• 4 Posts
  • 66 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 23rd, 2023

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  • I'm one of these patients. I was successfully treated for an autoimmune brain condition of some sort. To this day, none of our clinical testing has ever showed any abnormality. I was treated based on detailed medical history and my insistence that my self-reported symptoms be taken seriously.

    It took months to find a physician willing to treat me, and I still to this day don't understand what they were so afraid of. My self-reports of symptoms, patterns of exacerbations, and positive response to corticosteroids were consistent and unequivocal.

    I was in nursing school at the time, and I don't know if that helped or hindered me. But I finally figured out how to speak the language that my physicians could understand, even though I was the patient. That shouldn't be necessary.




  • Nothing at all bad happened to the two German journalists who published the Panama Papers. Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier are both very much alive and well, and have started a nonprofit organization in honor of their friend and colleague, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered by an operative of the Maltese government officials who she was investigating for corruption that was revealed in the Panama Papers.

    The investigations and revelations produced by The Daphne Project are ongoing. These are journalists who refuse to be silenced by one woman's murder.

    But to understand that, you'd have to be interested in not being ignorant for five seconds instead of just parroting things you saw online because you think it makes you sound smart.

    https://www.occrp.org/en/thedaphneproject/



  • Oh I hadn't even thought of that. I have two accounts because when I started using Boost for Lemmy, my home instance wasn't supported, so I signed up for startrek.website.

    My old account would appear to be an inactive user in the numbers, which is not really accurate. But also it means that bump in users that happened during the reddit exodus was partially driven by duplicate sign ups.







  • Even more fun, there's some evidence that nasal congestion can be triggered by autonomic nervous system dysfunction:

    "Vasomotor rhinitis is characterized by prominent symptoms of nasal obstruction, rhinorrhea, and congestion. These symptoms are excessive at times and are exacerbated by certain odors (e.g., perfumes, cigarette smoke, paint fumes, inks); alcohol; spicy foods; emotions; and environmental factors such as temperature, barometric pressure changes, and bright lights.2 Patients with vasomotor rhinitis are further divided into two subgroups: “runners,” who demonstrate “wet” rhinorrhea; and “dry” patients, who exhibit nasal obstruction and airflow resistance with minimal rhinorrhea.1 Many studies have attempted to clarify the pathogenic mechanisms for these subgroups. Current theories include increased cholinergic glandular secretory activity (for runners), and nociceptive neurons with heightened sensitivity to usually innocent stimuli (for dry patients).1 These theories have not been adequately proven. The vasomotor nasal effects of emotion and sexual arousal also may be caused by autonomic stimulation. In one small study,4 researchers concluded that autonomic system dysfunction is significant in patients with vasomotor rhinitis (P < .005)"

    https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2005/0915/p1057.html