The universe is expanding. On top of a mountain, time is wider, more expanded, than at sea level. On top of a mountain, clocks tick a tiny bit faster.
Faster than what? Faster than the baseline, which may be sea level. But from the perspective of an observer on the mountaintop, time does not appear “faster” nor “more dilated.” To an observer on the mountaintop, the mountaintop functions as sea level.
Does 2024 appear dilated in the eyes of 2024? No. 2024 only appears dilated to me if I am viewing it from the perspective of the past.
My mother has Alzheimer’s, as did both her parents. Some researchers—in particular, Dr. Lisa Mosconi—have been exploring links between Alzheimer’s and the way the brain changes during menopause.
Recently, as I entered menopause, I had an atypical cognitive lapse. The feeling I had was very precise. My brain is not getting enough oxygen. I noticed the veins on the backs of my hands were bulging dramatically. My blood, I thought. It’s too big. It’s not getting into the smallest capillaries. When we lived in Boston, my mother and I both used to suffer from Reynaud’s. This was a similar feeling.
There is an interesting difference between male and female fertility. I was born, in 1969, with all of my eggs. A man makes several million sperm per day—about 1,500 per second. Eggs are more like hardware—more fixed or immutable in time. Sperm are more like software—constantly being revised and rewritten. Together, this creates a more robust model for time, like knowing a ship’s speed as well as its point of origin.
My brain is more like an ovary, more like hardware. My brain is not being replaced every 120 days. But my blood is.
My body makes 2 million new red cells every second. Am I making new red blood cells that are “too large” for my brain?
Conversely, could I be making new red blood cells that are too small, therefore requiring me to make too many of them in order to maintain adequate blood volume? When the demand for heme synthesis skyrockets, it exhausts me. Plus, when I make blood that’s too small, I have to squeeze too much (hypertension) in order to feel the RBC. But I don’t want to enter hypertensive crisis. Neither do I want to have hypovolemia (low blood volume).
If I go into hypertensive crisis, and I am given vaso-dilators, this is maybe going to help me in the short-term. But it will alter my perception of time. When I am vaso-dilated, it is as if I am seeing light from the top of the mountain. When I am vaso-constricted, it is as if I am seeing light from the bottom of the sea. As the universe ascends—expands—I have to vaso-dilate in a gentle, measured fashion. I am always trying to keep pace with time.
Under the influence of vaso-dilators, my perception of time is altered. The world looks smaller and tastes saltier than it really is; the scale is shifted. There is no tryptophan (the largest amino acid); everything is glycine (the smallest amino acid). The vaso-dilated perspective prompts me to make new blood that is “too small”—which then perpetuates the problem. I get caught in a loop, constantly making new blood that never seems to suit me. Could this be part of the mechanism of Long Covid?
Long-term changes to blood cells triggered by Covid-19 infection: https://www.fau.eu/2021/06/21/news/research/long-term-changes-to-blood-cells-triggered-by-covid-19-infection/
When time is too wide, the world looks too small, and I make new blood that is too small. Time is too wide when I am too vaso-dilated.
When time is too narrow, the world looks too large, and I make new blood that is too large—i.e. too large for my capillaries in my fingertips or my brain. Time is too narrow when I am too vaso-constricted. I vaso-constrict too much in extreme cold, or when my blood pressure is high.
In the past, I have had a lot of problems with oxalates. I can feel bad when my blood sugar gets low, during gluconeogenesis (“making new sugar”), which fires up the oxalate pathway. I was diagnosed with Pyroluria when I first moved out of a moldy house—called a defect in heme synthesis—a problem with making new blood.
When I make new things (blood, sugar, oxalate), am I doing so with a correct understanding of scale? I believe this is a question that should be looked at. K2 prompts me to see the world as small (mountaintop perspective). K1 prompts me to see the world as large (perspective of the bottom of the sea).
Today does not appear dilated in the eyes of today. Today only appears dilated in the eyes of yesterday. And in the eyes of tomorrow, today appears the opposite of dilated—it appears contracted.
Might time (scale, dilation) play a role in disease?
