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Potential cure for CHS. You can smoke and not get symptoms.
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If you take a cold shower twice every day, then you wont get CHS. This is a preventative. If you do this, then you wont get a CHS episode, and it fixes mild symptoms like night sweats.

I will try to explain why I think this could work.
The biggest mystery of CHS is how it is possible that during flare-ups, people can lose weight so quickly? It isn't like a loss of water weight. It is fat. Ribs become visible, and it takes a long time to build up the weight again afterwards.
If a normal healthy person is eating zero calories, then they have about a 1800 calorie deficit. So, their body would burn 1800 calories of fat each day to keep them alive. A kilo of fat has 7700 calories. So, it would take them 7700 / 1800 = 4.28 days to lose one kilo. But we see people with CHS losing a kilo a day or more, so their calorie deficit must be around 8000 or more. Their body is using an amount of energy akin to running 2 marathons a day.
A good explanation for how CHS works needs to explain why it is causing the body to burn calories so quickly.
I looked into what body processes could possibly be burning calories so quickly. Based on the symptom of feeling cold, it seems like during a CHS flare-up, the body mistakenly believes that it is suffering a kind of hypothermia. The body thinks it is cold, and is taking measures to protect itself from that cold. Drawing blood in to the organs, and out of the limbs where it would waste heat. But, since there is so much sweating, the body also thinks it is too hot, and is taking measures to cool itself down. It is like if you use the heater and AC at the same time. They work against each other and waste energy. It is like if you try to use the gas and break pedals in a car at the same time. You can waste a lot of energy that way.

Our bodies have tools to heat us up. our heater. we have tools to cool us down. our AC. In a healthy person, if you are a little cold, then the heater turns on. and if you are a little hot, then the AC turns on. In between these temperatures, there is no AC and no heater. you conserve energy.

For people in a CHS flare up, their heater and AC have gotten too sensitive. the band of temperatures where you conserve energy gets smaller and smaller, until it doesn't exist. Then, the AC and heater start to overlap. The heater causes much worse symptoms than the AC does. Sweating is annoying, but when you are burning calories like an ultramarathon runner, your muscles cramp up and it is unbearable. So, that is why CHS sufferers try to heat up their bodies. At least they can get the heater turned off, and ease the worst of the symptoms.

People who regularly consume cannabis tend to have lower body temperatures, so we know that cannabis has some impact on temperature regulation.

The thermostat in our bodies is the hypothalamus. It is a part of the brain. If there is a problem of temperature regulation, the hypothalamus must be involved.
The endocrine system is the bodily system of hormones and chemicals that your organs use to send messages to each other. The nervous system is the part of your body that sends fast electrical signals, and does computation. The hypothalamus is the part of your body that links the endocrine system and the nervous system together. The hypothalamus can do computation based on what it learns about your body's temperature, it can remember things. The hypothalamus knows if your skin feels hot or cold. The reason that spicy cream on your skin can help with symptoms is because it triggers heat receptors, and sends a signal to the hypothalamus that you are hot. The hypothalamus receives all the information it can about our body temperature, and then it sends out chemical and electrical messages about what actions our organs should take. If you sweat or shiver, it is because the hypothalamus sent a message.
Next I looked into what are healthy things you can do for your hypothalamus, to help it regulate temperature better, and what I found is that cold showers are good. A cold shower helps the hypothalamus reset it's settings on the body's thermostat. With CHS sufferers, they tend to wear jackets in even mild cold, to avoid nausea. They don't get cold exposure at all, and eventually their hypothalamus forgets what cold feels like. Then the hypothalamus starts over-reacting to mild cold that could be safely ignored. We need to give the hypothalamus a chance to know what cold feels like.

I have a couple ideas which part of the shower is important. When you put your face in cold water, it activates the mammalian diving reflex. But if you spend enough time in the water, you can feel your spine start to shiver, and you know that you have activated the high setting on your body's heater. Maybe both parts are helpful. I would also like to know how frequently the showers should be done. It seems like twice daily does work, but it would be nice if it was only necessary once a week or less.

Cold showers are uncomfortable, but for many people, it is a preferable alternative instead of quitting cannabis.

If you want to participate in cold shower experiments, please send me your results. So we can accumulate better data about this.

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1 year ago