What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Something I'm wondering about: since COVID, I just don't seem to get colds anymore.

Before COVID, I recall that I very regularly had some kind of minor cold – it felt like it was about 50% of the time, realistically let's say maybe 20%? But of course that's just my recollection.

I then caught the original strain of COVID in March 2020, and suffered fairly badly from it for 3 weeks – definitely the worst illness of my life, though I was very lucky not to need to go into hospital. Since then I've had 3 doses of the COVID vaccine, and had COVID at least twice more, both times very mildly.

Since then though, I've noticed that I almost never have any sort of cold any more. I think my partner and I had some kind of brief minor flu back in September, but I've not had anything since, and I remember thinking that it had been a long time since I'd had anything like that.

For reference, I don't wear a mask nowadays, or otherwise do anything much different to my life before COVID.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why this might be?

Uneducated theories on my part:

1. Somehow having COVID made me less likely to catch colds
2. Somehow having the COVID vaccine made me less likely to catch colds
3. During COVID I got used to holding my breath around people coughing, and that's surprisingly effective towards not catching colds
4. I'm now mostly around people less likely to pass on colds for some reason

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially those who have some actual knowledge about this topic!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

My wife and I are having a baby just 1.5 months from now (hooray!). And our insurance provider, Anthem Blue Cross, is cutting coverage to our local hospital network and maternity services in 10 days (boooo!). The entire process of finding out about this (via the news, not our insurance or the hospital) and getting continued coverage has been an absolute nightmare. We jumped the hoops, sent in all the required paperwork, and even got the billing department at the hospital involved. We're still only covered if we happen to be lucky enough that the doctor who is named on the continued coverage agreement happens to be on call at the time of delivery, otherwise it'll be out of pocket to the tune of $10,000 of dollars. At this point it feels like we're betting it all on red.

The response to the United Healthcare shooting illustrated just how frustrated people of the US are in their healthcare system and I'd like to do my part to continue to keep that topic front of mind in the American psyche. I've written up a little op-ed on our experience and I was wonder if any Tilderinos have managed to get one published before. Any insight would be very welcome.

After deciding to get back into the gym after a long hiatus, I was shopping around my area and trying to decide between Crunch or LA Fitness, each for about $40/mo, plus steep initiation fees and annual fees. Searching for a way to get a discounted rate, I stumbled across One Pass Select, offered by my health insurer, United Healthcare. While I was fully prepared to dunk on United, because of how often Dr. Glaucomflecken does, this particular member benefit turned out to be pretty great.

One Pass Select essentially functions as a gym aggregator, offering multiple memberships for one flat rate. So rather than paying Crunch or LA Fitness $40/mo and being subjected to their terms/conditions, I pay One Pass Select $36/mo and get access to:

• Crunch
• LA Fitness
• Anytime Fitness
• Workout Anytime

And a handful of other gyms I haven't signed up for, because they're not convenient to me. Four gym memberships for $36/mo is pretty cool. Plus if I ever want to cancel, I just cancel my One Pass Select membership from their website, instead of having to sacrifice a squirrel on the 8th day of the sabbath under a blood moon while chanting gregorian monk (the level of difficulty it felt like the last time I wanted to cancel a gym membership).

A quick Google indicates that other insurers offer similar programs:

• UHC has One Pass Select
• Cigna/BCBS/Kaiser have Active&Fit Direct
• BCBS also has Fitness Your Way
• Aetna has GlobalFit

This was a great find for me, that I'd never even heard of before. Sharing it to hopefully benefit someone else, as well!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Despite vaccination, it seems I got the 'flu (not terrible so far).

I have my own non-prescription comforts and remedies for the sore throat, cough, upset stomach, fever, aches, and so on:

• Ginger, lemon, and honey tea
• Ricola cough drops, zinc lozenges
• PeptoBismol or TheraFlu (if I want to be knocked out)
• Scorching hot shower with eucalyptus or lavender oil
• Chicken broth with rice and thyme
• Electric heated mattress pad cranked up to high

There's little peer-reviewed evidence that any of these make a difference in the course of illness. There's marginal data on the effectiveness of ginger as an antinausea remedy, zinc as an immune booster in people who aren't deficient, and eucalyptus, lavender, and thyme oil components as antiseptics/antibiotics/topical anesthetics/cough suppressants. I'll be the first to concede that I practice all these remedies to give me the illusion of control of suffering, and comforting self-care.

I'm curious as to what home remedies others have tried, why, and how effective or comforting you think they've been.

Has a medical professional ever recommended a non-prescription remedy (not counting Tylenol/acetaminophen) or activity to you for a viral or bacterial infection, or told you to stop a home remedy? Did they give a reason why?

Is there a family, folklore, or alternative medicine tradition that you're following?

Does your home remedy make you feel like you're more comfortable and/or in greater control of your health?

Has anybody tried these? I just ordered a Silent Mammoth... which is essentially a coat hanger bent all fancy. It arrives in a few days.

Anyway, anybody have any experience with these sorts of things? I went with this one purely because its metal and I don't want to have some ten-use plastic to recycle if this whole thing leads to improvement.

I don't have sleep apnea but I do think my cute button nose could use a little opening. :)

Over a year ago, I had my heart broken pretty bad. I lost most of my appetite for the week or two after that, and felt a lot of that emotion "in my stomach" for a couple months. And, to be honest, I'm still working through the whole thing.

Coincidentally, I've noticed that my hunger signals have gotten a lot worse since. I used to just listen to my stomach to regulate my eating and that was perfectly fine, but now I find myself fairly regularly eating until I think I'm full then waking up from hunger pangs in the middle of the night or feeling hunger pangs as soon as my head hits the pillow when I try to go to sleep. Albeit, my eating habits aren't super great in general. I'll often eat less out of laziness of not wanting to make extra food or I'll skip a meal every now and then because I'm busy. But I've had those habits for a while and it didn't cause me much trouble before.

I'm wondering if these two things might be related or not. Has anyone perhaps experienced something similar?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

I have been going through trials to see what ADHD medication might be a good fit for me, and as a side effect have amassed a good deal of unused pills. I have like 60 Vyvanse, a whole bunch of Strattera, and with how expensive they are I'd love to pass them off to someone who might be able to use them. Is this a possibility?

Cheers!