Alyssa Luck

Personal Posts

About Alyssa: Background, Biases, and Philosophy on Health and Disease

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Last updated on April 21, 2022.

Most of us decide whether a bit of information is trustworthy in large part on the basis of who has conveyed it to us. You shouldn’t trust everything people say on the internet, and I’m no exception. This post is meant to give you a sense of who I am as a person, what my biases are, and the perspective I’m writing from, so that you can figure out whether you’ll be taking the information I provide with a grain of salt (or several).

Table of Contents
What qualifies you to talk about health and disease?
Why do you bother writing and sharing this stuff? Do you make money from it?
How do you do research for and write your articles?
Are you one of those anti-Western medicine types?
Are you one of those woo-woo New Age-y energy medicine types?
What’s your perspective on the causes of and solutions for chronic illness?
Are you anti-vegan? Anti-low-carb?
What does your own diet look like?
What are your current research interests and personal goals?

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My IBD Story: Ulcerative Colitis, Restrictive Diets, Surgery, and Ongoing Exploration

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If I’m gonna be doling out IBD-related information, I figured I ought to share my own story with the infamous disease. I’ll be honest, it’s still hard for me to think about those early days – my life is pretty great right now, despite lingering symptoms, and I have great optimism for my future, but it’s uncomfortable recalling such dark times.

But I want to preface this post by saying that I’m incredibly grateful for all of it. Even the surgery – I would have chosen differently if I’d had more information, but I don’t regret it.

When I started this journey, I was smart, hardworking, and good-natured, but rigid and perfectionistic – I had no give to me. When things went wrong, I didn’t bend; I broke. I was so caught up in oughts I couldn’t see how things actually are (much less enjoy them), I became angered and impatient easily, and I took everything so very seriously. A good quality when things are serious, certainly – but not conducive to a happy life.

Perhaps from the outside, the change wasn’t so dramatic, but to myself, I’m almost unrecognizable now.

The girl who so identified with her beliefs (food, religious, or otherwise) that she would feel threatened by those who believed differently – she’s gone now. The girl who thought exclusively in black and white now delights in the whole spectrum of gray.

I’ve learned that good and done is better than perfect in my head, and that there’s no award for trying the hardest or suffering the most – in a fight with reality, reality always wins.

I’ve also gained access to the eternal playground of ideas and discoveries that is human health, and the endless wonder and fascination that affords. And much to my previous dismay and current elation, health is indeed so much more than the state of our physical bodies.

But enough of my philosophizing. Please enjoy the chronicles of Alyssa and her colon.

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Fecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT) for Pouchitis – My Experience

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Last updated April 23, 2022.

It has now been over two years since my experience with FMT, and I have still neglected to document it in any way. This is just atrociously bad n=1 experimentation protocol on my part, and kind of speaks to how tapped out I was by The Great Search for Answers. I think the effort I went through to find/secure a part in/complete the FMT trial was all I had left in me at the time, so after it was over, I entered a phase of Staunchly Ignoring The Problems. Which was honestly very necessary. Sometimes ya just gotta take a break, you know?

But I owe it to my future self and the general knowledge bank of the internet to document and share what I can, so here we are! If you just want the cliff notes/what I learned (there’s one exciting thing!), scroll to the bottom. Because per usual, this became way longer and more rambling than necessary.

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