How does dehydration affect nerve health in general and peripheral neuropathy in particular? What is the effect of a dry room in winter (e.g., below 30%)? Does dry skin make PN worse?

One site claims:

BBC:

Dehydration also makes the blood thicker.

For people with PN this is definitely not good. In fact some
PNers have increased proteins in the blood already making it thick to begin with. (MGUS etc)

Thick serum does not flow in the little end capillaries very well.
And there is increased risk of blood clotting.

So drinking lots of water is important for this reason.
Eating high fat diets also clog the blood up. This was demonstrated in normal volunteers in studies not to long ago.
Too low a fat diet will starve the nerve repair systems. So only consume moderate amounts of "good fats". Avoid things like ice cream binges...or huge meals of ribs, bacon, etc. Try to get that saturated fat intake down as much as possible.

Dehydration will raise BUN-- blood urea nitrogen... this is seen when people have long fasts, before blood work.

Does this happen from a diet that is too protein-rich? Or some other reason(s)?

Read this just now:

High fat and high triglycerides visibly thicken the blood.
Ask any phlebotomist who draws blood all day long, and they will tell you who is dehydrated and who has really high triglycerides.
I've been told that some triglycerides are so high the fat rises to the tops of the tubes!

Some young adults on Accutane can test out at over 1000!

I know there are some links on protein/blood viscosity, but I think they demonstrate less of an effect than fat content.

Amino acids do not clump together like the MGUS peptides. The more clumping and longer the chains, the more viscous the serum becomes.

It is really important to drink enough non-diuretic fluids therefore, both for the kidneys and for keeping the blood fluid.

Unless you ohave some medical reason not to it is always a good idea to keep well hydrated. PNers do tend to have very dry skin and mucus membranes. The extra water helps. As long as you have good kidney function is will help to rid your body of some of the toxins. If your urine is not very clear it can be a sign that you are slightly dehydrated. Also, dehydration can cause stomach cramps. Hope this helps. hopeful

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.)

** I did not get any relief until I took Neurontin and Lyrica in high doses. Just a little friendly advice