Medical Questions I'd Like Answered...

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:00 am

Have you considered explaining you desired outcome to your personal trainer? I'm pretty sure if you tell them that you want a more feminine figure, they can help with that.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:28 am

I don't have a personal trainer.

violence in the media · Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:52 am

Prak wrote:It's not that i think people accidentally gain giant hulk muscles, it's that if i go to a trainer, there's a good chance they'll look at my propensity for facial hair and lack of chest mounted person nurturers and think i want to gain a traditionally attractive masculine build.

There are a whole lot of intermediate stages between "I am overweight and out of shape" and "Conan". Even if you're uncomfortable discussing your trans status and ultimate goal with someone; you can still get started on the process. You will have plenty of time to adjust.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 5:00 am

How bad is eating your own bodily waste? Gawker by way of three dudes with PhDs says that it isn't, but I'd rather that it would be. Please don't be too graphic about it.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:20 am

Is this part of your diet plan

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:22 am

C'mon, man, I was a broke-ass college student.

... it was already a part of my meal plan.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:15 am

So, I'd like to put on muscle for professional reasons. Not very much muscle at all, but a little. The thing is, I also want to put on weight, for healthy reasons. I don't much care if it's muscle or fat, as far as that goes. I just care that I'm 5'10", 135 pounds, and if I forget to eat for a couple days I get fainting spells and panic attacks. Also, I want to start doing cardio because I'm finding myself out of breath from short runs and my (entirely amateur and shitty) singing voice is getting even shittier. Taking adderall seems to accentuate my breath problems.

Okay, I don't literally go days without eating. But I do go down to 1-2 meals a day if I'm stressed out, if I'm sleeping 12+ hours due to narcolepsy, or if my sleep schedule is out of sync with normal meal times. Also even when things are going well I tend to wimp out on at least one meal and make it more like a snack. I was diagnosed with anorexia 4 years ago, although I never tried to lose weight or suffered dysmorphia, so in the brave new world of DSM-V I'd probably have had ARFID. With my mood medications I don't think I have it any more, but maybe I'm off-base.

So the question is is it even safe for me to try to put on muscle, should I wait until I've gained some weight before I try, and how do I watch myself to make sure I don't get myself in trouble? Can I trust a primary care physician to give me good advice? Is there some other more useful professional I can see without bankrupting myself?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:42 am

violence in the media wrote:
Prak wrote:It's not that i think people accidentally gain giant hulk muscles, it's that if i go to a trainer, there's a good chance they'll look at my propensity for facial hair and lack of chest mounted person nurturers and think i want to gain a traditionally attractive masculine build.
There are a whole lot of intermediate stages between "I am overweight and out of shape" and "Conan". Even if you're uncomfortable discussing your trans status and ultimate goal with someone; you can still get started on the process. You will have plenty of time to adjust.

Tell them you're training for swimming or something involving a lot of endurance, Prak.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:10 pm

Orion, how are your finances? Where would you range on this scale
1: poor college student
2: paycheck to paycheck 9 to 5'er
3: employed real adult
4: yuppie
5: wealthy

The answers depend on whether you can spare 500 bucks, 50, or 5.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 5:11 pm

Orion wrote: So the question is is it even safe for me to try to put on muscle, should I wait until I've gained some weight before I try, and how do I watch myself to make sure I don't get myself in trouble? Can I trust a primary care physician to give me good advice? Is there some other more useful professional I can see without bankrupting myself?

The important thing is that your calorie intake exceed your calorie use. If you burn more calories than you consume, then you're body will have to break down its own tissues for that extra energy, which is bad in your case.

Look at nutrition labels, and go for foods with high calorie density (that is, many calories per unit volume). If you don't eat much and can't increase your appetite, then increasing the calorie density of the foods you do eat is helpful. This is one case I'd suggests you do go for high-calorie density add-ons like salad dressing and whatever.

Prak wrote:It's not that i think people accidentally gain giant hulk muscles, it's that if i go to a trainer, there's a good chance they'll look at my propensity for facial hair and lack of chest mounted person nurturers and think i want to gain a traditionally attractive masculine build.

Rapid muscle building and rapid fat loss are exactly the opposite concerns. If you want to build muscle, then you'll want to eat more calories than you burn, and much of it as protein, so that your body will have the building blocks to construct more muscle. If you want to lose weight, you'll want to consume fewer calories than you burn, but not too few, because there is a limit to the rate that your body can turn stored fat into energy and if you pass that limit it will just start eating muscle.

Body builders actually eat massive amounts, compared to others, because it does not fucking matter how many reps you do if your body doesn't have the energy necessary to build that muscle.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 5:55 pm

Incidentally, this is why I felt sorta bad for my friend who was a defensive end back in college. They wanted him to bulk up past 240 without losing much speed, so there were weeks where his life appeared to consist entirely of HIIT and white meat. I've never seen a dude so happy to just sit around with an empty stomach for a while.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:39 pm

Is it feasible to build up your muscles in a part of a body where it's ignorable/acceptable to Western standards of female beauty to have them like, say, the legs and back while doing all-around diet? It makes me wonder if Prak can achieve that ideal figure faster by doing so.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:39 pm

That's sort of what I'm looking at with what I already do. I do treadmill to burn fat and tone legs, and I do chest flyes and pullovers because they build muscle on the sides and bottom of the chest, and are apparently why some male body builders look like they have tits.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:11 am

Orion wrote:So, I'd like to put on muscle for professional reasons. Not very much muscle at all, but a little. The thing is, I also want to put on weight, for healthy reasons. I don't much care if it's muscle or fat, as far as that goes. I just care that I'm 5'10", 135 pounds [1.78m, 61kg], and if I forget to eat for a couple days I get fainting spells and panic attacks.

See, that sounds rather like hypoglycemia. It's pretty common for thin people who don't eat, because you can totally just run out of capacity to keep your blood sugars up. The trick is to eat something as soon as you notice, preferably whole carbs rather than refined sugars to avoiding triggering insulin and making it worse.

So carry a sandwich. Really. When you eat it, make another one.

I have no experience with stimulants, but I find doing stuff makes me hungry. Like, I put on weight when I work out because it makes me eat, and I used to be very light weight. Most exercise seems to make people average out. Big people get smaller and stronger, little people get bigger and stronger, middle people just get stronger.

So the question is is it even safe for me to try to put on muscle, should I wait until I've gained some weight before I try, and how do I watch myself to make sure I don't get myself in trouble? Can I trust a primary care physician to give me good advice? Is there some other more useful professional I can see without bankrupting myself?

The main reason to not work out is if there's something wrong with your heart, because getting a very high heart rate when you have a bad heart is bad for you. Otherwise exercise makes people stronger, and helps them live and long and healthy life.

On average, individual results may vary. I like it, though wearing the gear out does cost money, and you will wear everything out that you use. Fortunately your body will respond to minor wear and tear by rebuilding itself stronger, so long as you eat and rest enough.

Like I said, carry a sandwich.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:19 am

I wish I could find out who came up with the term "toning" so I could start up a campaign to shun them even worse than the guy who made comic sans.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 5:03 am

Dean wrote:Orion, how are your finances? Where would you range on this scale
1: poor college student
2: paycheck to paycheck 9 to 5'er
3: employed real adult
4: yuppie
5: wealthy

The answers depend on whether you can spare 500 bucks, 50, or 5.

Poor student, which means I have access to a gym and to unlimited terrible cafeteria food, and very little disposable money. I'll be done with school in a few months, at which point I'll lose access to that and we'll see what comes next.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:15 pm

See that makes things hard. There are a lot of mass gainers on the market and I have closehand experience that some of them definitely deliver what's on the tin. That said they cost money and if you don't have any to spare I don't really know what to tell you.

You might be able to "dirty bulk" by buying things like ice cream, whole milk, and cheese with whatever funds you normally use for food. By consuming mid protein, high calorie, high fat foods (which basically means dairy) and eating that consistently I imagine you would probably put on a stable increase to your weight. You could plausibly turn some of this into muscle by doing no cardio and only focus on the body parts you really cared about modifying.

I realize there's a lot of wiggling in what I'm saying but you have very little to work with. A gym for a few months and no supporting funds is a difficult platform to both put on significant weight and muscle.

Whipstitch wrote:I wish I could find out who came up with the term "toning" so I could start up a campaign to shun them

Yessssss. You can lose fat or gain muscle. Those are the only two things you can do. You can't tone anything that's gibberish. It gets more muscular or you get less fat. Anyone who tells you about toning either doesn't know what they're talking about or they do and they're selling you something.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:23 am

Oh, I'm aware that I'm going to need a gym membership to actually implement any reasonable plan. When you say "mass gainers," do you mean the protein powders and stuff?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:15 am

Yeah. They're typically a whole mess of whey protein plus a blend of carbs and vitamins. Far as eating cheap goes, in lean times I stuck with beans, cottage cheese, eggs and oatmeal mixed with peanut butter. Basically, any time you see hard-boiled eggs, chili or cottage cheese in your shitty caf you should respond by cleaning those motherfuckers out.

Artless · Post by **Artless** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 7:40 pm

I wear a pair of circumaural headphones when I'm at my computer, and have a couple of other pairs I use when traveling, etc., and recently (last year or so) I've been getting savage headaches starting from above my left ear and moving around my left eye whenever I wear them. I assume I'm compressing or pinching something I shouldn't be, but neither adjusting the bridge on them nor changing out the pads has seemed to do much to alleviate it for very long.

I've used these headphones for years without any problems. This started happening like summer last year and the pain never occurs anywhere except that nerve or muscle right above my left ear to around my left eye, and it lasts for about an hour after I take them off. I've taken to just not wearing them properly, and generally leaving them off my head and around my neck, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having the headphones in the first place. Any thoughts? Anyone else experienced something similar? I've done some cursory searches but they mostly all return the same advice I've already acted upon to no real benefit.

Nachtigallerator · Post by **Nachtigallerator** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:07 pm

Can you give the pain some kind of flowery descriptor - burning, stabbing, throbbing etc? And is it just the circumaural headphones and can you use earplugs without problem?

My first guess is that it could be trigeminal neuralgia with the trigger area around your ear - if you don't wear glasses, I imagine you don't have other tactile stimuli in that area - that has nothing to do with you wearing headphones specifically. You would want to see a neurologist if that was indeed the cause.

Artless · Post by **Artless** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:37 pm

Throbbing pain. I also become keenly aware of my pulse when it happens, I can feel it in that area pretty strongly. My glasses don't seem to cause any problems.

Earbuds tend not to present a problem for me, but I rarely use them for a length of time equivalent to what I use my regular headphones for. I'll see if they cause the same problems after extended use. Earplugs tend to be kind of uncomfortable to wear for that side, but that's been a problem long before this started occuring; my Eustachian tubes are trifling jerks and I tend to have some amount of fluid in my middle ear for long periods.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 3:08 pm

So, I went to the doctor to look into the issue that's been bothering my back:

RobbyPants wrote:I've had this odd issue with my lower back for about two months that doesn't seem to be going away.

I feel it on or near my spine somewhere between the bottom third and half of my back. It might be best described as "discomfort" and is in no way painful. I only feel it when my back is somewhat bent and I am leaning it against something (typically a chair). Sometimes, the best way to describe it is like it feels like my shirt is bunched up in the area or that I'm otherwise leaning on something.

I can't physically feel anything through the skin when I touch my back. It isn't painful when I touch the area in question. I don't seem to notice it in any way when doing exercise or otherwise moving about.

Any idea what this might be and what type of doctor I should contact?

The doctor's diagnosis is that two of my ribs were slightly out of place, and he wanted to pop them back into place. From everything I've read about chiropracty is that it's not really effective and can be flat-out BS.

Is there any legitimacy to the idea of two ribs being slightly out of place (causing minor discomfort when I sat with my back on a chair)? If so, is this a legitimate treatment?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 6:55 pm

Ribs being out of place is a real thing that can cause real problems. Generally, it's about how they meet the sternum in the middle, and it's called pectus carinatum if the chest is pushed out and pectus excavatum if the chest is caved in.

There can also be impingement by the ribs on nerves or blood vessels, as is the case in thoracic outlet syndrome.

And Costochondritis is sometimes called "slipped rib" even though it's an inflammation of the cartilage at one end or the other of ribs, and not the rib itself literally being out of place.

But the "natural medicine" people who want to massage ribs to cure back pain are basically wackaloons. Have you had a chest Xray?

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 9:13 pm

I had funnel chest/pectum excavatum and at 3 years old the treatment was less gentle than what they offer nowadays. My youngest boy has a bit of it but probably mild enough that nothing need be done.

In my day they broke my ribs such that as my dad described it, "as you breathed your chest would completely deflate", and the them heal more normally than nature's original design (but not entirely normal with the lower ribs protruding more than typical). It wasn't until college that I finally realized that my incredibly shitty endurance and reduced lung capacity can be traced directly back to this.

Nowadays they can implant a metal bar/plate and have you wear a magnet on your chest, iron man style almost, that pulls on it to help reshape your ribcage over a year or two (at least in the case of excavatum, I presume can reshape the other way as well though). I don't know if this only works on developing bodies or if it has been shown to work in adults as well.