ZenAlex

I think offering a lot of value for free and charging for premium content is the fairest and best strategy really. Look a many other content creators out there. I sub to a lot of true crime creators. Their videos are free, but their uncensored/premium content is behind a paywall, as well as other perks. Many youtube creators have millions watch for free, but 500-10k people pay for their patreon etc and they can make anywhere from 1-50k a month on a small percentage of their fanbase.

I understand guys but this has always been the case with me, regardless of what state my mental health was in. I have had stressful times in my life but ultimately, I feel clear headed. I do have depression, adhd, anxious thoughts, but I don't feel like I'm the sort to panic or worry about anything too severely.

Hey guys. So If I was about to do some in depth tests on my gut, just to see if there was anything wrong going on down there that could be impacting my mental health and causing depression, poor appetite, irritability, anxiety etc... What sorts of markers on gut tests should I look out for? I know through watching videos on the subject there's an obvious link and through healthy diet and exercise you can make your gut health better and therefore your mental health, the issue is I've had an issues with - - low appetite - Emotional flatness an anhedonia - Uneasy/anxious feelings that aren't related to worrying, they're just there by default. And at times I've noticed slight improvement in some things, but not much through therapy, meditation, but dietary changes and lifestyle. However I'm in a place now where I'm meeting my nutritional requirements, I'm not aware of any allergies, I don't have any strong indication that there's anything wrong with my diet. At times I've lived very healthy. Whole foods diet, optimising nutrition, using apps and blood tests to monitor for any nutritional deficiencies, no alcohol, drugs, cigarettes or caffeine. Hiking, working out. I've done it all. But despite my lifestyle being super healthy and being very aware of my mind and body, I still never managed to completely figure out anhedonia/emotional flatness, low appetite and random feelings of uneasiness, which have only ever gotten better by accident when experimenting with diet. I'm in a place where I'm not aware of any other patterns or connections that lead me in a certain direction towards an answer that will fix this. I have a feeling that it may be related to gut health. Or at least it may play a role. I've spent a lot of money and time on physical health, therapy, zen and meditation. I've completely reinvented myself, and although I've seen improvement, the issues are far from resolved. But I admit despite doing many tests involving bloods with private and NHS doctors, I've never really took an extensive look at my Gut health. TL;DR - If I was gut testing for things that may be impacting mental and emotional health, as well as many low appetite, is there anything specific, any particular test/markers that I should pay attention to or look for?

When going through long covid websites, I got people constantly advising me of the below test for gut health, and if you have long covid you get a discount. https://shop.biomesight.com/collections/frontpage/products/gut-microbiome-test-snapshot What do you think of the test above? Would appreciate your input on how useful you believe this test would be. (Understand you can't give advice etc but what would your initial thoughts on the above test be?)

Can anyone recommend a decent test for determine gut health? Balance? Microbiome etc? As some of you may be aware from reading my journal or previous posts, I am suffering with some issues, and I believe they may well be long covid related. I have done all sorts of tests but someone made me aware of tests on gut health. Anyone on here got any advice for testing Gut health testing? Cheers @Michael569 @undeather

Interesting. Thanks.

Have been linked on long covid forums to a discounted gut microbiome test which I will receive today. We'll see what happens with this. Spoke to my GP today. She sounded a bit dismissive but said she'd look into a long covid clinic. Advised I had exercise intolerance issues.

Good to know thanks. Do you have any experience with Biomesight? https://biomesight.com/subsidised/kits

Hi. Have you got any experience with them,?

American company instead of stopping supplies of blood they knew was infected with Hep C and HIV, they decided to keep it secret and try to mix blood samples together in larger quantities and hope people wouldn't notice. 30000 people infected because of blood transfusions or catching it from someone who got a transfusion. Happened during late 70's and 80s. Victims been fighting for decades and still no one been held accountable. No compensation.

Woooooooo

I seem to have had meaningful session with my psychologist today. Perhaps if these physical issues hadn't have exacerbated my MH problems then I'd never have gotten back into therapy and I'd just stay a withdrawn emotionally numb man forever. Got another doc appt next week. Fingers crossed.

No amount enlightenment makes up for bad health. Suicide unfortunately is inevitable if people suffer enough and they are given to way out or reason to believe it will get better.

Yeah I'm considering nervous system dysregulation as something I could be having right now.

I'm trying not to catastrophise but no improvement in 9 months kind of sucks. All I'm gonna do is keep a symptom diary and keep trying to communicate my thoughts to my doctor as carefully as possible. I hope that all of this will help me appreciate the fragility of life as much as possible and one day I'll recover. So many people have it so shit and I didn't even realise just how bad and hopeless it is for some people. I'll appreciate what I've got a lot more. I don't want much, just for these symptoms to clear up enough for me to exercise again. I don't care about being rich, popular or whatever else. Just good health and peace.

What it if never gets better though, that's a possibility. And what if someone decides that despite recognition of life having positives it's simply just not worth the negatives?

Been contemplating suicide quite a bit. I have up and down periods with suicidal ideation. Part of me at times seems to make peace with the idea of being dead, but just concern over how I'd do it. Seeing another doctor on friday. My psychologist recommended referral to a psychiatrist regarding the possibility of somatic symptom disorder. Not sure I want to mention anything related to mental health as they'll immediately use this as an excuse to say my issues are just stress and not do any fucking medical tests. Will probably focus purely on potential medical issues and advise of my physical problems in detail. These doctors have good reviews. Need to articulate what I'm going through accurately and carefully. My last GP just didn't give a shit. Sometimes I wonder if I even care about getting better anymore. I'm trying my best to communicate my symptoms to my psychologist, but defusion is primarily what we're focused on. I wonder if we're ever going to get to the core of my mental health issues which have been exacerbated over last 9 months by whatever is going on inside of me, but were pre-existing so maybe this period of pain was necessary to get to the route cause of that.

Sorry to hear about your current issue. If your current mental health professional is not working, seek another. How is the rest of your lifestyle btw? I have also considered suicide but am still running down my options.

Covid or other viral infection or somatic symptom issues. These are the two things that stick out to me more than anything else. All I am doing right now is researching a bit on somatic symptom issues in case that is the problem. I'm getting frustrated with my psychologist a bit because he doesn't follow through on his promises sometimes. Thinking of changing over. Have been off work for months now. I am still going to remain hopeful. Another doctor may take me more serious. I have a doc appointment next week with my new surgery. I can try other psychologists. I feel like am 3-6 months away from being Ben from Leaving Las Vegas.

I don't know what else to do. moments of beauty give me hope. Even just typing this sometimes aggravates me and brings on stomach tightness.

Long covid - Post Exertional/Exertional malaise Somatic symptoms These are the things that make sense more than anything else now.

I registered with another doctor, and take a list of symptoms to them and will be speaking to my psychologist now about my symptoms that are probably psychosomatic and see what happens. I feel like my symptoms are too non-specific to really figure out what they are with further research. concentrating and researching right now is literally hurting me, I don't know why I am like this. Lets see what happens. I'm in between the belief that I could have done more and I've done as much as I could and maybe have done more than most people would I dunno man, I feel like the last 8 months have gone by so fucking quick. Another year over in 4 months.

On the weekend I was completely alone. I cleaned, meditated and calmed my symptoms right down. I managed to get my mind reasonably calm, and listened to some ambient music, and some of the old positive feelings at times came back Inner peace and zen + Ambience can be so beautiful sometimes. It takes the mind to incredible places. Makes me wonder if the greatest forms of beauty come from within the mind rather than in the senses. I'm going to create a finalized plan and list of things to do this week, then next week I'm just going to take completely off and chill. I will rest in nature and meditation, and all this will lead up to next weekend and I can hopefully enjoy the boxing and the end of the football season. After this I'm probably going back to work. I'm not going to spend any more time researching this for a while and just stick to following a list of practical things to do and see what happens. Still having thoughts of suicide. It is a back up plan if all else fails. I know how I'd spend my final days. But I don't want to die, I want to get better. Lets go dude.

Getting a continuous blood glucose monitor soon, have found one that doesn't require a smart phone. Will see what happens with repeated blood sugar monitoring. Will be getting an ECG fitted next week. I'm gonna do more research this week, but the main thing is placing a sheet of paper in my kitchen to reflect on to remind myself to be actually doing something practical, as at times I can procrastinate and also be focused purely on speculation and theorising but getting no where. Taking care of the physical - If the final couple of tests the GP does comes back with nothing and I continue to get palmed off by this GP practice then I'm going to sign up to another GP, and take along all my notes. I'm going to ask for a histamine prick test. I don't want to go ahead and just start taking anti histamines and hope they do something. I looked into the low histamine diet but it requires far too much avoidance of foods that are healthy for me to want to risk doing it without proper guidance and without knowing if histamine is the problem. Yesterday on lower carb there were some interesting moments. I felt a bit more aware consuming more fat and protein, but I had a bit of a bricky feeling in my stomach. It went away though. I'm not even on really low carb so it probably wnot make a difference but making changes and monitoring reactions is important. ==== I'm going to keep doing my therapy, but one thing I'm considering at some point is finding a MH professional that specialises in psychosomatic problems as I am open to the possibility that my issues are related to mental health problems now impacting my body, so it's worth a try. ------- I'm doing a complete overhaul on my physical and mental health and hopefully it will all be worth it. I'm noticing quickly feeling burned out after mental exertion at times. Lets fucking go.

Over the next couple of weeks I'm just going to chill. Lower carbs by around 100g-120g, see what happens, and just alter diet bit by bit and see what happens. I cannot find any obvious answer so just going to have to take stabs in the dark. If it is covid it will just bit a matter of time. I don't want to try drugs like anti-histamines because I have no idea if it is at all related and it could cause harm. If my GP doesn't figure it out I'll try another GP. I'm going to stay off work for the mean time, I'll take a couple of weeks away from researching all of this, just in case it's all just being exacerbated by me trying to figure it out in the first place. I doubt it since I wasn't researching at all when the symptoms started, but whatever.