Was my face really just bloated all along? I look like I lost 50 pounds in a day. Lymphatic Drainage

9:17 PM

All the before / after photos were taken today. There is a night and day difference. For the first time in 1.75 months I’m extremely happy taking selfies again.

9:35 PM

The explanation for how this all works, is that I theorized I had water retention and facial edema from minoxidil. Even when I was fasting for five days, it was odd to me that my face was still so round and bloated looking. It turns out you can drain your face of fat, but still retain water. Unless you are moving and sweating, the liquid just remains pooled up in your face. I was lying down the whole time while fasting, not sweating at all, hence no change in my facial water retention.

The entire past 1.75 months I did no activities that made me sweat profusely. I did do some strength training and other workouts, I did walk over 10k steps a day on average while I was in Seattle and Vancouver, but I didn’t sweat much. Overall unless you are sweating, your lymphatic system is not going to drain any liquid from your face.

i thought the whole lymphatic system with gua sha and everything was a myth. It turns out that’s not the case. The lymphatic system actually does exist, and pushing a gua sha stone around your face following the lymphatic lines actually do push the lymph node and other liquids out. Running and sprinting is the body’s main way of doing it. I don’t know the process of how it all works, that’s just how it all works.

Facial water retention is a common side effect of minoxidil, and occurs in around 3% or more of users. Some people’s faces blow up really round. For me, it was just hard to notice. It did happen to me, but I didn’t notice, no one else noticed, so it wasn’t something I tried to address. My eye bags were prominent though, and I resolved that quickly, but there were still underlying issues apparently.

The idea that made me think that perhaps my face is still bloated, was other users posting about it. They posted that months later, their face was still bloated, so I considered that perhaps I’m experiencing this too, and the “off” feeling I kept getting was due to this.

How I drained my face of liquid was I ate zero sodium, all vegan food obviously, lots of fruits and vegetables, drank a lot of dandelion root tea (arrived from Amazon yesterday) which is a diuretic that forces you to pee more, and finally the action that caused the most lymphatic drainage: I ran / sprinted for around 15 minutes. I would have ran for longer, but I didn’t have enough stamina. I basically went all out trying to sweat as much as possible. I walked for 45 minutes total before/ after too.

The coolest event of the day, other than seeing these facial changes, was a a young woman said hi to me. It was after I ran for 15 minutes, and I walked 20 minutes back. The lymphatic drainage was occurring. There was a blonde girl walking her dog on the path, I was on the right side of the path, since you are supposed to walk on the right as a common courtesy, and she was on the left from my perspective. Anyway she moved over to my side and got in front of me, pulling her dog over and said “hi!” Literally, and I was so blown away, but I just nodded at her and walked to the left and kept on going. I’m such a fucking idiot. Anyway this gave me a huge confidence boost. I walked with a stride back home. I will probably never see her again in my entire life.

This is actually incredible. I’m starting to see more and more of my “past” self.

It’s all qualitative, but when I take a selfie, I no longer feel like a freak or that something is “off” as much as I did a few hours ago. I was actually just barely able to go outside to jog, because I felt like so much of a freak. I walked with a hat and tried to hide my face as much as possible, I even considered wearing a mask. I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m so hyped. I’m so happy. I’m so excited.

wow. I no longer fear going outside. Although I still can’t really due to microneedling recently, and it hasn’t been 72 hours yet. I only ran outside after 7 PM, after it said the UV rating in the area was a 0, and I still wore a hat.

Anyway this stuff is exciting.