Posts by Joseph Thomas63

Sarah Murphy8:
"Ashley Flores, wait, where are you getting sunburns in February? "

I mean, even in February, the sun can still absolutely wreck you, right?😉

When you're on Accutane, your skin gets super sensitive to UV rays. At least for me, it was brutal—even my hands ended up completely fried.
p.s. There was actually a whole thread about Accutane back around February or March last year, so you should probably go dig that up and read it.

wanderinggull6:
"I know this is totally off topic, but I'm hoping Ashley and Linda Peterson can help me out. You guys were taking Yasmin, and I'm really confused: when do you start the new pack? Is it after a 6-day break or a 7-day break? (I finished my last pack on Thursday—so do I start the next one on Thursday or Friday?) I'm taking them because of PCOS, but I've noticed there are two different sets of instructions out there."

To be honest with you, I don't even remember how I used to take Yasmin anymore—like, I can't recall which days I took them or how long my breaks were.

When my doctor was getting my Accutane prescription ready, she made me go through all this hoops first—I had to photocopy my entire medical history from my dermatologist, and then she had to log his name into her system too. Then, she sent me off for blood work, and she wouldn't even touch that prescription until she saw my liver enzymes were totally fine.
She actually told me straight up that out of everyone she’s treated in her career, I’m only the second patient she’s ever prescribed this stuff to, and she’s been practicing for like 10 or 15 years.

$60 You're telling me people actually keep the boxes?! Man, I tossed two whole boxes in the trash!! Seriously, what a waste... I could've probably sold them and made some extra cash if I hadn't been so careless.
😉
On the Accutane packaging, there's this big red warning symbol—kind of looks like an exclamation point—to make it super clear that you can't get it without a prescription.

So, I was on Accutane for a month, and honestly, it was hands down the worst month of my entire life. My eyes were bone dry, my nose, my lips—everything was parched. I was constantly getting these little nosebleeds, too. And once my vision started getting all blurry after that first month, I just grabbed those pills and took them straight to the pharmacy to dispose of them as medical waste.
And yeah, sure, my complexion improved, but only like a tiny bit, maybe two or three notches, after I stopped taking it. While I was actually on it for that month, my skin looked three times worse than before; it only started settling down much later on.
And what’s my skin like today? It sucks. It's exactly the same as it was before the Accutane. And don't even start with me about how it's bad because I didn't finish the full four-month course. I bet my acne would've come roaring back regardless.

When I went to the pharmacy for the first time to pick up my Accutane, the woman behind the counter looked at me and said, "That stuff is pure poison, be careful what you're doing."
The way Accutane works is that it basically drains your sebaceous glands dry. So, naturally, the oil stops producing, and the acne, the greasy skin, and the oily hair all vanish.
But for how long?
My skin looked gorgeous for maybe five or six months, and then everything slowly started going downhill again.

Sarah Murphy8, quick question: what’s actually causing your breakouts? Is it ovarian issues, like PCOS, or something else?
When women deal with adult acne, it's pretty often tied to the ovaries or some kind of hormonal imbalance.
That’s definitely my situation.

Oh, and I used to take Yasmin, too. Back then, my skin was amazing. Only problem was my blood work went totally sideways—my platelet count was through the roof, I put on weight, and I was just constantly irritable.

Right now, I'm not taking anything. My health is great, but the acne is still hanging around. It's nothing extreme, just small bumps—people tell me they can't even see them (ugh, please, just stop trying to comfort me 😁).
My mom had the same issues, and she cleared right up after she had her baby. Well, I haven't exactly tried that option yet.

Also, just a heads-up: it is absolutely not a smart move to take Accutane during the summer. Your skin becomes incomparably more sensitive. Even for me, back in the winter—February, specifically—I ended up with burns on my hands unlike anything I've ever experienced:

As for you, Sarah Murphy8, cover up. Wear a hat, sunglasses, and at least SPF 30.
Good luck.

Abdominal exercises have always been my absolute nemesis, even back when I was training like a beast. Someone once suggested I switch things up and try those reverse crunches—I think that’s the right term, anyway. You basically lie on your back, kick your legs up to a 90-degree angle, and then lower them back down without letting your feet touch the floor. That move was a total game-changer for me; I could crush those sets all day long. Fast forward to today, and I can do an endless amount of those, but if you ask me to do a standard crunch? Yeah, good luck, because I can barely squeeze out ten before I'm totally spent.
Honestly, who cares? As long as the gut is firm and you're staying in shape, it doesn't matter how you get there.
🙂

redgardener5, honestly, just give those blisters some time to heal.
And if you’re dealing with leather shoes that feel like bricks because they're too tight, just take them to a local cobbler to get them stretched out and softened up.

If you want to stop the pain before it starts, my absolute go-to is those micropore tapes—you know, the white rolls usually found in that blue plastic packaging at the drugstore. Just slap one layer on the spots where you always get rubbed raw, and I promise you won't even have a chance to develop a blister.

p.s. You should apply it directly to healthy skin, but if you've already managed to mess up your foot, throw a little bit of sterile gauze over the spot first, then put the tape on top of that.

Look, if you're dealing with skin that’s super dry, flaky, and just straight-up itchy, honestly, the Eucerin lotion with 10% urea is my absolute holy grail. I’ve got this little trick where I mix it with some lavender oil, olive oil, or maybe almond oil. It makes it way easier to spread around, and man, the hydration actually lasts much longer that way.

Aside from that Eucerin lotion, I also think the Garnier lotion made for extremely dry skin—you know, the one in the orange bottle with the pump dispenser—is pretty decent too.
When you're hopping in the shower, you should definitely be using shower oils instead of regular soap, like the ones from Nivea or Balea that have about 55% oil content. Trust me, even after you dry off, your skin won't feel greasy at all.

Richard Moore3:
Hydrogen peroxide??? No way am I trying that for any DIY projects at home!

Look, we're talking about 3% hydrogen peroxide here, which is what you use to clean wounds. It’s not like it’s gonna kill you.
My grandma was stuck in the hospital for three weeks and ended up getting this massive pressure sore on her backside—just a huge, gaping wound. It took an entire year to finally heal up, even after she was using hydrogen peroxide every single day along with a bunch of other crappy antibiotic creams and whatnot.

I mean, nobody is out here pouring straight 100% peroxide on themselves; this 3% stuff is basically just water.

And you, rapidbadger45, just stick to your Q-tips and stop messing with your wound like that.
Just drip the hydrogen peroxide directly onto it, drop by drop.

Hey, it's me, Anthony Long25, back again after getting some much-needed sleep and feeling totally refreshed.
😁

So, look, causes of death basically break down into external and internal factors.

Internal causes are the direct reasons someone passes—think things like hemorrhaging, cancer, heart failure, and all that. Like, if I were to shoot you with an AR-15 😉, the internal cause would probably be blood loss, while the external cause would be homicide.

External causes only apply to deaths that aren't "natural"—you know, stuff like falling off a balcony, drowning in the ocean, murder, suicide, stepping on a landmine, etc.
I mean, defining iatrogenic death (which falls under external causes) is a total headache, but broadly speaking, it covers deaths caused by complications from medical or surgical care (check out the WHO - International Classification of Diseases and Related health Problems). It’s recognized pretty much everywhere globally, though it's rarely categorized that way officially; unofficially, it's basically the third major cause of death, if you catch my drift 😉

And you can't just lump them all together and say, "Okay, 100 people died of heart attacks, 50 from leukemia, 20 from breast cancer, and 10 from suicide."
(You seriously can't put external and internal causes in the same bucket)

"* 106,000 annual deaths resulting from correctly prescribed medications* "

That right there is the biggest item on the list and honestly the most questionable part.
Are you actually suggesting that every single correctly prescribed drug is supposed to be a magic cure?
Doctors aren't wizards or some kind of geniuses; they're just treating a diagnosed condition using the specific drugs or procedures they have available to treat that specific illness. It's a straightforward process.

It seems like the article was trying to imply that even these "correct" medications are essentially "wrong," but in that case, it's not the doctors who are at fault—it's the whole loop between big pharma manufacturers and the regulatory agencies that approve them. The issue goes way deeper than individual practitioners.

Personally, I'd love to hear how anyone actually determines that a person died because of a correctly prescribed medication. How do they even establish that? I'm genuinely curious about what that investigative process looks like.

As for whether modern medicine is doing more harm than good... honestly, I don't even have an opinion on that.

Did you guys realize that doctors and hospitals are actually the third leading cause of death in the USA?

Look, I don't have the energy to sit here and read through this whole massive wall of text, so I just skimmed it.

Listen, Anthony Long25, do you even know what a "cause of death" actually is? Like, if someone dies, the cause is heart failure, breast cancer, a brain hemorrhage, stuff like that.

A medical error isn't a cause of death.
Getting prescribed the wrong medication isn't a cause of death.
Having an unnecessary surgery isn't a cause of death.

The cause of death is the specific condition that immediately caused the person to pass away.

So, a doctor might hand over the wrong pill and then the person suffers a massive heart attack. In that case, the cause of death is recorded as a heart attack, not a "doctor's mistake."

People are totally mixing up apples and oranges here.

You can't just claim that out of 500 people who died from heart attacks, 200 were due to medical errors—it’s obviously a massive overlap of categories.

Death rates from specific diseases are tracked all over the world. For every single person who dies in the US, we know exactly what the cause of death was.

But now, they're just taking those top two leading causes of death and tacking on some random, assumed data about supposed medical errors.

p.s. Just so we're clear, I'm not a physician and I personally think the healthcare system is pretty terrible, but it really bugs me when someone writes something this illogical and everyone just swallows it whole.

So, I spent last week diving into that Zone Diet book by Barry Sears, and honestly, it’s exactly what you’d expect from these kinds of books. They all follow this same tired pattern where they claim their specific way of eating is the absolute holy grail, then spend hundreds of pages trying to justify why, making it sound incredibly convincing to anyone who isn't an expert.
It’s the exact same deal with those books on healthy food combining. And don't even get me started on that blood type diet nonsense. Every single author just pushes their own agenda while bashing everything else into the ground.

The thing that really rubbed me the wrong way about Dr. Sears' book was the massive ego on display. It’s basically him saying, "My method is pure genius, and everything else is garbage," or acting like, "Oh, American swimmers swept ten gold medals at the Olympics just because I told them what to eat." It's pretty obnoxious.

Personally, that whole 40:30:30 ratio per meal (carbs:protein:fat) feels way too heavy on the fat side for me, and half the food combinations he suggests just don't sit right.

He even goes as far as to suggest in a few places that McDonald's hamburgers are actually fine and fit within the Zone, so you don't even have to give them up.

Or like, suggesting a teaspoon of butter after having a beer (which is a carb).😁 combination for Casey Palmer5

I don't know, man. I'm definitely not feeling the hype, but hey, if it works for someone else—go for it. 👍

Honestly, thank god someone finally started this thread.
The truth is, doctors prescribe Diane like they’re handing out candy or something. They don't even bother asking how you feel or suggesting you actually look into the side effects—at least not in my case, and I’m seeing the same thing happening to a lot of you here.

So, yeah, I have those "famous" polycystic ovaries too. But honestly, I never had any real issues with them, aside from the acne; we're talking neck, back, and stomach (!!), though my face was mostly fine.
I wasn't even hairy or anything, though I swear I would’ve traded all the hair on my body for clear skin in a heartbeat.

I ended up on Diane for about five years total (with one little break for a few months where the acne came roaring back way worse than ever before).
I’m off them now. I just stopped. No big consultation with my OBGYN or anything, because my arms and legs started swelling up, my hair was thinning out, and my blood work showed my platelet count was through the roof. It wasn't even weight gain, per se—I just felt all bloated and puffy; I actually had to take my rings off because they were digging into my skin...
Bottom line? Diane was a disaster for me, except for maybe my skin tone.

When I went in for my check-up recently, the woman practically shrieked at me: "Why aren't you taking them anymore?! They worked so well for you! Your complexion was amazing, and your ovaries look totally clear now..." then she goes on about how you're supposed to stay on Diane for several years and blah blah blah.

Now, I feel incredible. My blood work is totally normal (which I had done on my own doctor's request, not the one who prescribed the pills), and the only time I feel a bit down is when I catch myself in the mirror. But I solved that by switching to a 10W bulb instead of a 100W one (highly recommend, by the way)—it keeps me from obsessing over every single tiny spot I used to notice.

When I weigh it all up, I'm much better off this way. I’d much rather be healthy and feel good, even if I deal with some acne, than be on hormones and deal with all these side effects just to have a perfect tan.
But hey, who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind once I stop recognizing myself in the mirror.

I’m dealing with the exact same thing. Honestly, even right now while I'm typing this out, my legs are starting to get those weird chills, and my hands feel unnaturally cold even though the heater is blasting in here. I don't know, maybe it’s just my low blood pressure acting up again.
When it comes to winter boots, I always go a size up from my summer shoes just so I can cram two pairs of socks in there if I have to. And yeah, long pants are basically non-negotiable for me.
That’s pretty much my only survival strategy—just bundle up and ignore anyone who might give you a hard time about it (like me, honestly, when I see some girls showing up to work this time of year wearing thin little socks and pumps).

Honestly, it’s just straight-up gross when someone bites their nails, especially when they go overboard and bite them down to the bleeding point. I know this one girl who actually bites her toenails too—I kid you not—and it is absolutely stomach-turning to look at. It’s particularly brutal during the summer when she wears open-toed sandals. She’s a really cute girl and totally chill otherwise, but this habit is just... ugh.🙄

Any advice? I’m totally lost here.