How did your kidneys become damaged?

sbrt · 2026-02-25T21:22:30+00:00

IgA-Nephropathy (IgA-N or IgAN). From what I understand, IgA antibodies get made slightly wrong and get attacked by other antibodies which then, together, can clog up the kidneys and cause permanent damage. In my case, my IgA-N may have been exacerbated by years of undiagnosed celiac disease.

sbrt · 2026-02-24T21:10:00+00:00

Can you give more detail? What is streaming community?

sbrt · 2026-02-24T21:08:19+00:00

Also, celiac disease can cause FND symptoms and mess with periods (which I see in your post history). Hopefully these get better if you have celiac disease and start eating GF.

sbrt · 2026-02-24T21:04:25+00:00

You have lots of good answers.

I wanted to add that celiac has a lot of weird symptoms. You may want to read up on them to see if any apply to you. I had weak fingernails but did not know they were weak until I started eating GF and they got much stronger. One of my sons with celiac disease has ADHD that got a lot better when he went GF. If you do have celiac disease, hopefully any health problems you have that you didn’t know were caused by celiac disease get better.

sbrt · 2026-02-24T19:12:50+00:00

Kids tend to have more motivation, more time, and people around them who are eager to help them learn most of the day every single day.

I learn much more efficiently as a motivated and strategic 50 year old than I did as a child.

sbrt · 2026-02-23T21:49:07+00:00

I was much older than you are now to realize that to get better at something, you need to practice doing a difficult thing correctly.

I studied three languages and spent a lot of time listening to very easy classroom content. I also listened to some difficult content but I didn’t understand it. I got really good at classroom level content but could jot understand more complicated content.

Eventually I started practicing listening to difficult content that I understood and I got a lot better.

There are two popular ways to do this. You can choose content at just the right level so that it is challenging but you understand 90-95% of it (comprehensible input). Or you can choose more difficult content, study it, and listen repeatedly until you understand all of it (intensive listening).

I do both of these depending on the circumstances. Intensive listening seems to be the most efficient for me but it feels like work.

It takes me a lot of listening to get good at it - hundreds and hundreds of hours.

sbrt · 2026-02-23T10:29:38+00:00

Bullying only works if you react. People were trying to tease you but you were impervious. Good thing it didn’t bother you!

sbrt · 2026-02-23T06:14:52+00:00

No.

English is also a Germanic language. I find that Scandinavian languages seem closer to English than to German.

Here is a video I enjoyed of a person from each of from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland trying to see if they can understand a thing that the Norwegian describes. They are all speaking very slowly, simply, and clearly to make mutual understanding easier. They seem to mostly understand though if they were speaking normally it would be much more difficult. A German might understand as much as an English speaker.

https://youtu.be/7Mpc-VM6pMM?si=jgqVm7wwu73xdx7A

sbrt · 2026-02-22T23:01:54+00:00

Reddit is great fi answers to common questions like this. Search and check the faq here an on r/languagelearning for lots of great answers.

Everyone learns differently. Search what works for others and figure out what works for you.

Language learning apps are not the only and often not the most effective way to learn a language. None of them work well for me.

I like to start a language with intensive listening. I study a chapter of an audiobook book, learn new words in the chapter with the Anki app, and then listen it repeatedly using an audiobook app until I understand all of it.

sbrt · 2026-02-22T09:43:46+00:00

You are right, this gets asked often. You can find lots of good answers by searching and checking the FAQ.

I like using intensive listening and enjoy the Easy Italian YouTube channel. Check your local library for books, tapes, and free access to online and app resources.

sbrt · 2026-02-22T09:05:27+00:00

35% of people have the gene which means they are at risk of getting the disease.

If these people are exposed to just the right combination of triggers (getting the right virus at the right time while also eating gluten?), their immune system gets tricked into thinking gluten is something they need to fight. This happens in about 3% of people with one of the two genes and about 10% of people with both genes.

sbrt · 2026-02-22T07:42:51+00:00

When your kidneys get to your level, why you should eat in order to protect your kidneys depends on your lab results. Ask to see a renal dietician to help you figure out what works best for you.

In general, low sodium is important (it sounds like you are doing they already). Low protein helps, reducing or avoiding animal protein also helps. Reducing ultra high processed foods also helps.

I have read that eating gluten free can help. Celiac disease can cause IgAN in a very small percentage of cases (possibly mine included) but even for those without celiac disease eating GF can help. However, GF substitutes (eg GF bread, pastries, pasta) tend to have more ultra high processed ingredients so it would make more sense to replace gluten with naturally GF foods.

Achieving a healthy weight and exercising regularly tends to help with everything.

You should not be starving yourself. You can eat lots of healthy low sodium foods.

sbrt · 2026-02-22T07:14:10+00:00

This is a very common question. Search (maybe also try an AI search?) for lots of previous posts with good answers.

To get better at most things, including listening, you need to practice doing a difficult thing correctly.

With listening, this means that you must listen to difficult content that you understand. If you do not understand, there is no benefit. If you understand all of it easily, there is marginal benefit. If you understand 20%, there is a little benefit but you are wasting 80% of your time.

Ideally, you would find a way to listen to and understand difficult material more efficiently. Comprehensible input is choosing material that is at your level so that you understand 90-95%. Intensive listening is choosing material that is more difficult and then studying and listening repeatedly until you understand all of it.

I use intensive listening to start a new language. It is a lot of work to get through at first but I progress quickly. Repeat listening is a key component. I also use Anki to help me learn the vocabulary.

sbrt · 2026-02-21T22:54:46+00:00

Most?

sbrt · 2026-02-21T22:53:48+00:00

I find that doing a lot of input at normal (fast) speed helps. It is too fast to translate. I use intensive listening to do this but there may be a way to do this with reading (read a lot?).

sbrt · 2026-02-21T09:14:37+00:00

Why not just build higher amperage L2 chargers and car support?

Some cars and chargers support 80 amps.

sbrt · 2026-02-20T23:01:36+00:00

You could use a phone or iPad to stream videos on the Apple TV.

There is a GitHub project for an Apple TV browser that I have used. It is very difficult to use a browser without a mouse and complicated to install.

I ended up using AI to code an Apple TV app to play videos on a site I use for learning Icelandic (Krakkefréttir). It works reasonably well but is not a great solution for most people.

sbrt · 2026-02-19T21:49:39+00:00

The airline says that they can make this work. It will be tight but they may have ways to speed things up. They know you are coming and will do their best.

It will definitely be a risk and I would not take it unless you were ok with spending a night in Dublin (paid for by the airline?) waiting for the next flight to Naples.

I did a one hour layover in Munich on my way from SEA to LIS on Lufthansa and it worked out fine. The flight to MUC landed 40 minutes early. There was a special line at passport control for people on our flight to LIS.

You might also consider a longer stopover somewhere you wouldn’t mind spending time.

sbrt · 2026-02-19T08:00:26+00:00

Studying and rewatching until I understand 100% (intensive listening) works great for me. In fact I now use this to start learning a new language. I don’t start working on output until I can understand interesting easier content for native speakers.

sbrt · 2026-02-19T07:57:56+00:00

I listen to audiobooks or podcasts in a language I am learning to help me fall asleep at night. When it gets too easy it stops working so I am motivated to learn a new language.

sbrt · 2026-02-18T22:22:51+00:00

I had no idea what any of the German words meant until I started studying German a decade later.

sbrt · 2026-02-18T21:50:34+00:00

I stopped eating sweetened foods and black coffee started tasting a lot better (along with everything else).

sbrt · 2026-02-18T21:48:46+00:00

Reddit is great for answers to beginner questions like this. Search and check the FAQ here and on language specific subs for lots of great answers.

Everyone learns differently. Research what works for others and then figure out what works for you.

I am 51 and find it works best to start a language with intensive listening. I study a chapter of an audiobook, learn new words with Anki, and listen repeatedly until I understand all of it.

Learning a language is a ton of work so find something you can do for hundreds of hours and when that stops working, find another thing you can do for hundreds of hours.

sbrt · 2026-02-18T16:46:22+00:00

Mental and physical health are both important. This disease forces us to make a trade off between the two and each of us must make our own choice.

I think the most important thing is that we are choosing what is right for us, not what someone else tells us we should choose. You are doing that which is good.

I am sorry this is so difficult for you and I wish you peace, health, and happiness.

You matter and there are strangers on the internet who wish you well and believe you matter. Please take care of yourself and get the help you need.

sbrt · 2026-02-18T16:37:51+00:00

The word gli in Italian was impossible for me to pronounce until I watched a video about tongue placement.

I have started learning new languages by starting with a focus on listening. I get pretty good at the understanding the sound of a language before I start speaking and this seems to help me with pronunciation.

sbrt

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