Is Swelling Necessary For Brain Repair?

[tara]

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?

 

[aguilaroja]

... 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?...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...?

3. I have a small head ... I may need to resign myself to some level of ongoing vulnerability ....

I don't know about youretopia. There are more web forums than I could count. It's daunting simply to intermittently follow things on RPF, where I hope to learn and occasionally chime in, hoping to be of service. I have not had opportunity to review some of your other posts and the fuller context. So briefly:

(1) The Ray Peat/Gilbert Ling/Gerald Pollack/others notion of water as I understand and coarsely over-simplify is: Biological water is different than "chemical" water. H20 in the living state is highly order and in an intelligent relational array, rather than being a few inert atoms.

Water is necessary for life, and life functions best when water is in a better functional ("association induction" "structured") state. There is less ordered water in a swollen state, which may be a short term adaptation as part of inflammation and repair.

In my non-humble opinion, in a more optimally restorative "repair" state, there is ample water in an organized distribution without much if any swelling over the intermediate and long term.

In "progressive" health circles, there is a renewed idea that inflammation is a necessary part of the healing response. But that theme can be and is overdone. There is a bit of unfortunate overlap between the "inflammation is good for you" and the "suffering is good for you" viewpoints.

(2) I would suggest disregarding effects on "swelling" as a guide to choosing comfort measures for migraines. Since migraine pain can be disabling, the first priority is to find something effectively relieving. After that, finding restorative measures is the main thing. I have seen Dr. Peat's methods provide long term relief for dozens of persons (mainly women, since estrogen excess is a common factor) when previous years of expensive expert treatments did not do much.

(3) Please be at ease about head size. There are plenty of well functioning comfortable people with relatively small heads. You'll join the ranks of the comfortable and flourishing, as you further tune your inquiries and improvements.

---
(3a) The "vascular dilation" idea about migraine has been questioned for years, and is at best an incomplete description. Non-specific brain swelling is not a useful idea for migraine description or relief.

Diuretics ("water pills") to reduce swelling in general have not been good relief agents. And millions of people who take diuretics for other reasons seem to have no great relief from headaches AFAIK. Interestingly, the specific diuretic that increases carbon dioxide function (through bicarbonate), has some evidence for migraine relief in some circumstances. I am not recommending it here, just pointing out the overlap with the Ray Peat viewpoint about beneficial effects of CO2 in certain contexts.
---
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22367627

J Headache Pain. 2012 Jun;13(4):299-302. doi: 10.1007/s10194-012-0426-9. Epub 2012 Feb 25.
Acetazolamide for the prophylaxis of migraine in CADASIL: a preliminary experience.
Donnini I1, Nannucci S, Valenti R, Pescini F, Bianchi S, Inzitari D, Pantoni L.

"Acetazolamide was prescribed in seven patients; the mean duration of treatment was 6 months, and the daily dose ranged from 125 to 500 mg. Three patients had a total and sustained remission, while in two patients a reduction in attacks and an improvement of the headache intensity were recorded. In one of these, acetazolamide was deliberately taken only during the migraine attack and the beneficial effect started 1 h after administration. In two patients, the drug did not produce any beneficial effect."

 

[Suikerbuik]

Agree with aquilaroja.

According to research (Peat, Ling and others) the internal cell environment is a gell like state (colloid) also called protoplasm. Properties of a gell are, that gells shrink when you acidify them and swell when you alkalize them. CO2 will slightly acidify the cell environemt thus helps structure profoundly, while it also plays a role in the bohr effect, which simply means more dissolved oxygen thus more energy (ATP).

And ATP is another cardinal absorbent that will favor the resting state of a cell. The actin and myosin prefer potassium over sodium in this regard. And because extra-cellular concentrations of potassium are relatively low compared to sodium, more ATP (efficient energy production) will lead to less cell swelling (osmosis is behind this).

Balancing estrogen by progesterone and by getting a better liver function (nutrients are needed) estrogen issues will hopefully fade away.

Structure plays a role in auto-immunty too. The wrong inflammation leads to damage, and substances like histamine and serotonin and ultimately cell swelling. Inflammation can be good and wrong, it's really hard to say what is good and what is wrong in simple terms, if not impossible to make any statement about this. This all depends on the balance within the immune system and source of inflammation. I won't take pain as something necessarily to healing, it is in some cases, but certainly not the more the better (inflammation is going on in every one at this point in time, it is just severe when you feel it, and I doubt that is good or prefered).

It's too difficult to say where your migraine comes from and if they can be solved by these simple interventions. But things like substance P (SP), calcitonin gene related protein (CGRP), histamine, NO, and more. Are from a disbalance that can be solved, not saying that will be easy though, I have no simple answer for you unfortunately. And there's also no reason to think that migraine is in the genes, although you may indeed be susceptible to it, by some form of heritage.

Goodluck.

Edit: typos and word order. Should be better now .

 

[tara]

Thanks both of you for your well-informed thoughts.

I understand you don't follow all the forums on the web. :) The youreatopia one specialises in recovery from restrictive eating disorders. No need to pay any attention to this, unless it is relevant for you and yours. It is of interest to me not because I think anyone would diagnose me with an ED, but because I suspect milder undereating may have been a significant stress factor in some of my health issues.

I hope you are right that there is little benefit to enduring the pain, and that I can eventually recover.
Chronic hyperventilation seems likely to be part of the picture - but attempts to reduce this can trigger migraine sometimes too.
That increasing ATP would help makes sense to me - I guess that's what we are all trying to do.
I do use Progest-E. It feels helpful, but my migraine frequency has been increasing anyway.

The only drugs that I've tried that are effecive against the pain are triptans. I have read conflicting things about how they operate - whether they increase or decrease serotonin/serotonin effects. I think it causes vasoconstriction, which releieves pressure, but also reduces energy in the brain (and knocks me out). I think the known side effects are to increase the likelihood of more migraines, especially if taken often, to reduce brain function long term, and to become less effective the more you use them. I take sumatriptan often, and I'm not happy about it - I wonder if they are setting me up to have a worse problem. Any one know more about how it works?

Other drugs I would be interested in trying are:
cyproheptadine - but not available here
tianeptine - not available
lisuride - not sure if I can get this - any thoughts on this?
diphenhydramine - not sure if I can get this
acetazolamide - I'd read about it being prescribed for epilepsy, which seems related. The precautions and side-effects listed look a bit scary. Maybe it would be worth asking for? I prefer the idea of using drugs to interrupt/abort an attack rather than daily preventives.

My GP suggested sandomigraine (pizotifen) as a preventive. Any thoughts on the safety of this one?

 

[aguilaroja]

My GP suggested sandomigraine (pizotifen) as a preventive. Any thoughts on the safety of this one?

I have no direct knowledge about pizotifen. On web search, it seems to be available in less than 20 countries. Under a different name, Mosegor, it has been marketed as an appetite stimulant.

Wikipedia notes pizotifen having anti-serotonin, anti-histamine and anti-cholingeric properties. There are relatively few serotonin-lowering drugs, and pizotifen is apparently one. Other serotonin-lowering drugs agents discussed on the forum include cyproheptadine, tianeptine, ondasetron, and hydroxyzine.

Though some of the properties sound intriguing, I know nothing about user experiences with this substance.

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizotifen

"Pizotifen is a serotonin antagonist acting mainly at the 5-HT2A and 5HT2C receptors. It also has some activity as an antihistamine as well as some anticholinergic activity."

 

[tara]

Thanks Aguilaroja. Maybe I should try going with my doctor's suggestion of pizotifen then. Those mechanisms all sound promising. User reviews are mixed in terms of effectiveness. But I don't think a read a lot of coomplaints about side-effects (other than weight gain, which I can live with a bit of if my brain works better).

 

[ddjd]

I have no direct knowledge about pizotifen. On web search, it seems to be available in less than 20 countries. Under a different name, Mosegor, it has been marketed as an appetite stimulant.

Wikipedia notes pizotifen having anti-serotonin, anti-histamine and anti-cholingeric properties. There are relatively few serotonin-lowering drugs, and pizotifen is apparently one. Other serotonin-lowering drugs agents discussed on the forum include cyproheptadine, tianeptine, ondasetron, and hydroxyzine.

Though some of the properties sound intriguing, I know nothing about user experiences with this substance.

--
Pizotifen - Wikipedia

"Pizotifen is a serotonin antagonist acting mainly at the 5-HT2A and 5HT2C receptors. It also has some activity as an antihistamine as well as some anticholinergic activity."

what does peat say about it?

 

[andrei]

@tara i have a sense of pressure in my temples for the last year..it is constant.

When i flex my jaw, i feel this discomfort in my temples. I did an MRI of my brain and nothing shows there.

I dont understand the physiology of the brain to speculate whats there. Could it be vascular dilation or some sort of pufa accumulation?

I must admit that I developed this after a while after I lost 12 kg in 2 months. I did an incredible fast fat loss..could it have a relation?

 

[tara]

@tara i have a sense of pressure in my temples for the last year..it is constant.

When i flex my jaw, i feel this discomfort in my temples. I did an MRI of my brain and nothing shows there.

I dont understand the physiology of the brain to speculate whats there. Could it be vascular dilation or some sort of pufa accumulation?

I must admit that I developed this after a while after I lost 12 kg in 2 months. I did an incredible fast fat loss..could it have a relation?

Hi Andrei,
Sorry you are having that issue. I hope it's not too uncomfortable, especially since you've got it all the time.
I don't think I have a very good understanding of brain physiology either, and can't say anything with confidence about what's going on for you.
But thoughts anyway:
I don't think the experts all agree about related phenomena either, including to what extent headaches and migraines are distinct, and to what extent they are neurological and/or vascular phenomena. Not sure if you've got a head ache, or just a feeling of pressure.
Could involve vascular dilation, or maybe wider swelling of tissue, or blood pressure (you can measure the latter).
In general, I think it's worth considering simpler, and especially more easily remediable factors, before obscure ones.

All sorts of different things seem to be able to cause/trigger headaches etc for different people. Amongst them at least: dehydration or overhydration
low blood sugar
sleep disturbances
electrolyte imbalances - eg insuffietient (or excess) sodium, potassium, magnesium ...
poisoning
allergies or intolerances to particular foods, environmental chemicals or pollens, moulds etc.
Vit -D deficiency
Hormonal imbalances - sometimes estrogen excess.

I still think there could be a way that having excess PUFA in the system could be amplifying stress reactions and swelling and affecting the brain, but I doubt it's the only or main thing.

 

[tara]

Hi Andrei,

And to add to the list:
physical structure issues like posture and/or tight muscles

 

[achillea]

It is amazing to me that one of the most widespread maladies in the world, headache,migraine, is not studied more. It seems they like to make classifications and symptoms etc but why do we have to still wonder about is it vascular, is it stuctural? Shhsh.. guess it is just another case of science not doing much anymore.
At any rate Tara, I get a seveer headache every night at around 3AM. Deep sleeping and then wham. I have to get up. The one thing that has worked is coffee. To me it is one cup of coffee away from relief but then I am worried and cannot go back to sleep. Sometimes the pain is so bad I have left over brain soreness for the entire next day. It is driving me crazy...sleep deprivation, pain.
I have found that pectra sol C helps, Restore helps. Magnesium bath helps sometimes. Red light helps sometimes. Coffee helps all the time.
I am wondering if it is wi fi, cell phone, smart meter . one or the other is calibrating through the lines at that time of night.
Lets figure this out as we can help each other. We cannot wait for the others to figure it out for us. We are a smart forum and we can do it.

 

[tara]

It is amazing to me that one of the most widespread maladies in the world, headache,migraine, is not studied more.

I think it as been studied quite bit, but it's complicated, and some aspects are different for different people. I've only read a little of the literature etc on it. But it surprises me often, when I tell people about mine, how often I get to hear of other people's stories. That they must mostly keep fairly quiet about.

I'm certainly all for us seeing what we can figure out ourselves, as well as seeing what others work out.

A thought for you - have you checked whether your 3am pattern coincides with your longest interval without coffee? Could you be suffering from regular acute withdrawal, which you relieve by interrupting the withdrawal?
If that is a possibility, one possible strategy might be to gradually reduce the quantity, possibly while spacing it more regularly to get it more even? I guess you've checked that it's not also coinciding with blood sugar lows, and resultant stress?

Magnesium is of no help to me once it's underway, but keeping up regular supplementation seems to be somewhat prophylactic. That is, Mg today is no help, but Mg yesterday may be useful.

 

[achillea]

We eat 100% Ray Peat advice.
Tara-
Since you have had heavy metals....the Pectrasol C is a mild chelator and it seems to help with migraines too. We recently heard Dr. Klinghardt on the parasite summit and he said that parasites can hold up to 200 times their weight in heavy metals. This is not to say that you want parasites but their waste and death can be very caustic indeed.

The Restore product is a lignite that from what the researchers who are promoting said is refined in such a way that it helps to tighten the junctures in the digestive tract so that there is no leakage. There are some very interesting talks by Dr. Sam Bush on the subject on You Tube. We like it a lot. Willard water is a lignite too and it has been around for a long time.

Have headache sufferers looked into electro smog? It is becoming more and more of a player. English man Barry Trower has some nice info on it as do many others.

 

[tara]

We eat 100% Ray Peat advice.

I consume (read) his advice eagerly to, but perhaps not 100% - I'm open to others' ideas as well, and while I have a great deal of respect for Peat, I don't expect omniscience. :)

Since you have had heavy metals....the Pectrasol C is a mild chelator and it seems to help with migraines too. We recently heard Dr. Klinghardt on the parasite summit and he said that parasites can hold up to 200 times their weight in heavy metals. This is not to say that you want parasites but their waste and death can be very caustic indeed.

I've heard of the pectrasol C - may consider it at some time, as you say with the possible heavy metal issues. Not sure what happens with chelators when there are metal amalgams in the mouth.
The idea that parasites can release a lot of heavy heavy metals when they die is new to me - I did know it's good to have things moving to get the waste out, but I thought it was just the dead and decomposing bodies themselves. :)

The Restore product is a lignite that from what the researchers who are promoting said is refined in such a way that it helps to tighten the junctures in the digestive tract so that there is no leakage. There are some very interesting talks by Dr. Sam Bush on the subject on You Tube. We like it a lot. Willard water is a lignite too and it has been around for a long time.

Interesting.

 

[achillea]

We are in our late 60's and looking for the best diet to age with. Our neighbors are a similar age and they are falling apart....doctors, doctors, doctors.

We have been vegetarian, paleo, leptin, raw meat and about everything else, Ray Peat's advice is doing us a world of good.

The more we become aware and investigate electro smog such as wi fi and cell phones and smart meters etc we are understanding the incredible influence it is having on us. If I remember correctly there is 20,000 more emf in our environment than ever before.

Those who are noticably sensitive to them are like the canary in the coal mine. I have known a few who have had to move farther and farther into the country to try to get some relief from the insomnia, headaches and malaise.

 

[Waynish]

I think swelling is part of many repair processes necessarily. I think a useful indicator is "swelling absent repair." Then things that reduce swelling as a primary or tertiary effect might be useful.

 

[achillea]

Here are some ideas we are working on for migraine/headaches
As of 2000 we are exposed to 200 million times the EMF than in 1900 which equals stress to the body.
Headaches are usually at the top of the list for EMF sensitivity.
The temporal part of the brain is heated ever so lightly by microwave and EMF radiation.
The brain becomes entrained to the pain of regular headaches, tries to deal with it but lets it go. If at the onset of the headache you can have random sounds in your brain then the brain will go with the sounds and not accept the entrainment, possibly altering the entrainment so that the high degree of pain is lessened and if done enough times then retrained to not entertain regular head pain.
There is no way swelling of the brain could be healing, it robs the brain of O2 and glucose.

 

[achillea]

Dr. Ray Peat talks and writes about the body environment and how the cells are all connected and effected by the environment as a whole. The truth is that we as humans are not in the environment we were in as children. The foods we eat, the pollution we endure, the fertilizers we are exposed to, the amount of estrogen plastics we are in contact with every day to name just a few changes in our environment.
We as humans have not been exposed to the effects of Electro magnetic frequencies in the concentrations we are exposed to today. It is creating a new environment for our bodies to have to deal with.
So is it not a factor in headaches/migraines ?

China now produces most of the Roundup organo phosphates in the world, something like 20 million tons per year. Organo phosphates have an effect on humans. Dr Stephanie Senef has shown a corollary between the rise of autism and the increased use of organo phosphates. It is now found in fetuses.

This is a stress on our bodies. A new environment of Roundup everywhere is causing loosened junctions in the brain and the digestive tract. When the junctions are loose, there is room for leakage.

Leakage in the brain and in the gut can cause headaches amongst other maladies.

Here is a good site for understanding the brain. It appears to be French but when you go to it it is in English. Le cerveau à tous les niveaux

 

[achillea]

In many cases we think the brain of a frequent migraine or headache has a sensitivity to frequency which vibrates the skull, muscles and cartilage, the brain cannot do anything to alleviate the problem, pain develops, the brain becomes entrained to the pain and does nothing about it but lets it run its course.

There are a lot of bones and cartilage in the skull and all are very sensitive. The electro smog like the microwaves from cell towers, the passing car, and the emissions from a blender all create electro magnetic frequency. These are not benign because we cannot see them. These frequencies either bounce off our bodies, penetrate our bodies or transfer through our skin and cause stimulation to our bodies. It does not take much amperage. Look at a tens unit, on electrode at each end of a huge muscle and the micro amperage makes the muscle twitch.

The same thing happens in the skull, ie the frequencies make the small bones and cartilage and muscles vibrate. The brain tries to do something about it, the brain cannot do anything because the stimulation is happening so often so the brain becomes entrained to it. The Russians realized years decades ago that if the brain cannot do something about a problem it just shoves it aside and lets it do its thing. They developed a machine called the Skenar that worked on the entrainment and through stimulation interfered with the entrainment to alleviate the malady.

Brain entrainment can be diverted and stopped as can headaches.

 

[achillea]