During this summers extreme heat I learned a new trick for myself: how to use cold for better regeneration, day and night.
During previous years I did learn the importance of good hydration and good breathing. During this very hot summer I think I had both relatively well under control. At night, when ozone levels are down, my exhaustion and confusion was still truly excessive compared to normal weather.
=> So my usual suspects didn’t seemed to cause my strong troubles with this heat. My body temperature was normal (didn’t actually measure it) so I wasn’t overheated.
My head *felt* like it was truly overheated (without being remarkably hot). At the start of this summer I’ve been working on ideas about ME patients having truly excessive oxidative stress. That consumes plenty of glutathione.
I believe this very high glutathione consumption requires very high NADPH regeneration rates, far in excess of what is needed in healthy people. When NADPH falls too low, NADH/ATP generation has to be shut down as generating NADH is a very oxidative process.
Therefore excessive oxidative stress indirectly sends the body in a mode that it deliberately must shut down both glycolisis and the NADH generating part of the Krebbs cycle and switch to maximum usage of the NADPH generating pentose phosphate pathway and the NADPH generating part of the Krebbs cycle.
As a former hypothermia patient, forcefully upping my body temperature or trying to strongly stimulate my blood flow resulted in almost immediate strong upflaring of inflammation. So my body seems to be trapped between having to burn plenty of calories and keeping its temperature down.
Hence the logical solution to me was: cool it down considerably. I filled my bath tub with 5 cm (about 2 inch) of cold water and slowly laid in it. First feet and bottoms, then legs, then feet and back without legs… Just to reduce the cold shock on blood vessels and hart. And no more water in order to prevent drowning in case it overwhelmed me. So heat was removed gradually.
The effects were more then good. It was more then just refreshing. At first it took some courage but after 5 to 10 minutes it felt actually nice. Energy flowed back into my body. I also made my head and hair a bit wet so my brain cooled too. I was much less confused.
I did so a few times a day when the heat was at worst. After these days I kept my head dry. And went to two times a day. Even then, my head just became clearer each time, just less spectacularly.
I believe it is cooling the muscles that allows to create plenty of extra NADPH. Muscles are prime producers of NADPH. Cooling the muscles helps a bit in lowering the blood temperature too removing some heat from the brain and allowing it to produce more NADPH too.
Later I did two showers a day with slowly flowing water a bit above room temperature. Or mixed some other cold sources, like sleeping with less clothes or sheets. It makes it a bit harder to fall asleep for me and I have to increase clothing/sheets in the middle of the night but it works well. I cool the head a bit more by drinking room temperature water and “chew on it until it becomes solid”.
The best? It clearly increased my week-to-week rate of improvement ;-). I also am a lot less prone to the common cold, a strong weakness of mine. Now I can get outside in normal summer weather without looking like I’m dressed for fall and still get a cold. I think it’s all due to activating the NADPH generating pathways. As the pentose phosphor pathway is the main source of it I guess it’ll work best for people on a non-keto diet with sufficient slow carbs.
As converting excess glucose to fat is a main consumer of NADPH, I try and keep blood glucose levels on a moderate level all day and night. So no spikes during the day and preventing strong dips during the night.
Biggest disadvantage: increased muscles sourness from my FM part. So before “exercising” I have to do a small warm-up every time to prevent “soft injury”. But over time it tends to improve my FM a bit too, just not as clear as my ME.
For my ME it has a lot of the advantages of exercising and feels as “healthy exercising” without the clear disadvantages. Stimulating my blood flow previously failed, now a slow improvement in blood flow is probably a free gift with the technique.
As to how much: I feel if my body doesn’t warms up itself and I don’t feel better shortly after the cold treatment, it was not good. So for some that may be only dipping feet shortly in a tub of water.
![ME/CFS lecture | Dr Nancy Klimas | 2011 [Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / SEID / New Zealand] - YouTube](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
