Time dilation. When we consider time dilation, we have to bear in mind the importance of the observer.
Does 2022 appear dilated in the eyes of 2022? No. 2022 only appears dilated from the perspective of the past. I was born in 1969. Someone who was born yesterday and I are viewing time and light differently.
My mother has Alzheimer’s, as did both her parents. Some researchers—in particular, Dr. Lisa Mosconi—have been exploring fascinating links between menopause and Alzheimer’s.
24 months into menopause, I began to feel a decline in my cognitive processing speed. The feeling I had, the thought that came to mind, was very precise: My brain is not getting enough oxygen. I noticed the veins on the backs of my hands were bulging. 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.
There is an interesting difference between male and female fertility. I was born, in 1969, with all of my eggs intact in my infant ovaries. A man makes several million sperm per day—about 1,500 per second. My eggs, in a sense, are like hardware—more fixed or immutable over time. Sperm are more like software—constantly being revised and rewritten. Both views of time, together, are more robust than each view would be on its own.
In my body, certain parts are more like the eggs in my ovaries (e.g. my brain), and certain parts are more like sperm (e.g. my blood). Meaning: my brain is not being replaced every 120 days. My blood is.
My blood is newer than the rest of me. My body makes 2 million new red cells every second. Am I making new red blood cells that are too large because the light of 2022 appears dilated to my brain?
That’s what it feels like.
Or, conversely, am I 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?
In the past, I have had a lot of problems with oxalates. I can feel unwell during gluconeogenesis (“making new sugar,” which fires up the oxalate pathway). I was diagnosed with pyroluria at one point—a defect in heme synthesis—making new blood.
When I make new things (blood, sugar, oxalate), am I doing so with a correct understanding of the scale of the universe—the degree of time dilation? 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.
Does time (scale, time dilation) play more of a role in our illnesses than we realize?
Abnormalities in the size of red blood cells has been shown to be a chief feature of Long COVID.
I need peripheral resistance.
I can achieve the same level of peripheral resistance using small blood cells if I vasoconstrict. Or using large blood cells if I vasodilate. But I don’t want to have thin blood and be too vasodilated (general anesthesia; Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Nor do I want to have thick blood and be too vasoconstricted (Autism). In either case, I can become trapped in time. When I have thin blood and am vasoconstricted I am too far forward in time (somewhat like being on top of a mountain). When I have thick blood and am vasodilated I am too far backward in time (somewhat like being below sea level).
When I began to feel post-menopause brain fog—when I felt as if my brain were not getting enough oxygen and the veins on my hands were excessively bulging—I noticed right away that things that thin the blood—or cause me to vasodilate—helped me regain cognitive function: melatonin, organic garlic, organic vinegar, organic alcohol (small amounts), or niacin. Though initially helpful, niacin, over time, felt awful, and caused me to have vertigo and a feeling of instability (excessive dilation) at the seat of my skull / brain stem. It also increased my need for iron (magnetism). The wider time is, the deeper. The more I dilate, the more I need to hold together. We’re always doing two things at once.
