The following is found on Youreatopia.com:
You can't really avoid edema in recovery because it occurs not
because you're re-feeding and resting, but because your body is now
getting enough energy to deal with the damage from all the relapses and
slips.
The primary reason for the swelling is intracellular and
intercellular water retention to bring nutrients to damaged areas
throughout the body to build new cells and to bring phagocytes to those
areas as well to chomp up all the damaged old cells and send their
carcasses out through the kidneys and urine.
The pain you feel is
designed to be there to force you to rest because the body is needing to
use the energy to deal with building new cells and getting rid of
damaged ones.
In my own empirical evidence (not evidence-based medicine), those who
are challenged with the most severe level of edema in recovery tend to
be those who have suffered from extreme exercise as a way of expressing
food avoidance. This
will likely be because the damage to the structures of the body when you
exercise and don't provide adequate energy means the body needs to
provide more nutrients and clear out more damaged cells than not. That's
what the edema is primarily about: whisking away the damage and
providing energy for anabolism (creation of new tissue and cells).
Gwyneth on youreatopia
http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2012/5/22/edema-the-bane-and-blessing-of-the-recovery-process.html
The water retention is there for a few reasons:
1) To bring
nutrients into damaged areas for cell building and to bring in
phagocytes that chomp up damaged cells and send the waste material
through the kidneys and out of your body as urine.
2) To encourage
enough inflammation and accompanying pain to force you to rest --
thereby allowing the body to avoid further damage while it's doing the
rebuilding.
Now, if the swelling is worsening, then it needs some
investigation. The general rule in recovery is if it's bad/stable and or
slooowwwwly trending to be better, then it can be left alone.
When
things are noticeably worsening, then the first thing to look at is
what might have changed in your behaviors recently that could be the
cause(s). Have you had a few days of unavoidable activity? Did you
overdo it one day with "just running a few errands" or "doing a bit of
cleaning"? Are you thinking quite a bit about food throughout the day
and not responding to those thoughts by eating immediately -- maybe
you've been eating more in the recent past but a few days of additional
stress at home or at work and you've slid just a bit?
Gwyneth
It is very common for a severe level of edema to show up in the body when the person has suffered from anorexia athletica. You don't want to be taking any diuretics or trying to rid yourself of
the edema (much as you probably really want to) because it is there as
part of the healing process.
Gwyneth
Someone suggests eating enough protein and using compression socks can help.
http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2013/5/25/why-is-there-so-much-pain.html
Some of you may notice you start getting colds, whereas in the worst
of your restriction you did not. In addition to some of the analgesia
that is occurring due to an inability to perceive pain (because the CNS
is too starved to interpret signals fully), there is both analgesia and
an on-steroids (literally) immune system associated with extreme stress
as well.
Restrictive behaviors are extremely stressful to the
body. Cortisol (steroid) is surging through your body and this fires up
your immune system beyond its usual level (for a while). Eventually the
long-term impacts of higher-than-normal levels of cortisol will move
patients in one direction or another: autoimmune illness (body attacking
its own cells as though they were foreign), or immunosuppression
(getting very sick all the time).
When you stop restricting, the
entire stress system is told to stand down. So now you’re feeling the
pain and you may have a wicked cold along with it as well.
Plenty of people on the forums asking about
why they are now having cold after cold and flus in recovery when they
were just fine when they were starving. Their systems are predisposed to
immunosuppression in the presence of high levels of cortisol.
Those with autoimmune predisposition are the ones with all the edema, pain, swelling and inflammation.
Both
states will demand of the fat organ that is work harder and usually
enlarge to handle the demands. And both states ease with continued rest,
re-feeding and mind retraining too of course.
Gwyneth at youreatopia
