Direct Brain-Lung Communication

[Wishful]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240321155335.htm

"The lungs are using the same sensors and neurons in the pain pathway to let the brain know there's an infection," says Dr. Bryan Yipp, MD '05, MSc'05, clinician researcher at the Cumming School of Medicine and senior author on the study. "The brain prompts the symptoms associated with sickness; that overall feeling of being unwell, feeling tired and loosing your appetite. The discovery indicates we may have to treat the nervous system as well as the infection."


I think that challenges the claims that ME symptoms are "just (mis?)perceptions". If lung infections can make the brain experience feeling tired, unwell, etc, it's quite reasonable for other signals to do the same. That's in addition to the possibility that the circuitry that leads to those feelings can be mis-triggering, or producing higher-magnitude outputs from normal inputs.

For PWME who have breathing problems due to ME, or whose breathing problems affect their ME, this brain-lung connection might be involved.

 

[Booble]

This is such an important factor.
These infections cause all kinds of things "behind the scenes" inside of us that make some of us feel a certain way.

I think cytokines are the key. They are in every cell of our body and communicate out to all of our systems what to do in the face of a threat.

"Cytokines can also direct brain cells to release chemicals that tell your body that you're sick, prompting you to rest and avoid activities that could further expose you to pathogens. "Tiredness, lethargy, malaise and just that kind of achy feeling is the impact of cytokines on our bodies,"