# What Helped Me - Kale, Blood, CPAP, X-tiamine, Methylphenidate

Here are some things that in the last 6 months have helped me a lot, mainly with handling chronic fatigue and ADHD. This post is very quickly thrown together and it seems more appropriate for a short form, however just in case this is exactly the information that somebody needs to hear, I'd like to increase the visibility by making it a regular post.

I did take [bupropion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RXAmPpDGxABANaNrB/johannes-c-mayer-s-shortform?commentId=CZbs59SpSgNkdTtoh) in the past as an antidepressant. However, I have discovered that eating 500g of well-cooked kale works better than Bupropion an antidepressant. Bupropion works ok but gives me insomnia. I put frozen pre-chopped kale in a pressure cooker and heat it at maximum heat until the maximum pressure is reached. Then I continue to heat the pot such that it stays at approximately maximum pressure for 15 minutes, and then I let it cool down on its own.

Starting to take 600mg benfotiamine daily might have had a big positive effect but I have not confirmed this rigorously. I am borderline diabetic which is why I think this might be important. 

I am also eating 200ml of pig's blood once or twice a week. I put it in a pod and steam it for 15-25 minutes until it turns into a solid pudding-like substance. Nuking it also works. It might be the case that I am very bad at absorbing the iron supplements that I tried so far. Or maybe blood has another effect like raising IGF-1 or something like that. I think I fucked myself by not eating meat for many years. Empirically it seems that I am more awake when eating meat, but when eating blood this effect is much stronger, which seems like weak evidence that iron is the issue as there is much more in blood.

I also got a CPAP device, which probably helps significantly.

I know the blood thing sounds probably ridiculous but I am very sure that it has a very strong effect. Even before the CPAP I ate blood every day for some time, and it made me think that I cured myself because I was just so much more awake. But with CPAP and potentially the other things it got even better.

Also, I am very sure that the kale has an antidepressant effect. First I stopped eating kale two times and each time I could feel my depression coming back. This effect was so strong that I googled if kale had an antidepressant effect which Google told me it has. I did not start eating kale because I thought it would cure my depression but just because I thought it was a generally healthy thing to do.

Also, I now have a methylphenidate prescription which is pretty magical. I can now steer my mind. Before my mind was going into random directions all the time. It still does this, but making a course correction is very easy on methylphenidate whereas before it was almost impossible, even when I noticed that I was on track. 

Even when I am not on methylphenidate I am just feeling a lot better and my best guess is that the things mentioned before are responsible for that, or at least some subset of them. But just sticking to the thing that works (it has been working for over 2 months now I think) seems to be the best course of action right now, instead of trying to figure out e.g. how much of a benefit benfotiamine really gives.

So in summary probably at least some of the things listed here are spurious but I hope for somebody in my previous situation this is a useful pointer in the right direction.