You know about the myelin sheath around nerves?

I just read that myelin is about 40% water. (The dry mass of myelin is about 70 - 85% lipids and about 15 - 30% proteins.)

So perhaps the myelin sheath is affected by dehydration.

There's a paper on this:

"It is the purpose of this paper to present an evaluation of the myelin sheath damage produced by variations of fixation, dehydration, and embedding techniques ...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...08/pdf/429.pdf

"Myelin increases electrical resistance across the cell membrane by a factor of 5,000 and decreases capacitance by a factor of 50."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin

"Thus, myelination helps prevent the electrical current from leaving the axon. . . Damage to the myelin sheath and nerve fiber is often associated with increased functional insufficiency."

Myelin damage could explain nerve hyperexcitability. Can a person with burned-off myelin experience 5,000x the nerve jolt as those with perfectly healthy myelin?

"Hyperexcitability at sites of nerve injury depends on voltage-sensitive Na+ channels."

"Na+ channel blockers consistently quenched neuroma firing, and they did so by suppressing the process of impulse initiation."

(They used lidocaine as a sodium channel blocker.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7965019

I've suspected for some time that I have sodium-channel issues. Ever since I watched an episode of Mystery Diagnosis where the baby would die when he mother touched her. (I also had questions about calcium.)