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Schizophrenia furrealz

Schizophrenia runs in my mom’s side of the family.  I may have anecdotal  information in this post due to a lack of formal diagnosis; however, experiential evidence suggests truth.

One of my siblings has schizophrenia (formal).  My grandpa had it (informal).  His mom had it (informal).  To my knowledge only my sibling is so disabled by it that they cannot function.  The other relatives seem to have kicked along until death.

Schizophrenia is a complex topic and I am no specialist… but it seems to me the crux of the condition lies in being unable to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined.  For example, I’ve reached states in meditation where I pick up “transmissions” of conversations.  Sometimes words or concepts I’m unfamiliar with are even used, which I’ve later verified are real.

I haven’t actually repeated these experiments in many years… in fact I lived at the house I grew up in, the last time I did.  To be clear, I PHYSICALLY heard these conversations and voices.  That said, at no point did I take them very seriously, and when focus was changed, they disappeared.

So what was that?  Was it a taste of schizophrenia?  A psychotic break?  Do I have the same condition as my sibling; but toned down substantially enough to walk on a knife edge between worlds?

I’ve had many other experiences that I know cannot be real in a literal way.  I can tell the difference – one is my brain playing tricks on my perception… the other is hard like cement where you go SPLAT!

I take no medications for depression or anything else.  I actually strive for a lack of medication generally… would medication help with depression?  Maybe… sometimes I am so catastrophically depressed that I am a hair from feeling utterly and truly like I cannot go on.

It takes everything I have to just go through the motions of the day.. the whole time thinking in the back of my mind how much I want to cease existing.  I can actually liken this to the experience of a neurotypical person.  Let’s say you’re a heterosexual male… you know how you constantly think about having sex?  You try to get things done and you are compelled to have a wank just to get on with your life… haunted by the constant bright light of sexual desire?

When in the depths of catastrophic depression that bright light of sexual desire is replaced with suicidal idealization.  It happens every few seconds… oh yeah, I’d like to no longer exist so badly…. it would be so nice…  BLIP back to reality… get some things done… more thoughts of suicide.

The thing is you don’t really want to die… you just don’t want to live.  You don’t want to EXIST.  The idea of NOT existing is so REFRESHING and desirable.

I truly admire and am equally baffled by people who want to live as long as possible.  It’s like staring at one of those 3D books where you need to cross your eyes, look sideways, and stare for 10 minutes.  Sometimes that illusion will click in your brain and you’ll say, “Aha… it’s a fucking sailboat!  Man what a waste of time!”  People who want to live as long as possible might be a fucking sailboat, a street sign, a dog, or some other thing that I cannot possibly see.  What the HECK are you people!

Even when I talk to those crumbly folks who are ultra old and made of paper mache… I am vastly impressed they continue to animate.  How did you become such exquisitely animated paper mache?  Was it the polymer structure of the glue that holds you together?  Are you filled with Twinkies?  Did you spend half your life in the freezer?

I digress.  Am I half baked Schizophrenia?  Or maybe I have some Psychotic icing?  Did I never experience the proper trigger?  My personality is doused with incredible control and non addictive juiciness.  I’ve tried to acquire Nicotine habits through tincture drops, gum, cigars, cigarettes, and vaporizers.   Yawn.  With enough alcohol Nicotine is fun for a while… otherwise nothing interesting about it.

Nothing especially sticks when it comes to drugs and alcohol.  At no point do I have a sudden craving.  Really I just have a little alcohol and nicotine when I’m sufficiently bored with a task that needs to get done… even then it’s at best something that makes the time pass more easily.

Am I simply hard wired to be missing such a trigger sufficient for activating Schizophrenia?  If anything I should be grateful, yet at the same time I am intrigued at some of the overlapping experiences I’ve had that resemble Schizophrenia.

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Ketogenic diet and high cholesterol

As promised from my previous post – did the Ketogenic diet help with my genetically high cholesterol?  Not really.  Although overall cholesterol did go down; LDL went up slightly.  The minor shifts are not encouraging.

Year Total (mg/dL) LDL (mg/dL) HDL (mg/dL) Triglyceride (mg/dL)
2018 Keto
5 weeks 2 days		 275 206 46 116
2017 No Diet 305 201 47 283
2016 No Diet 333 242 53 193

I can’t even remember the difference between 2017 and 2016… I know it likely wasn’t lifestyle or diet though because my lifestyle and diet has been very similar for many years.

As mentioned in my previous post, depression was not curbed much; rather it increased the catastrophic depths further and zeroed the feeling of well being.

I started this blog thinking this diet might actually fix my depression issues enough that I would not feel compelled to do any writing about depression.  Ah well, was worth a shot I suppose.

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One Banana – the end of Keto

Shortly into week 5 of a strict Keto diet, instead of things getting easier, they became much harder.  Not in terms of discipline but I began to get chronic migraines.  To clarify, the last time I had gotten a migraine headache was over 20 years ago – that’s how rare they are for me.

At first I figured it was an electrolyte balance issue so I upped my Potassium Chloride – no effect.  So I upped my Potassium Citrate – no effect.  Upped my Magnesium Sulfate – nope.  Finally I had some sugar incidentally from low calorie Gatorade… migraine gone.  The next day, the exact same cycle.

So I’ve had to cut my Keto trial short of 6 weeks due to… presumably running out of some kind of resource in the body.  I don’t think this diet is something I can acclimate to long term.  I’m not sure ANYONE should unless they must for health reasons.  At least in my case I believe something that comes from FRUIT is needed to function properly.  I also tried taking supplemental Vitamin C during this diet to “cure” my fruit cravings.

At no point during this diet did I feel like I missed processed foods.  Sure Pizza sounded good, but I didn’t miss bread, crackers, cake, or pure sugar.  The only thing I felt a constant craving for was FRUIT.

I have very very bad Cholesterol due to genetics.  On this diet in about 5 weeks I have lost at least 5-10lb (hard to tell for sure due to water fluctuations).  I’m certain this is primarily due to incidental calorie restriction though.. I did not adhere to the proper level of calories during the diet.  You can gain weight on a Keto diet – calories are calories.  I know one person who has been on a Keto diet for many years for health reasons and without following the numbers strictly, they still gain weight.  Keto is not a magic bullet as some people would have you believe.

That said, today I had my blood drawn to check my almost always horrible Cholesterol levels (LDL high, etc.)  A pharmacy student actually tried to enter my numbers into a risk calculator and found they couldn’t go as high as my total cholesterol in the calculator – yes, I’m “off the charts” bad.  I haven’t gotten the results yet, but will post them once I do.

So here’s my overall conclusion: if you want to do Keto, do it for periods of time similar to a fasting ritual.  I don’t think it should be done long term though (unless necessary).  Of course I’m speaking generally, but this is from my own experience.

Now let me get to the interesting part.  When on a Keto diet, everything starts to taste sweet that didn’t before: nuts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, zucchini, etc.  Even almonds or pecans start to taste like candy.

So after getting my blood drawn I went home and ate a Banana – one of the fruits I missed the most.  It was disgustingly sweet – like artificial sweetener.  That’s still not the interesting part though… I could feel a kind of “glaze” tingly feeling from the top of my head, slowly going down to my eyes, over my eyes, and slowly to my ears, etc.

I kind of feel like my nervous system is reactivating.  No kidding, on Keto since the beginning I began to have mild nephropathy – the loss of some range of sensation… all my muscles were also prone to cramping.  These symptoms even 5 weeks into the diet did NOT go away.  The induction period for Keto is 1-6 weeks… if my body was to strike a balance, it would have happened by now most likely.

I think it’s possible some people cannot thrive on this diet and may even have serious complications from it.  I blew off heart palpitations, mild nephropathy, and other mild symptoms, but I could not handle chronic migraines after 5 weeks.  I know the Keto evangelists will say that I “Did not do the Keto diet right.” and that is the ONLY reason I had these issues.  I’ll clue everyone in though: Nutritionally I did the best I could… I fixed chronic constipation, I took supplemental salts; I acclimated in every way I could as issues came up.  I’m fairly confident I did better and researched more than the majority of people could.  Meaning: I was fairly scientific about this diet and supplemented with vitamins/minerals to compensate for the lack of dietary sources.

I’m fairly convinced this diet is simply not compatible with my physiology.  I also do NOT think this is a “natural” diet or the diet of our ancestors.  If you’re going to cut something out, cut out refined carbohydrates.  This diet taught me a lot about my body and was worth trialing.

As I’m typing this I feel like my brain is doing jumping jacks for the first time in 5+ weeks.  My brain did NOT function better on Keto; my emotions were initially more flat-line but catastrophically negative thoughts began to happen every day after about 1 week; my mental clarity was NOT higher on Keto – my wife actually said I have had symptoms of incoherence the past few weeks.

I will point out one caveat when it comes to brain function; without getting into too much detail, my job (which I do most of the hours in every day) is very thought intensive.  I am in the class of thinking similar to that of a Chess Master.  I think and solve hard logical, mathematical, and strategic problems most hours of most days for multiple companies and industries.

So, brain function is very important in my daily life… I could still perform these functions, but more incoherently.  After eating a single Banana I can feel some complex thought functions reactivating.  I know that sounds like bullshit to almost everyone… I can feel my brain changing “modes” regularly.  I believe this introspection comes from practicing meditation for so many years.

People who have not practiced deep meditation for years, think meditation is a load of crap like taking a nap.  So unless you’ve meditated 1-2 hours every day for 10 years, you can keep your incredibly limited opinion on meditation to yourself. 😉

With meditation you can do “magic” tricks like turning nerves on and off, controlling heart rate, and overriding various autonomic functions.  You can also develop awareness of parts of the body that most people are unaware of.  So when I tell you I can feel my brain functioning differently despite operating from within “the simulator”, it’s true; but I am also aware that almost no one has a reference to such things and will happily call me out about it.

I look forward to seeing my cholesterol results and will share them soon.