Sugar isn't the enemy, but sometimes it feels like it

For some reason, a good chunk of people with long COVID find that minimizing added sugar helps with fatigue, sometimes a great deal. Honestly, it's been kind of magical for me, though it's not without difficulties or problems.

If you want to try, I'd recommend starting by cutting out very rich sources of added sugar (candy, soda, really sweet pastries) and trying to include more vegetables, fruit, and beans in your diet. Lentils are fantastic for this. 

I don't know how people figured it out, but I imagine it went something like this:

1. Long COVID patient goes to a naturopath because allopathic medicine really doesn't have much to offer in the treatment department
2. Naturopath recommends a no-added-sugar or low-added-sugar diet, probably because some naturopaths are H.A.M. on refined sugar = evil or free sugar = evil
3. It actually helps, hallelujah!
4. Researcher hears about it
5. Researcher runs small-ish study
6. It really, really works!

I got the article recommended to me, and wowza, my physical capacity increased almost immediately! Don't get me wrong, I'm still disabled, but I was suddenly somewhat less disabled.

HUGE caveats:
1. This won't work for everyone because almost nothing does.

2. You can do yourself some serious harm by going overboard with this

Why do I say harm?

Well, I tried to travel using only a carry-on around Thanksgiving, and I triggered a huge crash. I'd already been hurting because the Venn diagram overlap between very little added sugar, easy to prepare or no prep needed, appealing to me, and with reasonable macros is...small.

My hunger reflex is kind of poor, especially since grad school, which means that if I don't eat when I get hungry, the sensation of hunger just disappears for a while. I usually get another cue or two before I'm getting vertiginous or about to vomit, but it's not guaranteed. (This is why I have phone alarms reminding me to eat.) However, since I didn't have many options that I was able to prepare/appealed in the moment, I just didn't eat much.

In any case, I wasn't recovering from the crash. After six weeks, we figured out that lack of nutrition was an issue and certainly contributing to my problems if not solely causing them. By that point I'd lost 10 pounds of mostly muscle, and I went from having a pretty cute butt to having a long back. Not what I was going for.

Why was I unintentionally starving myself? Because the low added sugar thing had worked so well, I'd started down the path that ends at orthorexia; in the process, I did harm to my body. It's not just medications that come with side effects, it turns out! I don't know how much of this damage I'm going to be able to repair, either.

So, that's why I recommend not going wild with avoiding added sugar, because that's damn hard in most of the world, particularly the US. Take the easy wins of minimizing/eliminating sweets and make the best choices you can.

Note: best choices include choosing the higher-added-sugar option because it's otherwise a better choice for you, because macros, affordability, or it just tasting good.

Assistance and grief in chronic illness

 A shower thought, but one that happened while washing dishes.

Certain things that are silly or even wasteful when you're in rude health become helpful or even necessary when you have a chronic illness. A shower seat. A tablet stand and wireless keyboard/mouse to use the computer even when stuck in bed. Binging popcorn media when it's a bad brain day to avoid going insane. Meal replacements marketed to startup people. Multiple similar-but-different tools for dishwashing to deal with hand weakness or tremor. Seat-cane for events with uncertain seating and folding cane in my bag the rest of the time.

And on, and on. There almost certainly will be more in the future.

Every single one, I resisted for weeks to months. Most of them, I've felt guilty about, because imposter syndrome and Protestant Work Ethic. (Thanks, John Calvin! You suck.) I don't technically need any of the assistive devices and strategies, not need. I can struggle through without them; it just means more crashes, more suffering, and far fewer opportunities to get out and do stuff. "Just."

So why resist?

Each thing requires me to admit that I need this thing. It forces me to admit that showers are exceptionally difficult because of the heat and the inconvenience of trying to split one into smaller tasks. It forces me to admit that my legs are weak and easily tired. It forces me to admit that my balance has become kinda shit.

It requires me, in short, to confront everything that I've lost. And in my case, that means admitting to myself that these things are probably lost for good. All the dance parties I skipped! All the showers I resented! All the fancy dinners I'll never cook. It's an odd kind of grief because it's endless and endlessly fresh. Every time I use my shower chair, it's a pang. And sometimes, for no reason that I can discern, it hits me like a little punch to the gut.

When I put it like that, it's a lot easier to understand why I resisted.

All that said and bitched about, I do these things because they do make my life appreciably better, even with that little hit of grief. They are unequivocally a net good! I'm working on being braver about accepting the help I need; it does help, and it's one of the ways I have power over my life.

For anyone who might have ME/CFS or ME/CFS Long COVID, assists & strategies that have helped me in order of most to least total impact, as completely as my brain will allow:

• admitting that I need help and I'm not the person I was five years ago
• minimizing added sugar (soda and sweets); no, I have no idea how it works, but it works for me, possibly topic of another post
• tablet stand that can accommodate this very thin portable monitor, wireless mouse and keyboard set, and mesh basket that holds my computer + accessories + hard copy stuff I currently need
• aggressive system for task tracking, note taking solution, and robust daily routine (at least compared to what I used to do), which includes alarms to remind me to eat
• ready food (prepped meal delivery, more modern meal replacement shakes like Huel, Soylent, etc.)
• specialized computer chair to allow me to sit up and write on not-shit days with less discomfort and muscle fatigue
• shower seat
• using the car and ordering stuff when it might sap my capacity to walk/bus/run errand, even though I could do it the way I'd prefer
• seat-cane or folding cane for outings longer than 30-60 minutes
• just admitting it when my brain flushed the last five/ten/hundred minutes of information
• actually requesting ADA accommodations at concerts and events; making sure friends know that I will need a seat at parties and such
• three different brushes plus a sponge at the kitchen sink and similar "it's clutter to most people, but it actually helps me do the thing more easily"

Today’s Track Binge: Amon Amarth

I’m working my way through the albums of Amon Amarth (translated: Mount Doom), which are a huge hole in my personal metal library. I’ve definitely listened to some melodic death metal that I loved. Amon Amarth is one of the huge names in melodic death metal.

So why am I so late to this? I’m not sure, but probably part of it is the growled/screamed vocals. I find a tight-throated growl (Cradle of Filth often does this, IMO) positively painful to listen to, and it put me off the vocal technique almost entirely. Then, I finally decided to listen to Amon Amarth because, y’know, With Oden on Our Side = seminal metal album. And, it turns out, their vocal style is enjoyable and I LOVE the guitars.

I LOVE THE GUITARS

On a side note: the tight-throated growl is absolutely a stylistic choice, and there’s probably a way to do it without hurting your voice. However, the metal scream and vocal fry are both things you should be doing without tensing your neck or forcing it, at least if you want to be able to keep doing it. Low vocal fry done safely is even a different technique than what people default to! So yeah, just like hearing a singer at karaoke push to hit a high note, that tight growl makes me wince.

 

Today’s Track: Little Bit by Larkin Poe

Classic rock so classic that you hear the country and western bones; it ambles into the room in new jeans and shiny cowboy boots. Just a great groove. Paean to little big dreams and striving for only that little bit that’s going to make you content.

“What do you keep looking for?
More ain’t always more than
A little bit more than a little bit.”

The lyrics hit particularly hard in the current times of billionaires actively making life worse for everybody else in their quest for just one more million.

Also, how have I been sleeping on Larkin Poe this whole time? Their sound is so “simple” and so rich, and I’m just digging everything. Their bluegrass roots touch everything about their sound, and they borrow heavily from classic rock sounds, but they make it sound fresh.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EEWbDDIrhA

Today's Track: iOvNoW by ohGr

What does it sound like? It’s ohGr. Distorted noisy industrial on a melodic synth-pop base, I guess? I haven’t listened to any of their work since Welt, more fool I, and I’m digging this track. The brooding, melodic, almost menacing opening pulled me in, and it’s all the ohGr bleeps and blorps I love.

ohGr is two members of Skinny Puppy intentionally doing a more pop project. Think EDM run through a strangely modded and seriously mistreated mixer, add in a heaping helping of static, and just a soupçon of doom. I adore it, though I understand why some people are just not into it. Noise metal is just too damn much for me, after all. 

 

Today's Track Twofer: Die Like This and Stay Alive

 Die Like This by Mourners

Listen with care -- incredible encapsulation of the struggle to survive when you're on the financial edge. It can feel good to listen to a great song by someone who understands; it can be brutal to have a reminder. 2008, man. I knew so many people who fled into grad school in a desperate hope that the other side would open up to something better.

"Lost my insurance when I lost my wife, now I can't kill the crazy that's behind my eyes."

"I don't want to, I don't want to die like this."

Catchy pop rock. Vocals mostly capture that exhausted, quietly desperate feeling with the occasional line that grabs me by the throat with need or grief.

I see so many people living this song every day and it kills me that all I can do to help is call a bunch of politicians, yell about the cruelty of our current system, and ineffectively boycott the worst offenders. Even with handing cash to the people who are most desperate and ask, it feels like less than spitting on a wildfire. But at least someone got a meal, something to stay warm, or something to numb the pain.

"My friend got a friend who knows a guy; ten or a twenty I can sleep tonight. Oh-oh, what a way to go, what a way to go."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqwilf92ONA

Stay Alive by Andy Black

Today's Track (also): Stay Alive by Andy Black

Rock anthem with the sing-along kind of chorus that we need these days.

"""Stay alive for the good times,
Stay alive through the bad.
Stay alive for the hopes and the fears and the dreams --
The best that we ever had."""

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZdbiU7PhJE

Def doing a deeper dive on Andy Black another day; I love the rough, tincture-of-Tom-Waits timbre of his voice.

And stay alive, my friends. If nothing else, live on for spite, 'til we see the hateful assholes out of power. Live on for hope and spite and love.

Today’s Read: If You Can't Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury by Geraldine DeRuiter

 I’d run across her biting review of Bros (horrendous plaster mouth mold foam course and all) by sheer chance, and then this was recommended to me. It’s hilarious, believe me – I kept accosting my partner with random quotes* – and it also has serious and well-considered musings on feminism and the ways that peoples’ lives are shaped by gendered expectations, usually to the worse.

Some parts of it are absolutely maddening. Of course they are! It’s a book that is in part about being a woman on the internet! I enjoyed the parts of her life she shared. I laughed, wheezed, and cackled. It did make me think.

I liked it! Not sure if I’m likely to reread it, but I’m leaning toward no. Really great as an audiobook because Geraldine is the reader, and wow but that makes some of the prose a lot clearer; there’s a lot of snark and sarcasm, which can be really ambiguous in audio format, but no, she’s coming through loud and clear.

* “He adores me so completely that at least three of my in-laws have accused me of sexual witchcraft.”

“I’ve accepted the feminist notion that women can do anything, but the idea that we don’t have to do certain things is taking a bit longer to sink in.”

“Whoever said that time heals all wounds probably died of sepsis. It does not. But in the case of a broken heart, it does soften the edges of the pain a little bit.”

“Go to bed early and say the Pledge of Allegiance and don’t ever smoke pot or you won’t amount to anything. Well, look who is extremely high and laughing now, Mrs. Schmidt.”