Hi, I'm Tyler Alterman, cognitive-science-researcher-turned-entrepreneur, 31 years old, and I have a mysterious gut condition. It has been more or less disabling me for over 4 years.

I went from being a happy person known for extreme amounts of energy to being a depressed bum who feels like poopy all the time. Since getting 9 different diagnoses from 9 different medical professionals and doing some self-experimentation, I'm now somewhere in between these two poles. ...But the condition remains undiagnosed and unsolved, hence this website designed for people who might help me solve it.

Right now I'm looking for is people who have a causal understanding of the gut-brain system.

UPDATE 1/21/24: I’m doing much better these days. I’m at maybe 80-85% of where I use to be – up from something like 45% three years ago. Woohoo! However, I’ve been hovering at 80-85% for 2 years now, so I’ll probably work on my gut thing again soon. It’s really unclear what exactly helped, but here are some things I have higher confidence about:

• Motegrity/prucalopride most likely cured the constipation, permanently
• Candibactin AR seemed pretty helpful for specifically my set of symptoms, it probably did reign in whatever SIBO or SIFO I had
• Most conditions like this are at least partially psychosomatic. Here are some things which helped a lot:
  • Moving near friends who I love in the city where I feel alive (NYC)
  • Finding projects that get me out of bed every day (eg https://fractalnyc.com/)
  • Not beating myself up for being dramatically less able to work in a “grindset” style. I’m still not able to work in this style for more than an hour or two a day, and only when the right body-mind state arrives. That’s OK, I’m just less productive in that way now and have found other ways to be productive.
• Also working with “woo” practicioners – bodyworkers, energy healers, etc – regularly had immense effects, bigger than anything else. But they would last only for a few hours. I still don’t know what would happen if I saw one of these people regularly. I’ll probably still explore this, but to be honest, I’m kind of allergic to their aesthetic. Big disclaimer here that maybe many (most?) professionals in this domain are quacks, and so I would be very discerning when picking one (and not talk yourself into believing that it’s working).

Anyway, the info below hasn’t been updated for over six months, so please treat it as archival.

Table of contents

⏳ Before and after images

Before gut condition

After gut condition

Other images (click to englarge)

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😓 Symptoms