Want to live a long and fulfilled life as a man? Exercise vigorously (including lifting heavy things), get married/have a long term COMMITTED relationship, have some close male friendships, and put others needs above your own.
@sondraa and help with feeling/strength in the arm. For an elite athlete it can be devastating, but it can be treated with management, possibly surgery.
@sondraa Depends on his symptoms. Neurogenic TOS is a diagnosis of exclusion (not many, if any, reliable tests/measures to rule it in) and typically treated symptomatically. Bottom portions of the nerves that run out of the neck/upper back cross over the 1st rib/under the collarbone 1/2
Oxygen almost ended the world once.
Around 2.4 billion years ago, oxygen wasn't fresh air. It was poison. Early life forms avoided it, relying on anaerobic metabolism instead.
Then cyanobacteria started using photosynthesis, splitting water and releasing O₂ as waste. At first, the planet soaked it up into oceans, rocks, and iron. But eventually, Earth couldn't absorb it fast enough, and oxygen began building up in the atmosphere.
For anaerobic life, this was a chemical apocalypse.
These organisms were not built to handle free oxygen. So once O₂ started building up, it reacted with their cells like acid, fucking up proteins, DNA, and the cellular systems keeping them alive.
Basically, oxygen was chemically burning them alive from the inside. Much of the anaerobic life on Earth died off.
Scientists call it the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. One of the biggest biological die-offs in Earth’s history.
But not all life died.
Hundreds of millions of years later, eukaryotic cells started swallowing oxygen-eating bacteria, which became mitochondria and turned the toxic oxygen into energy.
Eventually, atmospheric oxygen formed an ozone shield, reducing the deadly UV exposure and making it possible for life to move from ocean to land.
And somehow, against all odds, here you are, a doomscrolling mouth breather.