Mar 26

 I figured I had peaked. Slowly, slowly, my physical health state is depressing again.

I've kinda noticed that pattern. It has all sorts of ups and downs. But it can also have this kinda longer up and down, and it tends not to see saw so much as more slowly rise and fall over the longer period. Within that, it spikes up and down in a 24 hour cycle.

Have a crappy diagram.

This is a rough approximation of what I think the pattern is. A general sawtooth, with a spiky line that follows the saw.

The blue line is what it feels like to be normal. Go about your business, no lags, no concerns, no weights. Normal. I never get to that line anymore. I get close. But never get to it. On my very best of days, with the wind behind me for a few hours in a 24 hour period, I feel close to it.

The green line is the overall trend, this takes place over weeks. The bits in the troughs can last for months. The slopes up and down tend to be over the course of several days, I'd take a rough guess of 3 at the very minimum and a couple of weeks at most. But it's rough. The peaks tend to be short lived. Rarely they will last - ish - for some weeks, or least wobble around the top. I suspect that I still follow the peaks and troughs in a very good period, but the troughs come upwards to be less deep. But. That's pretty rare. 

So the troughs can be anything from weeks to months. The peaks tend to be days. The slides up and down can be days or weeks.

Over all of that you get the red jittery line. This is how I am doing over the course of a day. Which often dramatically shifts in a 24 hour period. Ping pong. It's super duper rare that it evens out. I can't even remember the last time that was true. The changes can be very noticeable, fairly quick, fairly dramatic. Crashes are common. Sometimes resting for around 45 minutes will pull me out of the dive. Absolutely no guarantees. Sometimes it does shit.

The red line at the bottom is the oh shit I'm dying line. When I'm at my worst, and its a trough in a trough... I am hurting very bad. Very much crossed the line, don't want to be here pushed to the limit of, please let me die right now, let me go, dead. Iffy. This is depressingly common. Typically it doesn't last longer than a few hours at it's very worst, but it can stretch to most of the day, and it's almost always around sleep, either voluntary or involuntary.

Sometimes the green line up and down doesn't always go to the top or bottom. The getting better or getting worse can kinda stick on its way and change it's mind. But. It always tends to be a slower pace.

Then there are the real out of whack days. When suddenly I can dip hardcore even though perhaps in general I have been improving. These points often give me the best insight into the difference between better and worse because the change is so dramatic. These are the weird 48 hour differences that are so obviously fucked up. But they tend not to happen too much. It's more of a subtler change over time.

I can feel both the inclines up and down. I can typically feel the peak. You feel ok, until the next day you don't. And the day after you're a bit worse again. And again. And you realise oh, I peaked.

Beyond that I can't much tell what - if anything - triggers that cycling pattern. I don't think it's diet. I don't think it's excercise. Sleep is hard to tell - as the quality of sleep and yada often goes hand in hand with the curve. The two are so tightly intertwined - when I Feel shit, my sleep can be horribly detrimental, that it's hard to know which is the chicken and which is the egg, or whether they're not related. I would take an educated guess that they are symbiotic, if not causal.

To add to complications you then plot in crap like. How are my migraines. How is my mental health. How is my butt doing. Yada. Blah.

Generally speaking all of that tends to make it worse. Sometimes more subtle, but it is appreciable.

Not sure what it means if anything.

I mean you could look at that as the waxes and wanes over a 24 hour period of your metabolism and everything else. Your immune system winding down over night, spiking in the day. All those 24 hour cycle chemicals. Clearly they are having a dramatic effect on me. Something doesn't seem to be quite right there.

And the longer flux is the background health and energy depending on the weather and what you've been doing lately and yada. Almost your longer biorhythm. Which *also* seems out of whack.

I think bottom line, something in there is not working. Is very fucky. And you can see the impact it has on everything else. Like a misfiring engine.

Eh well.

Not much use really. Other than to adapt to the pattern and understand the rise and fall. And that hopefully, as previous evidence, there should be a rise after a fall. 

That being said.

The rises seem to be getting way harder of late.

And the falls much more likely to stick.

Deteriorating overall ? Or just a localised pattern over several months ? Impossible to say.