Sedj on Nostr: Watching Ben Wehrman pod with Dr. Morales (thank you both by the way), and the Dr ...

Watching Ben Wehrman pod with Dr. Morales (thank you both by the way), and the Dr just put something together that I hadn't considered before.

I'd heard about statins and dementia, but he mentioned a "transitory" dementia.

Before I sought professional help for some mental health issues I may or may not have been facing, I went through a pretty dark time - this was fall, like October/November a few years ago. I got caught up in thinking that brain chemicals (including those affected by what we ingest) were having so much of an effect on my mind that I was having trouble trusting in my own decisions. This is something of an existential crisis, but really concerning for myself, as I value myself as a problem solver and decision maker. Calling that ability into question really threw me for a loop. I was also questioning whether or not I might be somewhat sociopathic, or at least have some kind of disaffective disorder, as I was experiencing what I believed was a lack of emotion and feeling.

That was one factor in reaching out to a mental health professional to discuss my overall mental health. It was far from the only factor, but it was one place we started digging at. By the time I actually was able to start meeting with the counselor, most of that mental mistrust had cleared, though. I have since changed my perspective a lot on all of this, but even 6 months later, before really starting the process of evaluating my mental health, a lot of that had eased up.

What had changed? I think that was around the time I quit taking my statin medication that I had been on for several years. I'd have to go back and check the dates on this to see if it really lines up as tightly as I am remembering, but I had never put the two occurrences together. I may have inadvertently healed myself! The miracle of the human body and mind, finding the offending toxin (statin) and eliminating it (by engendering a mistrust in any ingested chemicals) without even telling me that's what it did.

I did have a great experience with counseling though; read a lot of books on various psychology subjects, found the importance of self-esteem (I had always assumed I had low self-esteem), and really discovered the importance of tuning into emotion, because of how much influence emotion has in every decision, and action we take, or even any memory we have. Contrary to a lack of emotion, I found I was just suppressing emotion behind a facade of logic and cognition. The emotion was definitely there, and putting it in a leading role in my life has given me incredible levels of peace and contentment.

Did the statin cause my existential crisis, in some kind of dementia fog? Fuck if I know, but I wouldn't be surprised. I wasn't wrong about the brain chemicals, just had to learn the right way to control them - through diet and not poisoning myself.