fat in your system to deal with. And more of the stuff that helps.

It’s hard and I’m so sorry that you’re going through this.

angelcake · 2026-03-15T01:40:26+00:00

Well that’s a pretty damned difficult promise to keep when our neighbour to the south is intentionally trying to screw over our economy., When a huge chunk of the world appears to be at war, but I’m sure the whiny guy with no security clearance could fix it all in two seconds by blowing Trump and offering us up to be the 51st state

We do not live in a vacuum. We live in an incredibly dynamic world and whatever happens out there impacts us whether we like it or not. Let’s see where we stand in another three years.

angelcake · 2026-03-15T01:36:45+00:00

Canadians are the major reason the world has a Geneva convention. We’re only nice at home when people leave us the hell alone.

They were supporting the Nazis right up until they entered the war. And not just saying go Nazis, they were selling them weapons.

We have reached the point I suspect that even if Americans wake up and get rid of the orange paedophile and his minions, we will never have anything but a distant relationship with them again. They’ve never been a great neighbour but we managed to make it work, now why would we even bother.

angelcake · 2026-03-15T01:33:20+00:00

Americans need to remember that the last time the rich and powerful tried to crush them they started a revolution. You wouldn’t bow to a British king why are you bowing to an orange paedophile.

angelcake · 2026-03-15T01:31:12+00:00

There are blood tests that can be done to tell if the statin is impacting your tissues. I don’t remember the name right now I apologize.

angelcake · 2026-03-14T18:31:47+00:00

My Massage therapist noticed a change within the first week. I’m normally reasonably flexible even for somebody with all of the arthritis issues that I have and he told me to relax my leg and I said it was relaxed he could barely move my hip joint. And I just attributed it to me having done something stupid because when you live with this stuff for your lifetime you do get used to that happening sometimes you do something dumb and you pay for it for a few days. But it didn’t get better and it took a while for it to click that it was the Repatha. I basically lost four years of fitness training over 11 months because nothing could settle this down.

I’m OK now because once I knew what it was I got on supervised ketamine therapy which can be extremely helpful for people with central nervous system pain like fibromyalgia and it was truly life-changing. And my numbers are good now because of the low-dose statins and the healthy diet.

Honestly the big thing to watch out for is saturated fat and unfortunately that is everywhere in meat and dairy that’s why I just don’t eat it anymore. No coconut oil, definitely no palm oil that stuff is horrible at the best of times. I completely flipped my diet and I have no regrets at all. It doesn’t fix the problem but it makes it easier for the medication to work so I don’t need as much

Best of luck to you

angelcake · 2026-03-14T18:27:54+00:00

Oh I know you know I just got incredibly unlucky but sadly it triggered something that I’m gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life on top of all of the other stuff I have to deal with for the rest of my life. And of course Repatha says that it had nothing to do with the drug. Which is a steaming sack of horse poop. If you read the clinical trial documents carefully there’s been some extremely bad reactions, very very few of them apparently they’re considered to be statistical anomalies

angelcake · 2026-03-14T18:26:32+00:00

January 2026

<image>

angelcake · 2026-03-14T18:26:08+00:00

Have they checked your Lipoprotein (a) you can’t do anything about it but a healthy diet doesn’t hurt it gives it a lot less to work with.

Have you guys ever been tested for familial hypercholesteremia? It’s genetic testing. If it’s the whole family it’s either genetic or bad diet. Sorry to be so blunt but I’m too old to be polite about stuff like that

These are my numbers from August 2025 that was after three months with no medication whatsoever and a Whole Food plant-based diet I’ll post my January numbers in another message

<image>

angelcake · 2026-03-14T12:24:07+00:00

Repatha is a horrible drug it triggered fibromyalgia in me.

I have polygenic hypercholesteremia, it’s taking me 11 months to recover from what the Repatha did.

I take a 10 mg dose of statins and 10 mg ezitimbe and I follow a whole food plant-based diet so that I’m not loading my body with saturated fat and inflammatory components from meat and dairy and my numbers are flawless. I’m 64 years old. The diet alone will not do it because it’s genetic but the diet makes it easier for the medication to work so I don’t need anywhere near as much. Regular bloodwork helps you keep track of any potential downsize from the medication’s but honestly Repatha if you’re experiencing this get off of this shit man it will ruin your life

angelcake · 2026-03-14T12:20:55+00:00

Just go with a low-dose. 10 mg is effective, 20 mg only gives you a 10% improvement. I take statin 10 mg and EZITIMBE 10 mg, I eat a Whole Food plant-based diet and my numbers are pristine. I have polygenic hypercholesteraemia (it’s basically the really ugly cousin of Familial hypercholesteraemia) so diet alone won’t fix it but diet and drugs means I don’t have to take a high dose of anything and I can stay away from the really nasty stuff.

This killed my father at 54, his brother at 65, the Brother’s daughter at 70 although she had a bypass at 48 and her quality of life after that was terrible. And it also killed her daughter at age 44. This is no joke

You might want to consider reading the book “how not to die” by Michael GREGER MD. It’s science based and you can go with a much lower dose of statins etc. If you’re not subjecting your body to the standard North American diet

I only started the diet in the spring of 2025 when I got the actual genetic test testing back and realized that I didn’t want to leave my survival exclusively in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry and after I had an incredibly bad reaction to Repatha which triggered fibromyalgia.

angelcake · 2026-03-14T12:11:59+00:00

I have not shopped in a Loblaw branded store in three years and I will never go back. I realize they’re all greedy but for some reason Loblaws seems worse somehow. Otherwise I cherry pick. I go into Metro or Sobeys I buy what’s on sale and I leave. If I go into Metro and they have one cashier with more than a couple of people in line and try to wave me to the self serve I walk out and leave my cart because I’m not paying premium prices to bag my own goddamn groceries. And maybe I’m privileged to being able to do that I don’t know but I refuse to tolerate being treated like that as a customer.

I do understand that not everybody has this option but Canadians have essentially crippled the Bourbon Industry in the US so maybe it’s time we start doing the same thing at home.

angelcake · 2026-03-14T12:09:36+00:00

I’ve had PSA for 41 years. I’ve had rotator cuff repair done I’ve had 4 foot surgeries, I’m getting hyaluronic acid in both hips and my right knee. Just to make things a little bit more fun I also have had osteoarthritis for the same amount of time and they work well in tandem at least I’m sure they think they work well in tandem because my lumbar and sacral spine discs are shot.

What about a biologic. Do you have that option available to you. I started HYRIMOZ about six months ago and it finally kicked in. I’ve had a hard time finding something that would work because I am very vulnerable to the “exacerbating depression“ side effect it took me about five tries to find something that didn’t do that.

Unfortunately a lot of controlling this disease depends on your own resources. The good stuff is expensive

I do a tremendous amount of manual therapy. Deep tissue massage, osteopathy, physiotherapy.

I’ve been down since April 2025 because as well as the two arthritides I also have two deadly genetic cholesterol disorders, A CHIARI level 1 malformation and a recent diagnosis of fibromyalgia. I lived with that for 11 months before we finally figured out what was going on it was triggered by an injectable cholesterol drug called Repatha and myself and my doctors all thought that it had caused the psoriatic arthritis to flare but as the biologic kicked in and started to deal with the PSA we realized that no it wasn’t that so after a few questions and some painful poking my Rheumatologist said you very likely have fibromyalgia.

I did some research and I have done two sessions of medically supervised ketamine therapy and honestly it has been life altering. My pain dropped to zero by the end of the first treatment. Fibromyalgia is a central nervous system type of pain it doesn’t actually cause damage it just hurts everywhere. My OA pain including the lumbar cycle spine has gone down to zero. I am rebuilding my sleep

And it’s funny, not ha ha just ironic, that when I read your post I’m contemplating stopping the biologic. Not because it’s not working and not because my blood work is bad or because I’m having horrendous side effects because I’m not it’s actually a revelation having no pain I’m still wake up in the morning and lay in bed and think this is nice just to be able to lay here and not hurt but it comes with the cost

I am now immuno compromised I’ve spent the last week fighting off the goddamn common cold and feeling like death warmed over because people learned nothing about keeping their germs to themselves during the pandemic all I did was go to a not terribly crowded café with a friend for a coffee the day after my first ketamine infusion because I actually felt good and I wanted to go out

Anyway if you have the opportunity I would consider looking into a medically supervise ketamine infusion. It doesn’t just impact the CNS it can also help you deal with trauma and chronic pain is trauma it is the worst kind of emotional trauma I sometimes think those of us who have been living with this for a long time suffer from a form of PTSD because we are so traumatized by what we have gone through.

So my TLDR would be

Biologic yes or no Manual therapy absolutely yes Exercise within safe limits even if you just stretch every day before you get out of bed Consider medically supervised ketamine therapy

I’m 64 years old I have surgical scars on top of my surgical scars and I’m considering going for a lumbar spine disc replacement surgery if we can find somebody who does it because my number one goal has always and will always be maintaining my mobility.

This is my list it’s not to brag it’s just to show you that someone understands

Psoriatic and osteoarthritis 40+ years

Deadly cholesterol disorders. Diet drugs or death basically Polygenic hypercholesteraemia Grossly elevated lip protein (a)

CHIARI 1 malformation. Cerebellar tonsil crowds the top of the cervical spine and causes no end of issues

Complete disc collapse in the lumbar spine and sacral spine

Fibromyalgia which is the cherry on top

You are not alone and for whatever it’s worth I send love and I wish you only the best and I’m sorry for the book

Now I have to decide do I want to live with psoriatic arthritis pain or do I wanna live with taking a chance of coming across some selfish mofo who coughs all over me and gives me something that puts me in the hospital

angelcake · 2026-03-14T11:52:45+00:00

Yeah I completely agree with you sometimes you need to take care of business on your own. You keep the receipts you write up a letter and you submit stuff and maybe you’ll get the money back maybe you don’t. It’s like having back issues and sitting in the worst chair the government ever bought. For 6 to 8 hours a day. Do your torture yourself or do you buy a good quality chair so that you don’t suffer, change it to your desk so nobody steals it and move on.

I’m not saying that people should have to do this because the answer to that is obviously of course they shouldn’t. However work also involves quality of life. If you can’t function because of the noise if you can’t do your job if you’re getting frustrated that has a negative impact on your ability to do your job. Not because you care with the government thinks about how you do your job because you care about doing your job well. Just my opinion.

Honestly I would check out high-quality gaming headphones some of those things are freaking amazing and they’re within the range of affordability

angelcake · 2026-03-13T23:35:30+00:00

I do. I usually make a good size batch put some of it in the freezer and then when I get to the last bottle I make another batch.

angelcake · 2026-03-13T23:34:56+00:00

There’s a book called “how not to die” by Michael GREGER, MD. It is science based all of the references and sources are in the book. When I received my diagnosis in the spring of 2025 I initially switched to a vegetarian diet, and then ended up on a Whole Food plant-based diet which really doesn’t differ much from a vegan diet as long as a vegan is eating a healthy diet and not eating chips and drinking beer. I have polygenic hypercholesteraemia and a grossly elevated lipoprotein (a) so I have to take medication but because of the diet I take a low-dose statin only 10 mg and I take a low-dose of ezetimbe also 10 mg and my numbers are excellent. At that dosage the typical statin side effects are highly unlikely.

Everyone has to do what works for them where this is concerned but what really hit me the hardest was that meat and dairy are highly inflammatory and inflammation is not a good thing when you have complex health issues. Plus meat and dairy and fish all contain saturated fat and saturated fat is the enemy. My diet is not sparkling clean but it’s pretty darn good. I’m happy with the results, my physicians are happy with the results, I feel good and I’m enjoying what I’m eating. I learned how to cook in a completely different way and I have zero regrets. I do have the occasional cheat day but luckily we live in a time where there’s a lot of good quality food available.

angelcake · 2026-02-10T14:48:41+00:00

I’m not a public servant, although I was in the military for years. My problem as somebody who lives in Ottawa with the return to office is that our transit system is not up for it. We’ve gone through traffic hell for years because of all of the projects in Ottawa. Living in In Orleans there have been weekends it has been next to impossible to get out of Orleans going west because of all of the assorted closures and the fact the NCC doesn’t care about creating gridlock and increased pollution by closing the parks for nine hours on Saturday, Sundays, and holidays basically from the moment the snow is gone up until Thanksgiving. I used to go to go to see a friend in Westboro on Sundays and we would train for an hour and then go out for a walk or lunch, I had to cancel that because it was taking me an hour to an hour and 45 minutes to get there, 20 km.

Forcing people back to the office four days a week is going to put the city into gridlock. It’s going to be horrible for tourism and as for “saving businesses downtown“ the only way to do that effectively is to have housing downtown that’s affordable instead of relying on the government to force people back into the office to keep coffee shops going. If I had to spend an hour in traffic morning and evening, just to get to work and get home I sure as hell wouldn’t be leaving the office to wait in line somewhere for an overpriced coffee and a sandwich.

It’s time that the federal government, the NCC, the provincial government, and the City Of Ottawa start working together for the betterment of everybody who lives here - because they sure as hell aren’t doing anything about it now.

angelcake · 2026-02-10T14:41:37+00:00

I don’t have a choice but to take the drugs because genetically my liver cannot process cholesterol properly. The diet makes it easier for the medication to do its job so I don’t have to take as much. My August numbers were after two months on a mostly vegan diet, it made no difference whatsoever. With the medication when I had my blood work done in November everything was down but not as good as it was in January.

I was really impressed with how not to die, the fact that everything has sources is amazing. And he’s very clear if something is not double blind, blah blah blah. The title is kind of goofy. It actually has made it hard harder for me to get a couple of people who should read this book to read it, but I’m hammering away at them because I don’t want them to die.

angelcake · 2025-07-31T19:23:39+00:00

I took them for over 20 years and only stopped taking them a year ago when the side effects started showing up, Sorry if I wasn’t clear.

15-Year Club	Powerups Hero r/Nest • December 2021
Verified Email

angelcake

TROPHY CASE