If I've understood right, RP has talked about cells needing to take up water to produce new cells/grow new tissue. Estrogen is needed (briefly) to initiate growth in some situations, and part of how it does this is by increasing the water in the cells. Have I got this right?
Gwyneth on youretopia says that swelling is a necessary part of the process of recovering and repairing the damage done by starvation. This is her area of expertise and experience. In the context of her audience, people who have a high risk of death or severe damage from restrictive eating disorders, her priority is to encourage people to eat a lot and not to restrict anything. She does not recommend avoiding PUFAs, and she presents the 'EFA's as genuinelly essential.
Migraines may involve swelling of brain tissue. PUFAs, stress hormones (eg estrogen, histamine, serotonin), and other aspects of disregulated water probably contribute to this. The mainstream seem to have fairly uncertain ideas about vascular dilation and/or neurological causes.
So my questions are:
1. If there is damage to repair in the cranium, from injury, undereating, poisoning, or other stress, does repair necessarily entail some swelling? My guess is it does while tissues still have a lot of PUFA to release under stress. Will PUFAs reduce in the brain tissue as they do in other tissue with dietary PUFA restriction? Once they are reduced, is swelling still inevitable during repair?
2. If swelling is necessary for repair inside my head, does that mean any measures I take to relieve acute pain during an attack are inherently blocking healing, and condemning me to more future migraines? This would be useful for informing my approch to pain releif drugs etc.
3. I have a small head (some members of my family have much larger ones). I don't know if this is my natural-sized head, or whether it is a sympom of childhood low metabolism/malnutrition/hyperventilation etc, along with my narrow face and crammed teeth. Does a small skull in adulthood entail more vulnerability to pain from swelling/vascular dilation? If this is the case, I may need to resign myself to some level of ongoing vulnerability that I can't eliminate (even if I can find ways to reduce frequency etc).
I don't know if this applies to me or not.
I have had quite a few blows to the head over the years (no noticable concussions).
Nobody but me has ever suggested that I have been under-eating - on the contrary, people seem to think I eat a lot, and I'm not skinny (not particularly fat either)). But I have been hungry a lot and seem to run out of glycogen quickly compared with most people I know.
We've just found out that we may have been exposed to some environmental poisons over the last few years we weren't previously aware of (lead and arsenic at least).
I don't think my brain is working anywhere near as well as I want it to.
So maybe there is structural damage to repair, or maybe there are some toxic heavy metals in there, or maybe the migraines and sometimes poor concentration/slow thinking are just a consequence of transient brain stress conditions, which can be avoided by addressing the current conditions. I've had lots of good advice from you kind and knowledgable folks on the latter, I'm trying some of them, and will try more, but no improvement yet.
I'd be tempted to ask RP these questions if I had access to contact him.
Can anyone shed light?
Gwyneth on youretopia says that swelling is a necessary part of the process of recovering and repairing the damage done by starvation. This is her area of expertise and experience. In the context of her audience, people who have a high risk of death or severe damage from restrictive eating disorders, her priority is to encourage people to eat a lot and not to restrict anything. She does not recommend avoiding PUFAs, and she presents the 'EFA's as genuinelly essential.
Migraines may involve swelling of brain tissue. PUFAs, stress hormones (eg estrogen, histamine, serotonin), and other aspects of disregulated water probably contribute to this. The mainstream seem to have fairly uncertain ideas about vascular dilation and/or neurological causes.
So my questions are:
1. If there is damage to repair in the cranium, from injury, undereating, poisoning, or other stress, does repair necessarily entail some swelling? My guess is it does while tissues still have a lot of PUFA to release under stress. Will PUFAs reduce in the brain tissue as they do in other tissue with dietary PUFA restriction? Once they are reduced, is swelling still inevitable during repair?
2. If swelling is necessary for repair inside my head, does that mean any measures I take to relieve acute pain during an attack are inherently blocking healing, and condemning me to more future migraines? This would be useful for informing my approch to pain releif drugs etc.
3. I have a small head (some members of my family have much larger ones). I don't know if this is my natural-sized head, or whether it is a sympom of childhood low metabolism/malnutrition/hyperventilation etc, along with my narrow face and crammed teeth. Does a small skull in adulthood entail more vulnerability to pain from swelling/vascular dilation? If this is the case, I may need to resign myself to some level of ongoing vulnerability that I can't eliminate (even if I can find ways to reduce frequency etc).
I don't know if this applies to me or not.
I have had quite a few blows to the head over the years (no noticable concussions).
Nobody but me has ever suggested that I have been under-eating - on the contrary, people seem to think I eat a lot, and I'm not skinny (not particularly fat either)). But I have been hungry a lot and seem to run out of glycogen quickly compared with most people I know.
We've just found out that we may have been exposed to some environmental poisons over the last few years we weren't previously aware of (lead and arsenic at least).
I don't think my brain is working anywhere near as well as I want it to.
So maybe there is structural damage to repair, or maybe there are some toxic heavy metals in there, or maybe the migraines and sometimes poor concentration/slow thinking are just a consequence of transient brain stress conditions, which can be avoided by addressing the current conditions. I've had lots of good advice from you kind and knowledgable folks on the latter, I'm trying some of them, and will try more, but no improvement yet.
I'd be tempted to ask RP these questions if I had access to contact him.
Can anyone shed light?