The Gaming Den

If you don't taper it off, you're basically just asking for all of the withdrawal side effects to hit you all at once. Given that you're already looking at near constant suicidal ideation, doing that might literally kill you.

How does the common cold work?

I mean I know that it's caused by a virus, so once you have it you always have it. But I assumed that it lies dormant in your system until you become symptomatic again.

But then people are always talking about a "cold going around", which implies that people are catching colds from others. So even though they may have had many colds in their life, they don't have another one until someone sneezes near them again?

Hiram McDaniels wrote:How does the common cold work?

I mean I know that it's caused by a virus, so once you have it you always have it. But I assumed that it lies dormant in your system until you become symptomatic again.

This is not the case (as far as we know). Many viruses work this way, but not all. In particular, the common cold is an RNA virus but not a retrovirus, so it only exists as RNA (never as DNA); viruses like varicella (chicken pox, DNA), cytelomegavirus (also DNA) and HIV (a retrovirus, RNA but integrates as DNA to go latent) do work as you describe - once you catch them, they're never entirely eliminated.

Viromics is a new field, but it appears that only 15% of the time are you carrying asymptomatic rhinoviruses (the causative agent of the common cold):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3678363/
But, once eliminated, the rhinovirus should be completely gone.

The common understanding is that the rhinovirus is asymptomatic much of the time, but still contagious, and mostly spreads in that way; as often as not, you'll catch it from someone who is asymptomatic (but even then, they should only be contagious for a week or so). The common cold proliferates better at lower temperatures, so the infection will temporarily make it's way farther up your nose during cold weather, thus colds are more symptomatic during the winter (probably also more contagious), for example. But they aren't *latent* during the summer, as far as we know.

A lot of viruses have a lot of variants in how their outside packaging looks on a molecular level. This in turn makes your acquired immunity to one variant limitedly or completely ineffective against another. So when there's a cold or flu or norovirus or whatever going around, it's probably a variant with a different rotein coat from the one going around last year or the year before. And that's one of the primary reasons you get sick every winter with the same stupid illnesses.

-Username17

Okay. That clears it up. Thanks.

Grek wrote:If you don't taper it off, you're basically just asking for all of the withdrawal side effects to hit you all at once. Given that you're already looking at near constant suicidal ideation, doing that might literally kill you.

Suidical ideation alone isn't my biggest concern; I've been living with that since I was 7-9 years old. The concern I really had was the medication had changed these ideations from randomly passing thoughts into constantly developing thoughts forming concrete plans on how to go about suicide in manners that it would be obvious that was my goal, and not some mistake I made that killed me. I ended up with two almost guaranteed methods, at least two iffy methods; and kept binning other ideas as impractical, or that they would make my suicide look like something else.

The thing is; I'm not getting these more detailed suicidal ideations as a withdrawl symptom. They're the side effect that I'm noticing is lessening in intensity, now that it's been ~7 days since I've interrupted the medication.
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FrankTrollman wrote:A lot of viruses have a lot of variants in how their outside packaging looks on a molecular level. This in turn makes your acquired immunity to one variant limitedly or completely ineffective against another. So when there's a cold or flu or norovirus or whatever going around, it's probably a variant with a different rotein coat from the one going around last year or the year before. And that's one of the primary reasons you get sick every winter with the same stupid illnesses.

-Username17

Which is why getting Flu shots are very important to get almost every year. The only exceptions that I could think of would be years when the vaccines made for that year's expected influenza strain aren't the right ones to combat it. The 2016 year flu vaccines in N. America were an example of a case when the predictions for the necessary vaccines weren't that well made, as it gave somewhere in the 50% range of defeating that years flu (i.e. almost as good, as not getting vaccinated at all). In general the flu shot usually has a better rate of defeating the flu than 50/50 odds, but nothing's perfect.

Grek wrote:If you don't taper it off, you're basically just asking for all of the withdrawal side effects to hit you all at once. Given that you're already looking at near constant suicidal ideation, doing that might literally kill you.

Just to clarify, suicidal ideation is the side effect I experience from taking Sertaline/Zoloft. It's not a withdrawl symptom from cessation of medication (in fact ideation dropped off to its pre-medicated levels over the past week that I had ceased taking Setraline). Now that I'm back on the 75mg dosage.... I feel like I'm staring death in the face again, and the medications side effects towards self harm are resulting in self injury ideations like how dismembering myself is a good idea; suicidal ideations will probably develop in the next 6 days of this dosage. Hopefully they might taper off to their pre-medicated severity over the subsequent 14 days.

I have been congested, sneezing, & having itchy/watery eyes for at least the past three weeks now (usually in waves of severity). I never had allergies previously, and haven't been diagnosed. I took two Benadryl tablets about an hour ago, and am not even experiencing a lessening of the symptoms. How likely is it to actually be allergies?

EDIT: Three hours now, and the symptoms remain. I'm just sleepy in addition now.

I'm thinking about teaching English abroad, most likely in China or Japan.

I also suffer from a form of depression and am on antidepressants. I've heard that Asian cultures tend to view mental illness as basically made up.

Can anyone verify what I've heard, and tell me what I might be able to do to not go off my meds that allow me to function at all like a normal person?

Prak wrote:I'm thinking about teaching English abroad, most likely in China or Japan.

I also suffer from a form of depression and am on antidepressants. I've heard that Asian cultures tend to view mental illness as basically made up.

Can anyone verify what I've heard, and tell me what I might be able to do to not go off my meds that allow me to function at all like a normal person?

I'm living in Shanghai right now, was in Beijing before. PM me if you want more info about this.

In China at least, mental illness is definitely kept quiet. You'd have a hard time finding a psychiatrist, and they would probably be expensive to visit. On the other hand, meds are cheaper and many don't need a prescription (ymmv).

Yesterday, I woke up with a severe back pain that doesn't go away. (I hadn't done anything strenuous, I wasn't cold, I went to sleep in the same reasonably comfy bed I've been sleeping in for years.)

The pain seems to be concentrated on the right half of my back around the fifth or sixth rib (it hurts to touch), although I feel echoes of it in my waist under the ribs on both sides. It's painful to breathe and move. The spine itself doesn't hurt, and in fact I can apply any amount of force to it with no increase in discomfort.

I took 10 mg of ketorolac and got well enough to go to work after three hours of shambling around the apartment. At night, I was able to sleep lying on my right side (but not in any other position).

Woke up feeling worse and able to walk no more than 5m at a time, took 50 mg of diclo and had severe stomach ache, but also was able to (1) straighten up enough that I didn't look freaky and (2) take a shower. It helped for about an hour.

What is it? What should I do (aside from going to the doctor)? Any pseudoscientific bullshit / warning signs I should be especially aware of to know if I'm being sent off to die by a free doctor / scammed by a paid one?

Have a look in the mirror for redness, swelling or anything else unusual. Does stretching (particularly bending sideways) hurt at all? Does a warm compress help?

No redness or swelling. Bending to the right (so, compressing the problem area) hurts so much I can't even, bending to the left is painless enough that I can do stretching exercises and try to touch the floor. Forward and backward are moderately unpleasant. I used some pepper cream; it served as a more tolerable distraction but didn't help much.

The free doctor predictably sent me to gtfo and die with a diagnosis of osteochondrosis and a "prescription" for over the counter painkillers without even looking at me. (The statement says I weigh 100 kilos, walk with a stick, and complained about leg pain: "So what? You have your sick leave, dumbfuck. Get out.")

2017/02/16 edit: got better. I credit almond paste and that one song from Stranger Things.

(disclaimer: I am *not* a doctor, nor do I play one on TV)
If compressing the problem area hurts, but you can bend the other way, that kinda sounds like a herniated disc. If a disc has herniated, or otherwise been damaged, I understand that any pressure on it hurts like the ending of worlds. I (again, not a doctor) would recommend immediately speaking with someone specializing in musculoskeletal issues. Friend of mine herniated a disc and was in pain for months because he didn't get it treated quickly. Don't let that happen to you.

My friend with fibro is now experiencing "sudden sharp, burning pain, leading to blood pooling at the surface" (under the skin, I think), with no activity before hand, sitting entirely still. Like a bruise spontaneously manifesting with literally no cause.

Her doctor dismissed it as muscle spasms, but that sounds ridiculous. Is that... Likely?

The answer is probably more information needed but it is possible for blood vessels to burst without trauma. Medications and health conditions can affect the likelihood of this as well.

I see it most often in my work where patients use steroid eye drops which has an increased risk of burst blood vessels on the eye, a subconjunctival hemorrhage. It's harmless but looks scary so patients call about them all the time.

I cannot speak to the muscle spasm hypothesis.

Is muscle mass built up better with high reps low weights or low rep high weight, or both?


I thought it was low reps high weight but been hearing otherwise

As far as i remember, constant low level stress is better for the body to adapt to than semi random high stress.
Over here, when i was looking into going to a gym (been years though <.<) it was low weight high reps all the way with gradually increasing weight every so often untill you arrived at high reps with semi high weight.

Low weights with lots of reps builds lean muscle - it will make you stronger but not bigger.

Heavy weights with few reps increases the size of your muscles.

My understanding is that there is more than one version of the HPV vaccine, protecting against different numbers of HPV strains. I was administered the vaccine back in early 2014 but my practice's record indicates that this was just a "gardasil suspension" without further elaboration. If I pressed them for it I could probably figure out which version they used but I'm curious if the date, my gender (male) or location (united states) would create a preponderance to one type or another?

Somebody I have been seeing has just recently tested positive and also been found to have tumorous cervical cells. This, after having the vaccine herself some number of years ago. Any possibility she could figure out which strain it was that she carries now to compare against my own protection? I'm promiscuous, and without a forthcoming male HPV test available I would like to exercise all due diligence to make sure I'm not spreading any problems.

Tangentially: my physician indicated that she would be statutorily constrained from administering an HPC vaccine past a patient's 26th birthday because it is counter-indicated by the CDC. This doesn't ring true to me. I would understand if she said she would merely refuse to do it, but I asked her to clarify and she did indeed mean to say that she was actively prevented to doing so. It seems to me that the vaccination is an ordinary prescription and that administering it outside of its designated age-range is just a potentially reasonable off-label usage, which is generally an option left available to the nuances of a particular patient's circumstances and their physician's better judgement. What's the deal?

OgreBattle wrote:Is muscle mass built up better with high reps low weights or low rep high weight, or both?


I thought it was low reps high weight but been hearing otherwise

My dad's a personal trainer and a world class athlete and he says neither. Muscle mass depends more on genetics and diet rather than what reps and weight you do. For best results you want to do the one that lets you work out until failure without injury, then make sure you eat some carbs about half an hour before your workout and carbs + protein no more than an hour and a half after your workout, and hope you have good genetics (specifically hormonal issues can cause you to gain less muscle, as well as diabetes as that typically interferes with your muscles uptaking carbs).

Gardasil is a brand name for a specific product. It's fairly simple to look it up. It vaccinates against HPV 6, 11, 16, and 18,

Gardrasil 9 also protects against 31, 33, 45, 52, and 58. But that's specifically called Gardrasil 9, and would be referred to as such.

HPV infection is a big factor in cervical cancer, but it's not the only way to get it - and while subtypes 16 and 18 are typical, there are other high-risk strains for inducing cervical cancer. There are many other subtypes which are not generally carcinogenous but can cause genital warts. Others don't really do anything that we know of. She may have developed cancer independent of HPV and have caught a harmless strain, or with an HPV subtype that she's not been vaccinated against. Your sex partner may have had a vaccine that included just 16 and 18, so testing positive for *some* kind of HPV is plausible if she's been sexually active for a while. She could ask her doctor if her test indicates any consequences for her sex partners if he hasn't told her that already. Does your partner have cancer in the "scheduled for surgery" sense, or did it merely show up in her pap smear and now she needs to get more pap smears later? I'm guessing the latter, but I can't really tell. A pap smear can show abnormal cells and still revert to normal some time later - and unless they remove an actual tumor, I don't think anyone will test which HPV subtype is present in those cancerous cells.

As for your last question, vaccines don't work as intended if you are already infected by the time you get them. If your partner had HPV 16 and 18 when she got the vaccine, it would be ineffective for her. That's also the reason you want to vaccinate people before they start having sex - HPV is everywhere, so virgins are the one population where you can expect not to waste the vaccine. I'd wager that's also why the CDC issued age restrictions on gardasil use. Apparently, nobody believes that an adult past their 26th birthday hasn't had HPV exposure yet. Vaccines are safe, but they can (rarely) have serious side effects, so there's no reason to expose someone who can't benefit. Additionally, the stuff isn't cheap.

To recap what could have happened:
1) Your partner may have cancerous cells unrelated to HPV and HPV unrelated to cancerous cells.
2) Your partner may have cancerous cells due to a subtype she hasn't been vaccinated against.
3) Your partner may have cancerous cells due to a subtype she's had since before the vaccination.


In general, I'm not sure if there's something that you can do besides using condoms and seeing a doctor if you have genital sores or warts. HPV is everywhere, and if you have a lot of sex, you may have been sharing harmless subtypes around for years.

I'm pretty sure I have food poisoning. Does anyone have any advice for not feeling like complete shit, or barring that, a willingness to put me out of my goddamn misery?

Not much to do until your body decides it's done purging everything out of your system in the most painful way possible. Try your best to stay hydrated.