Out of the 20 or so ME/CFS patients so far tested on Phoenix Rising , 90% turn out to have CCI/AAI, which is an astounding figure!
When thinking it over, that shouldn't be that surprising. I had got a gut feeling increased CBF has something to do with it. Then it popped up in my mind: a (National geographic?) documentary on the German WWII invention of the shaped charge and how they used it to bust bunkers.
They were according to the documentary the first to develop and successfully use a shaped charge to focus the blasting power of explosives towards a single point in order to dramatically increase the explosive power towards a single focal point, enabling to destroy fortified concrete structures thought to be impenetrable at that time. They used it to surprise there opponents and it helped enable them to wager their "Blitzkrieg" or lightning fast war, a new and unseen concept taking their enemies by surprise and speed allowing them to defeat far bigger armies.
Now such early shaped charge looked a bit like a hollow half sphere filled with explosives and focused most of its blasting power towards a point close to the center of what would be the full sphere. Similar shaped charges were later used by the Americans and Russians to develop the Bazooka and took the Germans by surprise destroying their previously near invulnerable tanks by focusing the blasting power of the explosion of a grenade towards a single point. A single soldier with a Bazooka now could yield a carry-able weapon that wouldn't have scratched the surface of the Germans armors if it had the same amount of explosive power in a conventional grenade.
I'll write all of this to demonstrate what focusing power such shaped charge can have. I first thought increased CBF pressure by x% just increased overall brain pressure by x%, resulting in an evenly spread compression of brain tissue by y%. Yet that somehow conflicted with the repeated attention to the brain stem seen in other ME/FM research and seen in these reports. I made the mistake to see the brain as a "near fluid" like structure, where compressive forces traverse equally throughout the fluid. Maybe a bit to much physic talks, but it helps in forming insight here!
Now looking at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-stem the brain does kinda look like something fitting in a (a bit more then) half dome shaped skull. CBF exerts forces upon both the skull and the brain. As the brain is (with some imagination) a sphere-ish objects that fits into a sphere-ish skull, and because Newtons (a very important physics law) law says that both forces must compensate each other, the forces on the brain must be compensated by the forces on the skull. As the brain fits inside the skull and is a bit smaller due to cavities filled with CBF, the forces on the brain must be compensated by a smaller surface area then the same forces are divided over the large skull area. Result: The brain sees a little bit higher compressive forces then the skull.
Now do the same over with the brain-stem. With quite a bit of abstraction it can be seen as a small sphere fitting in the bigger sphere of the brain. Result: quite a large concentration of forces, resulting in a multiplication of the compressive forces at the brain-stem.
=> Focal concentration of increased CBF pressure at some points of the brain IMO!!!!!
My 3D-visualisation would place the focal point of compressive forces somewhere around the brown-white and green-blue interface on the picture in the link. I see that that is near but clearly above the brain-stem, consisting of green-blue (midbrain), red (pons) and purple (medulla) part of the brain.
Wikipedia: "In the
human brain the brainstem includes the
midbrain, and the
pons and
medulla oblongata of the
hindbrain."
If my physical intuition of the focal point (in fact zone as the shape is not perfect) is correct enough, there is a zone with very high compressive forces just on top of the brain-stem. One can say that "misses" the brain stem itself. But the many possible causes Hip nicely summed up in the big blue cadre point all to forces acting on the brain stem just from below the brain-stem. Combine both and we have strong forces just on top acting downward and strong forces just below acting upwards on the brainstem, effectively squeezing the brain-stem a whole lot.
=> IF my physical intuition is wright, both the mentioned CCI/AAI problems and increased CBF pressure (as most ME/FM seem to have to a large degree according to recent research) seem to combine to a sum quite a big bigger then their individual parts. This would be in line with:
"I initially thought that I had developed CCI/AAI after developing ME/CFS. Reason being, my overt CCI/AAI symptoms (bobblehead, neck pain) didn't emerge until years into my severe ME... ...that would be consistent with my own timeline as to the appearance of neck-related symptoms. But Dr. Gilete's observation has no bearing on whether or not CCI/AAI is the cause of ME. "
Written by Jeff_w, one of the original people discovering this remarkable recovery Hip mentions and is told in
https://forums.phoenixrising.me/ind...-cci-aai-there-must-be-many-more.62893/page-2
An initial malformation of this cranial structure could be exposed by an increase in CBF pressure leading to the "shaped charge focal zone". In other posts I wrote about the possibility that IMO poor blood re-flow from the brain to the hart could cause increased CBF pressure. And such (temporary) worsening of blood re-flow could be caused by a strong infectious disease or a situation strongly increasing oxidative stress. These can increase trombocites, kill NO needed for vassodilation, making RBC less flexible decreasing blood flow... depending on the exact cause.
Also
https://www.healthrising.org/forums...and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome.6101/#post-34642 and probably
https://www.healthrising.org/forums/threads/fms-and-spinal-fluid-pressure-dysregulation.5831/ (
@Cort: is it the same link, merge posts?)
point to big sines potentially blocking blood re-flow from brain to the hart as a cause of increased CBF. That is a likewise other blood-flow related mechanism to increase CBF.
Whiplash dislocating some of the bony stuff in the skull could trigger ME/FM if pre-existing increased oxidative stress or obstructive sines were present. And the damage of the mechanical shock of the spine on the brain may temporary increase local brain inflammation as well.
It would also help explain the overlap between vulnerability towards ME/FM and migraines.
This whole "focal compressive force" hypothesis could be (relatively) easy verified or denounced by a joint team of doctors with some good idea on brain tissue mechanical properties and engineers with good 3D finite element modeling skills. The latter should not be hard to find. Would be a nice NIH funding proposal
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. Having any relations Cort?