Posts in Lifestyle (3 found)
ava's blog 3 weeks ago

vegan with a soy sensitivity

As a kid, I got diagnosed with a soy allergy; it caused me to itch everywhere and scratch until it bled, all over the body, and worse. I went through a desensitization process of weekly shots until my symptoms improved and went away. Until last year, I could eat soy with no issue; very convenient when you’re vegan. Then it seemingly came back and caused some nasty rashes. Took me a while to identify the culprit. Unfortunately, another round of desensitization is contraindicated for me and likely won’t work again, so I’m just having to roll with it. I really love tofu, edamame, natto, miso, soy sauce, tempeh, lao gan ma and more, so that sucks, but avoiding it has been easier than I thought. I’m not really that fond of eating many replacement products; I like veggie pans with just seasoned vegetables and some beans or other protein the most, and I prefer oat milk to soy milk. The only things I consciously had to switch were going from sugarfree soy skyr to a sugarfree pea-based yoghurt. Other than that, whole foods have been my friend, and there are a surprising amount of replacement products made from bean or pea protein, even chickpeas. I like the chickpea tofu I found, Beyond’s stuff is with pea protein as well, Seitan still works, and we replaced the TVP soy chunks with ones made from field beans, whose powder is also great for egg replacement in baking and for scrambled egg. Kidney beans patties are awesome, too, and red lentil stews are a comfort food to me. I can just use coconut cream instead of soy creams. So aside from losing some of my comfort foods, this has been a rather painless switch. Reply via email Published 23 Mar, 2026

Lifestyle
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Xe Iaso 1 months ago

Advice for staying in the hospital for a week

As I mentioned in my last couple posts , I recently got out of the hospital after a week-long stay. I survived the surgery, I survived the recovery, and now I'm home with some hard-won wisdom about what it's actually like to be stuck in a hospital bed for seven straight days. If you or someone you love is about to go through something similar, here's what I wish someone had told me. None of this is medical advice. I'm a software engineer who spent a week as a patient, not a doctor. Talk to your actual medical team about actual medical things. There is no way in hell you are going to be productive at anything. I cannot stress this enough. Whatever you're imagining — "oh I'll catch up on reading" or "maybe I'll do some light code review" — no . Stop. Depending on the procedure that landed you there, you're not going to be able to focus long enough to do anything that matters. Your brain is going to be running on fumes, painkillers, and whatever cursed cocktail of medications they have you on. Don't fight it. The name of the game is distraction. Wait, so what do you actually do all day? Scroll your phone. Watch terrible TV. Stare at the ceiling and have thoughts that feel profound but absolutely are not. Let your brain do whatever it wants. You've earned the right to be completely useless for a while. Bring a tablet loaded with comfort shows and don't feel guilty about any of it. Here's the thing nobody tells you: inside the hospital, time ceases to exist. All your memories from the stay get lumped together into one big amorphous blob. Was that conversation with the nurse on Tuesday or Thursday? Did you eat lunch today or was that yesterday? Genuinely impossible to tell. This is a well-documented phenomenon. Between disrupted sleep cycles, medication effects, and the complete absence of normal environmental cues, your brain has nothing to anchor memories to. It's not you being broken — it's the environment. Try not to have any meaningful conversations during this time. You're not going to remember them, and that's going to feel terrible later when someone references something heartfelt they said to you and you just... have nothing. Save the deep talks for when you're home and your brain is actually recording again. Don't even imagine having any meaningful thoughts during your hospital stay. They will evaporate. Okay, this one is weirdly specific but it came up constantly. Cables that glow when you plug them in are great because you can find them in the dark. Your hospital room is going to be a mess of wires and tubes and you need to charge your phone and finding the cable end at 2 AM without turning on a light feels like a genuine victory. But here's the problem: cables that glow when you plug them in are horrible because they glow in the dark. When you're desperately trying to sleep — which you will be, constantly, because the sleep in hospitals is atrocious — that little LED glow becomes your nemesis. Neither option is good. There is no middle ground. Pick your poison. I ended up draping a washcloth over the cable connector at night. Low-tech solutions for low-tech problems. Everything is going to be simultaneously too bright and too dark. The hallway fluorescents bleed under the door at all hours. Someone will come check your vitals at 3 AM with a flashlight. Meanwhile during the day the curtains don't quite block the sun and the overhead lights have exactly two settings: "interrogation room" and "off." You're going to have to grin and bear through this. Bring a sleep mask if you can. It won't fix the problem but it'll take the edge off enough that you might actually get a few consecutive hours of rest. Your ability to focus is going to be gone. Absolutely decimated. Do not fight it. Some days will be better than others — I had one afternoon where I could actually read a few pages of something before my brain wandered off — but mostly you're going to be operating at the cognitive level of someone who's been awake for 36 hours straight. So your advice for a week in the hospital is basically "give up on everything"? My advice is to stop pretending you're going to be a functional human being and just let yourself recover. That is the productive thing to do. Recovery is the job. Everything else can wait. Brainrot yourself. Watch the same comfort show for the fifth time. Scroll through memes. Let your attention span be whatever it wants to be. You've earned it. Honestly, the biggest thing I took away from my hospital stay is that the hardest part isn't the medical stuff — it's the expectations you put on yourself. Let those go. Be a potato. Heal. The world will still be there when you get out, and it'll make a lot more sense when your brain isn't marinating in hospital vibes and post-op medication. Be kind to yourself. You're going through something hard.

Personal Health Lifestyle
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ava's blog 3 months ago

a week without caffeine

I've recently decided to stop drinking anything caffeinated for a month. My top offender has been matcha, which has a surprisingly high caffeine content depending on the kind and the amount you consume. Second is other green tea, and black tea. Third is the occasional coffee I get elsewhere, or flavored cubes to dissolve in water that contain caffeine. I don't consume soda or energy drinks, and I don't have coffee or a coffee machine at home. This comes after at least half a year of intentional use, or sometimes abuse, of it. I made no secret on this blog that 2025 felt like two years in one , and I achieved a lot - but I also used caffeine to push my limits in ways that weren't good. I wanted to feel normal and not limited by my illnesses, poor sleep, or anything really. So instead of just drinking maybe once a day for the flavor, I started drinking for the effect, too, making the teas stronger. So it slowly became more cups a day, and consumed later in the day. I often used it to be able to make it through 2-4 hours of university Zoom sessions or a workout, or to try and fight the fatigue from my illnesses, or to make up for a night of bad sleep due to pain, or staying up late with friends playing games until past midnight. I've just been feeling really burnt out in the last month of 2025, and I thought about what I could do to change that. I chose to take younger me’s advice: Years ago, I barely drank black tea every couple months, matcha maybe once a week or less, and no coffee at all. I only drank for the taste. I didn’t even know the stuff I was drinking had any significant caffeine, and I made it mild enough. I never wanted to become a person that relies on caffeine or uses it to push across limits . I looked at people who felt burnt out and thought: “ Yeah, if I used substances to quiet my body telling me it needs rest or food or whatever constantly for months or years, I would feel burnt out too. I would at least lay off the caffeine and heed the signals to help myself get out of that. ” Now I’m the one feeling burnt out, and I did use caffeinated drinks to push myself further than I should have! Younger me was right, and by using my favorite little comfort drinks that way, I just borrowed from the future every time. That’s energy that will be missing the next few days, weeks, months… unless I do the same again, but maybe with more caffeine this time. But I don’t wanna dig myself that hole. Shortly after NYE, I managed to drink two very huge cups of matcha, one big cup of strong black tea, a normal-sized cup of coffee, and then some more matcha again at a friend's house to keep me awake for a board game evening late into the night, and it was horrible. I didn't wanna treat myself this way. So going forward, I will need to respect my limits. I don’t further wanna normalize ignoring my needs like this for productivity. If it protects my well-being long-term, I will just study 2 hours less, or I can’t study that day at all, or arrive at work an hour later, or can’t participate in a game night until 2am. Of course it will suck sometimes, because abusing it intentionally made me feel more capable and enabled a truly busy year; but I’ll just have to accept it. In the end, I’m not opposed to resorting to it for important stuff (a deadline, complex work...), but not constantly. A week has now passed ( 23 days left to go ) of consuming no caffeine (and not even decaf, because that still contains some), and I wanted to give a first update on my experience! Headaches starting past 3pm and went on until I had to sleep; took an aspirin to help it. Had a bit of nausea too, felt brainfogged, but calm. The headaches feel like my exercise headaches, which makes sense, considering both a lack of caffeine and intense exercise expand the blood vessels in the brain. I didn’t think I would be affected like this, and I should probably have tapered instead of going cold turkey. First day back in the office after the holidays. I notice a bit of a headache again past 8am, but they went away after 10am or so; didn’t even notice exactly when it got better. I feel a difference in how I focus and work. Caffeinated drinks immediately create more energy and a drive to work on something big/demanding for me, but if the work is not enough to fulfill that desire (mundane, repetitive and small), I’d struggle to get myself started or work on it uninterrupted. I’d take more frequent breaks to check stuff on my phone, I’d play music or YouTube videos to keep that eager part of my brain busy enough to get the boring work done. It seems like the caffeine boost made me more dopamine-seeking. I was craving anything that would fully utilize me mentally and then searching for a replacement when that didn’t happen. Now without the caffeine, there is no intense energy spike or crash, no frantic seeking of more intense work that would make me a bit anxious, and no search for something that soothes and distracts me from that sensation. Instead, I was able to continuously work without much breaks, distraction or distress for hours. It was easier for me to focus, to get into the zone, in a sort of flow state, even without music or videos. While I am still bored of my current repetitive work, I felt better equipped to deal with that, as I had no strong urge for a challenge inside of me that’d make me uncomfortable if I couldn’t find one. My focus and motivation felt more sustainable and persistent, instead of coming in short, intense bursts. I felt happy for no specific reason during my lunch walk, which was a nice change from the overwhelm and feeling of being hunted that I got so used to. Had some intense headaches again in the late evening; I think I am more sensitive to very bright screen light, because it always starts when I boot up Hello Kitty Island Adventure on the TV, and I’m currently in a very bright area. Very brief headache this morning in the tram that didn’t come back, not even in the evening. I may have put the worst behind me. I notice I am less sensitive to my environment; the glaring lights, the tram sounds and people. I’m still a bit sensitive in general aside from caffeine or not, but it doesn’t feel heightened. I sit there present, aware, no noise cancelling, and feel… content. At work, I feel like I have more… time? To arrive, to slowly get started in my own pace, and as said in the previous day, keep a comfortable momentum. I’m not suddenly extremely “on”, feeling rushed by the caffeine buzz. I like this. I also feel like I’m more comfortable with switching tasks than I’ve been the last few months. I’m also more comfortable with rest and intentional boredom. I felt very very tired close before 10am, but made a great recovery somehow that kept me going until 10pm without feeling exhausted or fatigued in between. The caffeine withdrawal headaches and light sensitivity seem to be gone for good. What remains is craving the reward, the treat; those were my comfort drinks, irrespective of their caffeine content, but that maybe that also played a role chemically. I miss it for a sort of mental relief. I notice effects on my hunger! It feels more controlled, and less urgent. There is less food noise in my head. It could be that increased stress and anxiety that were exacerbated by caffeine raised cortisol and made me hungrier, or smaller/skipped meals via caffeine lowering appetite makes the hunger return with a vengeance later. Or I seek to comfort and soothe myself after becoming frustrated of not finding mentally stimulating work while on caffeine, and I crave food for that. I underestimated how much it really affected my mood and anxiety. Everything feels calmer and more manageable now, and I no longer feel like I am constantly drowning. Rest feels truly restful. I blamed it on some challenges and problems in my life, but I guess a lot of it really was the caffeine, and I didn't notice how truly bad the baseline anxiety had gotten. On the first day, I even said to people that it doesn't make me anxious. I guess it did, though. What still remains is the need for reward I talked about, and seeking comfort, knowing it would brighten up my day a little. I want to work on some non-work things that are a bit demanding, each in different ways (a secret blog project, job applications, studying for my exams in March, translating for GDPRhub...) and it would be great right now to borrow a bit of drive and alertness on what feels like the click of a button. I wanna rip myself from the afternoon drowsiness, but I have to do it "on my own" right now. I really have to make sure to drink enough without my go-to choices. It's getting harder to do so when I can't drink the stuff I love or even crave! I have to be more intentional about drinking enough, when it hasn't been a problem before. For when I continue in 23 days! Reply via email Published 11 Jan, 2026 I will reserve caffeinated drinks for when it really matters (harder, more complex and important tasks; not just because, and not to keep up with people). If the task is not later in the day, it’s preferable to not consume any caffeine after noon. I will make/order the drinks to have a lot less caffeine. I will keep in mind that appetite suppressed or lowered by caffeine means more ferocious hunger comes later, so I have to feed myself well regardless.

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