Inevitable

That "free" photo session? I just dropped $200 at the mall on new clothes for it. Of course.

Photo Op

A friend of mine has started to get into semi-professional photography as a way to make extra money, and he asked me if I would pose for him next weekend (he is really desperate for material, this is not at all a measure of my perceived level of attractiveness. He also asked if he could shoot G.). He wants to get some practice in different lighting situations, and apparently I am pale enough to serve as a "challenge" subject for him.  The basic barter would be he gets practice, possibly some portfolio pieces, and I get the service and a disc of photos for free.

My initial reaction was NO, of course.  I've never, ever, never been comfortable in front of a camera--except for occasions when Match talked me into posing for him, because he makes it fun and sweet.

 But after thinking it over a bit, it seems like it could be something sort of fun and out of character for me to try. I am rarely pleased with images of myself, actually, but have come to have a new appreciation for the value of photographs since I've been in a long-distance relationship.  Match and I see each other in person so little, that it really helps to have plenty of pictures of each other available.  I was thinking this might make a nice birthday present for him. 

Last summer Match and I did a similar type of thing with a friend of his that is a photographer, but that was different because we were posing together, and I didn't feel quite so much in the spotlight. Plus, he tells me jokes and complements the whole time and keeps me pretty relaxed.

I don't know this guy (the photographer) incredibly well, but well enough to know that although he has some pretty sexy photos in his portofolio (along with a lot of classic sets), I am sure that he's not a predator, and will do his best to make me comfortable and keep a sense of humor during the whole thing.

Of course, it immediately crossed my mind that I should pick up my running and scale back my food this week so that I'll look nice and taut for the photos next weekend.  Hello, ED, I see you are still participating in the Occupy Cammy movement. Wonderful.

Honestly, though, I was able to consider that EDish message for a few minutes and then take a step back and give myself a reality check.  If this is mostly for Match's consumption anyway, he knows what my body looks like in most situations, so it's not like I'd be fooling him if I tried to change it somehow.  He's also said he actually preferred my shape at a higher weight.  To that end, I think my perception of what actually makes a body attractive has shifted in a more healthy direction than it used to, and I can see that thinner and tauter isn't always better, and sometimes you end up putting yourself through hell just to end up looking *worse*.  I can think of more than a few occasions, when I was farther into the ED, when I would spend weeks buckling down on myself for a big event when I was going to be photographed, only to end up so exhausted and worn out and fragile feeling on the event day that I didn't have a good time and wasn't all that entertaining to be around. I'm done with that bullshit now.

I think I'm going to go for it and try to use it as an opportunity to appreciate my body for what it is. Worst case scenario, I hate the pictures and never show them to anyone.  Best case scenario, I have fun, maybe get a little confidence boost and have a personal present for Match. 

Girly question: those of you that either know what I look like or have experience with photography and such, what should I wear???  We'll probably be doing both outdoor and indoor shots.

In Which I am Judged

Excerpt from today's therapy session:


Cammy: It's really rare that I do things that are so...


T: Morally questionable?


Cammy: Well I was going to say "spontaneous," but I'm glad I know how you really feel about it now.


T: Oh god, I'm so sorry...

And just for the record, the apparently objectionable scenario was a hypothetical situation, not something I have actually done.  Please don't judge me poorly, like my psychologist does, haha...believe me, if I ever do anything juicy enough as to be incriminating, y'all will be the first to hear about it.

I have to admit, watching her face turn that shade of red was worth my today's copay all in itself.

Miscellaneous Mundanities

Things are really intense with school/work right now, and I'm getting overwhelmed.  I have a couple of post topics I've been wanting to write about but just haven't had the time. Really sorry to everyone that I owe emails to; definitely going to make an effort to get caught up on that asap.  All the travel I did earlier this semester (granted, most of it was for PhD interviews, so it wasn't really optional) is coming back to bite me in the ass, as I'm now squeezing all of my work for the semester into about one month.  Yesterday my adviser dropped a pretty intense new assignment into my lap, and it is really stressing me out, as my thesis defense talk is less than two weeks away.  Just one more month and I am OUT of here and on to a much better program.

As per the usual when I'm tired and overstressed, all I've got are randoms:

-I had some vaccines yesterday that made me pretty sick (fever peaked around 102.5, no fun), but it was a good chance to practice giving my body a break when it needs it.  I slept off the immune reaction and was actually surprised at how good I felt today, despite the stress over my workload.  I really like it when I have evidence that my body is working well and is noticeably stronger than it used to be.

-I have the really bad habit of getting fixated on a specific song and playing it over and over again until I get so sick of it that I never want to hear it again.  I ruin all my favorite songs this way.  I did it again this week.  Anyone have suggestions for new songs I can ruin for myself? :/

-I've tried running a couple of times over the past week, and was prepared to be disappointed after I had a big Achilles flare-up in late February.  Fortunately, I've felt *fantastic* and am so happy.  The running really does represent more than burning calories to me; I just love the feeling and am really encouraged that I'm able to do it at least periodically now.  One of my favorite rewards from recovery efforts so far. I don't think my joints will ever be up to doing it every day again, but that's okay with me.

-I've been looking at housing options and other logistics in the city I'll be moving to in the fall, and am starting to fear that G. isn't going to be able to come with me. :'(  That will devastate me, but I'm trying to weigh what is best for him too.  He would stay with my parents instead, and in that instance he would be in a milder climate and would probably spend less time alone.  I've had him ever since I moved out on my own almost 7 years ago, though, and I can't imagine having a permanently G.-free household.  I would, essentially, be giving him up for good, as there is probably almost no chance he will survive my PhD, given his age (he is about 10 and is not an incredibly long-lived breed).  All of this probably sounds silly if you aren't a pet person, but we're really bonded and I feel a little sick when I think about leaving him out of the next chapter of my life.

-Speaking of the next chapter of my life, I know most of my class schedule for the fall already, and the first thing I thought when I finished mapping it out was "damn that's going to interfere with my exercise schedule."  I really want to try to use the move as a way to overhaul some of my more entrenched habits, so that will probably suck at first but might end up being good for me in the long run.  Easy to be that optimistic when it's still months away, I suppose.

-My homework for D. this week has been to start switching over to "real" versions of some foods that I still buy light versions of.  I'm at a point at which I recognize the value of the full versions, but the habit is so damn hard to break.  I think a big part of the comfort that comes from routines is just not having to make certain decisions; when something is safe and relatively rote, it saves a lot of mental energy not having to weigh other options.  So I've been challenging myself with picking out other, non-diet version options of a few things this week, and doing fairly well I guess.  My calorie intake is the same, but I know that having non-diet versions of certain things is more natural and better for me in the long run.

-Good: I cleaned out my wardrobe and got rid of all the too-small clothes. Bad: I now only have two pairs of shorts left. :(

-Good: My insurance company mailed me a $300 reimbursement check for the labwork I had done for D. earlier this semester. Bad: I didn't realize the check was attached to the bottom of the statement, and accidentally threw it away, not realizing my mistake until that bag of trash was long gone to the dump. Worse: The bill for the labwork was charged to my bursar account, which I have to pay by Friday or else they drop my class credits for the semester.

Wow, that is the most randomly mundane list of randoms ever.  Sorry ladies, I promise I do have some more interesting themed posts in the pipeline as soon as I can come up for air from my other work.

Really hope everyone is doing well, love y'all.

Match's Diet

So things with Match have been going really well lately.  Really, really well.  We had some definitely patchiness earlier in the semester, and I would be lying if I said there weren't times I when I wondered if this is really what I want...but we stuck it out and I think that now that a lot of the background stress has drained away, we can be more of "us" again. He had an awful, awful practicum adviser that treated him like shit every day, and I think the stress and emotional wear-and-tear from that were really carrying over to our relationship.  And it wasn't all him--both of us were pretty high anxiety over PhD decisions and such.  Anywho, that's a lot better now.

There was one thing, though, that really caused some tension and some of the only conflict on our last visit.

His eating.

Are you surprised? Ha...okay so first of all, his diet is AWFUL. Not just from my eating disordered perspective, I swear.  If you gave a carnivorous 4 year old with a raging sweet tooth complete control over his food intake, it would look like Match's. Truth.

It's not how much he eats, but that it's all extremely unhealthy things, highly processed soaring in sugar and fat and with no fiber, NO fruits/vegetables or anything he might even suspect of having a chloroplast at any stage of its life. I started to list some examples but was afraid it would get triggering, so I took those out. I'm not against junk food, and definitely do consume it myself. But the issue isn't that he eats snack foods or superheavy meals, it's that that is ALL he eats. D. has actually noted that he would probably benefit from a nutritionist more than me at this stage.  So anyway, that's a small piece of background.

He is very athletic, though, which is probably one reason that he has always felt a license to eat whatever he wants (again, the key isn't how much he eats, but that he "wants" only crappy things. When we first started dating I'd get stressed that he didn't always eat a ton on dates and I hated being the only one to finish my plate, even though it was salad).  Since he started grad school, he hasn't been able to play sports as much as he did in college--he went from playing about 5 days a week to about 3 times a month.  So he's gained weight, but not an extreme amount, and if he were actually exercising and eating fine, he'd be perfectly healthy at his new higher weight.

That's another thing, though: he refuses to work out.  He will play competitive sports for hours, but won't spend 15 minutes running or lifting weights, because it's "pointless."

And high blood pressure runs in his family.  He actually already has high blood pressure, and did even back when we first met when he was thinner.  We checked our blood pressure at the Target pharmacy just on a whim, and the basic results were that the machine wondered if I was alive, and told him he was lucky that he was alive, LOL. And his dad was recently diagnosed with diabetes.  I'm glad he hasn't gotten 23andme, because I'm sure I'd lose sleep over the results.

Okay so that is my whining/complaining about Match's health habits.  The key is that I care about him a lot, and truly worry about his health. I'm still attracted to him, we still do active things together, etc, so this really is more than vanity. I know it's not my job to police his health, but I've invested over 2 1/2 years of my life in him at this point and hope to enjoy him in the future. I worry.

 I actually go out of my way NOT to nag him about his diet.  Partly because I don't want to be that girlfriend, and partly because I think it has a chance of being blown off as my ED talking.

But sometimes keeping my mouth shut about it backfires. On this trip, there were a few times that I was so stressed/unhappy about what he was eating that I got really tense, which he immediately picked up on, and it created discord without him even knowing what was going on.  Which doesn't seem fair.  I hate that I let it get to me.  But I also hate that he doesn't see how unsmart his habits are, even though he's a super intelligent guy.

REALITY CHECK: Does the "how can this smart person do such dumb things to their health" lament ring any bells?  Of course, I have thought it about every ED friend I've ever had.  I'm sure my loved ones have thought it about me.  So just for the record, I see the analogy here and accept that it's a valid criticism of this entire post.  Match has had to watch me do things that are patently eating disordered, not in my best interest, and go along with a trend of behaviors that very well could--and may very well already have, to some degree--shorten my life.  So here I am, whining about being put in a position that is really just the reciprocal of what I've put him through.  Sucks all around, I suppose.

Now that we're on ED issues: I DO tend to take on vicarious guilt about what others are eating.  Back in the very early days of my ED, my mom was overweight (she isn't now).  I would see her eating what I thought was too much or the wrong type of food, and I would get so stressed about it that my mind would twist the stress into clamping down harder on my own food intake. (DISCLAIMER: I am NOT blaming my mother for my ED in any way, shape, or form. I was already getting disordered at that point and it was just one of many, many contributing factors, and I from what I know about myself I don't think it shifted my own ultimate trajectory).  That hasn't been an issue for a long time, but I definitely felt myself shifting into that mode during the last Match visit.  Overall I did fine with food, but I was really, really working hard at not restricting because I was stressed about his intake, and it made me tense and cranky a few times.

Anyhow, I've talked about this with both D. and T., and they both validated that his diet is a concern, but emphasized that I can't feel responsible for it, and need to do my best to not let it overshadow other things.  It's okay to make an occasional suggestion or comment without it being nagging or critical, but otherwise he is a grown-up and is going to do what he wants to do.  And the issue isn't dominating our interactions, but it did cause a couple of unnecessary spats.

And I really, really get disgusted with myself for letting that take over my thoughts/mood about him at times, when there are so many other things I could be thinking about. Like how he makes the bed while I'm in the bathroom doing my make-up every morning. Like how he was such a patient teacher when he was helping me with the statistics for my thesis. Like how he gave me an incredibly sweet nickname and uses it daily. Like how he makes a point of pulling my toast out of the toaster for me because he knows I have burn-phobia. Like how he still wants to hold my hand while we argue. Like how he thinks I'm sexy first thing in the morning when my ensemble consists of one of his old t-shirts, no make up, and messy bed hair.  Like how he doesn't complain that I constantly cheat when we play basketball 1 on 1. Like how he learned a sweet song ('You and Me' by Lifehouse) on guitar and sang it to me as a surprise one night. Like how he hides random love notes for me to find after he goes home from a weekend visit. Like how if he notices I have goosebumps while we're watching a movie, he will wordlessly take it upon himself to carefully burrito me up in a blanket, rendering me somewhat immobile but very cozy. Like how tenderly he kisses the ED tattoo on my hip. Like how he texts me photos of himself in the mornings before work to make sure that his tie matches his shirt. Like how he is the only real-life person I can ever talk to completely honestly about my ED stuff.  Like all the times that he has reminded me that I will have a Safe Zone with him no matter what else happens.

A picture, yikes! I'll probably chicken out and take it down soon.

Makes me pretty ashamed for ever giving a damn about junk food.

This was a long one.  I think the more private format makes me a little more honest, and that results in more rambles.  Thanks to anyone who read the whole thing.  By the way, when I mentioned in the last post that I was disappointed in how much privatizing had affected my pageviews, I was wrong. I was looking at pageviews for individual posts, but it seems now most people are reading from the home page (which is great!), so when I thought I'd had 8 pageviews I'd actually had 82.  My bad. You ladies are awesome.

Participatory prompts: Do you ever let a loved one's eating habits affect your own? Have you ever been in a similar situation of worrying about someone's health but being afraid to speak up about it, either because of your ED history or something else? General thoughts/comments?

What the Genes Said

Well, I'm already pretty disappointed in how this privatization thing is working out (because of Blogger, not because of you guys!) since apparently Google Reader doesn't pick up new posts anymore.  I have 75+ readers, and the last post got 8 pageviews in the 36 hours after it was published, which indicates that either not everyone got the readership invites, or most people rely on Reader or a similar service for updates (this is why I struggle to keep up with a couple of private blogs that I read, so I totally understand the issue). Or people are just busy, I guess I shouldn't let my ego discount that.  Oh well, I will just keep up the writing and hope that people find a way to read if/when they want.

One suggestion: I put notifications about new posts on my Twitter feed, so you can follow me at Cammy4B if you are interested in subscribing to that.

Okay, now the real post topic: Genetics.  Specifically, I recently got the biomarker analysis services offered by 23andme.com.  For those of you not familiar with it, they send you a kit, you send back a saliva sample.  They test your DNA for dozens (hundreds?) of different biomarkers for different diseases, traits, conditions, etc.  This is NOT a genome scan.  They have a specific set of loci that they are focusing on, based on published literature showing associations between your genotype at those specific sites and various conditions of interest.  

Before I talk about what mine told me, a couple of caveats.  I'm a biologist, and so I definitely did not approach this naively: just because gene X is associated with Condition Y, it does not mean that it is the ONLY gene that affects that condition, or that environmental factors don't play into the expression of the gene or overall risk for the condition.  It just means it is the marker that, in the literature *so far*, seems to be the most reliable predictor on a relative scale. Genes are predictive, but when it comes to polygenic physical traits (not specific, mutation-linked diseases) or behavioral conditions, they aren't condemning you to something for sure. For example, apparently my biomarker for OCD indicates that I'm not at elevated risk for the condition, but I still have major anxiety/obsessive tendencies. Also, it means it doesn't pick up on other things that they haven't included a marker for.  For example, I'm allergic to codeine, but it didn't pick up on that because they didn't have/test a marker for it (again, this is NOT a genome scan).  So this analysis is interesting but not a panacea.

Another caveat is that a lot of the markers are based on just one or a few studies, and the study population may not have been of the same demographic or lifestyle background as you.  Given the standards for controlled experiments, most studies are based on fairly homogenous sample sets (Asian women between ages 20-30, white men ages 18-24, etc etc).  This may or may not affect how applicable the results are to a random person in the population.  They are likely *very* close predictors, given how tiny the genetic variation is between people of different ancestries/sexes/whatever, but it is something to keep in mind when you assess your results. It's probably more of an issue for people who are racial minorities in the US, as the studies most often used caucasian test subjects.

One other thing if you're considering getting this is that if you're interested in tracing ancestry, men get a lot more for their money than do women, because they can trace both maternal and paternal lines using the mtDNA and the Y chromosome, whereas women don't have a Y chromosome and can only trace their matrilineal ancestry. This didn't matter to me, as I have a well-documented family history and was more interested in the disease/trait markers, but if you were adopted or have another reason to be curious about your ancestry, it's something to consider.

Okay, hope I didn't bore you before I got to the show-and-tell part.  A few things that I found striking about my profile:

-I maxed out every measure of addiction risk/dependency for every possible substance, from caffeine to heroin.
  --Besides a solid coffee habit, I have never dabbled with drugs, partly because I know that I form habits at the drop of a hat.  That's apparently a good thing, since this told me that in at least one case, if I did become an addict, I'd be an even more intense consumer of the substance than the average addict.  Ixnay on the ehtmay for me, lol...

-My genotype predicts that I have a "lower tendency to overeat" than average.  If they only knew the half of it...

-Higher than average risk of stress-related vomiting.  I've never had an issue with purging (I tried it a few times and was so awful at it that I never tried again), but I do actually get incredibly nauseous when I'm upset and used to stress-vomit as a kid.

-They test a variety of markers for BMI/obesity risk, and on about 90% of them I came out as being predisposed to being lower than average BMI, which was a relief, I have to say.

-Apparently people with my genotype have "substantially increased odds of remission from depression when treated with Elavil, Paxil, Effexor, or Celexa"
 --This was interesting, because I've been very obstinate throughout my therapy history about never going on any kind of medication to help with the ED issues/behaviors (I've had antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, non-birth control hormone treatments, etc etc pushed on me).  For the past year or so depression hasn't been much of an issue for me--although it definitely has in the past--so this is something to keep in mind if it's a debilitating issue in the future, I suppose, although I'd still need to do a ton of research before starting anything.

-Apparently, despite doing well on all of the IQ biomarkers, people of my genotype at one marker are "much less efficient at learning to avoid errors." Interesting, given my Type-A/perfectionist personality, but it is what it is I suppose.

-I have "sprinter type" muscle physiology, which may explain why even at the height of my running, I was more about speed than distance.

-I have a ton of pregnancy risk factors (not even considering the ED history).  Looking over all the reproduction-related problems I'm at an elevated risk for, it suddenly doesn't seem surprising that my mom has miscarried half over her pregnancies, given that we share most of the same genes (my mom got her 23andme done too, and it has a thing where you can link accounts with family members to see who got what from who).
  --As I've mentioned at various times in this blog's history, I don't envision myself ever having children, so this didn't bother me as much as it might some people, but it did feel significant.

-I should thank my mom for breast-feeding, because apparently people with my genotype can gain up to 6-7 IQ points when breast- vs bottle-fed.

-I have always thought that I had a pretty high pain tolerance. I'm extremely stoic about injuries and of course all the self-inflicted discomfort involved in an ED probably speaks for itself.  But apparently people of my genotype at that marker tend to be *more* sensitive to pain than average.  Interesting example of mind over matter?  It would be fascinating to know how that interacts with any predisposition to addictive tendencies, if being more sensitive can increase the biochemical response to pain (adrenaline, endocannabanoids, etc) that can actually create that sick sort of high that comes off of starving, hurting, peeling your soul away from your corporeal existence in an almost clinical way.  No marker for that yet, lol...

-Apparently people of my genotype tend to consume more sugar than average, thus my sweet tooth and Ice Cream for Dinner habit have a genetic justification. ;)

-If infected with HIV (let's try to avoid that, shall we?), I have one copy of the allele that slows progression to full-blown AIDs. People with two copies of this allele are actually almost immune to the virus, which is pretty interesting (see last month's issue of Scientific American for more on that).

-It got my basic traits right, as far as coloration, being taller than average, hair type, etc etc.

-I smell asparagus in my pee after I eat it, but I knew that without the genetic test. :/

-All in all, though, there weren't any huge revelations.  I'm at lower than average risk of Alzheimers, breast cancer, diabetes, etc, so that was good. The only disease I'm a carrier for is hemochromatosis, an iron absorption deficiency disorder.  Increased risk of Parkinson's, but it only bumps my risk from a 1% chance of getting it to 2%, so I'm not too concerned. The only other risk factor that made me look twice was an elevated risk of thromboembolism while on birth control, but my other genetic/lifestyle risk factors for blood clots are very low, so I'm not losing sleep over that one either.

That is actually just a small sample of all the results I had, but a lot of them are more obscure/less interesting or phenotypically obvious traits/risks.  One warning: if you are prone to hypochondria, this test may very well be more harmful than helpful, so keep that in mind.  I'm not, but I can picture someone like my brother being a basketcase over some of the elevated risk factors, like the Parkinson's one I mentioned above.

Lastly, if you are a science nerd like me, one of the coolest features is that if you're interested in learning more about a specific gene or the study that they cite as the source for associating an allele with a condition, it links you straight to the study on PubMed so you can look at the primary literature and form your own opinion about the study, if you so desire. For example, here is the study they link to for the IQ-breastfeeding trait.  Pretty awesome. They also update your profile when new studies are published about any of your biomarkers.

Alright, if anyone actually read that long thing, thanks for your time.  Has anyone else had this done, or one from another company? Any other interesting anecdotes about it?

Posts Will No Longer Be in Google Reader

I'm un-privatizing temporarily to make you aware that even if you have access to the blog when it's in restricted mode, new posts will not appear in Google Reader.

I know this is a pain, and know from experience that it makes it harder to keep up with restricted access blogs than public ones.  Bookmarks, blog-tracking apps, etc can help with this. Despite those options, I anticipate this being the most significant source of attrition in readership, but can't really do much about the way Google/Blogger have this set up.

I suppose this is another "last" chance to send me your email if you want access to the blog when I put it back on private mode (very soon).