Should we be cooling our brains down?

Just been watching Jarred Younger's talk at the Stanford Symposium, presenting data showing that PWME have brains that are 1 degree F higher on average than healthy controls - enough to make us feel ill, he says.

Did he say something in the panel discussion about it being worth trying to cool your brain down? A bit of googling shows that some people use cooling pillows for insomnia and migraines. You can even buy cooling hats.

 

Younger's ice suggestion, and someone's keto diet reference were the only treatments I heard at the symposium that didn't come with a warning.

Ice has always helped my cluster headaches. Never tried whole brain cooling, though.

 

I think its a bad idea to try. When you throw a monkey wrench into things you don't understand who knows what will happen.

 

I would agree with you for most supplements. But with a bit of cold, I don't see the risk or uncertainty.

People have been doing things that cool their body temperature since the dawn of time. I used to sometimes jump in Pacific Ocean water so cold it gave me a headache when I was mild. Some people swim in freezing cold water daily in winter.

Not to mention, people raise body temperatures in saunas or hot tubs all the time. Temporarily altering body temperature, especially just one part of the body, seems pretty low risk to me personally. Less risky than, say, eating at McDonalds.

 

But cooling your brain internally on purpose has probably not been on your list before.
I also want the answer today but how will you control how much your cooling your brain?
Will below an unknown temperature cause brain damage?

When you cool something the temperature gradient goes from the outside in, to get deep inside your brain cooler you likely have to cool your skull and the outside of your brain a great deal which your body will actively fight.

And your brain has no pain receptors, if your doing harm you may not know it.

How do we know that cooling the brain will even make a positive difference to our symptoms?

 

Well, one would know if there were controlled trials for this. Then the patients would be able to tell their doctor that x patients out of a 15 patient cohort seemed to have improved compared to healthy control who did it too.
And by controlled trial, i mean there would be a protocol in place, how cold, where to apply cold, for how long, and how often.

Of course there would be a placebo response to account for (i feel much cooler now that I am using the ice pack, it’s working! )

It reminds me of the cold packs on hands of patients with cancer receiving docetaxel, believed to be reducing neuropathy and nail changes by reducing blood flow to the hands). That was 10 years ago. The hospital aquired a new freezer and those fancy gel filled oven mitts just for that purpose. I wonder if they still do this and whether the science weighed in on that regard.

 

I don't say controlled trials are a bad idea (though i still am skeptical this would improve cognitive dysfunction), what i am saying is uncontrolled experimenting with something we can't measure and could cause harm to the brain is a risky thing to do.

Cooling the body obviously has applications but trying to cool your brain without equipment that can measure the changes is not a good idea. If someone is going to hold their head in cold water or even use ice presumably for hours or longer or repeatedly to actually have an effect and ignore the peripheral symptoms of the cold thinking they are doing something good and finding out they did real damage is not my idea of a good time.
If one lowers their core body temperature accidentally they can end up with hypothermia. The blood will be constantly flowing and to cool the brain you probably also have to cool it even if indirectly. Its not something i would pursue.

 

I guess everybody will make their own decision in that regard, just like using a heating pad. The application of cold will be self-limiting, and for the most part when it gets uncomfortable, the person will have enough sense to stop cooling their heads. And it was my understanding that Jarred meant locally cooling the head, not going into full body hypothermia. In physiotherapy applications, icing a joint or a body part should not be done for more than 20 minutes to avoid injury and decrease in circulation which would be undesirable.

I am jaded from self-help, DIY and self-management stuff. If it was this simple, people would already have figured it out. Don’t get me wrong, I think Jared’s presentation was great and that his ideas and methds are great. I am looking forward to his publication and hoping it will be sooner rather than later. It sounds like he didn’t spill all the beans, so there will be more data to see.

 

The problem is it seems we have localised hot regions. Any cooling method will be general, and not localised.

 

True enough, its not something i'm personally anxious to experiment with

I submitted a question that was not answered, how do we know the lactate is not simply coming from activity that goes anaerobic because of pyruvate dehydrogenase inhibition. If understand what he was saying it was that lactate should not be produced in the brain presumably because it has been designed to work aerobically and has a massive blood supply relative to its size and uses a disproportionately high amount of energy. So inflammation would be caused because of a non designed energy consumer (inflammation). But we have pyruvate dehydrogenase inhibition which means we are not able to use sugar plus oxygen to produce energy like normal people. So that lactate may in fact be a side effect of PDH inhibition. My question was could this be the cause of the lactate but it went unasked.

 

I have Raynauds syndrome so getting my extremities cold can be painful. However i have noticed that i do better when I am a little cold, as vasoconstriction is POTS’ best friend, as opposed to be too hot.

In regards to your second comment, Jarred mentioned that he was limited in the amount of testing he could do as the brain is not readily accessible for tissue and fluids (though i’d be the first one to volunteer my cerebro-spinal fluid)- so he is working with imaging, which is the least invasive technique one have. I am so very thankful for his work, it is brilliant. He deserves more funding.

 

I'm the opposite, i find cold very energy draining.
But being too hot is also very energy draining.

I am not criticizing his intentions, i am just saying that there could be an alternate explanation which should be investigated because high temperature could have many possible causes. If we chase the wrong one we are losing time.

 

How do you access this @Sasha?

 

I presume because it was live footage. YouTube videos are due soon.

 

It was being livestreamed but they're going to put it up on YouTube. It took them about seven weeks to post last year's material so it might be a bit of a wait.

 

@JaimeS did an excellent job tweeting from the Symposium, so while we are waiting for the videos to be uploaded to YouTube, going through her recent tweets will give some of the highlights of the lectures
https://twitter.com/exceedhergrasp1/with_replies?lang=en

#MECFS2018 was used as hashtag for the Symposium. Here's a collection of all tweets about the conference.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/MECFS18?src=hash&lang=en

 

Last summer I found placing a cold pack at my lower back really helpful. I was able to move around without feeling like I was going to collapse or faint from over heating. I've always had an unusual heat with my ME.

I'm not comfortable with a cold pack on my neck but found my lower back was perfect and it felt like it slowly cooled upwards to my head from there. During the winter months cooling the forehead is better for me. Summer - lower back.

 

Phew, from a few comments here I thought we might have to cryogenically cool our brains to see a result, thankfully all it seems to need is an ice pack or some frozen peas used sensibly.