u/Top_Development_1777

I'm currently about 20yo, my period has not stopped for more than 3 weeks now, and it is neither very heavy nor very light. This is not surprising because I started another hormonal medication about 2 months ago, which finally fixed the serious issues that I had for years (I've tried a lot of other hormonal medications before, nothing worked for this issue). The only negative effect I've gotten is that my periods now go on with no end in sight and restart earlier than they're supposed to. I don't mind any of this if not for the consequence of anemia. I get zero pain whatsoever and the bleeding itself is manageable. However, I've started to have symptoms of anemia, and I need to fix it as soon as possible without going to the doctor (I'll explain why later).

I couldn't go to school this morning because I was so tired after I woke up, and I get insanely tired after just walking around a bit. I used to be able to walk 10km+ without feeling tired. One of the professionals whom I see once a week said I looked a lot more pale last week than the week before that. I still do have mental energy and sharpness and don't feel different at all when I just lie on my bed and look at my phone, but the moment I do something that involves physical exertion, I run out of energy.

At this point I am too tired to do all the research on this and just want some recommendations for the simplest supplement components to look out for and buy at the mall tomorrow (it's late at night right now) to address the anemia.

Please don't tell me to see a doctor on this. I've already done my best with figuring out my hormones (with a doctor) but can't get any new medications (including any kind of birth control or other hormonal medications) or procedures done without my parents' consent since the stupid age of medical autonomy is 21 in my country. I have 13 more months to tough it out and I WILL see doctors with my own autonomy to get all my issues addressed once I turn 21.

My parents are against me getting any hormonal adjustments and would give me a lot of trouble if they found out that I was having problems like this. They would also force me to go off my current hormonal medication, which are the only things that have ever helped me mentally function at a basic level. I've adjusted my regimen through many years and this is the only optimal point by all other metrics, so I can't really change it.

I just want to do what I can to fix the anemia before I get medical autonomy, which is basic supplements (I also need cheap ones because I really can't afford much right now). Please recommend some.

I (20) have already been struggling with finding proper food to eat for a long time with just the strict restriction on wheat/gluten, because I live in a small Asian country which has nonexistent efforts to look out for people who cannot eat wheat/gluten, apart from the rare expensive cafe/restaurant here and there. In the last 2 weeks, I've had unavoidable accidental exposures twice, once from a dental procedure and once from my university event deciding to use flour to play the very first game and get everyone covered in flour (even though I sat out).

Then, 8 days ago, I got the Tdap booster shot because it was required by my university course. The last time I had it, I had a high fever and was miserable for an entire week, so this was already not looking good in terms of how my immune system would (over)respond to the shot.

Well, 4 days after the shot, I decided to try some porridge made from buckwheat groats I bought online (this was after trying and failing to make healthy sustenance food and eating really horribly for a long time). Unfortunately the package listed "may contain traces of wheat and barley", but I tried to be careful by washing it 6 times before cooking. Well, I developed anaphylactic symptoms pretty quickly although my blood oxygen ended up being okay when I arrived at the ER (I didn't have an epipen). I don't know if it's the buckwheat itself or possible contamination at this point. I don't even know what my exact problem with wheat/gluten is, because I went strictly gluten-free 2 years ago after my symptoms got really bad, I had important exams coming up and was too broke to get proper testing anytime soon so I just tried staying away from wheat and all my symptoms went away. Anyway I react pretty fast to even a crumb's worth of accidental ingestion (within minutes) and continue to have a horrible dull ache in my GI system, horrible mood, and general ill feeling for up to a few days after that. Nothing has shown to make the symptoms better except alcohol which numbs the symptoms but causes more damage.

Well, I decided to buy brown rice after I got out of the ER because (1) I was hungry and had nothing to eat (2) I had always been eating rice products (even in snacks and supplements) on a daily basis all my life. I made sure to get a brand that's gluten-free (and it's also organic). When I was washing the rice, my hand in contact with the water started itching. My mouth, lips, and any part of my body that came into contact with the cooked rice also started itching, I had stomach ache and brain fog after eating it. I have a twice daily hormonal supplement (I have a verified deficiency) that I can't just stop taking out of nowhere, it contains rice flour, I've already bought another brand without rice or any other potential allergens as an ingredient but it's going to take a few days to ship. Every single time I take it, the allergic symptoms get worse. Now it's getting close to how I react to accidental wheat ingestion. I hate this.

To make things even worse, I bought some potatoes that I would regularly buy from the supermarket and cleaned and boiled them. I didn't get the itchiness reaction to it and things seemed fine at first, but an hour or so later, I started feeling more and more horrible, like classic food poisoning, eventually got myself to throw up and felt a lot better. I've only actually thrown up 5 times in the last 14 years despite having GI discomfort a lot of the time, so it takes a lot for me to actually throw up.

The potatoes looked fine. I cut off any parts that looked suspicious, like slightly sprouted, already. I still had doubts that it might have been improper preparation, so I got my parents to help me prepare another bag of the potatoes I bought in a way that has been safe. Well, I started getting the same symptoms but less intense from just eating one chunk of it so I stopped eating it (didn't have to throw up but took about an hour to fully feel ok again?).

I also tried some plain steamed corn and had a similar reaction as rice (minus the GI discomfort?) but milder so I decided to stop eating it to be safe.

I still have to note that ever since I got the Tdap vaccine, finished my course of antibiotics for some dental thing, and started taking probiotics at the same time, I've been getting GI discomfort + severe fatigue + brain fog for at least an hour after eating ANYTHING that contained a good amount of fat, that I used to be able to tolerate. I also had fatty stools yesterday. So at least for now, I can't substitute my diet with high fats instead of carbs. I've also been taking famotidine for 2 days before the vaccine and continued taking it for about a week after the vaccine (I don't usually take it at all) so that might be a major factor to why I've been having issues digesting fats.

The ER has referred me to an allergist and a dietitian but I haven't received the appointment date for the allergist yet. The dietitian appointment is in more than a month's time. It's going to take at least a few weeks before I see the allergist. I'm not rich enough to go the faster route in my country.

I will get checked again for wheat allergy (last time I had the IgE blood test in another country, it was negative for wheat but I hadn't even had a minor accidental exposure in over half a year at that time so I don't know if it could've been missed), plus all grains (including buckwheat etc.), potatoes and other food items. I have a known severe allergy to dust mites and have been taking antihistamines daily for like 10+ years, it's not enough to relieve the symptoms half the time, so I'm definitely gonna get immunotherapy for that plus anything food related that I turn out to be allergic to.

Not being able to eat rice, on top of wheat, is way worse than not being able to eat wheat alone (which is already really bad). Practically all my favorite snacks after I went on the strict diet had rice flour in them.

I'm going to keep trying but I fucking hate everything. I've been through A LOT of horrible shit mentally and emotionally ever since a really young age but at least I had \*a bit\* more control over how my response was, than my body's fucking response to such normal things that are EVERYWHERE and in FUCKING EVERYTHING. Not to mention that I'm a good candidate for MCAS and everything. I'm not going to downplay psychological trauma (it may also very well be the bulk of the reason that I'm suffering from so much physical malfunction today), in my experience it has been more overwhelming, excruciating, and extreme to go through, and ruins more aspects of your ability to experience life, but having physical ailments ruin your life is a lot more \*despair-inducing\* because you are at the mercy of current medical advancements. It's a bit like, "I know I can recover when I get to a point somewhere far in the future (it takes SO MUCH but you still know where to go), but it hurts so much that I don't even want to fight anymore" VS "I really want to fight for myself, but I don't even know if there exists a point somewhere far in the future where I could recover". I dealt with the former for more than half my life, got on a decent upward track, and now I'm dealing with the latter.

I'm a medical student (just finished my first year) but if my health crashes further, I really don't know if I can graduate and actually make it. My drive to fight is really up there, but my actual ability to fight... I don't know.

I (MF13) am full of disdain for some of my teachers.

I am also pissed at the homework they give, so I want to talk shit about them all over the blank parts of the pages before submitting my homework. But I don't want to make it so obvious what I'm talking about so they don't straight up call my parents and have a Very Serious Chat.

I've tried morse code but it's too inefficient to write. Like why did they even invent that thing?? I don't want to do Korean because Kpop and Kdrama is only for basic people WHOM I DO NOT WANT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH and also East Asian language eww. White language better. Greek alphabet reminds me too much of math (eww). So I figured I should do this in Cyrillic.

Nowadays got AI, so if I wrote an actual language then my teachers could easily translate what I was saying about them with their phone camera. My genius 600IQ plan is to write English words, as close to how they are pronounced as possible, in Cyrillic, onto my worksheets, so I can freely talk shit about my teachers and they wouldn't be able to read what I wrote. This is the Ultimate Power Trip 😎😎😎

However I do not know Jack Shit about Russian except idi nahui cyka blyat and the reverse R thing

and I am also too lazy to download luodingo or read wikipedia.

Thus I am looking for native speakers on Reddit to teach me for free (im 13 you know I have no way to pay you) please help out a poor student thank you

P.S. to spice things up and confuse the AI, I want to include characters from all the languages with Cyrillic (I don't know how many languages there are and I can't name them and I'm also too lazy to Google so pls native speakers spoonfeed me with info pleasee

I know that Japanese would be pretty easy to purely learn to read because of the frequent use of Chinese-derived characters and katakana (add in some knowledge on a bunch of expressions in hiragana and you should be able to understand a decent amount of text). But I'm curious about other commonly used languages. Which ones would be easier and which ones would be more difficult to learn enough to understand a good amount of text in?

I am not diagnosed, I've had *relatively* mild hEDS symptoms that were really noticeable ever since I went through some major shit when I was 6yo. Things got pretty bad in my teens, then I went on testosterone (as AFAB) for semi-related reasons, which made me feel like I finally had a normal amount of strength and energy at first but made my symptoms get notably and progressively worse after 1-2 years on a male dose. Around 3 years in, I got a blood test for 17a-hydroxyprogesterone (17-OHP) because some doctor has found a correlation between a deficiency in that and progressively deteriorating symptoms fitting the descriptions of hEDS, MCAS, and POTS, which could be fixed with higher dose pregnenolone supplement for the vast majority of his patients. I fit the description very well so I went and got it checked, and indeed it was abnormally low. So I started pregnenolone 100-125mg/day about a month ago.

Well, it has helped with so many things (and will take some time to fully address the joint issues). But one of the most jarring changes I've observed is that my skin, which has ALWAYS been praised for being abnormally soft and almost "glowing" according to some people since my teen years, despite zero effort on my end to do anything to make it look better and using zero skincare products on my face, has become VERY rough and textured and definitely not anything above average when you're talking about skin quality. I never related to normal people's struggles to find the right skincare practices previously, while they said they could never make their skin look like mine no matter how hard they tried with their skincare. Well, now it is very clear that I will never be able to make my skin look like how it used to look like in this state, no matter how hard I try with skincare products as well. Guess this is how it feels like to be a typical person.

I never really asked for "superior" skin, and I'm not complaining about losing it in exchange for not feeling physically disabled anymore, but it's still quite interesting to have such a drastic change happen within a few days and lose this privilege in your appearance 😂

I always thought I just got lucky with my genetics and never had to worry about this for the rest of my life because I assumed that I would always have an advantage.

Also having good skin is the *only* good thing to *ever* come out of this medical problem, I really don't miss my wrists hurting from carrying normal objects like my phone and losing the energy to speed-walk or stand up in public transport like I did when I was younger etc. etc., I don't miss feeling too weak to do almost any normal physical activities like the other kids throughout growing up and just being blamed for not being mentally strong enough/thinking that I'm special and get to escape these or some bullshit.

If anyone wants me to explain the more medical side of this in the comments, I'll probably do it tomorrow because I am quite tired today.