#anecdata

[nonartrose]

Transgender Woman's Anecdotal HRT Changes For The First Month

So, I am a trans woman and looking into transgender HRT (Hormone Replacement Treatment) before getting it, I noticed that the listed changes start from 1 month after starting HRT, however, I started to notice changes literrally 1 hour after I started (vein collapse in hands, felt like slow Pop Rocks). So, since then I have kept a diary of changes over those first 4 weeks, so that I could add to the existent anec-data out there. I don't feel like going day by day is necessary or useful, so I will just condense my findings into a giant list. CAVEAT: Hormone Treatment is different for everyone, everyone's body reacts to the treatment differently, so just because I experience something in the first month that you didn't doesn't mean that either of us is wrong. ALSO: fun fact: you don't have to get Transgender HRT to be a "propper" trans person. Anyway, list:

Softer skin

Colder hands (due to hair-line veins collapsing in extremities)

Softer hair on my entire body and the hair on my head can take slightly harsher hair products without frizzing as much as before

Potentially started seeing new hair growth at my hair line (which was quite high before)

Slightly reduced hair growth on face and on legs especially

I smell different and scents/deodorant smell different on me

Mood swings

A general sense of being happier that previous

Anger-based emotions such as frustration and rage feel less "complex", "deep" and intense than they did before

Empathy-based emotions such as love and understanding feel more "complex", "deeper" and more intense than they did before

I am more patient and understand with myself, and slightly more with others

Crying starts much more easily and the tears that come feel less viscous than they did before

My eyes often get wet simply by smiling

I get over big emotional moments more easily and quickly than before

Slight breast growth (soreness started after the first month)

Subjectively it kind of feels like puberty (genuinely thought I had homework assigned one day. I am 29 and not in college)

Alcohol affects me more quickly and intensely than before

Potentially more back problems than before HRT (this is an ongoing situation that I have yet to be tested for, I think it could be that my body isn't great at absorbing Oestrogen and so my body's concentration of sex hormones is too low which can lead to complications with back and joints)

I am personally less attracted to men than I was previous (I wasn't Bi, but I did have a man fetish, which seems to have disappeared)

I bruise slightly more easily

Several times I have woken up half an hour before my alarm because I had to go to the bathroom in spite of the fact that I went just before bed

(intimate details, don't read if you don't want to know) my penis is smaller when flaccid, it is more difficult to get erect, it is more difficult to cum, my libido is almost non-existent, and ejaculate lost the white colour after a couple of weeks Hopefully this can be of some anecdotal use to some people and give at bit of hope that changes are coming, and as soon as you start. They are slow, but they start from day one. Update 1: From talking to a nurse today, it seems that my body has had quite a big and immediate reaction to the hormones, more so that what is expected. It may be that my body accept changes more quickly, it may be that my body is good at accepting the oestrogen, or it may be due to something which I as a layperson don't know about. If I get an analysis of test result back which indicates something specific as to why I have had so many affects in my first month, I'll be sure to share it here. Update 2: Got the test result back, and I have actually had quite a small increase in estradiol in my body, going from 0.05 nmol/L, 1 month before start to 0.10 nmol/L, the day before to 0.17 nmol/L, 1.5 months after start, so who knows how I have had so many changes take place. Since the estradiol level is so low, I have decided to take my estradiol pill sublingually, which means placing it under the tongue and letting it dissolve. So far, I have noticed a difference in the feeling I get when I take it. Despite my body having regulated to the estradiol taken orally, taking the estradiol sublingually has the same feeling as taking the estradiol for the first time did. So, fingers crossed that we're seeing up to a doubling of the estradiol effect.

[maximuv]

Wow, this is an excellent summary of what we know about nitrogen narcosis. I’m a recreational diver too, but I’ve never experienced it myself. Thank you for going in depth and giving such a detailed explanation.

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍

[thisisgraeme]

Celebrating Educator Experiences: The Role of Anecdata and Case Studies in Understanding Teaching

What the heck is “anecdata”? Last week, while tuning into a podcast featuring Dr. Andrew Huberman, a renowned neuroscientist with a vast online following, and Tim Ferriss, famous for his self-experimentation and books like “The Four Hour Workweek,” I stumbled upon an intriguing term: “anecdata“. This blend of ‘anecdote’ and ‘data’ was used repeatedly to describe the evidence underpinning their…

[idonthaveacontract]

I think that mad men being visually stunning in so many different ways has created some kind of wall a lot of people can't get through to truly appreciate the writing and acting. idk how to explain it but so many people seem to have cordoned it off into a separate zone of appreciation. people want to look at it but they don't want to watch it

[shinybluething]

Anecdata: I have a big NO FERAHEME flag on my medical records, but not because of anaphylaxis. So anaphylaxis is not the only possible complication.

I had feraheme trigger the Big Flare of Psoriatic Arthritis that rendered me completely but thankfully temporarily disabled and thus finally got my random aches and pains properly associated with my psoriasis and thus got both properly diagnosed and treated. And I mean finally referred to a rheum, so I got more than "here's an ineffective cream, use tar soap" (for my 80% coverage guttate-turned-plaque psoriasis that had been ongoing and worsening for four years) and "exercise more, take some ibuprofen sometimes." The first infusion left me feeling like I'd had the Worst Flu Ever and the second one basically made all my joints swell up and not move. I told the nurses I'd had the Bad Flu feeling before they started the second infusion and they started it anyway, BTW, because it went away the first time. Within 24 hours of infusion 2, I couldn't move my hands or open my mouth, or stand up on my own, so Spouse had to dress and wash me, lift me out of chairs, cut up my food, etc. And this time it didn't go away. Also there was a lot of involuntary screaming for about six months until the meds started to really work. There's still enough residual connective tissue damage in my left shoulder (the IV was in the left arm) that my BP measures differently from one arm to the other due to external pressure on the vessels, four years on. Also it did fuck all for my iron levels, because I hadn't hit menopause yet, and my anemia was caused primarily by the kind of menstrual flow that you're supposed to "go to the ER' for (which will get you laughed at, if you've ever tried to). I hit menopause (probably partially due to oral methotrexate for the arthritis accelerating the already happening hormonal changes) and ... the anemia went away.

Mostly I have had shrugging from medical professionals about this. "Autoimmune conditions are weird."

Have your doctors mentioned iv iron supplements? I have anemia, and since i couldn’t tolerate any of the oral supplements either they eventually did it IV. If you already know its an option and it wont work for whatever reason please disregard

That’s what they’re sending me to hematology for. In the meantime I’ve to do my best with oral supplements if I can.

[horizoncollective]

Not sure if I should ask y’all, @horus-unofficial, or both, but do y’all know what would happen if a human was connected to an NHP via a full subjectivity suite or something as they… cascaded?

It probably varies tremendously. There are very few cases because pilots typically shut down the computers immediately if this happens. The HC's Committee for Anecdata Collection has only a few cases collected where there wasn't an immediate shutdown, cycle, and reboot. The main human symptoms in these cases seem to be mild delirium which usually lasts several hours after de-sync, but the rest of the symptoms in reports vary. Some people get so nauseated they puke, some people get migraines (this is only people who were already susceptible to migraines), some people have religious experiences, and some get a high.

My favorite one on the file has a particularly interesting comparison that I went out and tried.

Go outside to a field of grass at night with a friend and a flashlight. Pick a star in the sky above you and focus on it. Spin in circles while looking at that star. Go as fast as you can. Then, have your friend grab you to stop you and shine the flashlight in your eyes. You will fall and hit the ground before you realize you are falling. You'll lie on the ground and think you're still standing and spinning in circles.

This is actually a lot of fun to do with friends. It is a very odd sensation.

[myfootyrthroat]

Someone should do a study on reduction of meat consumption after having really good black bean tacos vs after hearing a PETA lecture.

[saulwexler]

hmmm.. mulling over a hypothesis about the death of musical monoculture. of course streaming plays a huge roll, but I wonder if its also because releasing every 3-4 years seems to be becoming the norm?

The untouchable legends of yore (beatles, queen, michael jackson, led zeppelin ect.) put out 1-2 albums per year. Even the main pop girlies of the 2000s released like every 2 years.

so my hypothesis is that the core base of pop music has always been and will always be teenagers (specifically girls). That's like 6 years to build a fanbase that will stick around for the next decade+

anecdotally, I don't think it's a coincidence that my current faves all released like 3 albums between 2004-2010, rather than one really iconic one 🤷🏻‍♀️

[lizardywizard]

controversial but i've seen enough "this kid/elderly person clocked me as a nonhuman" anecdotes to feel like there Is Something there

[haruka89]

Things like finals week also cause students to study for exams like they have an eating disorder. Before the exams students binge-study and during the exams throw up their knowledge all over the exam questions. (I've literally had professors call this way of studying "Bulimic Studying".)

Which, this wouldn't be much of an issue if the student would retain that knowledge. But in general? They don't. The knowledge is there long enough to pass exams, even do well on them, and then poof, gone.

[celestial-tapir]

I see, one "shops like a billionaire" not because Temu's horrible products of environmental destruction, forced labour and gamified marketing are cheap, but because one would have to be a billionaire to own that many eggs in the first place.

[dihalect]

also in massachusetts ballot question news: question 5, the ballot measure to eliminate the tipped minimum wage, failed by a 14-point margin. never underestimate the restaurant lobby i guess

[siryouarebeingmocked]

>Barry Deutsch comic

Hang on, I need to warm up my eye-rolling muscles.

NEARLY ALL ECONOMISTS AGREE THIS BENEFITS YOU A LOT.

Citation needed.

How, exactly? Is it a supply of below-minimum-wage labour that can be paid under the table?

How many illegal immigrants care about what the economists say, and aren't just trying to get in to benefit themselves and their loved ones?

WE'RE GONNA BLAME YOU FOR ALL OUR PROBLEMS

The president is literally married to an immigrant, and is tight with Elon Musk. Who is a pro-immigration immigrant himself. Didn't Trump say he supported visas for highly educated people?

Oh, right, y'all don't care about them. Complicate the narrative.

The part you're deliberately leaving out is "illegal".

Weird how immigrants know what US economists say, but also want to get into a country that's horrible for them.

>eating housepets

Oh, you were actually referring to legal immigrants. Specifically, Haitians. Even though most of the immigration controversy is explicitly over illegal immigrants, from Latin America.

And you somehow decided that this minority amount of immigrants represents the majority of them. Totally not cherry-picking.

Also, ow.

EDIT: Also, anecdata; I have tons of relatives who are immigrants to America. Also from the Caribbean, also black. They haven't reported any racism.

[gravitasmalfunction]

[transmutationisms]

what do you think of these studies that say nicotine can help long covid depression dementia adhd anxiety etc

lol i've kind of been 👀 at this whole thing. first of all nicotine patches for chronic postviral illness is not a new suggestion, ive seen it in at least one pop-aimed 90s book on ME/CFS and it's always been basically a flop for preventing, curing, or even managing these conditions. the 2023 paper (DOI 10.1186/s42234-023-00104-7) that reignited this topic among long covid boards online is like. comically weak (4 patients, no controls) and its main hypothesis is a mechanical explanation of LC being a result of lasting viral attachment to the nACh receptors, not an explanation anyone even agrees with who's serious about postviral illnesses or covid or anything else. once again covid research is so fucking fried by being completely detached from so many researchers who were already working on post-acute illnesses.

anyway postviral illnesses are disparate syndromes with many different pathophysiologies and i wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility that there's some tiny subset of patients for whom nicotine might be actually useful, but overall the data aren't there, anecdotal patient threads from phoenix rising etc dating back decades look incredibly un-promising, and since the shit paper in 2023 the only things that have really happened in terms of research are a bunch of people saying leitzke's mechanical explanation of LC is wrong and oversimplified (just like every single other flashy, One Weird Trick type explanation of LC) and a bunch of people in patient forums trying it DIY and giving insanely useless anecdata. id try it too tbc, if i were navigating this dx, it's a fucking shit situation of medical gaslighting and it makes perfect sense to throw spaghetti at the wall, but that's still not evidence of anything for anyone else lol.

personally based on patient reports i think most people who find it helpful just like the mild stimulant effects, which, fair enough if you're nicotine-sensitive. it's not actually that unusual to get prescriptions for stronger uppers if you have certain chronic conditions that have a lot of overlap with LC, like for genetic EDS with a POTS presentation for example. so that seems to me much more likely what's happening than that nicotine is a mental panacea lol

[nohoperadio]

I've seen a few different sources about autism talk about how autistic special interests are often (or just "sometimes"? don't remember the wording) based on rote memorization of details without necessarily any broad domain expertise being involved. An example I remember is that an autistic person might like to memorize the precise technical specs of hundreds of different models of camera, while not having any interest in photography per se and never using a camera themselves.

Now I don't think I've ever personally encountered an autistic person who fits this description? Whenever I see or hear someone talking about their special interest(s), they tend to give the impression of being knowledgeable about the subject in a well-rounded sort of way, I don't think I've seen this thing of focusing on one narrow class of information and ignoring everything else.

But anecdata is limited in obvious ways and maybe there's a selection effect there where the people who have these narrow-focus special interests are less inclined to chat/blog/etc about it because they don't expect people to be interested, or something like that, who knows. So I'm not trying to claim that this whole thing is a myth or something, I'm sure it's real although I'm not sure how to gauge how widespread it might be. And it's obviously not a bad thing to have an interest like that, I'm not trying to be like "oh this is a harmful myth about autism", it's literally chill. I'm just curious about this gap between what I've read about and what I've actually encountered!

So, chat: do you, or do you know someone who does, have an interest along the lines of what I'm talking about? I'm curious to hear about it!