logixoul's introduction

Hazard

Hi! Have you checked your insulin levels? Insulin resistance is correlated to several health conditions, it may help you some way.

logixoul

Hazard Thanks, I think I'll do that. Is there something in what I wrote that makes you think I may have insulin resistance? Do you have insulin resistance?

Hazard

logixoul Thanks, I think I'll do that. Is there something in what I wrote that makes you think I may have insulin resistance? Do you have insulin resistance?

It's a very commom thing. I actually have a fatty liver strongly connected to a diet based on carbs, which I'm trying to fix now. Since I moved to a low-carb/sugar diet, I'm feeling improvements in many ways across my body (skin, weight, physical aptitude, mood, etc.). Unfortunately, nothing related to my eye sight so far (3 months since my diagnosis and 2 months tops of low carb/sugar).

mazury

logixoul As for the miligamma - do you take it orally or injections? I know this drug, it helped me with a few of my post alcohol poisonings when I had 10 day hangovers back in the days. These injections were a miracle. I wonder about your vit b1 and b12 levels. Do you monitor that?

logixoul

mazury Orally.

I don't monitor my vitamin B1/B12 levels (and I don't do any regular lab tests, for that matter).

I used to monitor my B12 (and D3) levels - back in 2018 they were very low because I had been eating a pretty extreme diet (raw vegan). Later I got them back to normal and stopped monitoring them.

Would you advise that I monitor this stuff regularly?

mazury

logixoul I don't really know, I'm just intereseted in the connection between b1/b12 and other b vitamins and our nervous system and eyes in particular.

logixoul

mazury I know of 3 separate connections of B1/B6/B12 to pain (including eye pain).

High doses of these b-vits (in a highly-absorbed form, so the B1 should actually be benfotiamine, not plain thiamine) have the following 3 properties:

- Fast (short term) general analgesic (pain relief) action

- Fast (short term) neuro-pain relief action (neuro-pain stands for stuff like pins-and-needles sensations, burning sensations, numbness sensations, sometimes muscle spasms...)

- Regeneration of damaged nerves, which provides long term relief from neuro-pain symptoms.

I don't know the mechanism through which these b-vits provide these benefits. It's explained here (this is the Summary of Product Characterists for Milgamma N) but in Bulgarian. I couldn't find an English version for you, sorry.

logixoul

Update:

5 months later, still using that BenQ MS502 projector for an hour a day. This is the longest (I mean the 5 months) I've been able to tolerate a screen (well, projector), since my eyestrain journey began in 2020.

I think the keys to its "eye-compatibility" are:

The projected image is 3 meters from my eyes
I'm using it in a low-contrast setup. Meaning, I've set it to "eco mode" (lower brightness) and have plenty of ambient light in the room (unshaded windows and strong lightbulbs).

I suspect most projector models will work for me (if I were to try them), provided the above 2 needs are met.

logixoul

News:

Pain Reprocessing Therapy helped me so much that I'm considering returning to programming after the 5-year forced pause.

stopstrain

logixoul this is incredible! Thank you so much for sharing.

I'm also a software developer and have been trying Pain Reprocessing Therapy after reading "The Way Out" as well but haven't had the same success yet (hopefully). I saw that you mentioned it that you do 5 minutes of exercises in the morning and then 2-3 hours later you feel better for ~5 hours. I have a few questions I'd love your input on.

Are the exercises that you're doing the same as "somatic tracking" from the book or are there additional ones?
What happens right after doing the exercises, do you still feel symptoms when looking at screens until the 2-3 hour mark?
How long did it take before you had good results? If it took a few weeks/months, did you feel any improvement before?
Have you had a cumulative effect or is it still mostly short term?

By the way, Alan Gordon's podcast ("Tell Me About Your Pain") is amazing too. Although I haven't had success yet with the exercises, I deeply relate to all the people he interviews and the personality type he talks about, so I'm sure there's a strong centralized ("neuroplastic") component to my pain, even if it's not fully centralized.

Thanks again for sharing the positive and exciting news!!

logixoul

❤

stopstrain Are the exercises that you're doing the same as "somatic tracking" from the book or are there additional ones?

70% of it is somatic tracking. Additional techniques from the book that I utilize:

Sometimes, when I try somatic tracking and it doesn't click, I do the "catch your fears" thing (I identify the fear as "I'm too tired/unfocused/dopamine-drained right now so the somatic tracking won't click" and respond with something like "nope, all is fine, there's no real reason why it shouldn't work out". And so it does work out.)
"Evidence sheets": I recently finally started doing (using) them. It does help as well.
"Avoidance behaviors" (as part of The Process): when pain starts to feel threatening, I lower it with eye massage and pills and water intake. If I feel a hair has gotten into my eye, I flush it out with saline solution straight away. I even abuse somatic tracking itself as an avoidance behavior, because I've discovered it has a direct analgesic effect (so I use it both for its official "long term improvement" purpose and for the unofficial "soothe the pain that I'm feeling right at this moment" purpose).
"Sending myself messages of safety": E.g., if I sit at the computer and immediately feel some minor pain, I know not to panic but to happily remind myself that it's all a bunch of brain hokum.
"Avoiding feeling trapped": I'll give an example. I know that if I eat food, I have to wait 1hr before I can drink water (this delay is for digestive reasons). And I know that I can calm any "spasm"/"pain" emergency that accumulates in my eye, by downing a few glasses of water. So, therefore, I don't use screens for 1 hour following each meal. Not because I can't.
Seeking out the pain ("empowered attitude"): If I don't feel pain at a given moment, I cheerfully do something to make SOME pain reemerge (e.g. I do some brief 5-minute screenwork), so I can then somatic-track it.

stopstrain What happens right after doing the exercises, do you still feel symptoms when looking at screens until the 2-3 hour mark?

Yes, but the last couple of days the "effect delay" seems to be more like 1 hour (and the pain during that period is much less). Because the last 2 weeks I'm doing somatic tracking much more efficiently. The breakthrough was that I finally got prescribed a good laxative for my GI problems, so now I don't feel constantly dazed due to a bloated stomach. And since I'm not dazed but am fresh-minded instead, I'm able to do somatic tracking much better.

stopstrain How long did it take before you had good results? If it took a few weeks/months, did you feel any improvement before?

I started doing PRT in September 2023 but mostly just for my legs. Then around November I started applying it to my eyes too, and IIRC had almost immediate results (so maybe on the third or fourth day). They were pretty dramatic too. But then I got worse at somatic tracking (IIRC I started having too much doubt about whether my pain was actually neuroplastic), so it stopped helping as much. Finally, I got the laxative breakthrough that I mentioned, and did 2 weeks of proper PRT, and in these 2 weeks I improved a lot, leading to my post about going back to programming. The improvement during these 2 weeks was gradual - it was there on day one (ok, maybe day two or three), but grew with time.

stopstrain Have you had a cumulative effect or is it still mostly short term?

I definitely do feel a cumulative effect in the last 3 or 4 days.

stopstrain I'm sure there's a strong centralized ("neuroplastic") component to my pain, even if it's not fully centralized.

Same here.

stopstrain Although I haven't had success yet with the exercise

If you have some specific stumbling block that you can describe, maybe I can help 🙂

stopstrain

logixoul Wow thank you so much for such a detailed and thorough response! I'm so happy to hear that you've found this relief for your eyes and GI issues! It's incredibly helpful to read about your experience and to hear about your success 🙂

The hardest part for me is that I don't know if the pain is neuroplastic. I've had eye strain and pain issues on and off for 10 years, but then (stupidly 😭) got PRK 3 years ago, which made everything 1000x worse. I tried a million treatments, including vision therapy, prism glasses, different screens, and countless others, before finally being diagnosed with Corneal Neuralgia due to nerve damage from PRK. However, the neuromodulator pain meds (Nortriptyline, Gabapentin) don't help at all, and I haven't had much nerve regrowth or inflammation reduction in a year of treatment. This makes it hard to know if I really have Corneal Neuralgia, or if I'm like the classic back pain patient he talks about in the book, who goes searching for structural problems and finds them (when really it's just centralized pain)! It's hard to know if there's real structural damage or not, but given the lack of improvement with treatment, as well as other "evidence" I have from the book that points to neuroplasticity (e.g., my personality type matching that of chronic pain patients, the pain getting better when eating, worrying/obsessing over the pain making it worse, etc.), I'm sure there's at least SOME neuroplasticity involved, which makes me believe these exercises can only help, even if they don't cure me.

The problem is that Somatic Tracking never provides the short-term analgesic effect for me. I do it calmly, without focusing too intensely, but the pain doesn't go away. I know that the book says that it's not about curing the pain in the moment but rather to send messages of safety and gradually teach your brain that the pain is a mistake, but it makes it hard to fully buy in when I don't seem to get any relief from it like all the patients he talks about do.

I'm going to keep doing it and also incorporate the other strategies/exercises you mentioned. Knowing that it has helped you makes me optimistic that it will start to help if I stay patient.

Thanks again for your help man, I really appreciate it. And congrats again on finding something that has worked so well!

logixoul

stopstrain the neuromodulator pain meds (Nortriptyline, Gabapentin) don't help at all

I think this is a very important piece of evidence. AFAIK, neuralgias respond to these medications quite well. So if they don't help you, it's probably NP pain. Your other pieces of evidence also sound very encouraging in this regard.

Do you have a Facebook account? If so, I encourage you to join the following FB group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/695823314550483/

Not necessarily for the discussions that happen there, but in order to read Kim DeCelle's pinned post (pinned to the top of the group) wrt "doubts whether your pain is neuroplastic". If you don't want Facebook, I can send you the text from that post in a PM (the group is supposed to be private). It is very valuable.

stopstrain Knowing that it has helped you makes me optimistic that it will start to help if I stay patient.

How long have you been doing PRT? If it's more than a couple of months, and you still see zero results, then I think patience may not be the answer. I think you may be missing some key understanding from the book. For a start, let me tell you about the main 8 components of somatic tracking, as I understand them:

Try to describe (to yourself) the changing character of the pain. Is it pinchy, tense, burning, tingling, etc.
No judgement/agenda
Send yourself messages of safety (most importantly, "whatever happens to the pain is okay, because my body is fine". Even if you don't fully believe it, telling it to yourself will help it sink in. The brain does respond to self-told narratives)
Important: Induce positive affect. Find a strategy that works for you for that purpose. I've used sruff like: listening to music, doing some crazy dance-like steps when I'm out for a walk, arguing with my brain (which is ridiculous and hence kinda funny)…
Outcome independance
No intensity
Authenticity of the messages of safety you give yourself. This one is a "nice to have", i.e. you can get some results even without full authenticity, and when you do, it'll get easier to be more authentic.
Find a way to look at the pain with curiosity.

If you can manage to combine all (or most of) these 8 things in the same ST session, you'll probably see some effect. It's a bit like juggling while riding a bicycle, at least in the beginning. 🙂

And if a given ST session feels like a chore to you, drop it and retry later when you actually feel like doing it. Do you have an evidence sheet? I've found it very helpful to have it written down, as opposed to it being just in my head.

stopstrain

logixoul I think this is a very important piece of evidence. AFAIK, neuralgias respond to these medications quite well. So if they don't help you, it's probably NP pain. Your other pieces of evidence also sound very encouraging in this regard.

Ah yeah that’s what I’m hoping! The only caveat here is I only got up to 1200mg Gabapentin which is not a high enough dose to fully rule it out, but I feel confident that it wouldn't work given that I felt nothing at that dose. I think combined with the other pieces of evidence, as well as another that I didn't mention -- which is that the pain gets much worse when I'm stressed, such as in an argument --, it all definitely seems to point to neuroplastic pain.

logixoul Not necessarily for the discussions that happen there, but in order to read Kim DeCelle's pinned post (pinned to the top of the group) wrt "doubts whether your pain is neuroplastic". If you don't want Facebook, I can send you the text from that post in a PM (the group is supposed to be private). It is very valuable.

Oh yeah I'm in the group! I just read Kim's pinned post and watched all of Dr. Howard Schubiner's videos that she linked - INCREDIBLE. It is very easy to see how screen and LED sensitivity could lead to NP. The brain is truly fascinating…

logixoul For a start, let me tell you about the main 8 components of somatic tracking, as I understand them:

You are totally right, I was missing those key components. I listened to the audiobook and thought I remembered most of these things but seeing it all written down (and written from your perspective) is immensely more valuable than doing it by memory. Thank you so much for explaining this to me, it makes somatic tracking seem much more doable now!

One quick question: for #4, induce positive effect, is that WHILE doing somatic tracking?

And lol about the arguing with your brain part, definitely relate to that 😂.

logixoul If you can manage to combine all (or most of) these 8 things in the same ST session, you'll probably see some effect. It's a bit like juggling while riding a bicycle, at least in the beginning. 🙂

Haha yes, it feels a bit like trying not to think of a pink elephant. Paying attention without intensity and judgement while sending messages of safety etc. etc. is not easy, but I am sure it will be doable now that I have your explanation AND now that I definitively know it helped someone like me. That part is huge because I wasn't sure that it could, so having that proof is invaluable.

logixoul Do you have an evidence sheet? I've found it very helpful to have it written down, as opposed to it being just in my head.

Great idea - another thing I was doing by memory, but will be much more helpful to write it down.

Thanks again man, I'm so excited to give this a real shot. You are super kind and generous to take the time to explain all of this to me and I can't express enough how much I appreciate it 🙏🏼.

logixoul

Happy to be of some help! You seem like a positive person as well, I value this type of people.

stopstrain One quick question: for #4, induce positive effect, is that WHILE doing somatic tracking?

It can be right before you do ST, or, at your discretion, during the ST session.

Btw it's "affect", not "effect". Affect basically means "mood". 🙂

stopstrain

logixoul Happy to be of some help! You seem like a positive person as well, I value this type of people.

Thank you 😊!

logixoul It can be right before you do ST, or, at your discretion, during the ST session.

Btw it's "affect", not "effect". Affect basically means "mood". 🙂

Ah, got it. Amazing, I will try this!

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