#gut stuff

Got a lot of new followers, anyways this account does post nsfw here n there. Apologies but woag tis life

STUFF I DIDN'T KNOW WHEN I WAS STILL ABLED...

Inflammation is domino hell.

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In the before times, I thought inflammation was a hot, puffy spot around an infected wound. If you quizzed me, I'd agree that asthma and bee sting allergies were probably inflammation too: again, big puff. And really, probably enlarged joints from arthritis too, right? Angry body makes swelling.

Freaking... get this. Mast Cells are a part of your immune system and they are linked to a billion hormones and chemical signals for your body, but the ones they're famous for are allergic reactions and inflammation. If they get the right/wrong signals from something: peanut allergy or super-stress deadline or the wrong pollen or getting overheated or flare ups of other medical conditions that stress your body--then the dominoes start to fall.

And depending on how many dominoes get hit with that first reaction? So much inflammation can be triggered. So many other health conditions can flare up because of the way those inflammation hormones interact with other organ systems.

Did you know prolonged mast cell activation can give you full body inflammation?

I did not.

My doctors and I worked through a bunch of my food sensitivities and wow. When I stopped eating foods that upset my mast cells? I lost one quarter of my body mass.

Imagine a human. Chop them into four equal bits. Throw one of those chunks away. That was me. Yeeting approximately a whole leg-and-buttock-worth of angry, swollen, water-retaining me-meat. All inflammation. All over-reactive mast cell mess.

I hadn't realized I was swollen. I just thought that was my shape in life. It had been that way for years. Why would body mass be a symptom? Haha. Inflammation.

This isn't a weight loss thing. I was trying to stop hitting all the mass cell symptom dominoes. Numbness and heart palpitations and sweats and dizziness and shortness of breath and a bunch of other incapacitating things like that were happening every time I ate.

Those reactions were getting more intense as my mast cells got futher out of whack. Which caused more inflammation... which triggered migraines... which triggered more mast cell inflammation... which set off body aches and POTS flare ups (circulatory issue)... so more mast cells got into the act... and on and on and on. It became a self-perpetuating loop of horrible, horrible dominoes.

So, I guess this is a heads up that "allergies" aren't just dramatic inflammation puff ups like asthma and anaphylaxis. Sometimes they're ongoing, low-grade irritation that can snowball and set off other issues.

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>>>Because I mentioned food and weight and those are complicated topics for people--please note, even if I eat off a 100% friendly menu, it doesn't stop other things from kicking off mast cell reactions. Food control is not the silver bullet magic cure!! Stress, heat, exercise, other conditions flaring--I'm still learning my triggers. Yes, having fewer irritations means more clear-headed days, less head and body aches, no more after-dinner-face-numbness, and less inflammation. This is good progress! But I also needed medicines. And I would never have correctly selected my safe foods list on my own. If you do need this kind of help, please work with a doctor. This stuff was not intuitive in the slightest and is very specific for each person.

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And if you encounter someone with food sensitivities, believe them and cut them some slack. The safe food list is weird sometimes.

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Seems like something we should all know.

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Woag, let’s see if I get smited.

Lou’s nightmare