Coffee Break: Santa Croce Tote

51 Comments

1. BYE PAM!!!!! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! (And take your ridiculous burn book with you).

   1. apparently he wanted someone to be even more obstinate and difficult about the epstein files than she was.

   2. I don’t understand this comment/reference?

      1. Trump has fired Pam Bondi as Attorney General. A commentator is expressing her glee at this event.

         1. Amazing!! Sorry, my mind went to the office ha!

   3. Curious he’s only going after the women. Don’t get me wrong she was awful but it’s not that much of a win.

      1. Maybe, but they were in major positions. So it’s not like his decision making has been overtly gendered.

         1. one word: Hegseth.

      2. I’m also annoyed that only women are facing consequences, even though I have no love lost for Noem and Bondi.

         1. Same.

      3. You have to consider that Trump doesn’t much care if you don’t like what he does; however, he cares when his base is upset. The Epstein files and the ICE raids were enough to upset even his base.

         The base absolutely loves every last second of what Sean Duffy and Lee Zeldin are doing. The base thinks the world of Harmeet Dhillon. Marco Rubio? Looking to be a contender.

         The base is PISSED about the Epstein files and ICE.

         1. They are not pissed. They don’t care.

2. I’m new in a faltering book club, and they’ve asked me to lead this month’s discussion to “bring new energy and a fresh perspective.” I’ve only been to two book club meetings in my life – what are best practices for discussion as you see them? Anything I should do, not do? The book is historical fiction based on real people, fwiw.

   1. Sounds like they want you to provide some shrooms.

   2. Not helpful, but this situation intrigues me. Sounds like quite a lot to put on you! I’d love to hear how your next meeting goes.
      Can we all guess what book this is? The Women of Arlington Hall?

      1. It’s America’s First Daughter. I’m only 100 pages in out of 600, and my primary feedback so far is that our group should choose shorter books 😅

         1. 600 pages is a lot for a book club book! I read a lot, but not many books I read are that long, and even fewer of them justify the page count.

   3. Make sure that all people get a chance to give some input even if you have to call on them. Sounds like a couple of people are dominating the conversation and that gets boring fast.

      1. We actually have printed out questions and pass them out for the book discussion part. It helps keep the discussion focused and moving along.

         1. I have done this although I haven’t passed them out — just put them out to the group orally while leading the discussion. Also if you go around the room and give everybody a chance to talk, it keeps the big talkers from dominating and the rest of the group really appreciates it.

3. Does anyone have any experience with POTS? My teen’s BFF may be getting diagnosed with it as I type. Teen is so worried, but also reading a lot of woo on the internet. My sense is that it’s a real condition, but one that people can manage and improve from baseline functioning with some science behind it. I hope they are talking to good doctors vs someone just pushing supplements and crystals.

   1. So POTS is a syndrome, i.e. a set of symptoms. The tendency on the internet is to elevate it to the status of an incurable chronic condition. Good doctors do a thorough work up for the types of underlying conditions that can cause it. A lot of otherwise good doctors don’t really have any background in working it up or treating it, and the waitlists for specialists are long. Specialist care is also often divided between autonomic subspecialists in cardiology, neurology, and gastroenterology, all of whom may offer different treatment options and testing, so it’s a huge hassle to get care.

      Also, please don’t be so quick to scoff at supplements; autonomic disorders can cause electrolyte wasting and blood sugar abnormalities and can be exacerbated by B vitamin deficiencies. It’s pretty common to need to take some things like magnesium or B1 and this isn’t a red flag. It’s actually encouraged to try supplements vs. needing IV electrolytes to not pass out.

      1. Sorry — I was thinking of the wellness influencers who push supplements or peptides and whatnot vs compounds that any particular body may need or need more of (e.g., if your potassium is too low, that is bad; if sodium is too high or too low, things are bad). Wellness influencers: bad. Science: good.

   2. Many people, including my SIL, seem to have developed POTS after getting COVID.

      My SIL has had a really hard time finding the best way to manage symptoms. She has several specialists, and it seems as if as soon as they’re able to help treat symptom X it makes symptom Y worse. As stated above, she works with neuro, GI, and cardiology – POTS specialists arw rare and so her care is divided up. She has some days where she’s totally her old self and other days where she can’t get out of bed.

      SIL is early 30s, was totally healthy pre-onset, and has a M.S. in bio/is well versed in science and has still really struggled. Managing appointments, medications, and dealing with health insurance is pretty much a full time job for her.

   3. Yes, it’s a real with a range of how severe it can be. It’s commonly comorbid with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Many doctors aren’t very knowledgeable about it and it may not necessarily be easily treatable. If you’re curious to learn more about it, this is one of the top doctors in the world for POTS: https://health.utoledo.edu/podcast/dr-blair-grubb-postural-orthostatic-tachycardia-syndrome-pots/index.html

      1. There are also debates about whether Ehlers-Danlos is real …

         OP, I think it’s more accurate to say there is no scientific consensus on the subject. Charitably, it’s too soon to say and in a couple of decades we may have some real answers. Your teen’s friend will be able to find support for any belief/position on the subject online, with much of that support contradicting the positions of well-credentialed, well-meaning doctors on the other side whichever side that may be.

         1. There are absolutely no debates on whether Ehlers-Danlos is real. Are you thinking of the debated diagnostic criteria for hEDS? There’s genetic testing for all the other forms of EDS.

            There’s no scientific debate over the existence of a postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome that can be found on testing. There is a lot of confusion when people are poorly educated about what it means and what can cause and treat it. Other kinds of dysautonomia are frequently misdiagnosed as POTS so people may think they have POTS when they really don’t (they may have something just as bad though). Some of the most prominent advocacy groups are not great either.

         2. I need to say it more clearly: there’s scientific research on autonomic disorders going back generations, and the fact that it’s not a big part of the medical school curriculum doesn’t mean that there’s no scientific consensus. It means that a lot of doctors are ignorant of the science we have. More research is always great, especially if COVID is causing new issues, but run, run, run from doctors who don’t work up and treat dysautonomia based on existing science. There are people who have struggled for years because they were passing out too often to take public transit, let alone drive, who ended up having treatable conditions that have been recognized as causes of dysautonomia since the 1930s.

            Maybe we’ll have more answers in a few decades, but in the meantime, please see a doctor who knows how to pick up a book, not just one who is well meaning and has a degree.

         3. There is zero debate about whether or not EDS is real. But this type of dismissive attitude is exactly why people seek out health information online.

      2. It’s honestly a crap shoot with doctors. From my own googling I figured I probably had EDS but I didn’t dare bring it up to my MD given the reputation of the condition. I went in for an appointment on a few sore joints and my eagle eyed saint of an MD decided we needed to detour and do the beigton test, and he sent a bunch of referrals to some secret clinics which was magic (they are at my local research university but have precisely zero online presence, by design).

         1. Can you pass on the names of the clinics? We have some academic medical centers here.

            1. No sorry. You can’t get in unless your MD knows the head geneticist. They really don’t want random unsolicited contact which is why they are secret.

            2. What? Seeing a geneticist well versed in this does not require a secret club membership. What the heck?

            3. Literally does require a secret club membership. If you seek them out, they’ll think you came from TikTok and are a hypochrondriac.

            4. Yeah, the geneticist are going undercover for this because the TikTok people are making it so people with actual genetic EDS – which can be fatal because of its vascular symptoms – can’t get to see them.

            5. *Hypochondriac. God forbid you also have mast cell activation; they will blame that on hysteria too. A lot of it is medical misogyny, but some of it is because people with personality disorders latch onto trendy diagnoses and feign symptoms.

   4. It is one of a cluster of syndromes that can be very real (and very treatable) for some patients, and also is an internet trend right now. Think of it as similar to tics a few years ago. Tourette’s is real and responsive to treatment…but also there was a wave of people claiming Tourette’s online that was not in line with historical population rates.

      All this just to say… keep an open mind all the way along. It is important you support your teen’s friend, and it’s also important you don’t make this too big of a deal in case she later drifts away from the diagnosis. Believe, validate, support, but be hesitant to reinforce, center this as her identity, etc.

      I was part of the anorexia wave in the early 2000s, and it feels like a similar thing to me. A situation where the center of the diagnosis is people with a real and serious condition, and then there is a spectrum out to people who are unknowingly or knowingly trying to mold their experiences to fit the en vogue diagnosis to explain a different set of symptoms.

      1. I wondered if I had an eating disorder back in the 90s. I had some entirely different real and serious conditions; once those were diagnosed and treated, my eating patterns normalized overnight. But I’d never heard of my conditions before, so I was just relating to people who experienced superficially similar symptoms. Also, since the idea that eating disorders were psychosomatic and could be caused by adverse circumstances was also common, as a teen it was probably somewhat satisfying to imagine that whatever was wrong with me was in some way the fault of adults in my life! But it was much better to just get real answers and feel fine agian.

         1. I feel like young women do a bunch of self-destructive things as an outlet for very real emotional stress. Disordered eating. Purging. Cutting. Drinking. Getting the wrong attention from the wrong men.

            1. For sure. Also a lot of the stress really can be blamed on adults! There’s no excuse for what a lot of young women go through in school, first jobs, etc. even if home life is okay.

               I do think that some of the neglected health issues young women face are terrible for mental health (PMDD, deficiencies like iron deficiency that factor into insomnia, endocrine conditions that destabilize blood sugar). Life can get so much better with less sexist healthcare.

   5. I definitely “believe” that it’s a thing but I would put it with a lot of autoimmune/ chronic pain in that doctors and scientists aren’t sure what causes it, how to prove if you have it, or what will help those suffering from it.

      1. In other words, conditions that disproportionately affect women and have therefore been deprioritized for research funding, medical education, and reimbursement. With a hefty dose of insurance company propaganda designed to bolster the logic of denials, of course! Autoimmune disease is really not that much more mysterious than other chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease. It’s very common in medicine not to know for sure what causes a disease, how to prove that you have it, or how to treat it adequately, but the standard is raised or lowered based on prejudice and stigma.

         And while they can’t always pin down the cause, sometimes they really can.

   6. I have not read the other responses and realize it’s probably too late for the OP to see this, but my son was diagnosed with POTS and was referred to a neuro chiropractor. The neuro chiropractor saw him a bunch of times over a couple of weeks, and it helped a lot. I am right there with you about chiropractors in general, but this one’s particular woo helped. He has almost no symptoms any more. The chiro saw him before he could even come close to getting into see a specialist, so we figured we had nothing to lose by letting him try it while he waited on openings. He never saw the medical specialist, including the cardiologist. It was a thousand-or-so dollars well spent.

      1. This makes me wonder if it was a structural issue physically impacting the vagal nerve. It’s known this can happen, and that manual therapies can sometimes help (so that part is not woo). But the risk factors for this kind of issue are also risk factors for chiropractic complications, so chiropractors still scare me personally, but I’m glad your son is doing better!

4. Went out for a big lunch and now I’m so sleepy!! Finally nice weather, for at least today.

5. I recently quit Orange Theory because I felt like it was adding too much stress on my body for the results I was getting. In my current stage of life, anything too intense like HIIT or bootcamp seem to be a solid no. (I can do the workout, no problem, but pay for it with low energy and sore muscles for days.) I still want to be active and moving daily. I have access to a treadmill and a bike — any apps or other resources you’d recommend for guided workouts? I will also need to add strength training.

   1. I do Ladder, lots of choice within the app for different types of workout

   2. Everyone I know who’s tried Burn Bootcamp has quit for the same reason. They push you to lift heavier weights than you can lift with good form, and it’s not really HIIT because there are no rest breaks. It’s not a sustainable workout model.

      I do kettlebells every other day for strength, plus on-line pilates videos.

   3. Don’t know if my comment before got eaten, but I do Ladder and would recommend

   4. I just saw an interesting social media post about how women should be stomping up the stairs and generally jumping even in old age to try to keep your joints and the muscles around them strong. I’ve been thinking about it whenever I walk up stairs…

   5. Agree with you about OT, it was too much for me. I don’t know what kind of bike you mean, but I have a smart trainer and enjoy Zwift for indoor virtual workouts, and I never thought I’d like indoor bike workouts especially one with a social aspect. You can follow one of their plans or just ride around and get Ride On! Bombs from other riders. If you mean outside, there are plenty of training plans but I use four metrics: time, distance, heart rate and enjoyment. With a heart rate monitor you can set your desired heart rate and see if you can go longer, or harder, or cover more ground – or you can just ride. I also like Fitness Blender for strength workouts with a little cardio and I always just used the freely available videos. And normally I work with a personal trainer, so my standards are high.

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