Hello, Quantum.
A very interesting update, so yeasterday I masturbated then afterwards in about 4 hours, I went to a Nurologist and told him about me having an auto-immune disease. He gave me an EEG for a potential inflammation in the brain and the result came out clear, I had no nothing.
So as usual the doctor asumed that my symptoms are psychological and gave me cipralex ( Escitalopram ) and some vitamens. Knowing I missed class for it I was very disapointed for the result. But given the fact that the result came clear, does this mean that we do not suffer from brain inflammation ?
Interesting initiative form your part, Nas. First, I would like to know, did you have POIS symptoms at the time of the test, and if so, which ones ? Did you feel that you were sleepy, and cognition was slowed down, like when drowsy ?
What is your usual time of symptoms onset after O ?
An EEG is very non-specific, it can only shows a slowing down of the brainwaves or abnormal pattern, as in epilepsy. It cannot, in itself, show inflammation, It will show an abnormal functioning of the brain , like in the case of the meningitis, but this is a far more severe state than in POIS, where patient are heavily affected, and deeply confused, or near a coma state. I have not enough experience with EEG results to tell if they can detect the level of brain dysfunction present in POIS. If you are very very slowed down, and really confused, like in easily detectable encephalopathies, it will show on the EEG. But what if your brain is just slower than usual, and your emotions a less stable than usual ? I do not know if this would show on a EEG. If your are not in a real knock out state, it may be necessary to have a "before" and "after", to see some slowing down of the wave pattern. And that is not easy, because if you are in an active state, and than just sit down and meditate for 10 minutes, you will see a slowing down of the waves, and that is not POIS. So, I have no clear idea on how to use an EEG in POIS, it could take weeks of testing with many subjects to see its usefulness. I would rather see measurement of different inflammation markers in the blood, like C-reactive protein, or IL-1 or IL-6, or TNF-alpha, or others, as an easier way to go, and I hope it is what Waldinger is currently doing.
I do hope we can come with an objective test for POIS, but there is no test up to date. Even if current tests, and maybe that includes EEG, do not detect anything abnormal, we all, poisers, do know very well that something is not normal. We just have to wait to find what tests will be useful and show it clearly.