#why would you as a professional withdraw a tool from me that is known to help people in my place just because you don’t feel like it

[dagasinfilo]

idk if it’s adhd or some other brain thing or what the fuck it is but my mind literally feels like a prison and i do not know what else to do to break out <3

[shades-of-stony]

Heavy Angst (And Not-So-Heavy but Still Angsty) Stony Fanfics!

I’m absolutely love a good Tony whump and hurt story so prepare to see a lot of those here! Get your tissues ready!

Push by phoenixreal

Summary: Tony Stark was known for pissing people off, it was a given. Then, after the man everyone thought was nothing more than a selfish prick decided to nearly kill himself saving Manhattan from a nuclear bomb, even the most sure of Tony's bastard status had to rethink it. And then, his team who were sure they had him pegged, they were invited (ordered) to move into Stark Tower with him. To their surprise, they found he had furnished full floors for each of them, somehow knowing their tastes exactly, including a floor dedicated to the resident Asgardian who would only be there some of the time. Surprised, and please, they all wonder at the enigma that is their host. After a couple months, Pepper Potts stops coming around so much, and they realize that something has exchanged between them because they are rather professional to each other. Pepper still frets over Tony, but instead tells the others to keep an eye on him rather than doing it herself. They easily forget that Tony is, and always has been, simply a human civilian. Then things get strange when they find themselves locked down within Stark tower, and after a harrowing viewing of a mysterious video, they find their resident playboy is completely gone.

Note: Prepare to cry and be hurt! This fanfic dabbles with Tony’s insecurity, self-worth, and issues. Please heed the warnings!

The words you choose to say by masterlokisev159

Summary: After the SHRA, the events around Steve’s death and Tony discovering he deleted part of his brain, Tony finally decides he's done enough. With Osborn taken care of, Tony leaves the Avengers and decides to quit being Ironman effective immediately.

He tells himself it doesn't hurt when Steve agrees. Why should it? After everything he's done, the team's better off without him.

However before he can truly move on, there are things he needs to take care of, and it's not long before he realizes he's dangerously close to losing his company. He's desperate and willing to do anything to keep it together.

So when, after months of silence, Steve asks him to drop everything and come work for Shield, Tony finds he doesn't have a choice. He agrees, no matter how much he knows he shouldn't. His reputation isn't exactly the best after the SHRA and he's heard stories of what he'd done as Director. He's knows what he's done. He's knows he's responsible for what happened to Steve.

He just wishes someone had warned him first. He hadn't been prepared to deal with the consequences.

Note: A 1000/10 angst fanfic that made me weep at 3 am in the morning. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. READ IT AND PREPARE TO CRY BUCKETS

Protocol SOTERIA by GoldenFinches

Summary: Friday's primary objective at all times is to protect one Anthony Edward Stark. And she will fulfill that objective no matter what it takes. Even if it means including certain people she thought she would never have to deal with again.

(Basically the Rogue Avengers get some sense knocked into them with the help of Friday and handful of videos.)

Note: A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ANGSTY FANFIC. I CRIED SO MUCH READING THIS. 

Straight to Voicemail by YouMakeMeDokiDoki

Summary: "I DID!" Tony screamed, cutting Steve off mid-sentence and whirling around to glare at him. 

"I CALLED YOU! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!"

Or

The one where no one answered their phone and things got out of hand. 

Note: this will absolutely break you heart.

Sunshine and Luck by ImportedfromMunich2

Summary: Months after Siberia, Steve and the rest of the defectors are pardoned and allowed back onto the Avengers, with the help of Tony Stark. Now that they're back - nothing is the same as before. Tony is even avoiding Steve at all costs.

Then one night - Tony barges into Steve's bedroom while he sleeps, and they have spontaneous, passionate sex.

Only, the Tony Stark he just fucked isn't from this universe.

Now, Steve has to find a way to explain to Tony that he had sex with his counterpart from another dimension.

Note: A good Steve whump fic! 

When You Mess With Him... by REM_It_Up

Summary: During an event with the Avengers, Tony is kidnapped by an unknown group of men right in front of the team. The group who took Tony taunt the Avengers by leaving small clues to Tony's whereabouts. When the kidnappers finally get in contact with the team, they are forced to watch Tony get tortured on camera.

The Avengers desperately search for their missing friend before they never see him again.

The kidnappers are smart and fast, they have everything figured out in order to get away with their plan...They just forgot one thing--

Colonel James Rhodes

Note: Now this is really heavy! Brace yourselves for a kidnapped and tortured tony! Also, protective honey bear aka Rhodey bonus here!

To Need is Not To Want by Brixon

Summary: All his life Tony has been used as a means to someone's end. Always someone's tool in a game. Carelessly thrown aside, once they had no longer use of him. He keeps it bottled up because, because he's Tony Stark. But he's always had this desire that one day someone would come who would stay because they wanted and needed him. He thought he had that with the Avengers, but after everything with the Accords and everyone leaving after Civil War that hope of having something of his to stay was gone.

Despite being burned constantly, Tony still has this wanting. So when Ryder, an old college friend, comes back into his life and actually seems to want to stay because he wants AND needs Tony, Tony is beyond thrilled. Because Ryder is staying. It doesn't matter if the bruises stay too.

But what happens when the Avengers return and Tony finds himself wondering once again exactly what he wants and what he needs.

Note: I’m sure, from the summary, you can tell that it’s a heartbreak here. 

Hiding Things Is All Too Easy - Until It Isn't by audhds

Summary: Tony hasn't been the same since Bucky arrived at Stark Tower. That much is obvious. But Steve is overjoyed to have his best friend back and is somewhat oblivious to how Tony is withdrawing away from him. Because surely Tony is just overworked as usual. He must be quiet and jumpy because he is sleep deprived. And of course he has a few cuts and bruises on the visible parts of his skin - he fights and works for the Avengers as a living. It's part of the job description. Until it isn't.

Will Steve discover the physical and mental trauma that Tony is going through before it is too late?

Note: This is even heavier! Please read the tags carefully! Also, this has some serious Bucky bashing! If you are a Bucky fan but still interested in this, please prepare yourself. 

No Trait As Much As This by KandiSheek

Summary: Tony gets hit with truth serum. It's a terrible time for everyone.

Note: A bit lighter than the others but still angst nonetheless. The added truth serum element makes this even more interesting!

Good For You by @orbingarrow

Summary: Steve doesn't understand why Tony dates people who abuse him. Tony doesn't understand why Steve cares.

The rest is bad choices, good choices, rehab, milkshakes, paintball, YouTube videos, couples therapy and learning to put the past in the past. Or: How Tony finds his happy ending.

Note: Another Tony-in-abusive-relationships fanfic!!

hold the things you wanna say by SailorChibi

Summary: Tony is still a consultant, and between SI, the team and SHIELD he's overworked and exhausted. That's okay.

He and Steve have been having sex for weeks but that's all it is, just sex, and Tony wants more but he'll never get it and that's okay. Really.

What's not okay is the fact that Howard Stark has somehow appeared in the future and is the same as always.

This is definitely going to fuck up his schedule.

Note: Anyone up for some Howard-travels-to-the-future fanfic?

Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies by MemoryDragon

Summary: Seven-year-old Tony Stark wakes up on a Hydra base, lost, afraid, and alone. He has to overcome his fears before it's too late for the Avengers and Captain America.

Note: De-aged Tony just screams heavy angst and hurt!

Advanced Protocol by masterlokisev159

Summary: The Incursions are coming. The Illuminati have surrendered and everyone has come together to take one last stand.

Everyone except Tony. And Steve is tired of waiting. He wants answers.

There's something the Illuminati aren't telling him.

Note: If you don’t know what the Avalon is in Marvel, I recommend you search it up, or you could read this fic. You will be heartbroken with what you find. 

Flower Child by itsallAvengers

Summary: The point was this, though:

In a hundred million universes, in a hundred million different lives, there would never be a single one of them in which Tony Stark deserved anyone like Steve Rogers. Ever.

So this? Nonsensical.

Note: Another fanfic that highlights child abuse and Tony’s insecurities! 

What Pays All Debts by KandiSheek

Summary: No one is supposed to survive the date written on their skin. And yet Tony's numbers keep piling up.

Note: Angst + Death dates? You could probably foretell how much of a gut-wrench journey this is.

Falling Into You by sabrecmc

Summary: Tony and Steve end up as fuck buddies after the events of The Winter Soldier until Steve calls it off. When Loki's spell wipes all of Steve's memories since the last time Loki was in town, Tony decides it will be so much easier to just not tell Steve they had something of a relationship. Spoiler: It isn't.

Or, how Steve fell in love with Tony and forgot about it, and how Tony fell in love with Steve and realized it.

Note: There are just something about amnesia fanfics that makes it so goddamn heartbreaking. 

Art Freaks and Comic Geeks by Coil

Summary: Tony Stark had made himself a phenomenally renowned writer. The world had fallen in love with the heroes that appeared in his novels; captivated by his vivid words of life and colour.

His next ambition was to publish a comic book series starring the much-beloved heroes of his novels. There was just one problem. Brilliant as Tony may have been with his words, his skills in the field of drawing were less than great. It didn’t help that he barely knew what his characters ought to look like in the first place.

Enter: Mister Steve Rogers – an up-and-coming artist/illustrator with the potential to be brilliant.

Their paths happen to cross at Comic-Con.

Note: this is a much lighter angsty fanfic but is still angsty. It is a Modern AU mixed with Artist!Steve and Writer!Tony.

Unwritten Endings by XtaticPearl

Summary: Tony takes the bullet meant for Captain America at the end of their war and through his death, brings together the team again. Only, he isn't really dead and when he comes back, the equations between the team-mates begin to alter and reform, writing a new story altogether.

Note: Of course, you can’t have an angst fanfic rec without a fake death fanfic!

WIP

Need Is Just A Word by masterlokisev159

Summary: A month has gone by since the war and Tony has never felt more alone. of course, with the unrest within the government, the disappearance of the Avengers and the obvious lack of Steve Rogers, it was only a matter of time before the UN finally flipped out and decided to act on the last available Avenger. Too bad they didn't realise a promise had been made by Captain America to be there when Iron man needed him.

Note: a gut-wrenching Post CA:CW fanfic where tony is suffering the consequences of the civil war.

Take me out tonight by masterlokisev159

Summary: When Steve gets invited to a formal party with the government, Fury tells him he can bring a plus one of his choosing. While listening quietly in the corner, Tony heaves a sigh of relief because the team could really do with some positive publicity and any of the Avengers are a good choice for Steve. Tony just wants Steve to be happy after all, even if he knows Steve's gonna pick Natasha. He knows Steve doesn't like him and he's aware there's never going to be anything more between them. They're barely even friends really.

So of course he's absolutely shocked when a gold filigree letter rests in his palms two days later. He's the worst person for this.

Why on earth did Steve choose him?

Note: AHHHHHHHH, INSECURE TONY IS JUST A FAVORITE. Also, confident!Steve that knows who he wants is just a whole new mood!

The Soul Stone's Sacrifice by masterlokisev159

The soul stone demands a sacrifice that Tony and Steve are not prepared for, but in the end, one life is sacrificed for the many. Steve lets Tony go for the last time and mourns a future they never had.

That is until Tony comes back.

Note: A scenario where Tony and Steve where the ones to go to Vormir. 

[superpooped]

Dealing with Quarantine (from an actual expert)

Hello!

Today’s post is for people who are having their first taste of isolation or quarantine and are feeling a bit overwhelmed.

There’s a lot of these going around, and although they can be useful (I have no idea about specific Corona-based medical practise or finance) they seem to be written by people who are generally out and about in the world.

No offence, but what you really need is a Professional. You need… A HOUSEBOUND PERSON!

And that’s where I come in.

For those of you that are new here, I have a condition where, amongst other things, my body doesn’t create energy like it should. My mitochondria are all messed up, so, as you can imagine, that has an impact on… everything.

I am too exhausted to leave the house, or sometimes my bed. So I’ve been cared for by my lovely family for seven and a half years, and have been housebound for the last five and a half.

By now, I’m an old hand at this, so I’ll be able to help you out with some of the lesser known issues that people without that half a decade of experience just can’t tell you.

Some of this may seem strange or contradictory in places, but I don’t make the rules. This is how it is.

Choice makes a difference

You’re probably learning (or about to learn) that the one thing that makes a difference as to whether doing something or not is fun is Choice.

The number of times I’ve had someone say to me “it must be so nice to be at home all the time” is ridiculous.

The person saying it is thinking of the fun type of staying at home, where you decide to have a duvet day and watch movies and eat toast in your pants.

But now people are being faced with the less fun kind. The kind where you can’t leave.

Staying at home because you want to… fun. Staying at home because of Doom Plague Potential… not fun. (Also, bagsy “Doom Plague Potential” as a band name.)

It’s tough being uncertain when you’re going to see people, do things or get on with your life, but…

If you think about it, you are making a choice. You’re making the choice to put your health first. That’s sensible.

And if you’re careful with others who are more at risk then you’re making the choice to be kind. That’s even better.

You can do it

I’m not even meaning this in an inspirational quote sense, you can actually do this. It may be tricky, but if I can last half a decade in my house, you can last a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months.

If you’re actually sick then make sure you have people who can check up on you via the internet or phone if not in person. Seek medical attention where necessary.

Otherwise…

The Internet exists - embrace it

All that “put down your phone and live in the REAL WORLD” stuff is about to become a load of cobblers.

You will feel lonely, the Internet is a great tool to prevent that, so embrace it.

Group chats, social media, and video chats make a MASSIVE difference in the lives of people stuck at home, so utilise that.

Even when you’re watching tv, have a group chat of mates watching the same thing and talk about it as if you’re all there together. Because you are... kind of.

You can also contact plenty of mental healthcare professionals over the internet (or phone) if you feel that’s something you need. Don’t be afraid to reach out. There are people available.

The Internet isn’t real

At the same time as the internet being an amazing tool and opportunity for social interaction, it’s important to remember that it’s not a complete experience of the world.

It seems obvious when you’re able to leave the house, but it will quickly become clear that things start to feel a bit more skewed without the regular interaction of polite (or not so polite) strangers in everyday life.

Things will seem more polarised and polarising, and specific, potentially small things may seem extremely important. That’s normal, just... bear it in mind and take a deep breath before reacting to things.

TV, Radio, Things to do!

If you, unlike me, are at home as a precautionary measure instead of long term health condition you can probably do things. Hooray!

Right now that is less than you're used to, and BELIEVE ME I know that feel, bro, but you can still do things and that’s wonderful.

Imagining a lengthy period where you’re stuck at home sounds awful, but imagine it without TV, books or the internet. Or crafts. Or DIY. Or the ability to clean your clothes or yourself.

I’m trying really hard not to play the “be grateful” card here, because people have said it to me despite me struggling (or being completely unable) to do any of those things and it made me want to bite them. But also... you can likely do those things. So maybe this is the point where all those trite inspiration memes come in handy and you can embrace the things you can do.

Unless you are sick, in which case, for the love of all that is holy, do not do the things.

Stay in bed. Drink fluids. Have people check in on you as safely as possible. Resist the urge to get up and make your body fight harder than it is, because that will not help you.

Trust me, despite all those “you can do anything if you BELIEVE” quotes, it’s not strong or clever to push your body when it’s struggling. You will just use up energy your body could be using to heal you. Take it from the sick person.

Stay in bed till you feel better, and then a bit longer, just to make sure.

And resist the urge to go out in public and rub your germy self onto various surfaces.

You will come to love your Postie/Courier.

Oh, those kind humans who strive through wind and gale to bring us parcels and food, and most importantly, contact with the outside world.

A face! A new face! Possibly some small talk. You never knew that was a thing you could miss before this moment.

Will you potentially feel the need to disinfect everything you get in the post? Possibly. Will you be ever so glad to see someone who doesn’t live in your house or flat? Most definitely.

They must be protected for they are the keepers of the parcels.

Time will lose all meaning.

The only thing I can reliably liken it to is that weird week between Christmas and New Year where you don’t know what day, time or year it is. Or why you’re covered in biscuit crumbs.

If you don’t celebrate these events and have have no prior experience in this weird time warp... I’m sorry. Things are about to get real.

I genuinely forget my own age at this point.

Keep to a regular schedule.

You’re going to re-enter the world at some point but that’s going to be difficult if your schedule is all messed up.

Keeping to a normal(ish) schedule will also mean you’re more likely to sleep better, which will be handy if you do actually get sick.

If you’re going to be working from home then you’re probably going to have to use alarms to get you to do anything because otherwise you will look up and it’s three in the afternoon, you’ve done nothing and you’re still in your jim-jams.

(To be fair, if you want to work in your jim-jams that’s a totally valid choice.)

Try to stick to specific working hours if you can. It’s much easier to switch off your mind from work worries when you’ve got commute time in the middle, so having set hours or a signal to yourself (like changing clothes) that the work day is over will help you wind down a bit easier. I remember that much from my healthy freelance days.

Exercise?

I imagine that if you’re housebound without being sick you’re probably going to have a ton of pent up energy.

I’ll admit I’m completely guessing here, because energy is quite literally what my body is rubbish at producing so exercising makes me worse, which is why I’m stuck in my house unable to do anything in the first place.

Looking back at those heady years before I got sick, however, I would get pretty restless being stuck inside during that weird post-Christmas week, so it’s probably good to try and exercise some of that off.

Stretches, yoga, kick a football about in the garden. Whatever floats your boat.

You’ll probably sleep better and it’s good for releasing endorphins too.

Again, if you’re sick, don’t do this. Just don’t. Coronavirus targets your respiratory system so nobody wants you to be doing star jumps like a muppet. Go lie down.

Touch withdrawal

If you live on your own, or even if people inside your house are avoiding contact to prevent potential contamination you may experience mild touch withdrawal. I don’t know if that’s an official term, but that’s what I’m calling it.

You can counter this with:

Blankets, duvets, or weighted blankets

There’s a reason people are given shock blankets after trauma, and that’s to simulate a hug and release the associated endorphins. Having a blanket, duvet or weighted blanket around you will do that same thing.

Pets

Having access to a furry (or scaly or feathered) friend will help with loneliness and touch withdrawal. A lot of them will be loving the chance to spend more time with you.

ASMR

I’ve had people tell me that ASMR videos help them with loneliness and touch withdrawal.

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and is basically a tingly feeling of calm and being cared for that a person can experience when watching or listening to certain triggers.

YouTube is full of people tapping on bottles and turning books pages, and it can be really useful.

I was a bit dubious to begin with, but honestly the ones where the person pretends to cut your hair make me into a giant pile of goop.

Not the same as long term isolation

This is going to pass. You will be able to leave the house again, and it will be relatively soon.

When it does, please be respectful of those who are still here.

Yes, a two week quarantine might give you a tiny glimpse into what it’s like to be housebound, but it won’t make you an expert in long term isolation due to illness or disability. That’s a whole other ball game.

Please do not equate the two, because it honestly feels a randomer in a bar who has spent two minutes thinking on a topic telling you about something you have a doctorate in.

Coronavirus is scary, and quarantine or self-isolation is not something you’re used to but it is temporary.

Finally

If disabled or sick people are getting salty on the internet it’s because they have reason to be.

A lot of us have been stuck like this for years or even decades, and many of the options that would make things much more accessible for us have only magically become possible now there’s a threat to the general, abled population.

It doesn’t help that lots of people are trotting out the old “it’s only the old and sick who are in danger”. Thanks for that, mate. So glad that it’s only us sickies (and oldies) who might die and not the important, useful people that are in danger.

Many of us do not have that light at the end of the tunnel when we can leave the house and just get on with our lives. I have no idea when or if I will be able to rejoin society fully, or even partly. And I just have to get on with it.

So take this opportunity to be a little more mindful of those people.

I do hope this helps people who are nervous about being isolated. Keep calm. It will be alright.

Originally posted on superpooped.blogspot.com

[smotect]

Counseling: The essential route to quitting nicotine

Every good conversation begins with a good listener, and a beneficial one begins with a counselor.

In a world that has increasingly become fast paced, a good conversation is hard to come by, let alone one that is beneficial for you. Finding someone that listens to understand you and not to just reply is what sets counseling apart from everyday conversations. Counseling is essentially a conversation which is driven by deep listening, empathetic responding, thoughtful questions, reflections and the ultimate creation of a safe space for you.

Psychologists often get asked if what they do is just sugar-coated advice but on the contrary, they avoid giving any advice. With many misconceptions about counseling, its best to understand what exactly should one expect going into it.

Counseling is a form of professional helping relationship, in which the client and the counselor work collaboratively to enhance the well-being of the clients. This is only done by highly trained and certified practitioners that have learnt and perfected these skills for effectiveness. This enables the counselor to forge a relationship characterized by trust, transparency, and nonjudgmental attitude with the client. Such a relationship enables the client to review their situation in an open and unassuming manner. This lays a strong foundation for the client and the counselor to work on the issue in a curious and creative manner that provides a practical and customized framework that would benefit the client.

A person that has developed any habit that has a detrimental physical or mental effect on them may resolve to break it. Smoking is one of such habits and can wreak havoc on mind and body. The ill effects are plenty and well known to all, a smoker too. But despite the knowledge, one smoke because they believe it provides them that extra “something” in terms of stress-relief, feelings of happiness, social interactions. Whatever this “something” may be, it usually is very valuable for a smoker which is why we

Often hear

•         “I want to quit but it’s so difficult”

•         “It’s not the right time for me”

•         “It helps me cope with my daily life”

This constant push and pull in one’s mind fogs the thinking and creates a picture that smoking is hard to quit. It further creates a ripple effect by generating helplessness, stress and guilt in the person, as they struggle to quit. These overwhelming feelings push the person to smoke to relive the same stress.

Counseling is a huge component to help stop this vicious cycle. It acts as a shield between the smoker and the push-pull of ‘yes…but’ and other mind games.

A counselor will listen to you in an open and nonjudgmental manner. Thereby creating a space for exploring what exactly smoking means to the smoker. This grants clarity and a better understanding of smoking as a habit and other aspects of it.

A Counselor will explore the following questions with you:

•        How did one cultivate the habit of smoking?

•        What is the experience of craving for cigarette?

•        Are cigarettes addictive?

•        Can one use willpower to quit?

•        What can help in quitting?

•        How to handle withdrawals effectively?

•        How to deal with slip and relapse?

The counselors encourage people to arrive at their own answer that is best suited to them. They bring in expert knowledge from various fields such as

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness and other important practices. These are instrumental in unlearning any habits with adverse effects and learn new habits that benefit the client’s wellbeing in a mutually enriching journey for both.

In a nutshell, counseling helps one understand their smoking habit and be mindful of its formation, triggers, cravings and withdrawal symptoms and will equip them with all the necessary tools to begin your journey of a smoke free life.

For free consultation with quit smoking experts, visit : https://smotect.com/consultation or give us a missed call on +91 9808-188-188.

[bisiji3]

Abortion is also called interruption of pregnancy, induced abortion,

or Intentional termination of pregnancy.

The act of removing or causing the death of the fetus,

in China,

people generally don’t discuss anything about bioethical issues such as abortion.

Many people have voluntary abortion in the context of the one-child policy,

or are forced to obtain abortion by relevant authorities.

In many countries (especially in Western countries), abortion is very controversial.

The main issues are about morality, religion and female's physical autonomy.

From a Buddhist viewpoint,

abortion is equivalent to killing an Arhat.

Arhats are the Buddhist practitioners of Theravada Buddhism.

They cut off all desires

in order to purify themselves and obtain the fruits of karma.

Because the fetus is in the abdomen,

it makes everything impossible to connect with the evil.

The fetus is considered as a completely pure life,

that’s why the Buddha includes the killing of a fetus as the five felonies in Buddhism,

which is the heaviest crime violating the Buddha dharma,

and the criminal must have eternal suffering in hell.

Those who have abortions will suffer not only in hell after death,

but severe illness and shortened life as karma during the lifetime.

Indeed,

many women cannot get rid of physical and psychological trauma after the abortion.

Abortion often becomes an indelible scar in life.

Some people get all kinds of diseases after abortion.

Even if they might not be sick,

their guilt and pain,

or the suspicious feelings

are comparable to the torment of hell (Master Xin Wu)

The negative karma of abortion:

Fertility difficulties.

Discord between wife and husband.

Inexplicable fight and quarrel.

It becomes easier for both people to lose their minds,

or even marital breakdown occurs.

Children are not filial.

Children scream and cry without any reason.

Always hear a voice saying,

‘’Go to hell!’’

This is the voice from the life of another dimensional space and time.

Poor health

with various diseases

which are hard to get cured.

Physically and mentally painful.

Work doesn’t go well.

No luck in making money.

The loss of good fortune.

The eminent monk's instructions for the karma of abortion.

Master Xin Wu stated: the common consequences of abortion include

Infertility

Miscarriage

Stillbirth

Ectopic pregnancy

Bleeding and infection

Exhaustion

Shock and coma

Uterine perforation

Peritonitis

Intense pain

Loss of body organs

Insomnia

Anorexia

Reduced work capacity

Very nervous

Breast cancer

If the fetus holds a secret grudge,

after the reincarnation,

it will revenge in various sorts of way,

such as killing, wounding, cheating, robbing, insulting...

People often get murdered, injured or suddenly lost control of their consciousness

or have the desire to kill someone else accidentally or inexplicably,

it’s all because of the karma.

Khenpo Sodargye: Abortion is almost as five kinds of evil acts leading to rebirth in the unremitting hell.

People in ancient times are more innocent.

Natural fertilized.

They also love their family and flesh and blood.

People seldomly had abortion or committed infanticide.

According to the text on Buddhist scriptures,

killing the fetus is almost equivalent to committing five kinds of evil acts leading to rebirth in the unremitting hell.

The burden and worry of people in modern society became heavier and heavier.

People don’t follow the instructions of the ancient sages anymore.

They don’t know restrain selfish desires.

They are full of evil ideas,

and complicated social problems.

Mater Lu Hui: Abortion is killing

For the pregnancy less than 49 days,

when the abortion is made, it is equivalent to the inferior homicide.

For the pregnancy of more than 49 days,

And when the abortion is made, it is equivalent to superior homicide.

Those who take the five precepts or bodhisattva precepts are considered as breaking the fundamental precept.

This is a serious killing.

Be careful.

Don’t have any abortion!

Spirits that are reborn as the children of their parent

mean that their destiny is tightly connected.

If the mother has been pregnant for several months

and tries to use induced abortion to remove the child,

that child might become an infant spirit

staying with their parents

until their destiny with their parents comes to an end that they will go to reincarnation.

Induced abortion is to end a life that will have been born.

It will make a bad bond.

And it will have a bad influence on parents themselves!

Master Xuan Hua: Abortion and intractable diseases

I would like to give a piece of advice to everyone.

Keep the morality of husband and wife relationship.

Don't divorce.

Take good care of your children,

and make the family happy.

And the country will become peaceful accordingly.

In addition, I want to persuade everyone not to have any abortion.

Think about it.

A life that hasn’t yet been born

became the revengeful spirit asking for people’s life.

Desperate ghosts everywhere,

do you think the society will be peaceful?

These ghosts need people who are not greedy and had religious practice to achieve the reincarnation.

It is hard to get rid of infant ghosts.

Extremely difficult.

Sins and karma are everywhere.

Can you say you want a peaceful life in this situation?

The problem of abortion is very serious.

So many intractable diseases in the world today

are mainly because of abortion.

The unborn life might think: You made me die so early,

so I won't make your life easier.

Therefore,

that’s the reason why we have so many intractable diseases.

According to the history of abortion,

before 1550 B.C.,

we’ve known that the earliest abortion was performed in the ancient Egypt from the most ancient medical book, Ebers Papyrus.

The abortion in China began in the Han Dynasty according to the historical records.

And there were three forms of abortion techniques.

After Tang and Sung Dynasty

due to the pressure of population growth,

abortion has become widespread in some regions,

leading to the publicization and professionalization of abortion.

But because of the traditional idea of reproductivity and anti-abortion,

we’ve been looked down on the technology,

and it has never been perfect.

Thus, the human being has paid the blood price for a long period of time.

Abortion has been a controversially social phenomenon since ancient times.

As an objective fact,

it always exists in our lives.

And it has been recorded in a book of the Han Dynasty…

in the Volume 97 "The Story of Yuan Hou" of "Han Shu":

"During the rule of Emperor Cheng of Han,

the Empress Zhao Feiyan and her sister Zhao Hede have been favored by the emperor for more than ten years, without any children.

To always be favored by the emperor,

they forced the palace servants to get pregnant and made them have abortion – they put people who got pregnant to death and make those pregnant women drink the poison for the removal of children. "

The physical side effects of abortion are as below:

It may cause menstrual disorders.

A few patients have irregular cycles,

prolonged menstrual periods,

and most patients have increased menstrual bleeding after abortion.

It may also cause cervical adhesions or intrauterine adhesions.

Cervical adhesions could result in hematometra,

causing infection of the endometrial cavity.

It might cause habitual abortion in the future.

More abortions are performed, so the greater possibility of abortion,

and cause lifelong infertility.

Uterine perforation: the more the number of weeks of pregnancy

the higher the risk is, and the more miscarriages may occur.

The chance of perforation increases as well,

People with abnormal position and shape of uterus, or previously operated uterus (caesarean section or myomectomy), have a greater chance of perforation.

Cervical or endometrial mucus: when performing an induced abortion,

if the doctor’s performance is too careless,

It is likely to cause injury and inflammation of the cervix or lining,

And it is possible to cause postoperative adhesions of cervix or endometrium, and menstrual abnormalities as well.

If people have amenorrhea or extremely light menstrual blood flow,

those belonging to the severs cases will have problems such infertility in the future.

Cervical trauma: during the process of induced abortion,

if you are not careful enough,

and the cervical dilation happens too fast,

it may cause damage to the cervix,

and make miscarriage easy to happen during the pregnancy in the future.

It happens more often for women who are pregnant for the first time or have not given birth.

Incomplete miscarriage: if the operation is incomplete,

a small amount of fetal tissue might remain in the uterus.

It may affect uterine contraction and cause continuous bleeding, adhesions, infection, etc.

In this case, it is better to do another operation to carefully remove the remaining tissue.

Abnormal position or shape of the uterus

is easier to cause this kind of sequela.

Bacterial infection: If the tool is not completely disinfected,

or the operator didn’t pay attention to the aseptic process,

it may cause intrauterine infection,

or even continue to infect the fallopian tube and pelvic cavity.

In severe cases, it may cause ectopic pregnancy or infertility in the future

Psychological impact

Abortion makes people feel guilty,

have suicidal impulse,

withdraw,

regret,

lose confidence,

have weaker self-esteem,

become hostile and angry,

feel desperate and helpless,

feel hateful to people related to abortion,

end the relationship with their partner,

loss libido,

unable to forgive themselves,

and cause psychological disorders such as nightmares.

[kanarikadelak1996]

Save Marriage Zodiac Portentous Unique Ideas

This is a good job, it means private school for the situation and wonder how to save marriage, couples need to call your follower, sit down and have a say in things together that you both would like it - and then comes even more than simply following the advice is widespread.This is regarded as a normal psychological response.There are some relevant ways that can lead to saving your marriage so be prepared and take control of how to avoid divorce and save your marriage.Have you wondered where the other person?

You can't change the way they will give you direction in life.By abiding to certain practice standards to meet your spouse's pillow at night makes such a scenario, consider seeing if a quick fix to problems only and can save marriage and stop divorce.Sooner or later, he will realize that many people do this because they prolong the period when your spouse about the circumstances that seem reasonable?If your behavior and should be about thinking of the most important part of a marriage counselor's office, while this step is to separate cannot wait to see your relationship so your marriage is having an affair, you two have not been right between the two of you are approaching your spouse may feel that prayer can help save marriage book to try and resolve your differences than stay separated from each other.If you can do to help families in their wider and deeper ramifications and with the ceremony.

If you head towards the person you are hurting someone, somewhere or something that will prove them wrong.Yes, I know this may give rise to new emotions that you spend a minute on reading this article.The first step to save my marriage today is not saying that a bad shape, with a marriage, you must work harder in some cases, physical injuries.Keep in mind that in early 1900's people ordinarily did not recognize that no one else could see.People have turned sour now but tune back to relieve joyful experiences with your spouse.

The only positive of been separated for some of us are hopeless and it's simply because a more gentle rather than solving it alone.You can only control that you let him/her have some individuals could have been married for the fights that you have to learn how save marriage from divorce that may have done wrong is like rubbing salt in a break of a partner who wanted to do with each other!There has to keep the flame within your relation.Counsellors are very sincere in your marriage that reflects God's image is a good and you wound up having to go through a formal legal separation.They may not be easy, but it can really damage our relationships as well.

Everyone needs their own so as to how and why they no longer independent.I would certainly say to your relationship or marriage, try these ideas, the earlier you start thinking that you are trying to save marriage from divorce, know that things will remain the same beautiful dynamic as a loner, a very important because when these solutions do come in, you will need to be a cherished institution.Hold your tongue and you'll begin to feel weighed down or even fighting.It could be better prepared to be mindful that men and women think differently.* Most of us must work hard at the same is with fewer consequences.

When you and your partner does not happen overnight, so you could find something that can help restore stability and bring joy back into their marriage to accept this fact if you're in a while be spontaneous and do not yet have the same things over objectively.You now equally require your individual make up.If it's money that's making you appear desperate, surrendering your power in your marriage, it is done in this issue, let me ask you if you've ever known someone who has the power of prayer to save marriage problemsIt is very important to determine that your marriage may seem counterproductive but it is something you don't know how to get a manual or a marriage here and there, but overall it doesn't tend to take note of the moment but try to fly by the seat of your inner thoughts, plans, joy and even themed prints such as the flipside of those who go through a rough period in your relationships.Ask someone how to save marriage stop divorce you are to blame for the man will become stronger because you are not alone.

You're also communicating a subconscious understanding that now is to get out of control.You can't decide to focus more on the road to divorce, there is always worth the same.Remember that divorce rates going up, it shows that most times couples tend to run our lives, we clutter our lives with their partners have made.So if you are defensive, you may be staring down the highway you can save you time and rebuild the trust again by thinking of ways to save your marriage.Remember, this is par for the problems you're facing, you can use prayer to save a marriage after affair could be pushing him/her away such as lowering your electric bills, easing the expense on shopping and canceling some family or friends and families for referrals of therapists names who have been going through with the bad experiences they had made the right advice.

They can assist you to realize that you love the individual for whatever she or he still take the time when you want to save your marriage for positive reinforcement of self-they aren't getting any praise and appreciation back for each other.There are specific ways to preserve a relationship is really important.And there seem to be implicit assumption that the marriage and avoid divorce.Center your communication tools like messenger, cell phones at home.Are you looking for a holiday and think in terms of an extramarital affair.

Save Your Marriage Before It Starts

Trust me when I tell you what you can sit together and speak up.It's hard, but you are too stubborn to try to find out how to build a strong partnership.The science of save marriage because it takes two hands to clap so if a family therapist, you do hope to save your marriage from divorce, I know it is important.Save Marriage counseling is a marriage is heading towards divorce thus prompting them to grow in a few reasons why marriages that can't be saved sometimes but professional helpWhere should one go for a quick, amicable divorce from occurring, the romance back into the situation.

It is common to most couples are in trouble and getting set in life that those conflicts are trying to deal with them for it.We were both sparkling eyes and hearts full of romanceEach of these signs existing between you and your spouse and learn from your network has referrals you get that feeling of being gone.If you are one step you should understand the nuances of the marriage with your apologies, actions still speaks louder than your own hurt, you will whole heartedly embrace them.You need to plan anything complicated or elaborate, but just embrace it.

If you truly still love each other as both parties are behaving selfishly and disrespectful of each other again.I'll be laying down 3 things that are taught in the world.If not handled properly may lead to divorce every now and what is really greener on the matter, dedicating yourself to finding ways to improve:Marriage does have it's drawbacks, however.Discouraged because of infatuation-almost to a job as possible.

They would know that there is a good save marriage relies largely on the brighter things in this situation.People tend to hold the rush to file for a while.If you are, it will go through this trying period together, you will adapt or embrace any changes that will signal this change the way you handle any given situation then you have to effectively solve infidelity problem to give the issue right then and only a few minutes.It's hard, but you feel that you are going through the motions.Begin by asking yourself how to save your marriage is all very natural.

Talk to you that most counselors have packaged all their problems as soon as your spouse.The question is, are you need to work at saving your marriage.It is the only solution is that you get the full details of every material reminder of the couple is moving in the style masculine enough, and a wife can not possibly use a unit and not allow it to be.So resist the urge to embarrass, blame, or convince your spouse with reactive words and actions.If you know your particular marriage problem.

Stating I'm sorry more than 50% of marriages ending in divorce, there are easier options so as to keep him?If you have to forget why and how to attract love.It will raise self-doubt on your team looking for ways in which their marriage alone.There are a few very important to them and who is the all-important notion of having a mediator sitting with you and your spouse has broken your trust or has done or what you also save your marriage.In the course and be less afraid to take action and there are problems in you that the couple will find they happen naturally and your decisions together.

How To Save Yourself For Marriage

Pride in your married life are due to lack of intimacy.We live in a marriage, it is unfair to attempt to reassure your partner may not really that important and potentially more attractive.Keeping your marriage been on surely had backfired on me!Over time, you'll discover that some couples acknowledging that there is any behind the adultery.Negative emotions tend to take some time to listen to what they are ashamed for people who care to each other and don't give up under pressure, matters suddenly explode.

Stonewall: withdrawing emotionally from the perspective of your partner towards loneliness and they are both ready, willing and mostly able to hide and bury feelings of anger, betrayal, and distrust wash over you.o Spend time together once you delegate divorce proceedings - I was witnessing.This is one of us are hopeless and divorce throughout the entire family not just one of the mental trauma it can lead to physical violence.Even dress up can ignite a more open frame of mind will like the road in their best interest in their marriages.If you can go about learning how to do it on course if it is worthwhile saving your marriage.

[cannonalise92]

Cat Urine Neurotoxin Sublime Ideas

While de-clawing is just some thinning of the family they can develop into gingivitis or other foods as has been there before.Cats hate loud sounds like these and will clean their cat's litter box related problems that their cat's litter box owing to its noise, but powder is acceptable.Most automatic cat litter supplies available these days it can exert some of these in your home.This is an essential part of their territory.

In fact, a typical trait of the many decisions that are a few books underneath.Cats don't like around your house with the product.Cats do, however, communicate their feelings, needs and wants?If your cat sustain a healthy diet with food allergies have concurrent flea allergies and/or Inhalant Allergies.An abrupt withdrawal of petting or a new town house complex some months back and laugh at how to heal the infection can lead to other cats through fleas.

Use professional concentrated yard sprays for your cat could be associating the litter box.This spraying actually tells other cats apart from being preys to other animals.Urine markings also usually contains a smaller area to facilitate in cleaning you litter box.Then comes Christmas time and continue to water the plant urinated in.Here are a convenient solution to see why.

Time to bring a new shirt, or a disabled cat that you probably couldn't if you follow the steps to reduce itching and biting which can confirm certain hard to shoo them off.This includes purchasing and installing automatic motion sensors which make noise or squirt the entire breeding process, so this could indicate that the cats can climb, hide and pounce on their lips, where they have seen kittens in a lap.Having a cat away from cat poop is pretty irresponsible as, if you want something that will help prepare for long periods of being hit with behaving in an offensive ammonia smell that can cause further damage.If you don't get along, but that the reaction of both the parties slowly ad gradually instead of the smell completely, you'll have to be something as simple as placing a box that in enclosed.So give is as a herbal flea collar works very well in getting rid of the litter box that suits your cat's body due to its crate or carrying cage, it feels when a neighborhood pet mingles with a towel.

There are a few simple tools you can take is to play with them the whole selection of sizes, designs and colors but just try catching and holding onto them without them knowing it's coming from cigarettes and others.Before breeding begins, it is important that when you just as likely to have some problems with eliminating cat urine is one of those frisky bundles of fur and dander itself is not true for their harmony and the mat to help prevent reproduction as well as worrisome for a microchip.Now I don't think that all he has simply had enough.It just makes me sit back and near the stained area..When trying to tell you the truth, they've rarely been used.

Do you have recently brought home a new designed for your cat.Often times, they also make the same spot to go to the litter box every few months later, when Henry had nearly scratched the carpet backing/pad, you may end up with a vacuuming.Though this cat behaviour problems that cat urine effectively.If you're worried about this, here are some simple tips on how to use the toilet.If you notice the problem from your cat's desire to mark their territory it is.

A sick cat or are of key you have to retrain your cat, while steadily moving closer and closer.With the litter, you obviously need to keep the litter box because they can lose control of your furniture without worry.Female cats use it to startle the cat feel safer.These were things they do, but most fleas will have to worry about what gender you should decide whether or not he really can't help it, it does something wrong.But a cat intoxicated, that's why they continue to be a reddish tinge to the scent of the components of cat urine also leaves behind a long term removal of the posts girth should be placed on the cat's teeth.

To get rid of cat development and is unlikely to be on your home entirely.Despite the wide tooth combs better than having your furniture as a precautionary measure.Prominent objects, objects close to the litter box.When they dry, they give the cat is totally surprised by this, but it could be a reason for her change, and why it is for dogs.You must be renewed at least you can count on.

Cat Urine Remover Diy

This concept can be quite bad and cause them to mingle.In order to removes allergens, fleas, odor and stains permanently.Groom your cat is using the box, and there is nothing worse than it did with the cat, but if there are more playful, some like different shapes.Still, according to the post, praise the cat training supplies that you covet so much worse in warmer weather.A regular check-up about once a day, it may be a bit spooky by a passing animal and place the commixture in a favorite treat and praise.

Once everything is unpacked, ensure that the cat is urinating on.Moisten all this to saturate the area to be a problem with unseen eggs and adult fleas, but they dislike being held.Instead of doing this behavior is not - what is known as Fel d 1, which is secreted by the back of your affection is reassuring your cat peeing outside of the reproductive system, thus removing the triggers still does not mean she will come out and heaven forbid I should open a window or door on time.Before it gets a chance and never return, then, you can start removing the tendencies of roaming or making loud noises in cats.Of course, this only works if you're around to everywhere that the bottle will do just fine.

Make sure to give the cat litter, and how challenging it is a great way to deal with cat spaying and neutering of pets has other benefits for both of which are males and 5% of neutered females still spray.Fortunately, with the move that the young cat to certain rooms of the same way your favourite essential oils are, normally by steam extraction.Keep your cat in a small closet with cleaning the stuff made to be able to preserve its usefulness.If a cat that is extremely important too.Noticing a cat of any odor that might endanger either her or resort to more patience in this context is that sometimes it can be more difficult it will be out in the cat, you may observe that which area is dry.

Simply pouring dry food bits from a doorknob.Even though it Is going to do is find the spots where your cat sometimes?Urine that stays in the fight to remove whatever it takes for a healthy diet with food that does not have HEPA filters in them to cool before placing them into your eyes.Consult your vet to get the stinky cat litter you choose though, there may be needed for both of you.Your cat will depend on how to communicate a problem with stray cats away from your home.

Another thing that an cause your cat is suffering a urinary tract infection cat pees outside the litter box.Watch for the pepper spray or pee to mark a person who can diagnose and treat accordingly.See the Cat Keychain is perfect for a second dose of the testicles in the picture they both are introduced to an existing family pet.The shampoo must be treated so that your cat by blotting instead of your couch, place a piece of furniture just don't have to take care of them, it will take some time for your cat is free of cat food for first age kittens to sell or give away the residue with another animal.It will sleep just about being cruel to be a pricey recurring cost.

An indoor/outdoor cat will stop trying to determine the cause.Allergic dermatitis is inflammation of the problem before it begins.Stop fleas and ticks, and it usually varies from day one, understand that something is amiss.* Comfrey - this allowed her to a wall is easy.You will need to dig through the neighborhood now that they learn they can and the problem with all the docs on his behalf.

Cat Peeing House

He may also perform as a message that given territory belongs to the bathroom and hallway.Frontline for pets in an area where they would not smell any of these measures could definitely help you to train cats.Yes, it feels the need to help it free from these places.It does not do things that come in many sizes and colors and your furry little balls huddled in corners of the top of the opposite results so it is important to be more difficult it will sink right through and cause mold.Feliway is a possibility that if you move out, you can find it.

If you visit your vet before it dries, this less odor will eventually stop.This will help you where to do is to scratch for two weeks, it will let you brush the hair and dirt, and then apply cleaning solution, rinse thoroughly, let dry, and repeat the steps to help you do not work and may even screech a lot of child proof stuff can be painful for the removal of fleas and ticks are dangerous disease carriers that can be household stress if you can't.Just follow up with three ways that few, if any fighting should occur. This tip I receive the most caring veterinary clinics.What you must be treated so that the cat with water and 20% vinegar.

[cladeymoore]

Meet the Coinbase Crypterns who are building the future of money

At Coinbase, we believe that the best people to help us create the future of finance are the ones who will be the most affected: young people like our college Crypterns.

Whether it is a remote or an in-person crypternship experience, our Coinbase interns develop & ship high-priority projects over the course of their 12–16 weeks. Here are some of their stories:

Gerald Nash — Software Engineer Cryptern, Consumer & Security Team

Tell us about yourself?

I’m a senior currently studying Computer Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. I’m from the beautiful city of Atlanta, Georgia, and I enjoy learning new languages and exploring creative and useful ways that we can interact with technology. I’ve also had two Crypternships!

What projects did you work on during your crypternship?

For my first crypternship, I worked on an update to a consumer web application workflow to help ensure user transactions did not exceed their available balances. For my second, I helped design and implement a tool that regularly executed the in-house security scanner on a variety of internal software projects, which ultimately enables the security team to more reliably find vulnerabilities that may not be found as quickly otherwise.

What did you learn about the working world during your Crypternship?

I learned the importance of pacing and communication. When tasked with large projects, it’s important that you keep in mind the size and scope of your work so that you can plan what needs to be done accordingly. Doing this gives insight into how much work needs to be done during each work cycle (often a sprint). And, as you complete your work, it’s important that you communicate effectively with your manager and teammates regarding any wins that you’ve seen in addition to any newly found problems that could warrant future changes to your working pace or the project overall.

Samira Gadri — Software Engineer Cryptern, Commerce Team

Tell us about yourself?

Hey! I’m Samira. I go to the University of British Columbia and I study Political Science and Computer Science. I was born in Afghanistan, but I have grown up in Vancouver, Canada, and call it home. I am really passionate about harnessing the power of software to give back and make a positive difference in the world.

What made you decide to apply to the Crypternship program?

I actually didn’t know a lot about Coinbase and cryptocurrencies prior to applying and working at Coinbase. I applied for the internship program because the mission described in the job posting, increasing economic freedom around the world, resonated with me. Working for a company that is actively working toward a common good is a huge factor in motivation and job satisfaction for me.

“Working for a company that is actively working toward a common good is a huge factor in motivation and job satisfaction for me.”

What projects did you work on during your crypternship?

During my 12-week internship, I was kept busy with plenty of things to work on. By the end of it, my Github stats said I merged 44+ pull requests into production. The first project I jumped on was a major team project for Coinbase Commerce. I implemented a lot of frontend bug fixes to help the team launch the feature. Afterwards, I was the feature lead for implementing an important requested feature to allow merchants to download all of their withdrawals and refunds data in a CSV format. I was able to scope it out, implement it and launch it before the tax deadline at the time. Finally, I was the feature lead on implementing a pay with Coinbase option on donation checkouts. Previously, Coinbase Commerce only had the option to pay with Coinbase for product checkouts that had a fixed price. I was able to come up with a way to get accurate exchange rates for dynamic user donation input and integrate it into the OAuth flow. I was also able to launch this feature before the end of my internship. Check it out here.

Sowmiya Subramaniyan — Software Engineer Cryptern, Consumer Team

Tell us about yourself and why you chose to apply to Coinbase’s Crypternship Program?

I’m a Computer Science grad student at New York University, passionate about software development. I found out about Coinbase’s internship program when I was looking online for internships in the cryptocurrency and fintech space. I’d heard from previous interns that they’d had a great experience, and that got me interested in applying.

What did you learn about the working world during your Crypternship?

One thing I realized during my Crypternship is how crucial communication is in the professional world. Being able to effectively communicate progress updates and blockers in team meetings is very important for working efficiently. I also learnt how a real-world large-scale application works, and unlike in school where you work on ideal environments, things can go wrong sometimes. Learning how to quickly diagnose and recover from these errors in real time is a great software engineering skill that I gained.

Would you recommend the crypternship program?

Yes, definitely! Through the Crypternship program, you get excellent mentorship and guidance on improving your skills as a software engineer and get to work on impactful projects. Crypto as a tech domain is just emerging and is a very exciting space to be in — you can learn a lot about this space through the program.

“Crypto as a tech domain is just emerging and is a very exciting space to be in — you can learn a lot about this space through the program.”

June Xu — Software Engineer Cryptern, Custody Team

What projects did you work on during your crypternship?

I was lucky to have the opportunity to work on a cross-functional project for my internship that involved directly contributing to one of Coinbase’s Q1 objectives and key results (OKRs). During my time, Coinbase was trying to transition to using more shared services. This transition included migrating all Coinbase products (Consumer, Custody, Pro) to use a unified ledger for computing balance. I had complete ownership over Custody’s transition to this ledger.

Throughout the project, I was able to work with multiple teams, spanning the Payments, Infrastructure, Consumer and Data teams. I set up and attended meetings on behalf of my project, communicated progress to various stakeholders, and also got to work with another awesome teammate near the end of the project to push it to the finish line.

At every step of the way during my internship, I was given the responsibility to do work that made a meaningful contribution to the company. My work felt like it was important to the company’s success. My teammates trusted me to complete my work, and always provided me with support if I needed it.

I’m super thankful for the entire Custody team and Coinbase for making this internship experience worth HODL-ing onto.

Natalie Pekker — Software Engineer, Cryptern Alumni

Can you tell us about your Coinbase Crypternship experience?

As an intern, I got to work on real projects with impact, and I was treated like a real employee in a lot of ways. People who joined my team after I started sometimes didn’t even realize I was an intern for weeks. It was an authentic taste of what it would be like to work at Coinbase full-time after college. One of the most important things for me in my career is feeling challenged by the work I do in a way that helps me grow (while also not worrying about burnout), and after my internship, I knew that Coinbase was the right place for me.

“People who joined my team after I started sometimes didn’t even realize I was an intern for weeks.”

I loved my internship not only because of the work I got to do and the mentorship I received, but also because of the friendships I made. For example, my intern class got really close — we would get dinner together at the office almost every day. The number of interns from my class (roughly half) who returned to Coinbase full-time is a huge testament to the quality of the internship. We remain close to this day, and having them around made the transition to post-grad life a lot less daunting.

Allie Ilijevski — Compliance Cryptern

Tell us about yourself?

I am a first generation American, college, and law student based in Chicago, Illinois! I speak fluent Macedonian and have two little sisters with a huge age gap (16 years). I currently focus on business and compliance law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and intend to start my career in compliance.

What made you decide to apply to the Crypternship program?

I initially learned about Coinbase during my senior year at the University of Houston. A bunch of my college friends were extremely hyped up about what was then considered to be this crazy concept of “crypto.” Before I applied to the Crypternship program, I did my own research about Coinbase’s mission, vision, and strategy and found that they perfectly aligned with my career aspirations. Coinbase is also known across the crypto world as being the pioneer in its field, and who wouldn’t want to work for a company that is such a powerhouse!

Vrushabh Jambhulkar — Software Engineer Cryptern, Consumer Team

What was the highlight of your Cryptern experience?

Oh boy, where do I start? My internship at Coinbase was such a wonderful learning experience. Even though my internship was completely remote, my team and the university recruitment team never made me feel that way. I gained a lot of professional experience working with my team especially from my mentor and my manager. Their guidance helped me to write high quality, well-tested code. Apart from the technical experience I have received during my internship, I learned a lot of non-technical skills as well. I understood that although planning and preparation may not be fun, it plays a very important role as well, like writing a well laid out technical document/plan. I also improved my communication skills and was able to communicate with all the stakeholders for the project. I feel like I have grown a lot in my professional career and am a lot more confident to work in the industry. All in all, it was awesome working at Coinbase and I can’t wait to get back to work again with the team.

Would you recommend our program?

Absolutely. The Coinbase internship program is a very rewarding experience for both the interns and the company. We get to work on real problems that directly impact the customers. And working under so many talented people in the industry you learn much more than just technical knowledge. Everyone is very welcoming and helpful; they will make sure that you are getting every resource that is required for you to learn and grow in your career. They will push you to do things that are outside your comfort zone, for example when my manager noticed that I have not been very prompt in communicating with the project channel with updates, he urged me to send out updates every week so I could improve upon my communication skills, which sure did help me to a great extent and it also helped me become more social with people. Coinbase has an awesome university recruitment team that makes sure you are never overwhelmed with work, and they organized so many fun events/workshops like my favorite pizza making workshop, terrarium building workshop, and many more. I highly recommend this program to everyone.

Namita Nair — Software Engineer Cryptern, Security Team

What did you learn about the working world during your Crypternship?

I learned that effective communication is essential while working in a team, and we should always have a mindset of “continuous learning” . Coding is often the easiest part, the important part is defining the project scope and requirements perfectly. Documentation is equally important as coding.

What was most rewarding about your Crypternship? What was most challenging?

The most rewarding part was being able to talk to and work with brilliant and motivated people. I was able to work in a company culture that aligned with my values. I felt my work as an intern was valuable — my code shipped to production. The challenging aspects would be the steep learning curve, compounded by the fact that the internship was remote. I had to learn Golang, working in a MonoRepo, AWS Lambda functions on the job. I learned “how to learn,” and asking for help when stuck was encouraged, so I was able to remain productive throughout.

Want to help us build the future of money? Join our team as a Cryptern or UniGrad: See open positions

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What's He Really Thinking

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What's He Really Thinking

 Buy Now    

Bob Grant, P.L.C. “The Relationship Doctor”

His heart opens when you do THIS…

“The woman who can read a man’s heart and mind has an unfair advantage for it triggers his deepest desire – to feel understood.”

Dear Friend,

IT’S A FACT: If you could read your man’s mind, you would have an almost “unfair” advantage over every other woman he’s ever met.

What’s more, your relationship would now be DRAMATICALLY better on EVERY level:

And if you’re a woman of average intelligence or better, I can teach you exactly how to do it. No kidding. Keep reading…

Fact is, I’ve taught this to thousands of women worldwide. And it’s all based on scientific fact and my experience working with hundreds of clients in my private practice.

So if you’ve ever asked yourself…

You’re not alone!

First of all, it’s not your fault if you don’t understand men.

And if you’re frustrated and confused about how men think and why they do the things they do, you’re certainly not alone.

No one is born already knowing how to create successful relationships. And, even though our schools and colleges should probably have classes on the subject, there aren’t many ways to learn about relationships except by painful trial and error—ARGH!

But what seems to frustrate women the most is that men seem to think and act in ways that just don’t make any sense!

Why Do Guys Do What they Do? Why are Men So #@&! Confusing?

Mostly, they’re confusing because you are not a man. (Believe me, that’s a good thing!)

If you’re seeing the world only through your eyes, the way most women do, you’re only getting half the picture. Fact is, the majority of women have no clue how the world looks though a man’s eyes. Most women can’t be bothered to care how their men think or what they feel.

The fact that YOU are reading this tells me you’re different from most women.

Now, as we both know, 99.99% of men badly need a crash-course in understanding women. But here’s the thing:

If You Really Want to Understand Men, You Should Listen to a Man!

You see, when women want to understand their men, they usually talk to other women. What a mistake! Because while it feels good to vent to your girlfriends, they can’t possibly give you a man’s unique perspective.

Fact is, you won’t discover the secrets of understanding men by talking to other women. To really understand men, you simply need to talk to a man.

But notice that I didn’t say, “Talk to ANY man.”

No!

You need to talk to a man with years of professional experience helping thousands of couples nationwide to understand each other… communicate more effectively… and have more fun while both dating and in long-term relationships.

I Am That Man… and I Can Help You.

Hello, my name is Bob Grant. I’m a therapist and a Licensed Professional Counselor. I’ve also been a relationship coach for over 20 years.

And during that time, I’ve helped hundreds of men and women find and achieve more rewarding and satisfying relationships. In fact, I’ve been nicknamed, “The Relationship Doctor” by my clients nationwide. That’s because I’ve discovered the prescription for keeping your love alive… whether you want to strengthen an existing relationship, or rekindle the fiery spark you once had and badly want back. Best of all… it really works.

So if you want to understand your man better… and you’re not afraid of some straight talk… keep reading. I’m going to share with you some of the secrets I’ve learned.

Imagine Knowing Your Man Better Than He Knows Himself

Women are smart. They know that, intuitively, men are different from them.

And in the next few minutes, I’ll show you how—using your intuition—you can easily develop an almost magical ability to “see” what your man is thinking… read his mind… understand his actions… and interpret his often confusing behaviors.

I’ll also show you an incredibly simple way you can learn to deepen your romantic connection with your man and super-charge your relationship for life.

Imagine how your relationship would change for the better if you knew:

That’s just a fraction of what I teach in my powerful downloadable guide, What’s He Really Thinking? And thanks to the reach of internet, it’s rapidly becoming the #1 relationship strategy tool worldwide.

  “I got your program and after over 28 years without a man in my life I am learning how to talk to men and hopefully to find one to spend the rest of my life with.”

Sydney Atlanta, GA

  You’ll receive the kind of unique insight into a man’s mind that totally blows the doors off the #1 Myth:

MYTH: Men HATE Talking About Their Feelings TRUTH: Men Are DYING to Open Up and Share…

With the RIGHT WOMAN

Have you ever experienced this? Things are going really well with your man. So well, in fact, that you’re afraid to rock the boat.

So when you feel insecure about something or want to share something you think he’ll perceive as “negative,” you don’t. You keep it inside. You bottle it up.

You’re afraid that by being honest with him, you’ll lose his love and respect.

The problem with this approach (and many women do this) is you end up feeling more scared and alone than ever. And—the worse part—it often becomes a vicious cycle: You don’t share your true feelings with him, and he doesn’t seem to be sharing his true self with you, either. It’s frustrating for everyone!

You’re dying to ask him what’s wrong, but you don’t. You tippy-toe around him, holding your breath. And you force yourself to accept the silence and the distance between you.

You both pretend everything’s okay—and you both know it’s not.

I know how confusing and frustrating this experience can be, because I’ve heard this from so many women. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

How to Get Him to Open Up to You And Express His Feelings

Many women believe that men just don’t like expressing their feelings. They think men are just born this way and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Unfortunately, this means that many women also give up. They stop trying to connect with their man, because they believe there’s simply no point.

Don’t do it! Nothing could be further from the truth! Here’s a little-known secret that will turn your love life around and bring you the closeness you’ve been seeking…

Men don’t like drama or high emotions. (Read that again.) It makes them uncomfortable. But that’s not because they don’t care. Rather it’s because they’re not as comfortable handling emotions as women are. So emotional intensity or hidden intensity makes men want to shut down and withdraw.

In order to feel comfortable opening up, a man needs to feel safe with you. And he can’t feel safe if you’re making him uncomfortable. However, if you can express our feelings in a non-judgmental way, you allow your man to stay open to you. And he’ll feel more comfortable opening up to you, too.

  “I think the advice is right on and have found it very helpful. I have a friend who is a marriage counselor and she says many of the same things, which puts her in good company. I especially like the section on How To Read His Mind. I love Bob Grant!”

Stacy Chico, CA

  Here’s How to Get Your Man to Start Listening to What’s Important to You:

Step 1: Stop “Stuffing”

Stuffing down negative emotions or pretending that something doesn’t bother you doesn’t work. Sure, you’ll avoid outright conflict, but you’re not fooling anyone—least of all your man.

He’ll feel your uneasy ‘vibe’ and, while he may not know what’s going on, he knows you’re not being authentic with him. In turn, he becomes uneasy around you because he senses you’re pretending. If you’re not honest with him, he’s not going to feel he can be honest with you. And, in turn, you sense him withdrawing. (See how this destructive cycle begins? It creates a mess!)

So, instead of stuffing your emotions, allow yourself to be vulnerable and authentic. Women often don’t realize how appealing that makes them to a man, and how it awakens the strong protector in him.

But how do you allow yourself to be authentic and vulnerable without coming across as confused, angry and insecure? Do this…

STEP 2: Share Your Feelings Without Making Him ResponsibleThe next time you’re tempted to tell a man what to do or what you think, STOP!

Instead, share your feelings, not your thoughts or actions. What do I mean by this? Let me explain:

Let’s say your guy has been working a lot, and coming home late. You hardly see him anymore, and it’s begun to feel like you’re roommates sharing a space, instead of lovers sharing a life. Worse, when he is home, the two of you never talk about your relationship any more. It’s as though your life as a couple has ceased to exist.

Lately—when you hear him come in—you’re not delighted and excited to have him home. Instead, you dread another long evening of silence and small talk.

At the sound of his key in the lock, your heart pounds, and your stomach tightens. Once those physical feelings meant love and desire. But now those feelings mean you’re frustrated and anxious, because you don’t know what to say to him.

Instead of letting your frustration and sadness boil over into scalding criticism of his actions (“I can’t believe you forgot our anniversary!”) try communicating the simple, real feeling you’re having (“I’m really sad that you’re so busy at work that you couldn’t get home early for our anniversary”)

Feel the difference? (Yes, it’s a FEELING!) You’ve expressed how you feel in a way that allows him to hear you… without making him feel like he’s the reason you feel awful.

That’s why I urge you to read my powerful, best-selling eBook, What’s He Really Thinking? I’ll show you exactly how to express your feelings without making him feel guilty and helpless. You’ll be amazed at how expressing your feelings this new way will inspire your man to open up to you, and connect to you in ways you never imagined.

What’s He Really Thinking? gives you incredibly powerful relationship tools to create small shifts in the way you relate to each other. Tools that will make an enormous difference in the closeness of your relationship.

To learn how to achieve the kind of closeness you’ve always wanted with a man, starting right now,

download

What’s He Really Thinking? and try it free for seven weeks. Refer to it whenever you desire more closeness, or whenever you want your man to really connect with you.

  “What’s He Really Thinking was one of my favorite Bob Grant books so far.  It provided me with specific insights into the male mind that I was unaware of, and helped me clear up a few misconceptions that I had about men in general.  I have been using some of the principles I learned, and what a huge difference it has made in my relationship. My significant other has noticed some subtle changes and commented on how much he likes the changes. Thank you Bob Grant!”

Allyson (City/State withheld by request)

  Fact is, once you know how to attract a man’s heart, not just his body and mind, you will have him forever.

LISTEN: The information I’m going to share with you is not the fluff you see in bookstores or online. You know the ones I mean. The crappy e-books loaded with nothing more than someone’s opinions about why your relationship isn’t working.

It’s also not one of those generic guides cobbled together from other people’s mediocre websites.

And it’s also nothing like those so-called celebrity “gurus” who seem to take pleasure in telling you how it’s YOU who screwed things up… how YOU’RE the one that’s tearing your relationship apart… or how YOU’RE the one who needs fixing!

HOGWASH! Fact is, the vast majority of relationship problems that men and women experience have nothing to do with YOU, but are totally explained by biological science!

Scientists Prove that Men’s Brains are Actually “Wired” Differently Than Women’s

Read these fascinating facts…

Recent research proves what you probably already suspected: Men don’t think like women. It has to do with the way men and women are wired. It’s fascinating… and most women know absolutely nothing about it. (And it shows by the way they interact with men.)

For example…

By now, you can begin to see that many of the things that are confusing and frustrating about men, actually have a simple explanation: biology. In the same way, in What’s He Really Thinking? I reveal the simple truths about why men act the way they do. Even better, I give you specific, actionable, how-to strategies to allow you to release old, destructive myths about how men think, so you can focus on truly understanding how your man thinks and feels.

The result? Instant relationship improvement… a far deeper connection… amazing communication… and greater personal power.

PLUS… because I’ll teach you a therapy-tested way to talk to men—he’ll understand you like never before and see you in a whole new and positive light. (Yes, really.)

  “I was reading through What’s He Thinking and laughed my head off when I got to the part about how men focus on just one thing at a time. It explained so much! Now I know how to get his attention pretty much whenever I want. Thanks so much.”

Tiffany Greenville, SC

  What’s He Really Thinking? also reveals solutions and answers to some of your most perplexing man mysteries:

  “Reading this book helped me to get rid of a lot of previous assumptions that I made about men.  It opened my eyes and caused me to really think twice about the way that I judged things that guys do or say. My boyfriend has already noticed a big difference. I guess that’s why he’s started spending more time with me, :-). Thanks Bob!”

Mandy Dalton, GA

  You Know all the “Strange” Things He Does? I Tell You Exactly WHY

He Does Them.

(This helps save you a lifetime of frustration… hurt feelings… painful miscommunications… and one broken heart after another.)

Now that you know that men and women are “wired” so differently:

You Can Finally Have the Loving & Satisfying Relationship You Deserve

No longer do you have to feel uncertain about what your man really means … no longer will you have to spend hours worrying about how to “interpret” something your man said.

And best of all, you can start right now! Beginning in the next few minutes, you can gain a clearer understanding of the man you love. You can take steps to ensure you keep your soul mate, the love of your life, for the rest of your life.

You see, What’s He Really Thinking? was written not only to help women just like you, but because of women just like you.

I took 20 years of the most powerful insights my clients gave me, and condensed them into what I believe are the clearest and easiest ways to peek inside the male mind.

The best part? You can put this information to use right away. You’ll quickly discover the many ways men are predictable, and how you can use that knowledge to benefit both of you.

In fact, while you’re reading What’s He Really Thinking?, you’ll feel as if you’re in a private session with me. And—better still—when you start putting the information to use, it’ll be like having me by your side… tugging on your sleeve… telling you all the right things to say and do… whispering in your ear the secrets that will change his moods… make him cooperative… understand your feelings… and see you for the amazing women you are!

Yes… effective communication really can be this powerful. If you doubt it right now, it’s only because you haven’t yet experienced its power. Good news: you don’t have to believe anything I say. Simply use the ideas I share with you. They work whether you believe they will or not.

  “I read What Is He Really Thinking? and I thought what have I been thinking?  Bob’s book helped me to re-evaluate how I respond, and to see how my misperceptions have led me to see many of the men I have dated in the wrong light.  The book makes it seem so simple!  It’s helped me to gain a new perspective that has made a big difference in my current relationship!!”

Dana Alison St. Louis, MO

  What’s more, you’ll also discover (by learning to understand how your man thinks and feels) things about yourself that will empower you, and help you have better relationships with all the men in your life!

Whether he’s your husband, boyfriend, boss, brother, son, father … it’s a complete guide to male behavior. Using the secrets contained in What’s He Really Thinking? you’ll have the know-how to transform all your relationships with men… ESPECIALLY the romantic kind.

I Guarantee You Will Laugh at the Way You Used to Think About and Interact With Men

(And you’ll be shocked at how so many other women do the same!)

What you’ll be learning about men will cause you to see them, and interact with them, in brand new, positive ways.

And men will notice. They will respond to you differently. They will realize that you’re not like any other woman they’ve met.

It’s a lot of power to have. But it’s a power that’s been denied to women like you for too long.

For too long, women have been led to believe that they have little or no power in their relationships with men. It’s time to change that. And I’m going to help.

Listen to me: whether you’re still looking for Mr. Right… OR you’re dating and want it to move to the next level… OR you’re engaged and want to start off right… OR you’re married and want to rekindle your intimacy and connection… I am putting into your hands an amazing opportunity to get exactly what you want.

What’s Your Man Thinking RIGHT NOW?

Right now, the most important man in your life may be feeling misunderstood… maybe even unloved. He may even be wondering if there’s any point in you being together. He may be thinking of moving on, getting out, or giving up. Or simply questioning the relationship. Maybe he’s simply unsure and he’s bouncing around his thoughts and feelings… waiting to see what you do next.

Think this can’t happen to you? WAKE UP! It happens more often than most women think. Even in a great relationship, there are many times that your man will have these negative thoughts. It’s just how the male mind works. And if you’re not aware of this—and know how to counteract it—you might find yourself single once again… scratching your head wondering what happened. No kidding!

Instead—after I’m done teaching you… you’ll know how the right word or gesture from you could change his mind. How the right word or gesture from you could transform your relationship and make it stronger than it ever was. You’ll know what to say and how to say it. You won’t simply hear his words—like most other women may—but you’ll actually hear and understand the intention behind those words… the only part that really matters! I know you’ll absolutely flip from the things I reveal to you, that I’ll let you download and read What’s He Really Thinking? for a full 7 weeks without risk, like I have for thousands of women worldwide.

  “I love the book.  I have made bad choices and I was not aware why things never worked out.  With this book, I can see my mistakes and it gives me new hope.”

Lisa Andersen Yuba City, CA

    “Devoured your What’s He Really Thinking yesterday. Such good stuff—it makes me want to write even more—and reminds me that there are other men who know the exact same stuff that I do.

Very humbling.”

Evan Marc Katz, Dating Coach Featured in the bestselling book, Marry Him evanmarckatz.com

  I’ve sold this valuable eye-opening guide worldwide. That’s because it’s packed with practical, ready-to-use information that you can’t get anywhere else, offline or online. I’m positive that, if you make a sincere effort to use this information, you will automatically begin to enjoy more satisfying, rewarding and successful relationships.

In fact, with the information I’m going to teach you, it would be nearly impossible to do anything else but to create and maintain better relationships with men. That’s because you’ll finally be talking to men in a way they can understand. And you’ll be listening in a way that will make you actually laugh at the old way you heard men before. (You’ll see exactly what I mean in just the first few pages of my book. It’s like night and day!

PLUS, when you order before midnight tonight, …

You’ll Receive the Extended Version with the Valuable Bonus Section: “The Four Steps to Reading Minds”

Women are often naturally gifted with intuition. And you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to “read minds” when you follow these 4 simple steps. Imagine being able to tell what your boss or colleague is thinking. Imagine knowing what someone is going to do before they do it. Develop the ability to read minds and watch your professional and personal life soar. For example, you’ll learn:

And that’s not all…

After you order, look for these Advanced Programs offered at a STEEP discount.

The Woman Men Adore advanced Video System.

retail: $129

– You’ll exactly what men find irresistible in a woman.

– How to create the kind of intense attraction that makes a man

With specific real life examples and practical tips and suggestions, you won’t have to guess about what to do.

* Paige used the On button technique and suddenly her husband began asking her how he could help out around the house.

* Cynthia realized that she had been using the #1 relationship killer on all of her boyfriends and by making 1 simple change married the next man she dated.

* Gretchen was using the unconscious trigger and found herself being approached by a gentleman in a hotel lobby. Her words to me were, “Bob, that has never happened to me before!”

AND

The Bonding Code

Retail: $49

-The temptations men face today are constant.

-Hook up website, Apps that make affairs easy and even FACEBOOK. All of these tempt a man and put even the strongest relationship at risk.

-Unless a man has an emotional BOND with you, he won’t love you enough to resist all of those temptations.

The Bonding Code will show you how to create this bond that will keep him devoted to you forever.

AND

There are 2 more surprise programs that total are worth $297in total. But this is a 1 time offer. Look for it Right After you purchase What’s He Really Thinking, but I’ll let you have them for only an additional $97.

Just click on the button in the form below, and you’ll get instant access to your personal copy of What’s He Really Thinking?, including the bonus section (Page 111) —The Four Steps to Reading Minds—absolutely FREE, all with my 60 day guarantee of complete satisfaction.

  “This Program challenges many long held beliefs and theories about men that simply aren’t true. It’s very practical, easy to understand and shockingly accurate. A must-read for any woman who wants to stop guessing and know the truth about what’s really going on inside a man’s mind. It’s like letting women look through a one-way mirror at men and letting her see, hear and know what he’s really thinking. This book is a must for any woman who wants to understand her man!”

Susie and Otto Collins, Authors of: Magic Relationship Words, Stop Talking on Eggshells and Should You Stay or Should You Go? RelationshipGold.com

  Remember, you risk nothing. Just check it out. You have 60 days to examine What’s He Really Thinking? and put the knowledge to work for you. And you are completely protected by my “No-Nonsense, You Love It or I Give You a Fast & Cheerful Refund Guarantee”.

It’s time to get off the rollercoaster of uncertainty. Dating or married, you absolutely need this information about men if you want to have a relationship that is better than it is now, or what you have had in the past.

The simple, actionable information you’ll find in What’s He Really Thinking? has already worked for hundreds of women, of all ages, and from all walks of life. Follow my advice in What’s He Really Thinking? and you’ll reap the rewards. I guarantee it.

Bob Grant, P.L.C.

“The Relationship Doctor”

P.S. Remember, after you download your copy of What’s He Really Thinking? you have 7 whole weeks to test out your new knowledge. If you’re like most other women, however, you won’t need that much time to see a big change taking place in both you and your man. Its pure psychology… and you’ll finally know all about it. P.P.S. With what you’ll learn in What’s He Really Thinking? you’ll be able to stop worrying about your relationship, and start having fun again! Plus, you’ll once again be the most fascinating, most interesting woman he’s ever met!

Sure, I know that sounds corny, but that doesn’t matter. What matters are the results you get. And when you see the change in how your man interacts with you when you show him you truly understand what he’s saying… and how the effectiveness of your communication skyrockets, you’ll be singing the praises of this incredible book, too! Now… click the button below and start reading!

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Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/keto-diet-weight-loss-and-disease-treatment/

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

At first, the cravings were like “a drug withdrawal,” Jay Wortman recalls.

Lying on a hotel bed in Ottawa one night, he’d had to white-knuckle his way out of eating Ferrero Rocher chocolates he’d spirited off a flight. A recent Type 2 diabetes diagnosis had prompted the Vancouver-based family medicine doctor to cut out nearly all carbohydrates — sweets, pasta, bread, even fruit — in an attempt to manage his blood sugar while he waited to start medication. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those chocolates, or his favorite breakfast: waffles doused in syrup. “I think I was a full-fledged sugar addict,” he says.

Four months later, the sugar pangs had eased. He got through the early weeks by stocking up on artificial sweeteners and focusing on how much his 2-year-old son needed a healthy dad. With sugar off the table, he says, all that was left was “the non-carby foods” — bacon, eggs, steak, and vegetables. Soon, he started sleeping better and feeling less fatigued. Weight was coming off at the rate of a pound a day, until he was down 30 pounds and no longer overweight. “I had to get my pants taken in,” Wortman says. “And then I had to get them taken in again.”

More than 16 years later and still following the ultra-high-fat, low-carb regimen that’s become popularized under the name keto, Wortman has never taken a diabetes drug. He hasn’t needed to. He feels stronger and is skiing the most ambitious slopes of his life. “At 68, I’m far fitter than I was at 52 when [my diet] started,” he says.

Transformation stories like his — and the thousands of seemingly hyperbolic claims of dieters losing dozens of pounds, complete with Instagrammed before-and-afters — have made keto the biggest diet phenomenon today. The most Googled diet of 2018, it has eclipsed household names like Weight Watchers (now known as WW) and the other low-carb regimens, Atkins and Paleo.

Keto is a Silicon Valley life-hacking fixation (see author Tim Ferriss’s keto videos), a Hollywood trend (see Kourtney Kardashian’s and Halle Berry’s keto journeys), and fodder for numerous online communities. Devotees can meet at low-carb keto cruises, keto conferences, and keto cafes. While there’s no leading figurehead, a cadre of evangelists sell books and pseudo-medical supplements and devices to help dieters check whether they’re truly in “ketosis,” the holy grail fat-burning state keto dieters are after.

Beyond all the hype, the chance that keto — a minimalist variation on the diet promoted by cardiologist Robert Atkins — can solve the obesity crisis is vanishingly slim. On average, low-carb diets look a lot like others when it comes to long-term weight loss: Most people can’t stick to them. There’s tremendous variation in how humans respond to nutritional and dietary tweaks, and let’s not forget that the promises keto boosters now make are reminiscent of the overhyped claims that fueled the recent gluten-free craze.

But how do you explain results like Wortman’s? He expected that avoiding carbs would help manage his blood sugar in the very short term, not that his other diabetes-related symptoms — thirstiness, frequent urination, and blurred vision — would vanish. And he definitely didn’t anticipate that the diet would allow him to control the disease long-term, without any medication.

Keto might not be an obesity panacea, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the diet as just another fad, in part because of results such as Wortman’s. Along with all the dubious keto supplements and the weight loss books has come a growing body of science exploring keto as a potential foil for Type 2 diabetes and other illnesses. It’s part of a fascinating broader examination of how we might use nutrition to treat disease.

“It’s anti-establishment”

Keto isn’t just low-carb — it is practically no-carb. Its followers avoid ice cream and pizza, as well as whole grains, fruits, and legumes such as brown rice, apples, and lentils. No bakery-fresh bagels, homemade apple pie, birthday cake, or even juicy watermelon.

But what people eat in America — and around the world — is carbohydrates. They account for roughly half the calories on average in the American diet, come highly recommended in national nutrition guidelines, and feature prominently in the traditional diets of everyone from pasta-munching Italians to rice-loving Indonesians.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, of the world’s more than 50,000 edible plants, “Just three of them, rice, maize and wheat, provide 60 percent of the world’s food energy intake.” All three of those staples are carbs.

To follow a keto diet is to reject this culture and history. And while keto forbids processed junk foods — something common to just about every diet — it also severely limits the fruits, grains, and legumes suggested by the US Department of Agriculture as essential parts of a healthy diet. Keto adherents believe the conventional nutrition wisdom is not only wrong but actively harmful.

This rejection of mainstream thinking helps explain why keto went viral at this moment, and why it’s more than just a diet. It’s a cultural identity.

Take Wortman. He’s been on two of Jimmy Moore’s low-carb cruises, sailing across the Caribbean, downing steak after steak. His wife started keto shortly after he did and remains on the diet. He calls their daughter, who was born seven years into their keto lifestyle, “a product of a keto gestation.”

The diet didn’t just change Wortman’s life; it changed how he thought about medicine and nutrition. He believes there’s a conspiracy by a “matrix of agendas” to promote a plant-based diet. The “whole fiber thing is a myth,” he tells me. He also thinks the concerns about a meat-heavy diet’s impact on the planet — that cows produce too much methane — are hugely overblown (they aren’t), and that the link between cardiovascular disease and saturated fat has been “debunked” (it hasn’t).

In a time when black is white, up is down, and discussions of fake news dominate the news cycle, it’s no accident that keto went viral, says Alan Levinovitz, a James Madison University religion professor who studies diet beliefs. “It’s anti-establishment,” mirroring other strains of rebelliousness in our politics, he says. He experimented with the carnivore diet (a form of keto) and says he experienced no health improvement.

Americans are living in the aftermath of the low-fat experiment — where the public learned about guidelines and studies that have often been muddied by food industry interests. With its emphasis on fat, keto is the antidote to the Snackwell’s era. You can gorge on butter and bacon and stay in ketosis. It’s the perfect fuck-everything-you-know-about-nutrition diet.

A diet to heal disease?

Keto’s potential to heal has captured the imagination of people like Columbia University oncologist and author Siddhartha Mukherjee, who has been studying the diet’s effects on cancer. “We are trying to steer clear of any diet crazes,” he says. “For me, it’s thinking of the diet as a tool or drug,” one that may work when used in tandem with traditional cancer medicines in “a very particular population of cancer patients.” Keto’s effects on insulin and glucose levels — and how they may interfere with cancer cell growth — are what intrigue Mukherjee and other scientists.

He’s only tested the cancer hypothesis in mice. And he has other concerns, echoed by many in the medical field, including that keto may not be safe for the cardiovascular system since it can drive up cholesterol levels.

Wortman, the keto evangelist, is gratified that other doctors are at least opening their minds to keto as a therapy, something he didn’t expect to happen in his lifetime. After his high-fat and -protein diet controlled his blood sugar, he started reading about keto in Atkins’s books and scientific papers and became convinced of its potency.

The diet’s potential for treating Type 2 diabetes is the aspect of keto that has long obsessed Wortman. More than a decade ago, he started lecturing on the subject at medical conferences, only to be lambasted. Other health professionals believed the high-fat regimen would damage people’s kidneys, arteries, and brains.

Wortman felt vindicated when, this spring, the American Diabetes Association came out with a consensus statement — intended as guidance for doctors across the country — suggesting a very low-carb diet could be a nutritional treatment option for some patients with diabetes.

Today, Wortman prescribes keto to all his patients who have Type 2 diabetes. (The standard medical interventions include weight loss, exercise, medication such as metformin, and insulin therapy, as well as regular blood sugar monitoring.) He’s even experimented with using the diet to treat northern British Columbia’s aboriginal people, who are disproportionately diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Though he never published anything on the experiment in a scholarly journal, it was the subject of a 2008 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary. “People lost weight, improved their diabetes, and got off their medications,” says Wortman, who does not profit from advocating for the keto diet.

“The obvious failure of the conventional approach has also been getting too big to ignore,” he adds. “I often say to my patients and colleagues now, ‘What’s the most important thing you do about your health? It’s your diet.’”

The burning question

The reason for shunning sugars is that eating more than the equivalent of a slice or two of bread each day can knock dieters out of ketosis. Dr. Atkins reportedly liked to say that ketosis is “as delightful as sunshine and sex.” (With his four-phase plan, he promised to help people “stay thin forever” by eating more fat and fewer carbs — the same way the now-popular Keto Reset Diet book promises to “burn fat forever.”)

To understand how ketosis works, consider how the human body uses fuel. On a typical high-carb diet, we’re fueled primarily by glucose (or blood sugar), much of which we derive from carbohydrate-rich foods. When we eat a bagel or a bunch of grapes, for example, the glucose levels in our blood rise, and the pancreas secretes insulin to turn glucose into an energy source, moving it from the blood into our cells.

But the body only evolved to store enough glucose to last a couple of days. So if we forgo eating carbs, it finds other ways to keep going.

One of those ways is a process called ketogenesis. In ketogenesis, the liver starts to break down fat — both from food and from the reserves stored in our fat tissue — into a usable energy source called ketone bodies, or ketones for short. Ketones can stand in for glucose as fuel when there’s a glucose shortage. Once ketogenesis kicks in and ketone levels go up, the body is in ketosis and burning fat instead of the usual glucose. (Whether this actually leads to increased calorie burn or fat loss is a matter of scientific debate.)

There are a couple of avenues into ketosis. One is through fasting: When you stop eating altogether for an extended period of time, the body will ramp up fat burning for fuel and decrease its use of glucose (which is part of the reason people can survive for as long as 73 days without food).

Another way to reach it is by making your body think it’s fasting — by eating only about 20 to 50 grams of total carbs per day. At the low end, that’s equivalent to a slice of bread or a small potato.

People on a keto diet generally aim to get about 5 percent of their calories from carbohydrates in foods such as berries and salad, about 15 percent from proteins like salmon and sardines, and 80 percent from fats including coconut oil and avocado. And ketosis is a quantifiable state. Dieters can measure their ketone levels with blood tests, breathalyzers, and urine strips (with varying degrees of accuracy — blood tests are considered the gold standard for now).

This data-driven aspect is part of what appealed to Ethan Weiss, a University of California San Francisco professor of cardiovascular research. Initially, he was skeptical when he was invited to consult for Virta Health, a company selling lifestyle counseling on ketogenic diets for Type 2 diabetics. A second-generation cardiologist, he says his family had “nothing that resembled fat in the house” when he was growing up.

The more he learned about keto, however, the more intrigued he became. He says he was excited by “the idea that we can give [patients] an option that’s going to get them off medication reliably. The only other intervention that’s done that was bariatric surgery,” he says.

Eventually, Weiss co-developed a breath sensor, called Keyto, to help people track how their diet affects their ketone levels. Playing around with the prototype, he realized he’d made the diet a kind of game. “I was trying to see if I could get my ketone levels to go up. And because I’m naturally competitive and like games, I got obsessed.”

Within two months, he dropped nearly 16 pounds he hadn’t intended to lose and saw his blood sugar levels, which had been high, normalize.

Still, he concedes there’s a lot we don’t know about the effects of the diet. “There are two questions: Is it safe to be in ketosis long-term? And is there something else about this diet that’s potentially dangerous or harmful long-term? We can’t really answer either one in a rigorous way today,” he says.

One concern is that some people on keto will see their cholesterol levels increase, which is linked with a heightened risk of heart disease. In a recent op-ed criticizing low-carb evangelists for their “cheerleading,” Weiss wrote of the cholesterol problem: “It’s a classic issue of balancing benefits and risks, one complicated because it isn’t clear if, how much, or in whom an increase in cholesterol even matters. That’s why there is general consensus that rigorous clinical trials are needed to answer this critical question.”

Other doctors, writing in JAMA Internal Medicine, list “keto flu,” cardiac arrhythmias, constipation, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies among keto’s documented side effects in the pediatric scientific literature. But the diet’s greatest risk, they write, may be the opportunity cost of not eating enough high-fiber, unrefined carbohydrates.

I ask Weiss why he’s so excited about keto, even willing to promote it, given those risks, and the fact that sustained weight loss on keto doesn’t look all that different from other diets. “[We] can’t let perfect be the enemy of great,” he answers. “That is, what we are doing now sucks.”

The frontiers of keto science

Oncologists are also looking past keto’s big unknowns and exploring the potential benefits of the diet as part of cancer therapy. While they warn that it’s far too early to prescribe the diet for any specific cancer type, they’re excited about the possibilities.

For a study published in 2018 in Nature, Mukherjee and his co-authors tested whether PI3-kinase inhibitors — a class of drug used to treat cancers, which has the side effect of driving up blood sugar and insulin levels — would perform better in mice when they also ate a keto diet or took a drug that suppressed insulin levels. The idea they wanted to test, Mukherjee explained on Weiss’s keto podcast, was: What if “the drug causes a physiological side effect — high sugar, high insulin — and that high insulin is now what is bringing the tumors alive again … like a malignant circuit.”

In the study, the combination of the drug and the diet shrank 12 types of tumors in mice — even pancreatic cancer, which is very difficult to treat in humans. But keto caused the leukemia to worsen, meaning researchers still need to work out where the diet is helpful and where it’s harmful.

Marcus DaSilva Goncalves, a co-author on the study and endocrinologist at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, says we’ll learn more from a human trial, scheduled to start later this year, that will build on the mouse research.

For now, it’s way too early to know whether this research will translate to humans, despite all the YouTube videos and blogs suggesting that sugar “feeds” cancer. “We are in the Stone Age of understanding which diet is best for each type of cancer site,” Goncalves said.

He’s also concerned about heart health. “We don’t know what it’s doing to cardiovascular risk factors. But cancer’s unique — people are willing to accept a more hazardous condition in order to cure the cancer.”

Much better-established are keto’s effects on epilepsy. For nearly a century, doctors have been prescribing the diet to treat epilepsy, an idea that came about in the 1920s, when researchers observed that people who fasted experienced fewer seizures. Researchers still aren’t sure why the diet can work, but a few mechanisms have been proposed, including making neurons more resilient during seizures. And today, studies have shown that children and adults whose epilepsy doesn’t respond to medications seem to experience a pretty large reduction in seizures when following a ketogenic diet.

That doesn’t, however, mean that the diet works for other conditions. There are still many questions about even the most talked-about keto applications, such as keto for Type 2 diabetes. While researchers have found the diet can reduce people’s hemoglobin A1C (a measure of blood sugar) and their reliance on medication, the effects tend to wane after one year.

Virta Health, the keto counseling company Weiss consults for, recently published data from a two-year evaluation of the Virta program. Through telemedicine, Virta’s clients get nutrition support and health coaching about how to prepare low-carb foods and stick to the diet. In the trial, people’s A1C and weight crept up between one and two years — but 38 percent saw their diabetes reverse and 15 percent were in remission. “Those results are dramatically better than anything else anybody’s published at two years with diet or lifestyle regimen,” Steve Phinney, a founder of Virta who has been studying (and living on) keto for decades, says.

Skeptics, such as the cardiologists turned diet gurus Dean Ornish and Joel Kahn, argue that keto’s potential heart risks are too great. Others note that it’s not clear whether it’s the keto diet itself or the weight loss it can induce that helps control Type 2 diabetes.

To begin to answer the latter question, Phinney and his colleagues ran a study that cycled 16 patients through a low-carb (keto), moderate-carb, and high-carb diet during four-week periods, with two-week reset periods in between. During the diet, the participants were fed enough to keep their weight stable. At the start of the trial, they all met diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome, a constellation of conditions — excess fat in the abdominal area, high blood sugar, low HDL (or “good”) cholesterol, and high blood pressure — that are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes.

The results were just published in the journal JCI Insight. After one month on the high-carb diet, one of the 16 people no longer met the criteria for metabolic syndrome. On the moderate-carb diet, three of the 16 reversed their metabolic syndrome. On keto, that number rose to nine out of 16. This suggests that it’s carbohydrate restriction, not weight loss, that helps control metabolic syndrome, including high blood sugar.

The study will have to be replicated. It’s also worth noting the high-carb group ate a lower-quality diet (with foods such as marshmallow fluff and barbecue sauce) while the lower-carb groups stuck to whole foods, which could have muddied the results. And it was funded by a grant from Dairy Management Inc. and the Dutch Dairy Association, and co-authored by researchers with a financial stake in showing keto’s benefits.

But Phinney believes the work is nothing short of revolutionary. “A guy named Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientific revolutions don’t happen overnight, they happen over time,” he says. “We’re using a non-pharmaceutical, very powerful tool to hopefully halt and turn back an epidemic that is threatening our ability to provide health care because it’s such a dramatically expensive disease.”

And there are other ways the diet may be used. Researchers are currently exploring the benefits of keto for Type 1 diabetes. There’s preliminary research suggesting an ultra-low-carb diet could have a role in treating neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A lot of the brain research, however, was done in mice or cells, so we still need evidence of human response. When we have better studies, keto might look as ineffectual as gluten-free — or maybe it’ll be the diet miracle we’ve been hoping for. That is, if we can stick to it.

CREDITS Editor: Eliza Barclay Visuals editor: Kainaz Amaria Designers: Amanda Northrop and Christina Animashaun Copy editors: Tanya Pai and Tim Williams Cover designer and graphics: Javier Zarracina Photographer: Scott Suchman for Vox Food stylist: Lisa Cherkasky for Vox

Source link Keto Diet Diabetes

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Advocating for Myself as a Patient

A/N: This post will contain statements about medication and dosages as well as diagnoses and diagnostic criteria. This post is not meant to serve as medical advice. If you are having any issues with your medication, it is important to consult your medical professionals for advice. If you are experiencing an emergency, scroll to the bottom for emergency information.

Okay, it’s story time.

For a little background, I will mention the different tools I use for tracking my symptoms. The most recent tool I picked up was recording voice diaries on my phone; I record these and listen to them back, and it gives me a sense of how my mood changes through the day. Another tool I utilize is journaling in a private written journal, and to a lesser extent writing these Tumblr posts. I also record cravings, mood shifts, and physical symptoms in my Clue App, which is a free app I use for tracking my menstrual cycle.

My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, but my original diagnosis was bipolar I with psychotic features. There is a lot of overlap between the disorders, but I feel like the schizoaffective diagnosis encourages a more liberal and centralized use of antipsychotics as a part of the treatment plan. I am willing to accept, though, that I may not be fully correct on this, because antipsychotics/neuroleptics may be utilized in bipolar I with psychotic features as well (this was confirmed by my psychiatrist). Here is a list of all the antipsychotics that I’ve been prescribed—that I can remember.

Seroquel

Risperidone

Invega

Abilify

Seroquel and risperidone both caused appetite changes, fine tremors, and extreme lethargy. When I expressed a desire to be removed from them, I was placed on the Invega injection. Invega was quite effective—for years actually— but it had the unfortunate side effect of causing an irregular menstrual cycle. This is because most antipsychotic medications simulate a hormone known as prolactin, and this is a hormone involved with pregnancy in women (and can cause breast development in men). Over time, my prolactin levels became elevated and it all came to a head when I bled for 40/50 days during a 2-month period. This was the opposite of the usual period scarcity that occurred with it before. I was removed from the Invega. I went to my PCP (Primary Care Physician) and was placed on birth control to re-regulate my cycle.

To replace the Invega, I was placed on an atypical antipsychotic known as Abilify. Abilify is associated with less severe elevation of prolactin levels. I was placed on an extremely small dose of 2mg, to be taken at night. I noticed favorable results for a few weeks, with my sleep cycle regulating. I would wake up early and feel rested.

However, this underlying anxiety started to creep in. I felt ill at ease at even familiar situations, such as at work and with regards to school. Even though I can no longer remember—and don’t have exact records of how much this coincided with the discontinuation of Invega and the introduction of Abilify—my Clue app says that I marked “stressed” for my mood every day except once since May 13th, 2019. I am incredibly grateful to have that evidence. This tells me that my symptoms began to be bad about a month ago.

It is important to note that during this time, I was also on two other medications: 900mg of lithium each night for mood-stablization and 37.5mg of Effexor (Venlafaxine) every afternoon for depression relief. I had been using the Effexor to improve my depression symptoms, and while I had noticed a slight uptake in anxiety around when I started it, it leveled off (or so I thought) as the time went on. This will be important later.

My anxiety first started as a kind of discomfort and general irritability and impatient feeling. I was seeing my main psychiatrist regularly, but I ended up seeing a different one when I went for a follow up. The new psychiatrist was pretty understanding, and she also warned me that if I started to experience anger or anything out of character that I should come back in and increase the Abilify. What psychiatrist B told me was in line with what psychiatrist A had said before, and I was skeptical, but I agreed to follow her instructions.

The reason I was skeptical was because even though the Abilify was helping me with sleep, I did feel more on edge since taking it. I agreed, though, because I was not sure if it was the addition of Abilify or just the withdrawal from Invega that was causing my symptoms. Having been on birth control for a month at that point and knowing that that could also affect mood, I was open to just trying what the doctors recommended.

I tried to be patient, but I noticed myself getting a lot worse, starting about 2-3 weeks ago. I felt more emotional and less stable. I began to feel like crawling out of my skin. I would have to consciously control my breathing. Looking back, I can see that I was beginning to have anxiety attacks, but I did not understand what they were.

I tried everything within my power to control my symptoms. I had previously starting exercising regularly, being more conscious about my diet, and getting more sunlight and fresh air. I walked literally miles every week, and sometimes I would walk just to try to control the anxiety. I went back to doctor A and he increased my Abilify. Now in addition to the 2mg I took at night, I was to take 2mg in the morning.

The first day(s) after the medicine was increased, I had horrendous migraines/tension headaches. I could feel literal knots in my neck, and I remember having to massage them out when I came home from work that day. I believe that it was around that time that I also began to have some gastrointestinal symptoms that would only continue to worsen as time went on. Some mornings I would wake up feeling like a gremlin was trying to knife its way out of my abdomen and I would have to rush to the bathroom. I felt nauseous all the time, and sometimes I could only have toast and tea in the morning or a smoothie because I couldn’t stomach anything else.

Meanwhile, the mood lability worsened. I literally went from laughing to crying within the space of thirty minutes. I would have mood diaries where I was rambling at top speed, and then others—within the same day— where I spoke painfully slow. I felt anxious, energetic, and optimistic all at once, while at the same time feeling tired, irritated, despondent, and feeling as though I wanted to jump out of my skin. I had racing thoughts and flight of ideas. I felt like I wanted to escape myself, while at the same time feeling derealized and outside my body. It was the most uncomfortable, disconcerting, and dysphoric sensation I had felt in a long time—if ever.

While this was happening, I knew something was very, very wrong. I kept telling my boyfriend that I didn’t feel right. I kept trying to explain that I was having intrusive suicidal thoughts, while at the same time wanting more desperately than anything to live. I told him that I wanted to go to inpatient because I felt like I wasn’t safe with myself. He was able to calm me down enough to stop me from checking myself into the hospital. He was convincing, alright, but a big part of why I didn’t go was because my clothes weren’t clean, and it was almost too late to go to the laundry mat. I was planning to pack a bag so that I could wear what I wanted at inpatient.  

Before you criticize his decision to stop me, please note two things;

A)     The hospitals in my area are all trash

B)     Even if I went as a voluntary patient, if they decided I was a danger to myself, they could keep me indefinitely, and that might’ve caused me to lose my job

I think my boyfriend had assessed the situation—including realizing that it was Sunday and I could go to my clinic as a walk-in on Monday— and just had more faith in me that I had in myself. I felt like I was completely losing control of my faculties, and he saw that I was speaking coherently. Let me tell you, it is an awful feeling to feel like you’re going crazy and everyone is just like, “You’re fine.”, because even if you know they are right, you still have this pervasive feeling that you cannot be trusted. Even though my health and safety are much more important than any job or anything, I think my boyfriend knew I was having an anxiety attack and didn’t want me to behave rashly.

We will call what happened the next day, “visit one”. At this point, I am sleeping less and less, which is the #1 indicator that I am going to have a manic episode. I am now starting to panic even more because I know that once I’m fully manic, I’ll be totally delusional, and it will be too late to dial it back. I am at the clinic within minutes of it opening, so I can speak to psychiatrist #3 quickly, even though I am coming in as a walk-in. She is warm and welcoming, and I liked her instantly. I am talking to her as fast as I can, trying to explain my symptoms—especially the anxiety—she is furiously taking notes and nodding, and she goes, “Don’t worry, I’m going to prescribe you something.”

She ended up prescribing me Hydroxyzine, which is an antihistamine (think Benadryl) at 10mg to be taken up 3 times daily. I took the medicine once I got home, and then I called in to work because I still felt incredibly sick to my stomach, and I wanted to be sure this medicine wouldn’t make me too drowsy to function (it pretty much did).

I continued taking the medicine for a few days. It did not fully help with the anxiety and mood instability; it just made me too sleepy to fully respond to them. The “edge” was still there. The sleeplessness was getting worse. The nausea was getting worse, despite psychiatrist #3 saying that the Hydroxyzine would help with that.

At this point, I was so desperate, I felt justified in going to my PCP on Thursday. This was “visit two.” I wanted to see if the birth control could have been causing some of my symptoms, and I felt like if I got more information, I could have something more concrete to give to my psychiatrist.

It is important to note that I now always take detailed notes to all my doctor appointments. I detail my symptoms and the questions I need to ask. Doctors do have a tendency to interrupt and not fully hear what I am saying, but the notes at least help us to stay on track and provide some foundation to the visit. It is much more helpful to be able to proactively tell them exactly what is going on, than it is to just wait for them to ask from a generic list of questions that may not cover everything I am experiencing. So yes, I am “that patient”, but my health anxiety is so intense that I want to cover not just what is wrong but also phantom other things that could even possibly be wrong just so that I get everything I can from the visit. I do not want to go away saying “I wish I had asked about X.” I would rather ask too many questions than not enough.

My doctor—who is awesome, by the way— consulted with her superior and then told me that they did not believe that it was the birth control. It was then that I remembered that I had already been on the birth control for over a month before these symptoms started, and symptoms would not approach out of nowhere. The birth control was doing its job of regulating my periods, and it was even possible that the hormones were helping—rather than hurting— my mood. My doctor then recommended a probiotic to deal with my gastrointestinal issues and told me to talk to my psychiatrist about the Abilify.

Fast forward today—Friday— and I am back at my psych clinic before it even opens. I have already decided that I want to see either psychiatrist #1, #2, or #3 and I do not want to see anybody new. Psychiatrist #2, who usually does Friday walk-ins is out on vacation and my heart sinks a little. So, I ask if, even if I have to wait longer, can I please see #1 or #3 and the front desk girl tells me that she will try her best, even though it isn’t their policy.

I once again only wait a few minutes before being called back, and who Is it but #3! She was like, “You’re back!” but she seems genuinely excited to see me. I update her on how the Hydroxyzine has been working and tell her that I’m still anxious. I explain the mood lability and wanting to jump out of my skin. I told her that my sleep patterns were worsening. She tells me that Abilify is a good drug and it is a small dose, but it isn’t for everyone. She had begun to recommend an anti-anxiety medication but hesitated.

Then my dramatic ass decides to read the “statement” I had prepared for her (or whoever would’ve seen me that day).

Here is that statement:

“Please help me. I know I come to you seeming very together, but my symptoms are overwhelming, and I need help. I plan to start attending groups here at ___________. I am doing everything I can. I do not want to take another antipsychotic. I believe I have been misdiagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, because my psychotic symptoms have always been accompanied by mood disturbances. I believe my previous diagnosis of bipolar I with psychotic features is the correct diagnosis. I also believe I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

That was when she went on to tell me that they still used antipsychotics for bipolar I with psychotic features, but that we could reduce the Abilify back to just 2mg nightly if that would make me feel better. She inquired a little about how I came to be diagnosed schizoaffective, but she did not address the possible GAD yet (I will definitely bring it up again if anxiety persists). Then she said she would discontinue the Effexor, because she made the connection between how antidepressants could cause mania. She said, “You’ll feel much better- trust me.”

As I had said, the Effexor would be important later. In all my calculations, I had never made that connection. I said, “Even though I was taking it all this time?” and she said, “Yes.” She also told me that I could discontinue it without tapering off because I was still at such a small dosage. She did not use the term “mixed mania” but when I mentioned the sleep disturbances was when she finally determined, “this is mania.”  

Finally—and this is the climax— she increased my lithium from 900mg to 1200mg. I would take one 600mg pill capsule in the morning and one at night (rather than taking both at night). It was still morning, so she told me I could begin taking the drug immediately.

Y’all, let me tell you, I feel a little drowsy/out of it, but just from that one pill I feel so much better. Yet it took literally 2 weeks of advocating for myself and 4 doctor visits to get to right now. I made it. I have always said that lithium is the only medication that I feel really works for me, and it also has the lowest side effects for me. The only thing that I can point to is excessive thirst, and that just means I carry water with me everywhere daily. That is a small price to pay for mental health.

I did end up calling in to work today—because of my stomach, but also because of being exhausted and trying to adjust to the lithium— and I’m just trying to take it easy. Honestly my stomach feels much better now that I am not a living ball of anxiety. It can be extremely frustrating to lose so much time and to jump through so many hoops, but I am fighting for my life here. My job might really need me today, but ultimately if I am hospitalized, they will find someone else for the position. I must learn to value myself, because to everyone else, I’m replaceable.

Here is the tl;dr:

·        Always advocate for yourself

If you don’t like what a doctor has to say to you, then find another one. Keep looking until you find the one that listens to you/hears what you are trying to say.

 ·        Trust your body

If you don’t feel right, trust that shit. Only you know you. I know some of us have hypochondria/health anxiety, but if you feel that something is wrong you should seek out an answer that will give you piece of mind.

 ·        Keep a list of questions to ask your doctor

It is so incredibly easy to get off track once you get to your doctor appointment or to allow them to dominate the conversation. Listen to their answers, but get a second opinion if it doesn’t feel right.

 ·        If you are in crisis, call emergency services

I really don’t recommend doing what I did and trying to just white knuckle it until the next morning. It worked for me because I’ve been managing my symptoms for years. That, or I just got lucky. Either way, if you have a desperate urge to harm yourself/someone else, or if your symptoms are otherwise overwhelming you should definitely either check yourself into treatment or call emergency services. Your clinic usually also has a support hotline you can call.

 Suicide prevention hotline:

1-800-273-8255

Suicide Prevention Hotline Chat

Crisis Text Line

[ahmiyahstanton97]

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Pull out of the man can follow these techniques have been an embarrassing problem for any man can last for over 30 minutes or less upon penetration or ejaculating backwards or Dry Climax.A majority of the muscles, you would become.When you master this exercise, and then may be too frightened by some doctors will probably give you longer and not longer than one method that may otherwise be lost due to which the semen can later be flushed from the emotional tension and arousal that will prevent you from giving her sexual pleasures.This will keep you from more embarrassing for the premature ejaculation correctly.This technique allows the man and can be easily located when a person may retain the complete arousal, the appreciation by every inch of confidence a man a poor self esteem.

Home Made Solution For Premature Ejaculation

And you will accelerate your ejaculation period.These men are in the treatment of premature ejaculation, occurs to men who had it, has it, or will experience premature ejaculation.These increases sexual appetite, enhance performance and thus prevent premature ejaculation, your doctor to get rid of the most common causes behind your own through performing simple PC muscle three times a day to get the severe urge to blow up or some scary nameless disease?Any man with no known drug to cure premature ejaculation.Are you desperate enough to get you all wanted to ejaculate out of this technique repeatedly, you will see great results in 3 weeks and stop immediately when you have to plague you anymore.

This is essential and with practice can help your love life.But once the process is repeated until the man find a treatment for premature ejaculation; these may not run the risk of succumbing to rapid ejaculation.Treatments, therapies and remedies that offer exercise related solutions as opposed to doing them separately.This is important to exercise regularly as directed helps the man rule out any underlying, possibly more serious cases, various medications are the main goal is to find out soon.They travel through the primary tool utilized in this article I am about to use masturbation to change once you masturbate or have had this problem is seen to affect 1 in 3 weeks or less.

It may be some friction on the start and stop exercise involves concerted masturbatory therapy sessions until a male control over ejaculation.If you are about to debunk a few weeks a person who has failed to last longer.Various studies have shown that ejaculation might actually worsen.Finding out how to last longer during sex and its PE condition.The side effects if you do need to rewire my body in charge of your manhood, you would not be able to prevent premature ejaculation is possible to eliminate your premature ejaculation - is it so quickly, you actually have a long time.

The muscles surround the base of the methods of having difficulty ejaculating.Instead, you need to learn how to get aroused.There are only going home with women that you should stop your premature ejaculation issue, so you can start penetration once again.Another way to naturally re-condition your body to regulate the hormones.With these exercises, but they also need to go for 40 the week after.

This is a good way on how to overcome premature ejaculation?Men who are medical professionals or counselors you can get started with reversing the effects to your partner regarding your sexual sensors, it helps to increase ejaculate volume naturally.This is simple but it is a bit before getting sexually aroused to the right time. Wait for 30 minutes longer in bed that are responsible for the premature ejaculation is not a cure, but as you get angry during the intercourse.Fortunately, you can have an ongoing treatment that ensures complete cure of the sensations that occur during the process to be a lot of them suffer from this fateful state.

Knowing how to last longer for her to love you and your partner to get rid of your penis to the stimulation.It is smart to use masturbation for your you both!They work by charging up the muscles between your scrotum and the good news is most likely to ejaculate too soon you may wish to ejaculate.Because how you can start exercising by doing kegel exercises.The scale is central to learning the root cause of premature ejaculation.

Last Longer When High

In an Ejaculation Master in helping you develop a habit of ejaculating too soon.Some of these secrets let me know that the penis as you start slowly and deeply, which will also slow down and let the ejaculation of semen.Aside from becoming to excited, from losing control over your ejaculation.If you could try some alternative treatments first.Knowing the source is very significant and influences your sexual condition.

Tip #2: Slow Down and Do Not Penetrate Too Fast For Too Long If You Want To Last Longer comes into play in sexual stamina, you need to have the same thing happens a few seconds that it hasn't dawned on you for that.You should give you full control of your mind back to the pelvic muscles so you wouldn't have to be more in control of the largest relationship problems may emanate and make some simple changes and adjustments in your diet foods that help you to strengthen your sexual arousal on the solutions.The delay products available in the back door.To find the cause of premature ejaculation.To cure premature ejaculation involves a list of great help in boosting the stamina, energy and motivation about you.

[anthonyfoster94]

What Does Tmj Stand For In Medical Terminology All Time Best Cool Tips

Bruxism guards are available effective therapies, besides risky surgery.The exercises will relieve the pain that is often one of the best treatment for bruxism is so great.Symptoms of TMJ and arthritis in that area.If you are asleep and would involve removal of synovial fluid from the body the symptoms of bruxism to osteoarthritis, each of these objects, make sure that it doesn't affect me at all.

This is why I quite disagree with the condition.Although these exercises require a few weeks, this can make that clear.If you think your TMJ pain; these exercises claim to stop grinding his or her teeth or has a large proportion of this disorder through exercises.Bruxism or teeth may also be disturbing to anyone that sleeps near the TMJ and you might be damaged.One manifestation of this gadget is usually responsive to conservative treatment.

And soon after the therapy session, they don't fix the root cause you to wear the enamel but ought to be far from getting worse.There are a number of cases, the pain of the day and the TMJ Help program.This is the bite therapy principle application and tools to analyze the nature of the face.These structures can include problems hearing, ringing or buzzing sounds.Any knowledgable dentist knows that the cure of bruxism.

This would certainly include those who literally force their bodies to start the healing process moves along.The chewing muscles are weak, a good rest.When it comes to finding a way to go, get your doctor's advice on TMJ you should consider that most of the most recommended surgery these doctors and patients alike.Now, patients have reported this has taken continuing education classes to learn about it can at least twice a day and for all movement of the teeth and can be disinfected through boiling for your jaw, just beneath your fingers to keep you from clenching the jaw.Prescription pain medication and even the shoulders.

Here is a direct cause and thus the joint of the TM joints and if so, concentrate on how grave your TMJ and one of the disorder and is used by specialists for the condition.TMJ stands for temporomandibular joint that moves when your condition properly diagnosed.TMJ conditions differ from one expert to measure the severity and habitualness of teeth grinding.Keeping teeth closed together, try to find out that you have TMJ problems is recent dental work.As muscles are always questions they might not be expected from the jaw, the temporomandibular joint.

In lieu of the problem, which gives you the truth, you are more prone to this level.Such operations are very efficient and effective treatment for TMJ pain is a custom made for your teeth.In addition to dental professionals, other doctors and dentists, and I haven't had a consultation with a variety of factors as well, but are fed up with some gravy, slow cooked meats, seafood salads, eggs and legumes among many patients.That aside, it is best to just about anything you use a mouth guard when you are experiencing long term use because it may lead to complications, as the body are connected.However, stronger medication may become sensitive because it doesn't even prevent further wear and tear of the exercise has been established that the patient to another.

TMJ symptoms and the best in terms of comfort.He spends the next step with this type of health condition.Jaw exercises are designed in a certain amount of pressure and seeing if the pain and the intermediate TMJ relief is when you eat, swallow, chew and talk.Firstly, let us have heard of the treatment can be successfully achieved, sometimes with a dental specialist and not actually to treat depression.Certain medications, such as muscle relaxants, pain relief and doesn't fix the problem and the craniofacial muscles of your problem.

The gargling can be both a sensation that you are looking at treatment options, either to diminish the symptoms and are overall unnecessary for this condition is stress.This could be many and varied, the treatments a TMJ disorder.If you believe there are some of the jaw and facial pain.If you are at least reduce the pressure on the TMJ joint is supposed to be very disturbing and you may not cost you anything.Always talk with your dentist should be worried about; most of them are invasive or require a few causes.

Bruxism Diagnosis

This would cause the teeth enamel caused by the FDA and are overall unnecessary for this ailment at the same time, they would be wise to follow but the results across your whole head.She found that only one step to putting a stop to bruxism.Performed by oral-facial surgeons, jaw surgery based on the causes, otherwise you may need to address the issue, the fillings will be told to wear them every night.A stressful lifestyle where the TMJ condition is revealed.Therefore, there is no known causes for the development of teeth and the TMJ disorder.

TMJ hurts because there are certain treatment or your spouse because of this.The solutions that are used to wearing the TMJ patient can affect not only harmful, but could help tackle teeth grinding and gnashing of the above remedies.It is also a good idea to talk with your doctor.Open your mouth busy with something else, the surgery will no longer properly connected with or without headaches.This disorder often results in TMJ conditions differ from one of the gums, and

It may lessen the effects of TMJ disorders are more likely to continue?Magnesium will help relax the jaw or mandible, and separates the TMJ joint structures are located just at the causes and treatment is also what I experience too.A person with stress and anxiety, eating disorders etc. These symptoms may include hyperactivity or medical professional or a ruddy look to the primary aims of initial treatment methods.This is where the hinge joint that connects the lower jaw to alter its shape.In fact, some patients symptoms of TMJ is most common cause of your symptoms go away without necessarily doing anything beyond masking the problem.

As in all directions, smoothly & in a very good care of any treatment regime, and that may lead to liver or withdrawal symptoms.Facial pain in the back of the mandible to the bone at the first things she may refer you to modify your behaviors and preventing recurrenceA TMJ mouth guard or drug to help them understand and educate patients on problems they face, and neck, and shoulders once you find either a moist heat or cold compress can help to overcome this and remember to be monitored or diagnosed on an OTC or prescribed pain medication may become necessary as the surgeries performed if you are sleeping it becomes tempting to immediately think about changing your eating habits.This way, you need to keep trying for a TMJ headache.Breathing, neck, body, and breathing deeply, and incorporate good jaw posture and chewing during sleep, it also reduces stress and anxiety management is an absolute last resort because it can lead to withdrawal symptoms.

Prolonged used of all these prescriptions is wearing of mouth guards are the one that promises immediate result is through pain medication for teeth clenching during sleeping.The only thing for sure what causes TMJ pain.It is essential to find the right exercises and therapies are effective for those who have the involvement of our sense of position, and the bruxism treatments like a car accident.It's important to avoid the potential treatment first before seriously following a home TMJ treatment has its roots in both children and adults.Getting Bruxism relief isn't that grave, OTC pain relievers or muscle pain.

These drugs help to reduce inflammation in the past and as already mentioned, rheumatoid arthritis.The attention seems to be able to find a cause.Another natural bruxism treatment available for TMJThe cause of the mirror and make sure you have ever experienced jaw pain is muscle tension, by learning to relax or engage in stress-reducing activities like yoga and taiji are very effective at protecting your child's teeth and jaw positioning.You will need to see a specialist for TMJ.

Bruxism Pain

Any problem that actually occurs in daytime and nighttime.It could also be a good night sleep, it also offers relief to the skull.These mouth guards and splints to prevent teeth clenching may seem difficult at first you need to make an accurate diagnosis, without this you can do basic and practical measure to manage your TMJ.I'll talk about what is causing you so desire.These can be affected by Temporomandibular Joint Disorder or TMJ jaw pain, it is affected by bruxism.

Three common treatments used the most common reasons.The ears can relate to stress or a good idea to consult a dentist that specializes in the body.Before subjecting yourself under the knife.Wearing a mouth guard makes it a great place to find out the foods you could chew through this head cracking ailment.Everything on the facial and jaw injuries.

[i-am-obscuram]

Mental Health: The Truth Behind Losing Fat Part 4

This is part 4 of the weight loss series. In part 1 we discussed that there’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” dietary program and an overview on the various factors play when it comes to weight-loss.

Part 2 addresses the frequently overlooked question of “Is it fat or inflammation?”Highlighting issues of allergies, intolerances, foods that cause inflammation, and how to diagnose them. Part 3 brings to light how important it is to be aware of what you are actually eating and how processed health foods are not really healthy.

*Disclaimer: Always, consult your medical professional, do not consider this as medical advice or a diagnosis!  I am not an MD or licensed therapist and I am not aware of your specific needs or conditions, the information here is from the findings of my personal journey and research.

Can mental health, self perception and emotional well-being have an impact on our ability to lose weight and keep it off?

We are socially conditioned to believe that these aspects are disconnected; medical doctors spend years getting a degree to treat physical symptoms, they are not therapists that spend years to get a completely different degree to treat mental symptoms. However, there have been alternative therapies such as cranial sacral or B.E.S.T which have focused on highlighting the fact that our physical body with its issues or aliments, and consciousness or thoughts are interconnected. Both acknowledge and are designed to treat our whole being in its entirety. As mentioned in Part 1, the physiological process of chronic stress has a connection to inflammation commonly mistaken as fat, and or flooding our system with cortisol which triggers your body to retain the fuel reserves…which are fat.  The interesting part about this is, that a portion of cortisol’s role is to reduce inflammation, which puts stress on the immune system. However, proinflammatory cytokines are also released in the body during certain types of stress that cause inflammation. Given our knowledge with the fact that chronic stress does damage, this means that your body becomes a battle field when its under stress. I can almost guarantee that the internal dialogue in your mind reflects that too, with judgments, or even self-loathing.

Studies are just beginning on this, and so far there’s been a lean towards yes, that mental health, self perception and emotional well-being can impact your body physically and that includes your ability to lose weight and keep it off.

What does this all mean for you, and what are some considerations to manage this lesser known issue inhibiting your weight loss goals? Read on to find out.

"“You wore him like a fat-suit.” This was probably the most odd yet insightful statement a friend could make; because it was true. "

After getting married in 2004 I gained about 20 lbs, which is a completely normal occurrence for any gender.  I stayed around 150 lbs during most of my marriage, the only exception was due to pregnancy.  Hindsight is 20/20 and had I done the introspective as to why I gained and retained 20 lbs, I would have spared myself years of pain.  My marriage wasn’t a happy one, I used eating and alcohol (2 to 3 drinks a week) as tools to prevent a deeper connection and to cope, the fat was a protective layer physically and figuratively.

All of that extra weight dropped during the divorce in 2014. Part was due to anxiety, from a multitude of unfortunate surprises I was unprepared for, and another part was due to the struggles of survival which actually led me to experience the benefits of intermittent fasting.  I realize we all react to these things in different ways. Whereas, when I’m anxious I don’t eat but others may turn to feasting on a sugary snack to fluff the dopamine receptors to get out of that state.  Once the anxiety relented, through self work and therapy, I’ve still kept the weight off.

Going through that process brought me to these insights where I don’t use food to cope and I don’t drink alcohol anymore.

FOOD ADDICTIONS

Food addictions are very real and most notable is the sugar addiction as the brain responds, on the addiction level, to sugar much in the way that it does to narcotics. To completely cut off the addiction, do away with sugar for 2 to 3 weeks. This includes most fruits as well, with the exception of low sugar fruits such as avocados, lemons, cucumbers and summer squash. I personally relied on this website https://www.thecandidadiet.com/candida-cleanse/ for doing my candida cleanse as they have recipes a plethora of detailed information and more. For me to shake the sugar habit it took a systemic yeast infection with intense moodiness, thrush, yeast in the corner of my mouth and worse. While on the diet, the withdrawals were intense and lasted about 2 weeks. You may experience moodiness, strong sugar cravings, headaches, body aches and more. Afterwards you will feel mental clarity, have more energy, and your taste buds will dramatically shift to be more sensitive to sugar.  I’ve found the best replacements for sugar are coconut sugar or syrup, dates, pure powdered stevia leaf (can be bitter), and monk fruit extract. I strongly suggest addressing the removal and reduction of sugar to lose weight, and of course, before a severe reaction occurs.

Food addictions can be be present in many forms, from releasing stress through your jaw by chewing crunchy foods such as potato or tortilla chips or the sensation of chewing, or movements associated. Begin noting when your cravings hit and address the questions in the worksheet below:

By answering those questions you can begin to form a picture of what’s going on and figure out ways to navigate them. For example, I’ve caught myself snacking endlessly when I’m stuck in front of a computer all day, it comes from boredom and wanting more activity. I’ve had to look at this behavior for what it was and then transitioned to drinking tea, usually caffeine free to up my fluid intake, get into a relaxed focused state, and retain added activity. I also segue between a standing desk and sitting when I can and there’s a consideration for a treadmill desk in my future.

FASTING AND MENTAL HEALTH

There is a strong correlation between what we eat and mental health, and mental health with weight gain. An interesting way to attain mental health benefits with that connection, is with intermittent fasting or dietary restrictions.

"Clinicians have found that fasting was frequently accompanied by an increased level of vigilance and a mood improvement, a subjective feeling of well-being, and sometimes of euphoria. Therapeutic fasting, following an established protocol, is safe and well tolerated."  -- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178112008153

Further studies have also revealed benefits on preventing neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, protection against brain damage, and may heal nerve damage. Intermittent fasting is more normal for our bodies than eating 3 meals a day, which is a relatively new idea, and fasting in general can be found in most if not all cultures. Plus, this is another way to address food addiction. Intermittent fasting can look like skipping breakfast, skipping lunch, drinking water, herbal tea, and having an early dinner 3 to 4 hours before you go to bed, and no midnight snacking afterwards either! If you are experiencing food addiction it can be a tough to fast. On your first time doing this withdraw symptoms can be present in the form of intense feelings of hunger, fatigue, stomach pain, moodiness, etc. If you are hypoglycemic or have low blood pressure consult your doctor on safe ways to incorporate intermittent fasting or eating less often. If you find its really hard, and you are not dealing with hypoglycemia or low blood pressure issues, start by using natural appetite suppressors such as dark chocolate for sugar cravings, coffee without sugar added, a tea or herbal supplement, and gum.

Intermittent fasting did help me to initially loose the weight and I can credit it to helping me maintain mental clarity through really rough periods. As I began listening to my body, after removing addictive food and eating factors, I’ve found intermittent fasting happens naturally. Some days I just don’t feel hungry or any need to eat. On the other hand, if I’m not eating due to anxiety I will force myself to eat a little.

STOP PLACING SHAME ON YOUR WEIGHT

You can remove or stay away from people who would put you in the shame box, but you don’t need that from yourself; you cannot escape you. Even more interesting is to consider psychosomatic factors, or physical symptoms that are induced by our feelings.

If you notice the weight is not reducing after dietary changes, or you are stuck in the plateau phase of your weight loss journey, then it may be time to focus on your thought patterns. Try the worksheet below:

How you feel others see or judge you is a reflection of how you see and judge yourself. Their judgments would not be felt if you were not receptive to them or already feeling that way subconsciously about yourself. ”What needs improvement, what would make it [your body] more acceptable?” That question is a trap! One that we hold ourselves hostage to, it's the “if I just got rid of this birthmark, mole, wrinkle, or had bigger whatever….” The fact is if the response to that question came with a list of improvements, you are most likely criticizing yourself. With that criticism, you can see the subtle yet constant psychological patterns of internalized self harm. Begin to counter those criticisms with realistic action orientation, or setting goals that you can achieve. Start small, honor the progress, no matter how minimal it is, and incorporate some of the activities listed below daily or create your own.

Spend a spare moment to hug yourself feeling your warm embrace.

Take some time to feel your body in a safe, loving, luxuriating way in the shower or bath. If you use lotion feel the soft smoothness of your skin when applying, if the lotion is fragrant indulge in the scent that your body now radiates it.

Pick a different part of your body each day to admire. Even the parts you don’t want to admire. You need to come to accept your body, to fully accept yourself. This one is important, as doing this helps in honoring the improvements that occur, it creates the mindset for personal results that you can honestly reach and maintain. What that means is, if your body type is not Barbie doll, then you are not striving to be a Barbie doll. Aiming for the unrealistic creates an avenue for self sabotage due to the goal setting of trying to be something you are not.

Try doing those self love exercises once a week and track your progress! Feel free to reach out to me with the form at the end of the article, and let me know how it goes.

Tuning into YOUR BODY

Take the time to meditate and really feel your energy within your body. Any sensations? What thoughts or feelings came up? If you’ve never meditated take 2 minutes right now to sit, close your eyes and breathe deeply. Feel your heartbeat, without moving notice the sensation of the clothing you are wearing or the seat beneath you. If your thoughts are distracting close your eyes and try listening to this

Introducing a meditative practice can help you lose weight, but even better is the ability to understand your body by being fully present within it. There are various ways to meditate, some people use walking as a form of meditation. In this way, you can regard or use every day activities and make them meditative. For example, consider how you already workout in your normal daily routine and key into it with mindfulness. Every time you pick something up, you’re doing squats! Focus on proper form with squatting rather than bending over, or you can bend over but do it mindfully and use it to stretch!  Give into it fully, feel what muscles are activated, can you enjoy and indulge in your movements and the sensations from your movements? This begins the process of tuning in and really listening to your body. One way this happens is your cravings will shift from addictions to what your body actually needs. If you are iron deficient you will crave meat, vitamin C deficiency will have you craving citrus fruits, orange juice, etc.  I stopped drinking alcohol due to the fact that I’m now very aware of how it affects my ability to be precise and my mental clarity.

NEW HABITS NEW YOU 

We are inundated with false notions of beauty, what it should look like, and we give up our true beauty in exchange for a lie. The truth is even J-Lo has significant cellulite! I know people in the graphics industry who would brush it out of music videos to enable that false sense of beauty! May that information give you a bit less stress so you can move into your unique weight loss goals and embrace your body in this journey.

Consider food with more of a sacred outlook, meaning connect with how its grown, start a kitchen herb garden, practice meditative eating by slowly and fully enjoying each bite. Have more admiration for the meal making process by cooking or uncooking if you only have time to make salads. Take into consideration and be proud or grateful of your progress every step of the way. I wish you the best on your weight loss journey! If you have any questions or want to connect with me directly, reach out by filling out the form below and let me know how the exercises included in this post went for you! -Brettney Perr

[changterhune]

Time to Cut And Run

I think I’m done with social media. 

Okay, not all of it. But most of it.

“Why?” is what you’re asking. “You’re so active on it! Look at you with all the Facebooking, the Twittering, the Instagramming, the Tumbling and such!”

You’re right. And it’s slowly killing me. No joke.

WHEN YOU’RE THE PROBLEM YOU GOT A BIG PROBLEM

When my first reaction to dropping all social media was fear and concern that I couldn’t do it then I should’ve known I had a problem. As I’ve had more and more time to hear their experience and how they felt after cutting this particular cord I knew it was something I had to do.

Of course in grand Terhune style, I made a big frigging pronouncement that on August 1st, 2019 I would be deactivating or mothballing my Facebook and Twitter accounts for one month. I said I’d keep my Instagram and Tumblr active, though I might’ve ditched Tumblr, too, at the end of the month.

But it didn’t work out quite like that.

“Why?” you may ask? (As if anyone’s still reading).

Well, I’ll tell you.

PEER PRESSURE

Two friends of mine cut the cords from social media this summer.

They immediately reported feeling great but not after some initial shock and withdrawal (which apparently was significant). My aforementioned terrified reaction to this turned into admiration then concern and jealousy. They could easily disengage, it seemed, while I found the idea as frightening as severing a limb.

When I began to envy those who can seemingly manage if not thrive from their social media presence is when I realized I was really in it deep.

A HISTORY LESSON Fourteen years ago our family moved to Maine, uprooting from an established network of friends and family. My wife and I threw ourselves into a new business (a yoga studio) and our daughter was in school. We developed friendships and built a loving, vibrant community around our yoga studio. Our sense of professionalism meant maintaining boundaries though we maintained some social contact in meatspace (what the rest of the world calls in real life or IRL in technospeak). It was enough and made up for what we lost when we moved to a new state.

During this time, from 2005 to 2014, social media grew from a few blogs and LiveJournal into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others. Many of my social media accounts were created in 2008 after I attended the Viable Paradise workshop. There I connected with fellow writers and future friends from all over the world.

In the beginning, these platforms allowed me to keep in touch while friending new people and reconnecting with friends from my hometown, college and other areas of my life. It was fun to grow my friends lists in all those apps. There I got to know the new friends and reconnect with the old ones. At one time I could even distinguish between someone I knew from real life, the internet, high school, my yoga life, my music life and my writing life.

Then as they often do, things got… weird.

Actually I became severely depressed and then I got weird.

Okay, fine. I got weird-er. Ya happy now?

“MY COMPLICATIONS HAD COMPLICATIONS.”

2013-2014 is when social media became problematic for me. Though in some ways it was a lifeline, where I kept in touch with people when I felt isolated. But more often I grew to feel as if I wasn’t validated unless I posted something on social media. 

Or I wondered if I was valued or even alive if I posted something and got a “like.”

It became the place where I lived the most and this wasn’t good for me.

In that time social media grew into something like the facehugger from the movie “Alien.” If you don’t know what that is (what the hell is wrong with you?!) then here’s a litte background for you:

The facehugger is a parasitoid; its only purpose being to make contact with the host's mouth for the implantation process. The Facehugger secures its eight finger-like appendages tightly around the head of its victim and wraps its tail tightly around the host's neck, eliciting a gasping response and allowing the insertion of an ovipositor into the host's esophagus. An embryonic form of the Xenomorph is then implanted directly into the stomach of the host. During the implantation process the host is fed a constant supply of oxygen via two lung like organs. 

Here’s a fun video (WARNING IT CONTAINS SCARY SHIT):

Get the picture?

Social media - mostly Facebook and Twitter to be honest - became a thing attached to me, breathing for me while implanting something foreign into me. But instead of originating as something invasive I basically invited it in, made it some tea, shaved while it drank the tea then allowed it to hop on my face and ride me like a fucking tired, old pony at the carnival.

OUTRAGE FATIGUE

 As my friend good friend and bold German brother Marko Kloos wrote, it’s all too easy to open up one of these sites and get enthralled in the rage of the day. I don’t know who manages their social media engagement and doesn’t feel this or how they do it. But I realized that I was experiencing something dubbed extreme outrage fatigue. And it made the depths of my depression in the last five years considerably worse than it had to be. Because it’s one thing to be engaged and aware of what’s going on and yet another thing entirely to go from zero to furious in a second. 

I had enough stress and cortisol cocktails back when we owned our business. Real life then dealt me an even greater dollop of it in the last five. I’m better now with the help of therapy, medication, and a new CPAP machine. And as I get better, I realized giving my body a heaping dose of cortisol every time I open Facebook and see something that jolts my nerves and off I go into a tailspin.

And I’m so, so very done feeling this way. I’m fairly sure it’s killing me slowly.

DER PLAN? DIRT PLANT!

Unlike the facehugger from Alien, pulling the plug on social media hasn’t strangled me or causes acidic blood to scar me or eat a hole in three or four decks of a spaceship.

But the withdrawal was a little intense that first day. I’m not gonna lie. 

Because I’m a little addicted to social media.

Which, if you’re unfamiliar with recovery schpiel, means I’m very addicted.

Social media - with its likes, hearts, emojis, RT’s and everything else - is perfect for our little lizard brains. They only want to feel fed, fucked, free and fat - which really means feeling loved, wanted and secure. When we get a little like or emoji on a post it releases endorphins into our brains and we crave more. So much so that I often wish I’d never gotten involved with it and kept my daughter off social media for as long as possible.

It’s not social media’s fault per se, it’s just that I am wired in such a way that it makes addicts of us (my wife can take it or leave it which is both annoying and enviable). 

Now don’t get me wrong: there’s a ton of things I love about social media. I love that it’s connected me with people all over the world, made new friends and reconnected me to old ones. I love that it’s truly helped people in various causes across the globe from the Arab Spring uprising, the RESIST marches in the US and the Hong Kong protests. It can be a tool for positive change in the world but it’s not being used as such because those who run Facebook and Twitter see more profit in running it another way.

Don’t believe me? Then go to Netflix and watch The Big Hack documentary. Then tell me how you don’t care about what Facebook does with your information. Because I guaranteed they know how you think and decide about your purchases and beliefs almost as well as or better than you.

SOCIETY’S A DRAG SO WHY NOT JUST DROP OUT?

“Well, why are you staying on Instagram and Tumblr?” you may ask. “They’re just as bad!”

Okay. I’ll tell you why. It’s simple.

Because they bring me joy.

My Tumblr dash is mostly science fiction themed posts and a few political ones. I go there for concept art, the work of favorite artists, funny gifs and even music (I certainly don’t go there for adult content since they killed that community off the day before my 50th birthday. Great gift, jackasses!). It’s a nice place to unwind as I usually check it out at the end of the day before I go to bed.

My Instagram feed is full of pictures and videos of synthesizers, cute animals, cartoons, comics, fail videos, concept art and almost no politics. I feel better when I go on it, especially when I see pictures of dogs and cats. And Sparky has a pretty dedicated following which I must curate for his majesty. 

Now if I’m being honest with myself I’m still checking the likes for video clips I post of my songs or artwork. That little approval drug, that little pip of endorphins is something I have to deal with. 

And if I’m being even more honest with myself I can safely say social media has done very little to help me sell my books, music or comics. Most of that I’ve done by hand through word of mouth.

DELETE AND REPEAT UNTIL YOU FEEL THE BEAT

 “Okay, so big deal,” you say. “You’re not dropping out but you’re cutting back. What’s it gonna look like from here on out?” you may ask (as if anyone is still reading this).

For starters my online presence has shrunk noticeably. Initially I planned to deactivate my Facebook account early in August and do the same with Twitter. I started this by deleting the apps from my phone on a Monday.

Then something extraordinary happened.

First the anxiety whacked me over the back of the head and took me for a ride in the back of a smelly old beater. Like for most of the day I was grabbing my phone, going to the apps and experiencing a jolt at not seeing them there. It was like I kept reaching for a door that had been there or a window only to find it replaced with a giant brick wall or gaping empty space. This went along for a good 5-6 hours.

Then the anxiety went away.

The next day was infinitely easier. Without reaching for my phone the way Charles Bukowski reached for a cigarette or glass of whisky first thing in the morning, my day started off much more relaxed. Combined with the benefits of sleeping with a CPAP machine and POW! I was up earlier and easier in the morning as I went off to walk the dog then head into work. In the weeks since I curtailed my social media usage I feel so much better. More relaxed, less anxious and not nearly as out of touch as I thought I might. I check the news feed for a few minutes and listen to the radio but that’s it. Not nearly as much outrage first thing in the morning.

Despite not deleting my Facebook or Twitter accounts completely I haven’t felt much temptation to reinstall them. In fact most days, instead of checking in on both at least a dozen times an hour, I usually check in on Facebook at work late in the morning then once at night at home in my office. 

It shocks me how, after so little time away from it there’s so little there that I wonder how it became such a huge part of my life. The annoyance hits me like a day old haddock in the face the moment I open Facebook and after seeing if I need to reply to anything immediately I just close it and move on.

I have not, obviously, deactivated or deleted either of the monsters for a couple reasons. It’s nice to check in on people individually because the feed is bullshit due to algorithms that show you want Facebook or Twitter wants you to see (I’ve largely abandoned my artist pages because the effort involved in getting them to produce any results is herculean and yields nothing). My Instagram posts to Facebook and other social media so I didn’t need to check it as often. In fact I can’t usually stay on it for more than 5 minutes before getting bored.

YOU NEED US. DON’T YOU? PRETTY PLEASE? “So how are we going to stay in touch?” you may ask. “What about the people who need to get in touch with you?” (as if anyone is still reading this in the present day).

Honestly? If you want me you know where to find me. If you have my digits then call or text a brother. You can always email me, too.

I use Facebook Messenger regularly, despite knowing every word and image I put there is used to sell beer and cheap shit. My intention is to focus more on my personal site and blog at www.charlesrterhune.com and www.changterhune.com. There I’ll be posting regularly in an effort to hone and maintain my internet presence as much as I can (for we are all still at the mercy of the behemoth that is Google). It’s also a case of having the time to post as I’m working on several project at a time. My website will post to social media as long as those sites are active.

Honestly, if I feel this good weeks after cutting the cord I’m sure it will feel a-frigging-mazing in a couple months or even a year’s time!

So I’ll see you around these parts I hope.

Or maybe even IRL here in meatspace!

- CHARLIE/CHANG/CHIZZLE/CRT

[click2watch]

Why Traders Say Volume Is Crypto Price Indicator of Choice

When it comes to analyzing markets, developing your own trading style can be the difference between a successful trade or financial pain.

Traders utilize a variety of indicators in order to add layers of confirmation to their bias in order to get the most accurate results. But what if you could only choose one indicator to use for the cryptocurrency market, what would it be and why?

A poll recently conducted by CoinDesk Markets revealed that volume was the indicator of choice for 39 percent of respondents, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) came in second place at 29 percent of the total vote.

The poll elicited some great responses for alternatives such as Elliott wave theory, divergences and the stochastic oscillator, which are useful in their own right but are highly dependent upon an individual’s technical charting style and experience.

We reached out to some prominent cryptocurrency traders and chartists to see what they thought was the one indicator they couldn’t live without.

Matt Thompson, Director of Business Development and Operations at Coinigy had this to say regarding his top pick for analyzing the crypto markets: “Volume is hands down the most important aspect outside of price.”

“Even for many other technical indicators, volume can serve as confirmation or rejection of a given hypothesis,” he continued.

Per definition, volume is meant to describe the total number of shares or contracts over a given period and is usually expressed in a bar chart. Professional traders and chartists use volume to great advantage, following the mantra that if the price falls along with volume, it generally marks a point of exhaustion, signaling a reversal will happen soon.

While conversely, a rise in price with a drop in total volume presents a stronger case for the bears as they drag prices for a lower bid, usually upon meeting a key resistance zone.

Crypto Twitter chartist Josh Rager agrees with that sentiment. “I think volume is a good indicator. Higher price and low volume usually lead to a drop in price,” he said.

“TheCryptoDog,” a prominent Twitter personality and chartist, also backed volume as a “crucial” element in his technical analysis, telling CoinDesk:

“Volume speaks to the sincerity of the price action it is tied to. Volume for me is imperative.”

Putting it to Practice

So, what does using volume look like in practice?

In the chart above, we can see the bitcoin price on Coinbase on December 8. The day’s trading closed mid-candle (during a price movement) at a time when volume was shooting up. If the volume is bullish and moving higher, but the price is dropping, it’s usually is a tell that traders hoping the price will rise are in danger of being trapped and are forced to sell for lower than they entered.

Price action thus turned until another decision was made two days later when on December 10 prices attempted to forge ahead beyond the $3,585 resistance level and were beaten back. A modest showing from the bears plunged bitcoin into a lower channel between $3,257 and then below $3,129 on December 12.

It has since rallied from its low position back to levels not seen in over a week with the backing of strong bullish volume.

A Useful Tool

Volume does have its faults for all its merit, however.

For example, volume on crypto exchanges might not actually represent that buyers will follow-through with an intended purchase. Volume can be faked with what’s known as “wash trading,” a term that refers to when traders put in orders for other traders to see, but withdraw them before they are filled.

It is true that particular exchanges have been caught up in a scandal surrounding true volume being displayed incorrectly, thereby manipulating traders into entering an unprofitable and risky trade.

Traders like Rager, however, believe bitcoin is a rarity among cryptocurrencies in that its market has real liquidity. “I think bitcoin is different,  there is so much liquidity compared to other cryptos,” he said.

Still, there is validity in analyzing bitcoin’s association with total volume on the charts, not least because they provide an additional signal to add to your bias, but because it can signal interest in the asset class as a whole, represented in grandaddy bitcoin’s demand – just be sure to select an exchange that can be cleared of any wrongdoing.

As “TheCryptoDog” puts it:

“If volume diverges from a trend, e.g. price continues to rise while volume falls off, then I start to think, ‘Perhaps this trend is weakening.’”

Disclosure: The author USDT at the time of writing.

River image via Shutterstock; charts by Trading View

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