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   Representations govern definitions of ‘health’, views of the body, how we treat, use and push it, as well as its resulting ‘increased needs’ in the societal/ civilised living conditions, which we are systematically encouraged to ignore. Theories and philosophies govern attitudes toward diffuse flaring syndromes and those who ‘cannot keep up’ (in speed or complexity) in the societal / civilised contexts. Both affect how much the body-brain unit gets into habitual and auto-reinforcing activation of survival and adaptive mechanisms, which have constructive but also counter-productive effects. The flaring syndromes struggle with these views and the attached practices and medical treatments.

Challenging the unexamined presuppositions concerning the needs of human body and what is ‘good for everybody’ leads to challenging the universality or necessity of the frameworks of survival and complex evolutionary systems and dynamic adaptive systems, which ride on theories derived from mathematised topology, whose baseline presupposition and ultimate result is critical conditions (a hidden parameter of ‘Boundary’). They are used to justify bio-psycho-social views of ‘health’  that ride on notions of the human-but-not-animal body.

The basic topologic modelling describes the above frameworks in generic terms only, and adds another view – that of the human body as ‘wildlife’ reacting under the pressures and within constraints of normal living conditions. (‘Under’ and ‘within’ are terms used to delineate the domain of application of representations in physics, something the human domains tends to forget).

Osmosis: water distribution in the body

•    Medical (2010): Low-Dose Oxytocin Stops Unexplained ‘Burning Pain’: a case report  with Note 1 and Note 2 . 
  The idea of this experiment arose from observing jelly fish decay in anaerobic conditions and leaves decay after heat stress: water plays a major, not minor, role in biological integrity and operationality. 

• Power point presentation (2006)  PPT 1 in the PhD thesis (slides): Details on water in the body

• Blog (2012): The Water Strain Hypothesis
  A blog of comments on various papers (reference given) that tend to support the idea that osmotic stress has a role to play in diffuse symptoms.
  

• Topologic Ecology of Health report (2012): Trephina Gorge Experiment
  Effects of nearly 5 months staying in very simple living conditions in a  remote area, and walking in different ways. The topologic modelling gives a way of making sense of another type of instinct than the immediate survival instinct and the long-term viability instinct to heal – that to simply live effectively, be unaffected in most situations, and so not have to survive or adapt or sustain affliction in many ways. These informal notes  of observation are the result of explorations of these situations in daily life.

Examples of changing topography in the body

A ‘changing topography’ is equivalent to a distorting shape – a distortion. In other words, pains are amenable to being modelled with a simple geometric topology.

Moving pain

The ‘pain shifting maps’ that some patients make present a changing geometry in the body – i.e. a moving topography. This is a partial use of topology as a  geometry of ‘shaping’, but with conventional geometric properties rather than topologic.

The diffuse pain spreads from a core area close to the source of cerebrospinal fluid and to  the hypothalamus, which contains a nucleus called the Hypothalamic Osmostat. It acts as a strain management mechanism (a ‘first stress system’ in the literature) :

The diaphragm

Habitually reduced to a concept of up-down motion, the diaphragm can also be viewed as topologic ‘core’, and this changes many things about breathing mechanics, habituated or free.

Sensation (non-sensory, not ‘information’): the shrinking diaphragm as a signal of reduced oxygenation… ‘Breathe !’ says the body.

Being literally geometric: The head: “Central”?

The head: “Central”? … to ‘self’-control perhaps, not to the body.

An equivalent framework in archaic or Neolithic female representations

This difference in fundamental representation is often related to male vs female medieval frameworks representing physical/bodily experience, different in male and female bodies. Females cannot keep up survival mechanisms as much as men do without pain, fatigue and systemic damage. The ‘core’ of the body has more importance to women (breathing rather than just procreation); but the ‘rise’ or physiological activation still goes to the head (think of menopausal hot flushes triggered by the hypothalamus.

The ‘red spot’ on the forehead, considered ‘symbol’ of prosperity or fortune in India, has an origin in a physiological phenomenon of low-grade dehydration: a pinkish dry spot  of irritated skin between the eyes in women. In modern adaptive health it has spread and become all sorts of face ‘rashes’ that no longer bring health or prosperity. In the modern spiritual traditions derived from male frameworks, this spot is no longer associated with the skin but is a metaphor or a symbol, for example of the ‘third eye’ which is ‘invisible’ and linked to psychic/ESP capacities. In India the red spot has become a fashionable item in varied colours, glued onto the face skin. In Western cultures of the 18th century, the ‘beauty spot’  is derived from the black mole, and sometimes seen on the face somewhere around the nose of societally successful people (e.g. actors, performers). These ‘spots’ all carry cultural metaphors for success or prosperity or beauty, but originate in physiological processes that are actually not signs of health.

Examples of what is ‘hidden’ in the body

View full presentation of body models in health and illness: this power point presentation (slides) <PPT1> in the PhD thesis collects examples of

water in the body
topology in the body
feeling like non-human living things (leaves, jelly fish, salmon life cycle)

[online 2010]