The Gates (I)

Ok guys, I got some inspiration to write today (even though the nerves still feel quite bad) after less than 3 months which is surprising. I hope I can keep this writing pace from now on :)

The time since the last post has felt like an eternity, so many things have happened. First, the World Cup with Morocco's surprise, the epic Argentina vs France final with Mbappe's hat trick and Dibu's last minute save, and of course the Argentina and Messi World Champions (I need to show this catchy song). Then the whole political upheaval in my country, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, the Bolsonaro fans storming the Congress a-la-american, the new ChatGPT sensation, the incredibly sad Turkey and Syria earthquake, and so many other things. It's as if the world is going a bit crazy lately. Being in Peru, usually we just take the third world backseat, grab popcorn and see the big things happening somewhere else on the TV, but Peru has been chaotic in the last years, and it hits closer to home. 

This aside, I can proceed about the nerves stuff. I decided to make this post much more informative than the last one, since there is a lot from the last 1.5 years that I haven't talked about which needs to be mentioned, and the anecdotes and jokes just get in the way. So I'll make a compromise and make this concise, and then go back to a more normal blogging style next time. 

First I want to describe more completely the issues I had at the beginning, and how it compares to now, giving a quick update at the end. At the beginning (June 2021 and earlier), the most evident joint issues I had were: a right hand middle knuckle that easily subluxes to the side (seen at the photos), a left snapping (loud and sharp) elbow, a right subluxing elbow on the medial side, subluxing left false ribs (the lower ones), a painful left lumbar, and flat feet (if you count flat feet as a "joint problem" that can be fixed). Also knees and a lumbar that easily fatigued on walking or staying in a bent down position for more than a few minutes. 

On the neuropathy, the left arm always felt numb and tingly, although much more if I rested on it. It wasn't always painful, but it was irritable. The left side of the back (at the ribcage and blade) had quite many pinched stabbing nerves, these weren't always painful, but my back would tend to stiffen and fatigue horribly if I kept it straight for too long, such as when I read at the bus. There was radiation from the left neck to the left cheek too. The left lumbar had pinched nerves which sent very painful shocks down my leg. This is by far the main problem in the sense of functionality. Finally, and this is something I didn't notice back then but it's obvious now, my left trunk and core were much more irritable on the left side than the right one, due to a lot of longer, more "spider-web" kind of nerves (like the deep core ones, and I think possibly the vagus) that were trapped there. I didn't notice that kind of background radiation back then because it's just the way I was used to live, it was only later when that side started to feel less numb, and that I realized the background radiation there was a big reason of why I felt so crappy/sick body-wise, that I noticed. Those nerves aren't pinched as "explicitly" as the ones in the neck, say. Still, after a while it became obvious that the left trunk"nervyness" was tied to the left subluxing ribs (since the radiation would shoot up whenever the ribs popped). Finally there is skin issues like numbness and radiation there, and oversensitivity to heat, cold and sunlight (heat and cold hurt easily and I easily burned horribly). I've never been checked for any skin nerve issue (small nerve fiber neuropathy), I don't have that much money, and I just assumed my skin was like that (I only realized it was a problem that could be fixed when I started recovering sensation and other things later on).

The improvement in these are as such. The biggest difference in these are in the neuropathy in the whole left body, being the left neck, arm, blades, back, spine and lumbar to foot. It just feels much less radiating than back then and is kinda liveable in the sense I'm not thinking whether life is worth living every day anymore. This is very, very far from perfect, the radiation still feels terrible, but I can tolerate it, specially if I know it'll be gone one day. It is the difference between something that is so horrible it seems life threatening and you think of death every day, to something that bothers you a lot but meh, it doesn't fundamentally impede daily activities like going out. Skin is also much less numb, things like cold or hot water hurt much less, and it's not as sensitive to sunlight so I can go out without feeling such a burn, that's among the nicest things of all this :) On the joints issues themselves the improvement is more subtle. I know for a fact that the joints are much better supported now, and compared to back then, the fatigue and pain must be like a 100 times less. The tests I had back in the US showed decreased hypermobility over the months, and I guess at some point in 2022 it must have become indistinguishable from normal (I haven't taken a new test since 2021 though, so according to the tests I'm still hypermobile :p). However, other evident hypermobility features beyond joint hyperlaxity, like the right subluxing knuckle and the left subluxing floating ribs, still sublux as always. There hasn't been any improvement in these, no magical moment when they suddenly become fixed and aligned. In this sense, there has been 0 progress and I'm very much hypermobile (and neuropathic), but the nature of this stabilization process is that things get fixed at their own time, so I trust such resolution will come eventually.

The most extreme improvements are in the joints and body fatigue and dyzzyness (POTS). Back to two years ago, they were, along with the left lumbar pinched nerves and the feet bleeding, the main things that impeded basic things like walking, hanging out or even sitting and bending down. It was damn extreme and made my life actual hell for some months, and made me consider getting a wheelchair or something. That problem is pretty much gone. I feel a slight-moderate degree of knees and body fatigue only when say, going upstairs, and I still a slight-moderate kind of brainfog (or feeling my head fucked), but there is no bad dizzyness, and whatever remains feels like nothing compared to how extreme it felt before. My old self would consider the state I am as completely cured already given that I'm decently functional (and would cry some tears of joy), but I still feel quite many issues. Despite my body can handle daily light and moderate activities just fine, it's not yet ideal for more intense activities like sports and concerts (I can do it, just can get extremely tiring, but I guess everyone gets tired in those anyway). Also the radiation is horrible everyday although it's not really painful, just very irritating (the main thing is I don't want to do anything all day and prefer to rest it, and also my focus is not the best) or intense academic focus. So I won't say it is cured yet. 

Now on the findings there have been so far (I guess this is the juiciest part :p). Before this I thought it is better to think what kind of things one should expect if such a thing like the holy grail of PT was ever found. There are things that are straigthforward to expect such that it should fix a subluxing/unstable joint or "simple" back pains without much difficulty, decompress pinched nerves and such. At the other extreme there is crackpot things such as if it could make blind people to see again, make you grow wings and the like (btw, I'm using the John Baez Crackpot Index as the standard to be a good crackpot). So I'll put a ranking of expectations, and how it has turned out to be so far.

• The straighforward (things I've seen discussed on the internet, so more tha )
• Cure back (and other joints) pain. Back pain goes away pretty much completely, and quite immediately which is very fortunate. It was the first thing to note as just one correctly executed session dealt away with it. That is in stark contrast with what I thought initially, that the pain would go away as the joints are stabilized progressively. Intuitively, a crappy hypermobile body with neuropathy should feel more joint pain than a stable, healthy one. However, the pain levels at August 2021 and now are pretty much the same, despite my body back then was extremely more crappy. There's one caveat, though: the decreased/eliminated pain is due to the strengthening effect of the exercise. As such, it only lasts a few days, while the muscle is being created. As far as I've seen, the effect starts to run down in 5 days or so and it starts hurting some again (it's not bad, but I don't want it to worsen, so I'm forced to go back to the gym). In that sense it's not a permanent cure, since you should be able to live pain-free without doing anything like normal people do. However, if you keep going to the gym consistently say every 2 days, before the effect of the last session runs down, you can keep this pain-free state and a normal-ish life indefinitely (keeping the streak is not as hard if your life quality depends on it. Even if you get lazy or get tired of the gym, by the 5th day the pain will remind you your "normality" is just temporary, and lifting heavy, tiring as it is, is 1000x preferable than the pain). I think the pain level should stabilize to nothing eventually, as the body gets more and more stable. But right now it's not nearly good enough and I can't afford stopping, so I can't really confirm.
• Repair single subluxing and unstable joints. This one is partially confirmed only. The clanking and popping at some joints has decreased, but I noticed this only after a year. I know for a fact that a lot of muscle was created on all my joints, but despite this, the snapping or poppy noises, or hyperextension, stayed the same for a year, and to a good degree today. You can guess how frustrating that is lol, so much hard work for almost nothing in this respect. Nothing magical like a fixing of my subluxing knuckle has happened. It seems if it were to happen, a lot of stability has to be attained first. For example, if a body is very atrophied, the main trunk muscles like the spinal ones have to be strengthened first, then only after a while (say a year) they can support the blades gliding, and then only after the blades are strong enough (another year?) only then one could possibly fix a subluxed knuckle. It sounds ridiculous for something as "simple" as a bad knuckle, but it's the way it's turning out to be (although I can't confirm anything, since it hasn't happened yet. I just have a lot of faith in this thing)
• Fix a stiff back. Although the back is definitely much better supported in every sense, it still feels very, very stiff. It's not excruciating, and much better than it used to be, but it's pretty bad still (it's among the main issues I still have, this thing is so stubborn!). So I can only say a partial yes for this one.
• Unpinch nerves like the ulnar or sciatica ones. The answer is yes, it's among the most obvious and quickest effects. The only note is that each nerve gets decompressed at its own time, and it's not fast at all. Also, even just one long nerve branch like say, from the neck to the hand, is decompressed not just at one joint (like the elbow) but at all the joints at different times. Which means that the nerve was trapped at multiple points (at the neck vertebrae, then at shoulder, elbow, wrist), not just one. The effects of decompression usually come as muscles spasming (with increased electric supply) and increased sensitivity at the extremities. For other nerves like the left lumbar and ribcage nerves, these took a while longer to feel, almost a year apart. Further notes. Although the EMG I have for the arm nerve is almost normal now, I still feel radiation, decompression and a bit of numbness months after that test, and it sucks. On the lumbar, previous EMG tests showed they were normal, even thought back then they misshot and hurt a lot, and now I'm feeling the unpinching for months too (it's obvious they were pinched). Apparently there's something that the EMG tests don't capture, they tell you they're normal even though they're clearly misshooting and pinched.  
• Cure headaches and migraines. I can't say anything because I've never had migraines. I can confirm that stabilizing the neck/head has in the long term a dramatic effect in making one more sharp and less brainfogged, but it's a different thing.
• The more ambitious (things bordering on the controversial, but still discussed on the internet)
• Reverse myopia (at least to a degree, maybe completely). I gotta make an update here. Last time I mentioned that I took an eye vision test which gave the same numbers that I had 2 years ago, at my lowest health. So one year of exercise didn't have any effect on the myopia, dissapointingly. Well, some news: I gave up and decided to have some new glasses. Surprisingly, the numbers did change a bit in the new vision test (it's in the Drive so you can compare), but it's not all for the better, and I'm skeptical still. So, on the myopia, my left eye improved a bit but the right one worsened a bit, oddly. Now, given the left sees worse than the right one, this means they converged a bit, although the overall mean is the same. The change is not huge, and I don't notice a difference in everyday life. If the next test (in a few months) shows another improvement (or convergence between left and right), even if a bit, it'd show a consistent trend, and I could be more confident, but for now I'm still skeptical. Commenting on other results of the test, the cylindrical power actually got a bit worse in both eyes (just what I needed, this is so frustrating lol). However, the axis values changed significantly, getting closer to the horizontal (0 or 180). I guess it's interesting, but this doesn't have any effect on vision power, which is what I am looking for. Final response: no effect on myopia or astigmatism as of now. However I'm still hopeful it could be reversed. My vision issues are nothing severe like say blindness, it's just the most "basic" myopia and astigmatism type. It's mild enough it could be explained away by weak eye muscles, and if it's muscles, the holy grail should deal with it (if the myopia doesn't get fixed, it means the holy grail doesn't work (doubtful at this point), or that it's not, after all, a muscular thing, so then no exercise has impact over it). Asking for a moderate myopia correction should not be much to ask for the holy grail :)).
• Cure flat feet. My arches got strengthened and I got an arch but only when the feet are lifted. It collapses to great degree when I step. However, my feet now leave footprints that have a curve and don't look like pancakes anymore, so I'll go with a partial yes.
• Repair many joints and tissues simultaneously. Indeed, in fact there's no other way to fix joints but to fix all of them simultaneously, since all the muscular system is connected. This includes all the tissues and muscles in the trunk, not just the elbows and such. This the most immediate observation, the simultaneous reparation effect in all the joints is too obvious.
• Fix joint hypermobility. Well supported by my joints tests which shows decreased hypermobility at the knees, hip, shoulders and elbows, some ranges of movement going from hypermobile to normal over months. Last time I still had some hypermobility, but I haven't taken any test in over a year. Maybe a new tests shows no hypermobility at all, who knows? However, there's still many subluxing joints, and that also counts, so this is far from complete yet.
• Unpinch more intricately trapped nerves (like at occipitals, eyes, pelvis, etc.). These nerves indeed decompress just the same as any other nerve. It can be at any bone or joints whatesover. Incredibly, even "weird" nerves like the parasympathetic vagus nerve, are in the end wire-like structures too, and they can be trapped by muscles at bones like the clavicle, and decompress in just the same way. The difference is that unlike other more "purely motor" nerves like the ulnar, nerves like the vagus have more bizarre effects, since they control actual bodily functions. These effects are not there always, they are rare, but when they have happened, they had a big effect in improving the sense of body wellbeing (or getting rid of that unbearable "diseased feeling" that was so permeating long ago). The effect of untrapping nerves is as such absolutely enormous, because of so many things nerves regulate (it's not just motor!), and given they tend to decompress simultaneously, hard to quantify or pinpoint which effect belongs to which nerve. It's just amazing and unfortunate that despite being so many compromised nerves, so little can be captured in the doctor's tests. It seems muscular pressure is not that sharp to damage a nerve in a more piercing, localized, detectable way (like say an accident). 
• Improve fatigue (physical and mental). Another very confirmed thing, the physical fatigue comes from the generalized muscular strain and crappy burning joints, and decreases over time. This is great because the fatigue is one of the most monstruous aspects of this diabolic syndrome. The mental fatigue seems more nerve radiation-related, and it took a lot longer to see a significant effect on this. The lumbar and trunk nerves only started decompressing after a year of therapy, and it only got good enough to study intensely a few months ago (and even then I'm still crappy and it takes active effort to overcome it. But at least it's doable, before it was impossible), while the physical fatigue decreased enormously just in 2021. 
• Improve the body "genetics" (term as used in bodybuilding to vaguely describe the quality of one's muscular structure, propension to more easily or harder get muscle or strength, or get injured). Well, you can't change bone length and such, obviously. And you won't ever be Arnold (unless you are Arnold). But improving the "genetics" as in muscular structure is pretty trivial with this. In fact one can not only improve the "genetics" a bit but do it a lot of times consistently, in theory until all assymetric strains are eliminated, at which point the structure should be perfectly balanced (as much as physics allows). I don't see why not, since this doesn't ever fail, but I haven't tested it personally (I'm so far off!).
• Improve cognition and behavior. This may sound wacky, but I've seen it discussed in the internet indirectly. Some people complain about neck or nerve pain disrupting their thoughts, making it hard to focus, or making one clumsy and distracted . That in itself is an effect of the nerves, muscular pressure or pain on cognition, even if of a basic type ("nerve pain makes me always distracted or clumsy"). There's again some news in this respect. In the last months, overall, the nerves have kept radiating as usual, but it started to feel good enough to study, and I could finally, after a long time, study intensely and with decent consistency (I still avoid sitting, so I study languages on my bed. No physics yet). I had a good studying strike (struggling to upkeep but still) for 2 months. However, 2 weeks ago I experimented with new exercises and increased the weight, which had an averse effect on my body, and made me feel horrible radiation (like it felt before the last 2 months. It's nothing new, it's just that I had gotten used to being able to study and do things again, and I had to go back to rotting on my bed unable to do anything productive). The thing is, it's hard to "hit it right" in the gym in the heavier weight. I do it correctly, it feels nice to study, but if I screw up, I feel sick for the next 2 days (mainly because the left core nerves radiate/burn so bad), and my study suffers. It's just too obvious now. So the effect of the radiation is quite dramatic, it really doesn't let you do focus on anything. After this event it's harder to call me lazy :D, seems it's really the stupid nerves. (I'll talk more about this in the update later, this is just a summary).
• Crackpot findings (that I haven't seen anywhere and I couldn't have possibly imagined)
• Small fiber neuropathy (aka pinched skin nerves). This is the most crackpot shit none could've imagined, but by a miracle, the skin neuropathy is also caused by the stupid tight muscles, which also pull on the fascia and skin. It's a more abstract, difficult to see strain (harder to visualize than a "simple" nerve trapped by a mucle at the elbow, say), since the skin nerves are trapped by the skin tension in a mindbloggingly complex way. It's a miracle that this can deal with it, the holy grail has indeed, a god-like kind of precission in decompressing structures. This means both large and small nerve neuropathies can be cured in one swipe, instead of waiting for advances in both. The effects of curing the SFN are mainly skin sensitivity changes to temperature (abrupt touch of cold or heat hurt less, feels more moderate) and to touch (de-numbing of specific zones, which become more sensitive to things like drops of water/sweat running down the skin). The sun radiation on the skin also feels nicer, "smoother" and warmer, instead of that ugly sensation as if being radiated by something radioactive. Also changes in skin sweating.
• Muscular structure. The fact that there is a muscle firing sequence of such extreme specificity (Iliocostalis lumborum, Longissimus thoracis-etc.) is entirely unexpected. A priori you could expect the firing to be more disordered, like how it happens in a normal gym session, and not in this quirurgically-targeted way. One can wonder if this structure is found in the exact same way in other bodies, or if it's different for everyone. This order is unfathomable in a system that is not "fundamental" like the human body. In essence, the human body is not qualitatively different from a bunch of dirt or coal, so why should it exhibit such fine tuned order? Physicists are used to see miraculous ordered structures to appear in fundamental physics (things like the Schrödinger or Einstein equations), but biology is usually a chaotic mess where you wouldn't expect something like this to show up.
• Blood pooling. The main effect so far is that my hands now never turn very purple like before, and they never hurt as before. However, the hands and arms still look quite red often, and I'm not sure if this kind of pooling does away. I heavily suspect it should because normal people don't have it, so if it's muscular (related by blood vessels compression or whatever), I assume it should go away, but I haven't seen such thing. So I only give a partial yes.
• As an appendix, there is a whole lot of circulatory things tied to the muscular imbalances, not just the red hands. I also have very red cheeks, and I think it'd make sense if it was the same issue of blood being pooled at the peripheries (hands, feet and head). In 2021 when these issues improved, the cheek redness decreased to a degree, but it's not gone, so I can't know if the whole thing is muscular, but I suspect it is. The pale and translucent skin seems to be (but not certain yet) related, as it had a slight tone change when the rosacea and hands/feet pooling improved (could it be like blood circulation being rebalanced, and being "better contained" at the trunk instead of pooling at the extremities, changing the pale skin at the trunk?).
• Freezing of extremities. This seems to be tied to the blood pooling. The painful freezing went away along with the purple hands. So I can give a confident yes.
• POTS. Indeed the POTS improves with increased stability. It was quite a dramatic improvement at the beginning, but now there is a remaining portion that takes long to go away. So a partial yes to this one, I can't completely confirm if and until I feel it gone for good. It seems to be a full body circulatory thing, but it seems to be very related to neck and head instability too.
• Brainfog. Yes, quite similar to POTS (are they part of the same thing?)
• Other cognitive and behavioral stuff. 
• The pressure has an effect on something inside the head that seemingly affects dreams and sleep. It only happened for a few periods (4 or 5 times, around 1 week each time), but it was very stark when it happened. I start to get very sleepy in the day and drop asleep for hours. The dreams have always been "hyperrealistic", dreams that simulate being like the real world. I don't think it's a coincidence since I rarely have such dreams, but whenever I get those weeks, all the dreams are of the hyperreal type. 
• Cravings of sugar, salts, sweets, gatorade, etc. These are surprisingly affected by the syndrome too. It started to go away early in 2021, and somewhere in 2022 it must have gone away completely (or almost?). The process was quite odd. When it started to go away, I'd have moments where I craved a sweet as usual, gone to the kitchen to get something, lifted my hand to get it, and then thought "wait, I don't want it anymore" and went back. And then I'd get the crave again, and it was all intermitent, until it faded away after many months. Honestly, this made me feel terrified of how much my desires are affected by the damn electrical impulses. There are many things that could cause this, but it seems the background nerve radiation is a main factor. The constant irritability put me in a constant anxious or "hurried" state that made me to crave things so as to distract myself from it (but why salts and sugars in particular?). When the radiation goes away there's less impulse/anxiety to do this.
• Trichotillomania and other tics. I put this just in case. I've always had tics and I developed started to pull my hairs in the last years. Now, that habit got very decreased by 2022, from filling my table and floor with hairs to having it to a moderate-light degree. The decrease was very natural, just like for the cravings, it seems it is the anxiety or radiation produced by nerves (in my case on the left body) that trigger this distracting habit. However I still have it, and one could still atribute this to chance, so I'm not 100% confident, but I do suspect heavily all these tics and behavioral things are associated to the nerves, the anxiety and "hurried" feeling it produces. I could be more confident if this tic goes away completely without me doing any particular effort to fix it.
• Body hair. Ok, I honestly didn't think there's be any effect, but I took photos of everything on myself at the beginning just in case, because one can never predict what sort of things nerves are associated with. My only crackpot suspicions were that hair growth could be supressed by lack of electric supply, and maybe they could grow at my head entrances and beard. I didn't think of other parts like the armpits or chest or whatever. So far there's nothing at the entrances or the beard (rip). However, hairs did significantly grow at many spots of the back and a few at shoulders. So, this is a confirmation of my initial suspicion, it just didn't happen at the beard, but at the back, and it look horrendous, yuck. 
• Relation with the endocryne system. Also a super wacky finding. There were a few very rare but significant events in which it feels like "emotions emanating" from spots that perfectly coincide with where the body glands are located (throat, sternum and testicles mainly), most often either adrenaline, happiness or a funny sensation. This is not 100% certain but I don't know what else are in those locations that could create the same sensations. Not only that, the activations were always simultaneous in different locations (say at the throat and at the pelvis, or at the sternum and pelvis, at the same time), never individually. Now, if it is something endocrine-related, it'd seem as if the muscular strain over the glands could cause such inhibition, and on increased stability, those emissions start happening, also alliviating the sickness feel. In that case, it'd be strange because my hormone levels were normal according to a blood test I had before (I had it when I suspected my sickness feeling was due to a thyroid problem), so the tests wouldn't be sensitive to this issue, or maybe there's no problem with the thyroid and other glands and it's something else?. (Before anyone says "feeling emotions" at spots is total nonsense, it's just the same as when people feel "butterflies in the stomach" or you get a heavy chest when you fear something. So everyone should be familiar with it :) ) (On another note, it's yet another thing which is extremely obvious as it is felt, but the tests show nothing. Just like the nerves can burn even if the EMG is normal, or overall, syndrome peeps can feel like complete trash despite normal tests everywhere).
• Tinnitus. Definitely related to the muscular issue. However, it's not clear why it's caused. It doesn't seem like something that can be explained directly by a simple muscular pressure over the inner ear, that when lifted, goes away. It feels like there's a component of the tinnitus that almost feels like an "imagined sound" in a way, like the sound may not be entirely physical. I wonder if pressure over something in some sensory processing organ causes this, or if it is indeed just simple ear pressure creating those sounds. 
• Sinus (and flu-like feeling). The increased stability makes the sinus to be drained out of the nose and face in some periods. Over time it decreases inner head pressure, alliviating inflamation that contributes to a flu-like sickness feeling aswell. (Btw, of note, it is this flu-like aspect that makes it seem as if this whole fatigue syndrome is caused by a virus, but it's not, it's all tight muscles :p).
• Flares. They went away in August 2021 after the first round of head stability. It seems to be related to an instability of the head, more specifically the Atlas joint. I don't know what is there, but some kind of organ regulating who-knows-what at the inner head must be related to this. The thing is, there are so many delicate things in that region, controlling equilibrium, cognition, sensation and so on, that it's hard to tell what it's related to (and I'm not a doctor so even worse). I never mentioned how it was in that week when the flares got corrected. The Atlas joint stabilization was very surreal and scary, since that joint feels so extremely delicate. There was one specific night where the adjustment made worry I could die, although rationally I knew nothing wrong was gonna happen. The next morning I woke up with the stabilization finished, and the difference in flares and wellbeing was brutal. They went away more or less around that day, but the week prior was quite rough.

• Crackpot things that haven't happened
• Cheek rosacea (and extremities red rash). I suspect it's a fully muscular thing (pressure on blood vessels) since there has already been a partial decrease, but it's still very much red. If it dissapeared, it'd be the most visible evidence that indeed it is the case, but that hasn't happened (again, so frustrating!).
• Lack of hair at beard or bald spots. Again nothing here, or at least nothing sharply visible. However it's within the realm of the possible now because there has been increased hair density in other spots at the back.
• Neuropathy and fatigue cures. Although the nerves have unpinched a lot, I still have the stupid pinched nerves frying my life. This one is the most certain that will get cured eventually given the consistent trend, but since it's not complete, this should be in the list of things that haven't happened.
• Flat feet, myopia-astigmatism, fatigue, etc. cures. None of them are remotely cured after all this time, so a no, so far. Actually, it's funny that things that are much less obvious like the relation with SFN have been proved already (and at this point are a very obvious everyday feature), but the "easier" mechanical things like the flat feet haven't happened. And at this pace it may be long before I can confirm anything. And it's still possible that these may not be corrected, although I feel they should (only time will tell).
• Subluxing joints/hypermobility cure. All the joints that were subluxing 2 years ago (mainly a right knuckle, shoulders and elbows, and floating ribs), still sublux now. There's been improvement in the joints' hyperextension as per my previous tests, but the subluxations are still pretty bad (by bad I'm comparing with normal people. This is overwhelmingly better than my starting point, there's no comparison at all, but it's still much below normality. Normal people would still consider this as very crappy joints. So I'm well into the hypermobility spectrum (why is this thing so long??).
• Unexpected difficulties or bad findings
• Extreme lack of muscular structure/support. For years it was obvious I had a problem, but it didn't seem much more than pinched nerves and tight muscles, not much different from others'. It became obvious there was something really, really wrong when I had my first crashes, weird palpitations and other horrible things in December 2020. Things that you don't want to live even a second with. So to go from "just a tight back and a pinched nerve" to realizing it's a disease that takes 2 or 3 years to recover from... it means this thing is absolutely brutal. So this was a rough thing to discover and accept, that I was not normal, but had a syndrome that is quite severe and doesn't have an easy patch to fix. (Note, isn't it amazing that so many doctors think this is a nothing-thing and that we make all this up? I've lost like 3 years of my life and possibly my career to this crap, and this is still nothing, others have lost decades, because we like to be hypochondriacs, nice!)