a healthy person wants 1000 things. a sick person only wants 1.
and that makes you a target.
when you're desperate to feel better, every supplement, every lab draw, every new protocol from some guy on twitter feels like progress.
but it's not always progress. it's dopamine. it's the feeling of doing something when you don't know what to do.
i fell into this trap too. it's really hard not to.
i spent months buying every supplement i read about. stacking protocols. getting blood work done every few weeks. obsessing over biomarkers. reading every reddit thread. convincing myself that the next thing would be the thing.
most of it was noise.
the real problem was i was treating symptoms and never asking why i was sick in the first place. that's what the whole system runs on. your doctor. the supplement industry. instagram health influencers. all of them sell you the next thing to manage how you feel, not fix what's wrong.
the wellness industry doesn't make money when you get better. it makes money when you keep searching.
the turning point for me was realizing i wasn't making progress. i was just staying busy.
so i changed my approach:
a) wrote down every hypothesis for what might be causing this
b) picked one. tested it for a month to prove myself wrong, not right
c) found other patients with my condition and compared notes
i didn't just have an illness. i had become it. every waking hour went to obsessing over it.
committing to one experiment didn't cure me. but it gave me my life back. i had one thing to focus on.
if you can: test one thing. give it time. find people who get it.
a few years ago i got covid and never recovered.
i went from exercising every day to completely bedbound.
lost 40lbs. in and out of hospitals for over 2 years.
saw 20 doctors. bloodwork came back normal.
"you're probably just stressed from being a founder."