Meta-rational pain management
Debugging your body when the supposed “healthcare system” fails you
A two-hour podcast with Max Shen
The “healthcare system” (not, in fact, a system, nor devoted to healthcare) is mostly incapable of addressing chronic pain. Also chronic fatigue, seasonal depression, food intolerance, or many other debilitating long-term health problems.
In some cases, it’s possible to take control and find effective treatments for oneself. Max, for instance, completely cured his disabling chronic pain. I have found completely effective treatments for seasonal depression and food intolerance.
As we discuss, this is a necessarily meta-rational activity. You have to be meta to medical institutions and research when they’re failing you. That’s difficult and time-consuming and often not effective.
Chronic health issues are serious
The “healthcare system” considers chronic health problems it can’t treat, or chooses not to treat, as “non-serious,” because they can’t cause death. They were nearly completely disabling for me roughly 2018–2023. I consider that serious, personally!
My work-around for food intolerance, which I figured out a couple years ago, meant that I went from 10% functional to 50%. I’ve been much more productive as a result. I plan to write about that soon!
I maxed out around 50% functionality due to chronic pain. That flared up in June this year, and I haven’t posted nearly as often on Substack as a result. I’m working on addressing the pain now, with some success, following the same general approach Max recommends. I hope I’ll be posting more soon!
My health-related posts
YOU NEED MORE LUX
Very bright lights, much brighter than “SAD light boxes,” eliminate mild winter blahs, seasonal affective disorder, and may be effective against depression at any time of year. This post is an overview explanation.
Seriously bright light vs. winter blahs
Following on to “YOU NEED MORE LUX,” this post covers the nitty-gritty of industrial-strength LED lights and how to use them at home.
Nutrition: the Emperor has no clothes
“Nutrition has made no progress. It has discovered no stable facts. Everything nutritionists have said, they have said the opposite ten or twenty years later (if not much sooner). They literally know nothing.”
Post-apocalyptic life in American health care
My experiences navigating the profoundly dysfunctional “healthcare system” on behalf of my seriously ill mother, with some recommendations.
Fake fatigue in long covid
Disabling fatigue after covid—and, it turns out, other respiratory infections—is pretty common. It’s not yet clear why, although research is turning up some fascinating probable mechanisms. The best current understanding is that long covid is not one thing, but several, with different mechanisms. That’s part of why it’s unclear how to treat it. This post explains an approach that worked for me.
Plus, a very weird experience of apparent long covid reactivation months after I’d eliminated it—and how I eliminated that. With a cool hypothesis about how and why that worked, based on “The ‘false fatigue alarm’ theory for Long Covid fatigue” by Dan Elton.
I'm new to Substack but used to read your website--coming from dharma. I find you here and land on this topic, which has been a big disrupter since 2019 to my teaching and writing. I learned only at age 59 that I have hypermoble Ehlers-Danlos syndome, a complex connective tissue disorder that has comorbidities and dysfunction, although chronic pain became the main problem for me as I aged. The medical "system" was useless and usually has been most of my life for all chronic conditions.
I have made steady improvements by doing my own research via Deep Research on AI. The advantage of it has been that I can connect two completely different fields to solve a pain problem. For example, I connected anatomy, research on my hEDS condition, and shoe architecture to yield a mathematically precise set of measurements that I needed to find the best walking shoes and orthotics. I then found them and resolved much of my pain in terms of both frequency and intensity.
Also, I figured out that my severe allergies contribute to inability to lose weight and to pain, inflammation, and fatigue. Even brain fog on severe days. None of my doctors made the connections.
I also found out by chance that 3 mg of melatonin before bed works better than NSAIDS (which I can't take) for pain and inflammation. Doctors? Not a clue.
Had no idea you also struggled with chronic pain David, very sorry to hear! It can be incredibly devastating.
Have you interacted with John Sarno's work at all, or the many folks that have followed in his footsteps exploring the relationship between chronic pain and emotions?
Personally I consider almost all chronic ailments to be an emotional, or at a lower resolution, a spiritual problem.