Dan Honmedical establishment: your blood pressure seems high, are you also under any stress at the moment?
me: *gestures everywhere*
medical establishment with whom I otherwise thanks to a lot of time and effort I have a relatively good relationship: ok so we want you to try a few days off your adderall and for you to take your blood pressure when you're not on it to see if that affects anything
me: *doesn't take adderall*
also me: *gets stressed out at, you know, not being able to function particularly well*
also also me: oh look my blood pressure is EVEN HIGHER NOW
honestly once you've reached a certain level of mental health management and then Something Happens then your psych who you get along with really well is all "ok, so what's changed" and you're like HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CONTROL FOR VARIABLES HERE WHEN LIVING IN 2023
part of the problem is that when I'm doing well I do more things and those things are generally good and then when a Thing happens then things can spiral really really quickly and easily
anyway I see what they were getting at with doing an experiment to see how adderall affects my blood pressure but I think what we learned is that it's likely net doing a better job of lowering my blood pressure by contributing to controlling my stress and anxiety
Which you know hi I could've written down as our HYPOTHESIS if they had asked me but also I am not a medical professional and my life is apparently not a closed course
briannaorg@danhon I had a hospital stay for surgery and was surprised they kept it on my med list since I didn’t need to be very productive. Turns out, it has pain relieving properties, by dint of making brain work gooder.
Coach Pāṇini ®
0xC0DEC0DE07EA@danhon I got real worried when my neuropsych testing was like, “you have average attention span and memory for your age” I immediately blurred out “under lab conditions!”
@c0dec0dec0de yeah, now I'm like "well you know, I know I have high blood pressure in medical settings, but asking me to measure my blood pressure at home may reveal that my home environment is _more stressful_ than a medical environment!!!!”
@danhon medical environments are stressful, too! Your BP could very well be lower at home. Also, since they take vitals immediately in most appointments, they’re frequently a little elevated because you just walked in.