Brain inflammation

wdb said:
I'm curious, do humans actually have the ability to specifically feel the brain hurting or to feel it being inflamed, how does that feel different from various common types of headache ?
Click to expand...

I am fairly that brain tissue itself does not generate pain as a result of injury or inflammation to brain itself. Pain is usually ascribed to meningeal irritation.

Brain inflammation is one of the causes of raised coffee pressure, which produces headache worse in the morning but I don’t think there are any symptoms specifically due to brain inflammation (encephalitis). Most brain inflammation makes itself known by local signs of damage as in a stroke - weakness of limbs, loss of speech or vision etc..
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
I am fairly that brain tissue itself does not generate pain as a result of injury or inflammation to brain itself. Pain is usually ascribed to meningeal irritation.

Brain inflammation is one of the causes of raised coffee pressure, which produces headache worse in the morning but I don’t think there are any symptoms specifically due to brain inflammation (encephalitis). Most brain inflammation makes itself known by local signs of damage as in a stroke - weakness of limbs, loss of speech or vision etc..
Click to expand...
Actually... the work of Jarred Younger finding lactate in the ventricles and other areas of the brain are suggestive of brain inflammation.

If you try to run a mile as fast as you can you will understand what lactate accumulating in the muscles feel like. I believe the same can be felt in the brain, if a patient with ME talks too much or cognitively over-exerts. While i cannot say for sure that this is brain inflammation, in my gut, I understand and i feel this is what happens. And in my view this is different than a simple headache or a migraine. Sometimes it feels like a brain cramp, usually in the evening after over-exerting.

I am hoping we can pursue research in that regard as this would provide much needed biomarkers and evidence of disability for legal purposes.

@Sallycatherineharris I’d also recommend you continue your process of being seen by a doctor, just to make sure it’s not anything else. Regardless, do make sure you rest and try to avoid exertion as much as humanely possible.
 
JemPD said:
God :eek: that sounds horrific.
Click to expand...
@JemPD Thank you for acknowledging. It was very very frightening. I was so sick. What made everything even harder was that I had severe insomnia as well so I had to suffer feeling all the severe symptoms all night long with only a few hours sleep, a lot of nights no sleep.

I should have been hospitalized with those head symptoms especially, but I was so ill and didn't want to be touched or talked to.

I never forget just how bad my ME can get and I get anxious whenever I start to deteriorate even now, 18 years later.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Lactate is not a sign of inflammation. It is a sign of altered respiration. I think Younger has conceded that calling this inflammation may not be very helpful.
Click to expand...
Thank you Jonathan, you are a tough cookie when it comes to science! :nerd:
Here is what the Younger article said about Lactate:
We found increased LAC in ME/CFS patients in the bilateral insula, bilateral parietal cortex, left hippocampus, left middle cingulate gyrus, left precuneus, right thalamus, right rolandic operculum, left temporal cortex, right calcarine sul- cus, right fusiform gyrus, right lingual gyrus, and cerebellum. LAC is a byproduct of anaerobic cell metabolism (glycolysis) that is not found at high levels in the healthy brain, but is produced by various immune cells under inflammatory conditions (Dienel 2012; El Ghazi et al. 2010). Because anaerobic glycolysis results in much less efficient synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) than healthy metabolism, the resultant energy deficits at the cellular level may drive the profound fatigue experienced by ME/CFS patients (Castro-Marrero et al. 2013; Lawson et al. 2016; Myhill et al. 2013).
Click to expand...
 
Rosie said:
@JemPD Thank you for acknowledging. It was very very frightening. I was so sick. What made everything even harder was that I had severe insomnia as well so I had to suffer feeling all the severe symptoms all night long with only a few hours sleep, a lot of nights no sleep.

I should have been hospitalized with those head symptoms especially, but I was so ill and didn't want to be touched or talked to.

I never forget just how bad my ME can get and I get anxious whenever I start to deteriorate even now, 18 years later.
Click to expand...
I'm not surprised you get anxious at the thought of going back there! It makes me go cold just thinkin about it & I haven't lived through it. I just cant imagine.
I wanted to add the hug emoji here but it looks to 'smiley' to be appropriate somehow. But I'm sending a hug to you (if welcome I know not everyone likes hugs), i'm glad you're not there now & hope & pray you never go back there.
 
Milo said:
Thank you Jonathan, you are a tough cookie when it comes to science! :nerd:
Here is what the Younger article said about Lactate:
Click to expand...

Yes, but this is not realistic. Lots of cells use anaerobic respiration - like cartilage cells for instance. Normal brain is aerobic but if there is more lactate then it is clearly not normal. The problem with blaming immune cells is that if there were enough immune cells (white blood cells basically) in brain to show up as a change in metabolism the person would be on a ventilator or dead pretty much. The brain does not tolerate white cells stall well. And if there were enough white cells to give a metabolic signal I am pretty sure an MRI scan would shine like a beacon. And ME MRI scans don’t.
 
JemPD said:
I'm not surprised you get anxious at the thought of going back there! It makes me go cold just thinkin about it & I haven't lived through it. I just cant imagine.
I wanted to add the hug emoji here but it looks to 'smiley' to be appropriate somehow. But I'm sending a hug to you (if welcome I know not everyone likes hugs), i'm glad you're not there now & hope & pray you never go back there.
Click to expand...
Thanks @JemPD I know what you mean about the hug emoji being too smiley. I often don't like using it either for that same reason.

The exhaustion at the time of my severe onset was extreme, it felt like all the cells in my body were exhausted. My sinuses weren't functioning properly, so I had toxic stuff coming out of them burning all the way around my GI. I was on antibiotics for six months straight.

I had no idea I had ME in my earlier years so I was trying to carry on normally getting sicker and sicker, starting to experience severe bouts of PEM and then severe ME hit.
 
Last edited:
Jonathan Edwards said:
I am fairly that brain tissue itself does not generate pain as a result of injury or inflammation to brain itself. Pain is usually ascribed to meningeal irritation.

Brain inflammation is one of the causes of raised coffee pressure, which produces headache worse in the morning but I don’t think there are any symptoms specifically due to brain inflammation (encephalitis). Most brain inflammation makes itself known by local signs of damage as in a stroke - weakness of limbs, loss of speech or vision etc..
Click to expand...

Do you feel there is any evidence of brain inflammation in people with ME/CFS that's driving our typical symptoms?

Bill
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Not in any very meaningful sense of inflammation. There may be some microglial activation but I rather suspect that microglial activation in brain disease is an effect of what is wrong, not a cause.
Click to expand...

What do you think is accountable for the incredible brain-fog so many of us experience?

By many measures, I was once considered a person of very high intelligence. Many days now I feel highly compromised. As if the impulses in my mind have to swim across synapses of heavily viscous fluid. And my head feels "pressurized."

I feel like something is very wrong with my brain. Not sure what that is, but it's not right.

I'm glad that there are clear thinking scientist-physicians like yourself helping us out and speaking the truth as you see it. I'm grateful for that.

Bill
 
Diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are now considered inflammatory diseases of the brain. I suspect eventually so too will ME/CFS
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom