CHI 2017 and my health issue



I was never a healthy person, full of energy or strength. But I had enough energy for my work or personal life, so I didn’t care about it much. I was a sleep-a-lot person. When I was teenage, my friends are used to find me taking a nap at a corner of the dormitory, when we had an appointment but I didn’t show up. Still, I slept only 7-8 hours a day with occasional naps on weekends.

After 15 years, during my recent vacation in April, I had to sleep 10~11 hours a day. Even after sleeping those hours, I was tired and foggy thoughts. Someone told me sleeping too much can make me feel more tired. But when I sleep ~7 hours, it was hard to even wake up from the bed. Someone says I’m too lazy, but I disagree. I felt fatigues from my calves, too dried eyes. From time to time, I have severe eye pain in a morning, because it’s too dry and my eye lid is sticked to eye ball and pulls and pushes white part of my eye ball, makes wrinkles. It’s partially because I have slightly open eyes during sleep. So I try to use an eye patch to make sure that my eyes are completely closed, but it’s inconvenient. I also had inflammation in my right ear. All of these seem tiny problem, but have bugged me, made me feel less energetic in mornings. I also had upset stomach too often, which caused headache. I also had insomnia. Moreover, I felt I was becoming less sharp on thinking and more sensitive to external stimuli such as noise and light. It was difficult focus on my work and felt less confident in personal relationships.

Indeed, I was too sick to go to the last CHI afternoon sessions, last keynote, and parties. I felt that I wasted the traveling budget and my research time. (Actually I've missed a lot of research time because of my health issue.)

What’s happening to me? Am I just getting old? My mom seems more energetic than me, even though she sleeps less than me. So I did some check-ups during the vacation, and found out a lid to my health problem.

Some of the symptoms match to mine. My mom had similar problem to me, and didn’t have any problem after removing her uterus. It’s a little annoying because I have the problem because I’m a woman. Well, what can I do? I want to have a baby at some point in my life, so I just need to maintain my body better.

To help my estrogen problem, I need to 1) reduce my estrogen/Xenoestrogens consumption, 2) increase progesterone secretion, and 3) take of myself — less stress and more sports. My health will be the first priority for a while. I wish I can manage this problem well, and can do my best for my work and personal life!