I’m the weirdo who faints and has 20 minute non-epileptic seizures from time to time.  I swear I don’t do it on purpose, and not that often.  My version’s triggers are sudden unexpected pain, menstrual cramps, prolonged standing in the hot summer sun, that one IUD insertion, and any injection containing epinephrine as a component.  My best guess as to the cause is some kind of beta receptor supersensitivity.  I can’t do caffeine, I can’t do Sudafed, and to stop anaphylaxis, one puff of albuterol will work.  To drop my resting heart rate from 150 down to 75 during pregnancy, half of the lowest possible dose of atenolol was used.

I’m also an athlete.  I’m training for a half-ironman triathlon this summer.  I’m better than the average person at body awareness.  Having spells of presyncope while standing in line at the grocery store, or standing around at my kids’ soccer games, is just something I’ve been dealing with for over 20 years now, and I thought it was normal!

To prevent fainting, I will often choose to sit instead of standing.  I will lean against a wall if it is available.  I will shift my weight from foot to foot, or gradually clench and unclench my leg muscles on a continuous and automatic basis.  I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t even think about it.  I consume more salt than the average person, but not an excessive amount.  In my reading, I’ve discovered that I needed to add potassium to my salt, so I did.  Training and races go better for me if I’ve got sufficient electrolytes.  I’m not the hypovolemic type, I just don’t want to ever be dehydrated.  I also can not stop a hard interval suddenly.  I’ll always keep moving after a hard training effort because abrupt heart rate drops suck.

I got a fitness tracker, and started watching my heart rate.  I knew it was more variable than the average person from my earlier heart rate monitor use, but I had no idea about the volatility I was experiencing.  My heart rate, just sitting at a computer, can be as low as 44 or as high as 134.  No particular reason.  A dizzy spell standing in my kitchen was caused by an abrupt drop in heart rate from 106 to 49, followed by a slow rise back up.

Unfortunately, beta-blockers are a banned substance in the races I seek to participate in.  I can see why, because they slow the response time just enough to be dangerous.  Also, my history of food allergies, asthma, and Reynaud’s phenomenon make them less than a desirable choice on a daily basis.  I did, however, manage to secure a small supply of a 24 hour version and a 3 hour version for particular high risk situations.  They really work.  I didn’t know that you’re supposed to stand up out of a chair or on the pool deck without dizziness.  They’re terrific for performance anxiety, and to keep me from trembling whenever I watch exciting TV.  Oh yeah, that’s not normal either, but I’ve been doing it for years.

I’m still not on any full-time medication, because the risks outweighed the benefits, but as I get older, that could change.  I wonder how people dealt with this 5000 years ago?  They probably didn’t do anything other than lie down when they needed to.  I’m still driving, because it never happens when I’m driving, and even if it ever did, I have sufficient warning time.  However, sympathetic nervous system hyperactivity is a risk factor for osteoporosis and heart disease.  I can see why.  It takes me longer to heal or recover from my athletic training than the average person because my sleep is sometimes interrupted by adrenaline surges.

Meditation helps a lot.  It can prevent adrenaline surges from being as big as they were in the past, and that can keep the heart rate drops from being as large, which reduces cerebral hypoperfusion issues.  Breathwork also helps a lot, although I can’t do the full Wim Hof method, because I’m not interested in raising my heart rate up to the 150s through simple hyperventilation, and then shivering for minutes afterward.  I can do a very abbreviated version.  There are more kinds of breathwork than that.  There’s the slow version, breathing in for 7 seconds and out for 11 seconds.  There’s the square breath version, breathing in, pausing, breathing out, and pausing for the same amount of time each.  There’s also breathing fire, breathing Earth, and more energy flow stuff that I don’t want to get into.

Does lightheadedness while standing around affect my life, even if I faint on average less than once a year?  Of course it does!  I can’t do the standing around thing on a regular basis, so I would never get a job involving standing on my feet all day.  No teaching, no cashiering, no acting, no military (asthma already got me out of that one), no factory assembly lines, and no baggage handling, because weightlifting is dangerous with a wonky autonomic nervous system.  I can’t think very well on my feet, because if I’m standing, I’m automatically in a low level state of lightheadedness.  Courtroom lawyer work is not my cup of tea, nor is singing in the choir, although I do love singing.  If I ever needed to do these things, I would insist on a daily beta-blocker of half the lowest possible dose, or I’d suck it up and accept fainting as a part of getting the job done.

I vastly prefer lifestyle changes to drugs.  Sometimes drugs work better, but if I can live without them, I will.

I’ve been listening to the best tinfoil ever.  It’s all about the speculation about underwater civilizations co-existing on the planet, with huge underwater metal mining operations that crawl along the ocean floor, and have tiny ships that move in excess of 250 miles per hour underwater.  My inner critic is like, yeah right, the physics of water would make that speed just a little bit unlikely.  I suppose I needed something fun about mermen and mermaids to go with all of those ancient fish religions, including the pope’s fish hat.  That would explain the UFOs.  They’d be fish people UFOs, Earth based, but not human based, and the underwater Antarctica bases would be theirs as well.  Isn’t rampant speculation fun?

What really sparked my interest, though, was the notion that space aliens are going to return and claim to own us as their slaves, and that we should be legally disputing that claim.  I suppose if we can’t be bothered to get off the planet and visit the local planning office at Alpha Centauri, we deserve the destruction of our planet?  It seems that the fish people created humans, and then the space aliens lied to us and said that they created us instead in order to assert ownership over us.  See, that’s the bit about polytheism and animism that is so much more functional than monotheism on pantheism.  The creator god may not be the sustainer god.  The creator god may have been a slave himself, and his work product owned by another god.  The creator goddess may have died, and Earth’s inheritance may have been stuck in contested interplanetary court proceedings for over 10,000 years.  Maybe the inhabitants of Earth earned their freedom from slavery thousands of years ago.  Maybe the inhabitants of Earth were never owned by others until found and possessed.  How does the interplanetary law of possession work anyway?  Is the Earth eligible for an alien court guardian ad litem?

This notion has been in the movies and TV shows.  It’s all over the place if you know what to look for.  Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5.  It’s in the fiction books as well.

Remember how I said that I didn’t think there was alien contact with Earth, because their microbiology would be different than ours and cause serious life impacts?  Well, what if space is filled with space-faring microbes and fungi, continually raining down upon the planet from above, and obscuring the space-station and satellite equipment?  Poor Hubble Telescope mirrors, always getting a film of algae on them.  What if space is filled with water bubbles, containing space-faring life?  If that were true, then aliens could come and go without impacting life on Earth quite so much, because the solar wind would be like the bloodstream, bringing bacteria and other microlife from here to there throughout the galaxy.

If there are space-faring aliens, capable of stepping outside of the ever-present now, there would be more than one kind.  Would they fight over the ownership of humans?  Are humans classified as dependent, or property?  Or are they classified as sovereign and therefore have no protectors?  Ah, there’s the rub.  Not all slavery is as bad as freedom to die in poverty and filth and rot.  Sometimes, people join the Army and become slaves because it is better than the alternative.  So, this still has the elements of consent, and giving away your power.  When there is a chain of inheritance at stake, you need to make sure you’ve found all the possible heirs.  When there is a contract at stake, you need to make sure it isn’t fraudulent or void.  You also need to make sure that the property is spelled out precisely.  “Show me the paper” isn’t just for mortgages.  It is necessary for intergalactic treaties as well.  Did the signatory actually have the authority to sign away the descendants’ rights for eternity?  Was there an interruption in the chain of authority by conquest?  If stolen, can the rightful owner be found?  What about adverse possession?  Can one alien species adversely possess the Earth for the prescribed period of time while paying their taxes?  Why do I assume that there are intergalactic taxes?  What are the taxes anyway, cow adrenal glands and teenage boy testosterone in injectable form?  Or was it gold?  Nah, more likely to be copper and Moscovium.