A Russian prankster glued a massive portrait of President Vladimir Putin to the inside of a residential elevator. He then placed a camera in the elevator to record people’s reactions.
So! In a fun twist, I'm starting to suspect that I have Crohns, and by fun I mean I really wish I could eat like a normal person. For obvious reasons, it's going to be a While till I can get officially checked, and google is being shockingly unhelpful in this regard, so I was wondering if you had any general advice for how to handle it in the meantime? Either personal experience or a website is great! I'm already avoiding dairy, which hurts me deeply as a lover of a shitty grilled cheese.
In retrospect, there were warning signs beforehand. I’d had a somewhat…delicate system when it came to certain foods for some time. Gut issues run in my family on mom’s side; IBS is common, so that’s what I supposed it was.
I used to treat the symptoms with a tea made from chamomile, mint, calendula, and cinnamon, (equal parts, 2-3 cups a day, tastes quite nice) paired with a turmeric capsule a day. It worked quite well for several years, until of course it didn’t. (Because it eventually got worse, and I spent four days in the hospital! That was delightful. But, my gastroenterologist, after a colonoscopy, did say that the damage was less than what he normally saw in patients on their first flare, and that likely my efforts had delayed the first flare and helped.)
For months, I was on a low-fiber diet. No raw fruit or veg, no wholemeal bread (SUCKED because I LOVE wholemeal bread) no nuts, no popcorn. Cream of Wheat and milk and fruit juice was like, my whole diet for a solid month (I lost seven pounds, and I’m not a big person. That was seven pounds of muscle, and it was annoying as hell).
Now, trigger foods can be different for different people. For me, dairy is a safe food even in a flare. For you it might be an irritant. This is, to quote Dr. Irshad, “Because the gastrointestinal system is weird.” So it’s kinda trial and error to figure out what’s safe and what’s not. You do this by cutting out basically everything fun, and then trying one food at a time and seeing if you react to it. Fiber is often a major culprit, so look there.
Now, with it managed (2 mg of sulfasalazine and 1 mg of folic acid a day) I can eat nearly anything I want again. Nearly. Popcorn is still problematic, and I can’t eat like, a whole pound of raw cherries any longer.
So, hope this helps, know that I’ve got the exact same thing, and if it gets bad go to the ER. (That’s where I ended up).
A note on fiber: cooked vegetables may still be very good for you! If you have diahorrea as a symptom, one of the ways of controlling it is to up your soluble fiber (vegetables etc) and drop your insoluble fiber (whole grains etc). Soluble fiber absorbs water and insoluble fiber prevents it from absorbing, so you want to try and shift that balance towards absorption. People are always like “fibre is good for you!!” But hoo boy it’s a little more complicated than that
Yes! Cooked veggies good! I had problems with broccoli for ages still, but can eat it again.
People kept telling me (still do) to cut out wheat and dairy, but like. That’s two of the ONLY safe things for me during a flare. Milk, cheese, and grains, specifically processed low-fiber grains.
“Oh you should go vegan,” people say, and I’m like “That is according to my doctor the absolute worst thing I could do, so no thank you.”
I have IBS, so luckily I do not have the immune-system-eating-itself aspect of Crohn’s, but in terms of dietary triggers and symptoms, they’re very similar. fiber sucks. one thing that might not be as obvious is that alliums (garlic, onions, all that jazz) can also suck, and most fruits can be high in fiber and fructose, both triggers for me. so apples and other seeded fruits, stone fruits like cherries and peaches, and ESPECIALLY dried fruits, because drying fruits concentrates the suckage. basically bananas are the only good fruit.
what do I eat? mostly simple carbs like pasta and potatoes, and proteins like meat, eggs, and dairy. vegetable proteins like beans are 100% off the table because they’re just concentrated fiber. if I eat a vegetable it is a bell pepper or possibly wilted spinach if I’m feeling daring.
If you can’t eat sometimes those “meal replacement” things like boost are fantastic because they’re stuffed with vitamins and protein.
You’re gonna want to keep up your electrolytes too. Gatorade is good and pickle juice has a lot as well (if acids dont bother you).
Common triggers: nicotine, caffeine, other stimulants, alcohol, carbonated drinks, spinach/lettuce-like foods, fried and/or greasy foods, heavily seasoned food, peppers and other spicy food, beans & lentils, rice (especially long grain), corn (including popcorn), gluten (wheat rye or barley), dairy, seedy food (like strawberries or actual seeds lol), starch apparently. (If you’re gonna try eliminating stuff I’d go for those first)
Meal replacement shakes can sometimes have a lot of fiber, though (that was a major problem with Soylent before they reformulated).
people will say they aren’t attractive and then go create art and then go write beautiful poetry and then go bake a cake for a friend and then go spread positivity and then go write a novel and then continue to say they aren’t attractive, as if everything they do doesn’t count or doesn’t matter, as if societal expectations somehow decide their worth and fate.
people who slander dandelions are so boring. oh you don’t like weeds?? you don’t want to see my yard absolutely covered in fairy pom poms motherfucker??? get bent
Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*
My cat: Father isā¦evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.
i swear to god, men raising their voice is the most terrifying thing in the whole world. they dont understand, like its an immediate panic response, game over
I actually had no idea women found this so scary
my downstairs neighbors fight on a regular basis, and every time he starts yelling iām a little afraid heās going to kill her. i have no reason to think this except that he is a man and he is angry
My math teacher has a loud voice and a temper and he scares the living shit out of me almost everyday. Heās made me and other kids cry more than once and he and his teacher buddies make a joke out of terrifying students.
this was women in general? i knew my gf didnāt like it but I was unaware if this affected most women
Yes, it does
As a woman, I had no idea it effected other women like this. I was too afraid to even talk about it. I thought I was weak. Thanks for bringing attention to this.
My dad thinks itās funny that I used to cry when he raised his voice. I freak out whenever some one does. Once my director did, and I started crying I couldnāt stop. Iām glad to see Iām not aloneā¦
This is so importantā seeing how common this isā and I also want you all to know that this is not normal. It isnāt something instinctively ingrained into women, to be afraid of men. There is no natural state of men being a threatĀ that women constantly have to be afraid of.Ā This is cultural. So many women and girls here have a mutual understanding of this feeling, and I think it really shows an unsettling truth about our society, particularly about how men are raised to act and how so many women have this defensive reaction gradually develop. Itās so important that these people have their voices heard, because it teaches us about problems that we just canāt deny the existence of any longer.
Iām glad Iām not the only one
My fellow men, pay attention. I didnāt realize how scary this could be until one of my exes explained it to me, and itās heartbreaking.
Also, when we move too much during an argument, or lean forward, itās scary, and I never knew. I was even a little insulted at first, because surely she didnāt think I would hurt her. But see, that doesnāt matter. It wasnāt a sign that she mistrusted me specifically; itās a conditioned response. (Although if you keep doing it once you realize it scares her, she SHOULDNāT trust you.)
Not every woman has been physically harmed by a man she trusted, but every woman KNOWS a woman who has.
I used to be horrible about this, because I didnāt realize how intimidating it was. I didnāt understand why the woman I was with clammed up or tried to tell me what she thought I wanted to hear, and I only got angrier, and acted even more like an asshole. It was wrong. It was abusive. It didnāt matter if I INTENDED it that way; it was still emotionally abusive. And it was inexcusable.
I get that when passions are high, and when youāre frustrated, itās a natural tendency to let your voice get louder, to shout and gesture and lean forward. But you can train yourself to do better. You can train yourself to keep more of an even tone, to refrain from large and fast gestures, to not lean into her personal space. I did. Iām not perfect at it yet, but goddamn it, I WILL be.
Donāt tell me itās too hard, that you just canāt do it, or that you āshouldnāt have to.ā Iām 53 years old and just now getting the hang of it, and if this old dog can learn something new, so can you.
Note to guys: It really, REALLY doesnāt matter if youāre thinking, ābut I would neverā¦ā
History is littered with the bodies of women who believed a man āwould never.ā This includes women killed by men who honestly, deeply, truly believed they āwould neverāā¦ right up until she said that one thing or moved in just that way and he just got so mad, just that once, and pushed her or punched her or slashed her or shot herā¦ just once, yāknow, to shut her up, or because she was flinching and didnāt she know that HEāS NOT LIKE THAT and IāLL TEACH HER TO BE AFRAID OF MEā¦
We are trained, from infancy, that Men With Loud Voices are a source of pain from which we cannot escape, and attempts to escape may result in more pain. And as soon as weāre old enough to comprehend a world broader than our immediate circle, a world that extends into the past and will run into the future, we realize that there is no way, no way at all, to tell which men āwould neverā and which men āwould neverā¦ except if.ā
We live or die on that āif.ā And any man who doesnāt like facing that hyper-vigilance can work on fixing OTHER MEN, not womenās fear.
The reaction shouldnāt be ānot all men are like that;ā it should be āno woman should have to live in fear.ā
Itās telling that so many people will hear a story of long-term abuse and say, āwhy did she stay with him?ā and not āwhy did he treat her like that?ā
This made me cry.
Donāt skip over this.
āEVERY WOMAN KNOWS AT LEAST ONE WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN PHYSICALLY HARMED BY A MANā
Finnish soldier gets separated from the rest of his unit but heās the only one carrying the emergency amphetamines for the unit, takes too many and goes on a one man rampage for like 2 weeks straight giving the opposing Soviet soldiers nightmares for decades. Oh and he did it all on skis.Ā
Did he survive?
Yes, during his methed up 2-3 week rampage he got injured by a land mine, travelled 400km on skis, and only ate pine buds and a Siberian Jay that he caught which he ate raw. When he made it back to Finnish lines he was taken to a hospital where it was found his heart rate was nearly 200 beats per minute and his weight had dropped to 43kg (94.7lbs).
His name was Aimo Koivunen if you want to look him up
Those are the eyes of a man who has seen god and laughed
Important distinction, it wasnāt āamphetaminesā like Adderall or Vyvanse or something, it was Pervitin, prescription grade methamphetamine.
