How to cure a canker sore (also known as mouth sore or mouth ulcer)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001993/
http://dentistry.about.com/od/basicdentalcare/f/cankertreatment.htm

Right now I'm doing the warm/hot salt water rinse and hydrogen peroxide treatment.  I put one part hydrogen peroxide to one part water.  The hydrogen peroxide strength that I'm using is 3%.

How to remove lint from clothes

Do your clothes, especially black clothes get lint on them after washing?  Perhaps you used to use tape or try and brush out the lint and it does not go away easily? 

No more!  Use a lint brush.  The following are what they look like:
lint brush 1
lint brush 2

Note:  If there are some white spots left on your clothes that the lint brush is not removing, just wet your fingers with warmish water and rub the piece of clothing (works on black clothing) until the spot disappears.  When it dries it will remain invisible.

How to cure stye eye or chalazion at home

1) Put 1/2 teaspoon of salt into as hot water [~210mL] as you can stand to put on your eye.
2) Fold half of a standard-sized paper towel into a small rectangle.  Dip into warm/hot salty water and then apply to eyelid.  The paper towel will cool quickly, so dip it into the hot water again and apply.  Repeat this for 10-15 minutes, and do it 2-3 times a day.  [I did it twice a day for 15minutes in the morning and ~11 minutes at night and mine went away in 3-4 days].

Note:  if the water in your container/cup cools before the 10-15minutes is up, reheat in microwave to as warm/hot as you can bear.

Ingrown toenail removal: do it yourself

Before you start, you will need:  
-nail scissors
-needle-nosed (or bird beak) pliers, the finer and longer the tip, the better (helps to grasp small pieces of nail in tight spots)
-alochol (to sterilize the equipment you are using)
Optional but helpful:
-nail clipper with "hook" part that I think is for opening bottles (these bottles are not really made anymore).  This will help you to dig up nail that is wedged in the skin, then you can grab it with the pliers and pull it out.
-Tweezers, this can help to get some skin or nail that your pliers may not be able to get.  However, I recommend using a fine pliers over tweezers, because most tweezers just don't have the strength to rip out nail.

Steps:
1) Soak toe in hot water with 1 slightly heaped teaspoon of salt per ~210mL of water for 15 minutes.  This will make the next step much easier
**NOTE:  I no longer soak my toe in hot water before I cut out the ingrown portion of the toenail.  Sometimes I just do the procedure after I'm finished showering and sometimes with no immediate previous exposure of the nail to water.  An advantage to not soaking the toe first is that when you remove the toenail, it is more likely to rip out in one piece rather than break (as is more likely the case when the nail is soaked).**

2) Using a sterilized nail scissors (you can purchase this at your local pharmacy, Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada) push the tip between your toenail and nail bed close to the skin (on the side of the ingrown toenail), and cut the nail as far down to the root as you can go (i.e. until it just hurts too much to continue if it hurts at all).
3) Using a sterilized needle-nosed or bird-beak pliers (preferably one with teeth), grasp the nail portion that you just cut tightly in the pliers (and I emphasize tightly, otherwise the pliers will slip off the moist nail), and slowly but continuously peel/rip away the nail and its attached incised portion from your toe, I would say to pull the pliers in the direction towards your heel, but do what you think is best; the goal is to remove the nail sliver as well as the incised portion of nail

There may be a little blood, but other than that, you should be able to walk right away on it.

Note:  to sterilize equipment, soak a paper towel with alcohol and rub/hold onto equipment for 30 seconds.
If you are using a pliers that has been used for mechanical work, make sure to clean it thoroughly.
 

Muse: Manic and understanding lyrics?

Although I have only been psychotic/manic twice in my life, I want to write about one strange thing that I experienced/noticed.  During my second psychosis, I was able to understand the lyrics to songs that I would normally not  be able to understand, i.e. discern the words.  This is especially in fast moving/paced songs, rap.  When I'm on medication and prior to my illness, I am/was not able to understand most/many of the words in many songs.

This just adds to the interesting phenomenon in my previous post that manic people (i.e. from bipolar) are associated with ingeniousness.  This is seen in the arts as well as sciences.  Examples include Vango as well as many doctors who are bipolar.  One psychiatric nurse told me that this is because of the amount of energy that manic/bipolar people have.  And indeed, manic people have high energy and a lot of thoughts/ideas.

Experience with my schizoaffective diagnosis

As my schizoaffective disorder reared its head near the end of my highschool years and into my first year of university (studying chemical engineering at that time), until now, I have lost many of my previous interests, which is not really a bad thing, but nonetheless it has happened.  This is probably due to both the symptoms of this illness and the antipsychotic (AP) medication that I take for it.  I learned in my Drugs and Human Behavior class that a man with bipolar disorder won in court to be taken off his bipolar medication because it was suppressing his creativity.  For those of you who don't know, research shows that madness is associated with genius, particularly in those who have bipolar disorder.  And, AP medication suppresses this in many people.  Modafinil has helped me to gain more energy, which has helped me to some extent to be more creative.
In fact, I started writing this blog while feeling a bit manic when having taken a generic form of olanzapine that was not working as a sedative and probably not as an AP either, that coupled with takeing 200mg of modafinil for two days in a row, and 100mg thereafter.

However, I still have a problem in that I am quite quiet in public settings, not finding creative or appropriate things to say.  Even as I look through the way I used to write in emails prior to my illness, I was a lot more "colourful" and "flavourful" in my writing, however, now I'm just factual, not really expressing much emotion through my text.  However, I am still able to recognize emotion in other people and would say that I have higher levels of empathy and recognizing others emotions than many people.  I feel that I am dry or not colourful when interacting in real-life, i.e. not much non-verbal expression.  Although I can realize this, it is not easy to change.  I do not always have on a serious face, I do smile, but, my non-verbal expression is too dry in my opinion.

Modafinil 3

After my last post, "Modafinil 2", I did take 200mg of modafinil divided into two doses throughout the day.  It did help, but the effects were not as strong as when I started modafinil, which I already explained as probably being because I was coming off of generic olanzapine which was not sedating to me thus I never experienced fatigue associated with that AP (antipsychotic).  The next day I took 1/2 of 10mg Zyprexa Zydis (I just used a knife to cut the OD [orally disintegrating] pill in half), and have been taking this 5mg of Zyprexa Zydis for 2-3 days now.  While on 5mg of Zyprexa Zydis these past few days I have been taking 100mg of modafinil upon waking and it has been allowing me to function in the day with about 10 hours of sleep per night.  Perhaps I could get up with less sleep, say 8-9 hours, but I feel quite tired in bed when waking up with that much sleep, and decide to sleep in for another 1-2 hours.  If I were to sleep for only 7-9 hours at this present time, I would be depending on modafinil to wake me up thoroughly, which it may be able to do.  As time goes on while I'm on 5mg of Zyprexa Zydis, I plan to eventually see if I can cut down my sleep and remain on 100mg of modafinil.  As I plan to resume full-time day studies in fall 2012, I may need to up the modafinil dosage to 200mg due to function on only 7-9 hours of sleep, but I'm hoping that 100mg will be sufficient.  The doctor originally prescribed that I use 200mg, however, I found that 100mg is enough so far for my purposes (part-time night student).

Modafinil 2

After taking 2-3 days off modafinil, I have started taking it again at 100mg in the morning and the results are worse than in my earlier post.  I still feel quite tired upon waking and throughout the day.  This may be due to Zyprexa Zydis 10mg having worked into my system more.  When I started modafinil, I just came off of a short trial of 10mg generic Olanzapine which was not good for my sleep and was not sedating.  I plan to try 200mg of modafinil tomorrow morning to see if it helps with the fatigue that I experience.  Actually, mid-way through today I had to take another 100mg because I was feeling too tired and have class in the afternoon.

Modafinil

Cut and dry version:  
Do you experience excessive fatigue in schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or bipolar disorder because of your sedative antipsychotic medication?  I've been in the same boat for 3 years and through an internet acquaintance have discovered a marvelous drug called MODAFINIL (Provigil in the US, Alertec in Canada) that has eliminated my prior sleep time of 12-14hours per night to a modest 7-9 hours per night.  I take 100mg of modafinil once I wake up.

After taking modafinil, my concentration, memory, and confidence have increased remarkably.  I was able to do some tough physics questions that I was unable to do prior.  Also, when I'm in class (I'm a science student at university) I am able to take notes without forgetting what the professor said and am able to take notes and both listen at the same time to the professor and write down the new information if needed.  Previously, I had serious problems with remembering sentences of normal length.

More information:  
I'll give some more information here for those of you who are interested.  I am schizoaffective.  I was first diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and then it changed to schizoaffective disorder.  I currently take 10mg of Zyprexa Zydis 2-3 hours before going to bed.  I've been on Zyprexa, Seroquel, Seroquel XR, Abilify, and Zeldox.  I haven't used Risperidone because it increases prolaction moreso than other antipsychotics and I'm afraid of developing gynaecomastia.  An antispychotic that I haven't tried is Invega.

I do find a difference in brand name versus generic antipsychotics.  For example, if I take generic olanzapine, I can not fall asleep properly at night and have sleep issues, however, with the brand name Zyprexa Zydis I fall asleep like a baby.

When I started modafinil on September 18th 2011 I took 200mg in the morning.  The next day I took 200mg again.  However, it was too stimulating for me so I cut it down to 100mg once a day taken in the morning and it has been great since.

Keywords:
Decrease sleep time in schizophrenia
Decrease sleep time in schizoaffective disorder

Edit:  In September 2011 I got the results from a sleep study that I did in October 2011.  It stated that I am missing slow wave sleep and that I have decreased sleep efficiency.  On the positive note, I did have REM sleep.