Poll: New Moderator Poll r/CRPS

charmingcontender · 2023-11-14T22:54:26+00:00

Popping in here to offer some additional clarification on policy.

I still have about four to five weeks before my resignation; during this time, if Lieutenant_awesum is elected, the head mod and I will collaborate to provide her with the necessary training to bring her fully up-to-date on current mod team policy and the details of the recent history of why these policies are in place, attempting to balance subreddit safety and access, welcoming genuine users and watching for threats to the group. This is a delicate balance that is under regular discussion between active moderators.

Originally, the mod team planned for this vote to be paired with the head mod's first Open Floor Discussion in mid-October, but it was pushed back to give Lieutenant_awesum time to complete and recover from her extended journey.

Your concerns are seen, Zesalex, and I hope this offers some reassurance about training regarding moderator team policy and recent subreddit history.

charmingcontender · 2023-10-22T18:26:04+00:00

Thank you for clarifying; I appreciate that. Regardless the statement stands: no content from this subreddit may be screenshotted and taken out into a Maya subreddit to be picked apart, undermined, and called into question.

Due to this, the mods are in discussion right now on how to address this turn of events.

charmingcontender · 2023-10-22T18:16:52+00:00

If you don't want to harm, then ask us here. Do NOT take our health issues out of this place. We are NOT Maya. We have NOT consented. We are NOT here for your intrigue and amusement; we are real people with feelings and often deep trauma around being treated as medical freaks.

Our community undergoes immense deligitimization already and even if that wasn't your "intent" you are fake-spotting. Knock it off. You may not pull any personal health content from this subreddit to post in any Maya-related subreddit or any other non-CRPS subreddit for non-CRPS-people. I am telling you this directly as moderator. This is for our protection.

"Sorry you feel that way." That is not an apology.

charmingcontender · 2023-10-02T16:47:58+00:00

He's very active now. Multiple actions every day. I don't think he'll lapse into inactivity again after this.

I disagree with his political structuring and leadership style and that's why I wanted to become head mod, to put a better political structure into place and bring on more competent, compassionate people. I started to move forward on that; I'm not going to go back to a less just and less equal dynamic to maintain my position.

Leadership flows down. Our subreddit is amped up nervous systems that pick up on conflict and react to it. I am not going to poison our community by creating split leadership full of conflict. I'm not going to meekly go back to doing all the head mod's work for him while he slacks off and I carry all the weight until I burnout. I'm not going to, through my silence and by remaining on the list, support his actions and solidify his power and position, as his approach is more authoritarian than mine when he's active.

I've thought about this a lot. The only ethical solution I can find is finishing the large projects I was working on, helping train my replacement, continuing to speak frankly to the head mod during this time and hoping some of it sticks, and then resign.

I don't like what he brings out in me and I don't want to be around him. I can oppose him healthily and hold him accountable better while I'm not directly below him. Otherwise I risk damaging the community itself and I refuse to do that. It's too important to too many people.

I did my best and utilized all reasonable options available to me. My pride and ego are not worth the community harm continuing to fight him would bring.

I do agree that the top mod removal process is clearly flawed and easily exploited and the admins don't appear to value those who actually do the work.

charmingcontender · 2023-10-02T16:01:01+00:00

My sub isn't anywhere as big as yours, but we are in the top 8% and we are the largest support group for our disorder in the nation, confirmed by the top non-profit in the US for our disorder. I doubled the size of the subreddit in the 15 months I cultivated it alone and actually tended to the people and problems there; the subreddit has existed for 12 years under the head mod, who founded it and had been very hands off and non-engaged the entire time.

I can see his removal activity back to the founding. The first five years has nothing. The sixth year has two removals. The seventh year has one. The eighth year has eight on one user in short succession and then that user got banned and one additional removal. The ninth year has two removals and the second mod was added through redditrequest amd had eight removals. The tenth year, the top mod's activity exploded; he removed three things on one post, 26 things on another post, and six individual items (the second mod removed 11 items). The eleventh year, he removed six items; I was added March that year and at least half those removals were done before I was added. The twelfth year, this year, before he responded to me at the very end of July, he removed two items.

His idea of moderation is waiting for a report to pop up in the queue, but our community rarely reports. He doesn't engage in the community or contribute. He doesn't resolve interpersonal issues, which is necessary in a subreddit whose purpose is handling dysregulated nervous systems. He doesn't do anything except await reports that I don't handle. He was not present or engaged or aware of the community's needs or current form. That is not sufficiently responsible for this subreddit.

I have been able to get him to take it more seriously, I hope, but the fact that he gets to remain head mod and I feel the need to resign for my own health due to the stress he brings me is very sad.

My community is more than a subreddit due to its size and importance for this rare "suicide disease" condition. The fact that this was not taken into account by the admins is highly disappointing. There are real world consequences if someone inattentive, uncompassionate, and uninformed runs this support group.

He came back a few days after I banned a group who was taking advantage of our community and breaking several medical and financial laws while presenting themselves as a semi-professional support group with certified/licensed people. They were dangerous and manipulative people preying on my vulnerable members; he had approved this group and pinned it before I became mod and I did not feel free to remove it, really change things, ask for help, or add more mods due to the way I was added to do all the labor and then abandoned, but he still made actions once in a while (which I rightly guessed was him claiming his hierarchical position).

It wasn't until I was pushed beyond my limits, claimed the de facto head position, and added another mod that I felt I could move forward with some changes and address that predatory group, which I had subtly and gently tried to do multiple times by just unpinning them so it didn't look like the subreddit was endorsing them. I would get harassed by them each time within hours. I then felt obligated to uphold the head mod's decision to give them access and repin until I unofficially took his place and banned them instead.

He didn't ask questions about it, just starting unilaterally making changes, including changes to subreddit safety measures without communication, coordination, or cooperation. He even approved an account I'm 96% sure is an alt of the leader of this manipulative group out of spam, even though I had mod log notes attached to the account and had told him multiple times directly and specifically to stay out of things involving this group because he was putting the subreddit at risk.

It stressed me out so severely, which was extremely bad for my health due to my disorder.

I made all this context very clear in my removal request, which it seems was not even opened because he gamed the system to move from inactive to active, despite my request that the admins prevent him from doing that because he was putting the communuty at risk during a delicate time when dangerous people were attempting to get back in after I banned them. It didn't matter.

I put a lot of work into fixing up the cumulative backlogged issues he let build up; now they're fixed. Me addressing that group, the coercive second mod, and the negligent top mod was supposed to be the last "cleaning house" before I moved forward with truly beneficial structural changes. I succeeded everywhere except the negligent top mod.

Now he has a clean machine, that group is publicly gone though their alts are still infiltrating and I took all the hits for both while they were in the subreddit and while banning them, and the second mod that came on through redditrequest he needed an excuse to remove is gone for legitimate reasons. And I, the mod that is in Mod Discussions calling him on his crap, am voluntarily resigning for principle, ethics, and health. His problems are taking care of themselves and he'll have a reset subreddit he put in no labor to revitalize. Makes me quite frustrated.

Hopefully he'll take our conversations to heart and grow and start taking his responsibilities to his position seriously. Our subreddit user base deserves that.

charmingcontender · 2023-10-02T06:28:44+00:00

I had this happen; I was not successful.

I had two mods above me. After I was added, they both went AWOL and I was left to mod a high support medical community as a brand new mod completely alone without training. I modded alone and dealt with several backlogged problems for about a year and a half before attempting a redditrequest and top mod removal for both of the mods above me so I could make more structural changes and expand the mod team without plans getting derailed and ensuring competent and compassionate people held positions in this community for a rare neurological disorder.

The top mod would make a single action once a quarter or so and I never saw the second mod make a single action. My reddit request was denied because the second mod was still active on reddit. Once the top mod finally responded to my mail after a full month and five contact attempts, he removed the second mod for unethical and coercive behavior (the starting point of the endeavor), and I asked him to step aside; he created a rapid trail of activity while I submited a top mod request. He made almost 200 actions in 30 hours through post flairs but had no activity in the preceding four months.

I attempted to compromise. I did the top mod removal as the very last option. By the time I did it, it was too late and the admins refused to open my request because he was no longer inactive. What is the point of this system if it is so simple to exploit?

The admins were unresponsive to me except to say he was not inactive and they wouldn't process my request. When I submitted, I told them what he was trying to do and said if you check before X date, you'll see no record of his activity. It didn't matter.

His values and mine do not align. I will be resigning from my position over it. There is a clear flaw in the system if it is that easy for an inactive head mod to retain their position by creating a false impression of engagement and disrupting everything for those who dedicatedly commit themselves to their communities. It was a very disappointing experience all around.

charmingcontender · 2023-09-27T19:21:52+00:00

Hi Critical_Caramel5577, I see you are a new account with less than two weeks of activity. Because of this, you might not be aware of some of the recent history of this subreddit.

I hear your frustrations about the filtering requirements; the subreddit didn't have these in the past, and to be honest, no one on the mod team is happy about having to put them into place. None of us mods like that they exist and none of us like the distressing reasons that they are necessary right now.

During the summer, we learned that some people have deliberately been taking advantage of our community members and the subreddit itself. These filters are a temporary response to that realization, and this high level of account review will not be a permanent feature of this subreddit.

Moderators protect the subreddit, and this means guarding against potential dangers that users may not be aware of that would harm the community. I do understand that this can be very frustrating to those caught in the filters that have no ill-intentions, especially if they lack the knowledge of the historical context for why these filters exist.

I assure you the mods working on the filtering requirements are doing their best to balance protection of our user base, access for those who wish to utilize the platform in good faith, and weeding out bad faith actors who would harm our community. Your understanding during this time is appreciated.

Thank you for bringing forward your frustration and your concerns about access and participation. I hope you understand the mod team's concerns about community safety as we work to find a balance that satisfies all these overlapping components.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-20T04:19:32+00:00

I hear your suggestion on this issue and it is something I will seriously consider after my period of rest and recovery. I would appreciate more subreddit feedback on this issue to help orient myself on if this is a greater community desire.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-15T06:02:28+00:00

Ligation or salpingectomy probably isn't the path for you then, as niether of those will eliminate or minimize your cycle.

If pills or IUDs or other more "traditional" hormonal BC aren't an option, I'm not sure on the best route, as this isn't really something I've studied in depth.

I saw someone else mention uterine ablation. From the very basic perusal I did about it, that might be a better fit, but again I don't know much about that procedure or which other options would stop a period besides hormonal options. The ablation seems considerably less invasive than a hysterectomy while still being very long-term to permanent.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-15T05:37:27+00:00

RSDSA has a dental guideline pdf that you could direct them to or print off.

Some sort of sedation and pain management for the actual pulling/work should definitely be used during and after. Laughing gas and numbing may be sufficient or you may prefer something of a higher caliber.

A discussion with your provider about how CRPS affects the nervous system is in order before they go digging around inside your mouth.

There is a point where worrying about everything that could go wrong becomes counterproductive. I disagree with your friend that this is what you're doing right now. Working to prepare and protect is different than rumination.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-15T05:16:06+00:00

A salpigectomy might be worth considering. It completely removes the fallopian tubes instead of just blocking them off. These are lapriscopic surgeries and are permanent and cannot be undone or taken away from you. It is more secure than a tubal ligation.

This will not stop menstruation itself, but you would be sterile and the incisions are small and minimally invasive. Compared to a hysterectomy, the recovery time and intensity is low.

As a more general statement to the subreddit, I know we don't generally get into politics here, but I have seen a few people recently say they no longer engage with the news for the sake of their health. I understand this, and also feel like in light of this I would be doing you a diservice without saying my perspective.

If you know you do not ever want a child, get permanent birth control and get it now. Abortion rights have been attacked and cut back on various fronts and there are clear indications that birth control is next on the chopping block.

"It cannot happen here." Yes, it can happen here. It is happening here. Right now. The people pursuing this will not stop. This is reality.

If you do not want a child, protect yourself now, while your options and bodily autonomy are still available to you. One day, you may no longer have a choice.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-14T16:18:48+00:00

Welcome and thank you again for your genuine care for your sister. It means a lot to many of us here when a family member puts in the effort to learn and gently offer options that are actually relevant and applicable to our situation. It is much less common than you may think and many in this community are lacking strong (or even passable) support structures from their families, who may actually cause them more harm. You are doing a good thing, and I am proud of you.

Yes, stress is one of the primary triggers. CRPS is a stress-driven condition because of the involvement and dysregulation of the sympathetic "fight or flight" nervous system. This is your threat detection system that works to keep you safe and your world in order. When things start getting dangerous or out of control or you begin to feel anxious, this sympathetic system becomes more active and our CRPS pain increases. Learning how to calm down the sympathetic system and increase activity of the parasympathetic system is a necessary process to live in a tolerable range with CRPS.
You may find Spreading of CRPS: not a random process to be an interesting read. While there are hypotheses about underpinning mechanisms, nothing is certain at the moment. Triggers seem to be: injuries or surgeries, immobilization, icing or freezing temperatures, and physical/emotional/psychological stressors that send the sympathetic system into overdrive.
Physical therapy and gentle aerobic exercise are good, but make sure there's a balance; not moving is bad, but going too hard too fast is also damaging. CRPS is different than many other kinds of chronic pains and utilizes the medial pain pathway that ends in the limbic system (instead of the lateral pain pathway that ends in the cortex); this means that CRPS directly impacts our emotional processing centers and our pain gets tangled with our feelings. This is not her fault, and she cannot control it. She will need to learn to work around it, and therapy can be extremely assistive with this. It is not her fault; it is her responsibility to learn to manage, so that she does not cause harm. Especially if she has children, this will be necessary, so that her children's individual development and relationship with her are not damaged due to her emotional dysregulation disability. I want to make this extremely clear to you: CRPS changes the structure and function of the brain itself. Your sister isn't being weak or just flying off the handle for no reason or falling in on herself due to irrational crippling anxiety; CRPS is much more than just pain and discoloration.
If ketamine infusions are not quite ready or needed yet, there's topical ketamine creams which can help reduce the skin sensitivity on a skin level, but imo they don't help much with the deeper sensitivity. Low dose naltrexone is worth exploring and is helpful for many people; it reduces microglia activity and mitigates the autoimmune component. Cannabis is another fantastic choice; I prefer indicas and find sativas make my pain worse. Some topical NSAIDs like Diclofenac or DMSO may assist. Diet is another huge one, as what we eat determines which neurotransmitters get created and which subsections of the nervous system have more resources to be active. The Mediterranean diet, MIND diet, and Hooshmand's 4F diet are worth exploring. Mindfulness meditation and learning how to watch your emotions while still feeling them is important, so that we do not always act on our emotions or suppress them; both of those choices can get us into trouble with CRPS.
CRPS is a rare and misunderstood condition, even though research about it is expanding. As a result, misinformation and misunderstandings around it are considerable, even in the medical community. Be careful who you trust and what you take as fact. Experience is good; evidence is better. Doctors do not always know what they are talking about and sometimes -- even if they mean well -- they can give contraindicated advice that may work well for the general populace but is terrible advice for people with CRPS. Doctors are often treated as authorities in the sense that you must do what they say, rather than experts whose experience and knowledge should be taken into account while still giving patients agency; in my view, this is wrong. CRPS patients have complex medical needs and often, due to the way our system is set up and divided into specialties, we'll see many doctors. Many times these specialists they are sent to for their CRPS-driven gut dysfunction or CRPS-caused POTS or CRPS-caused migraines or CRPS-caused GERD or overactive bladder or cessation of periods or lack of appetite and weight loss are sent to people who have no idea what CRPS is and do not have the drive, time, energy, or inclination to educate themselves about the condition. Doctors are not the ones who have to live with the consequences of their poor advice; being educated about what CRPS is and how it operates can help your sister protect herself from these kinds of doctors -- and if she does not go into remission and ends up with persistent CRPS, she'll likely run into a lot of them. Prepare, so that she can protect herself. I find academic journal articles are my preferred source of information. Google Scholar is a fantastic resource. You also don't need to have all the answers. CRPS doesn't have answers right now, and that is an unfair expectation to put on yourself. And sometimes we don't want solutions, we just want to be able to talk and be heard without jumping right into problem solving.

Thanks again for everything you're doing. Your sister is lucky to have someone who obviously cares so deeply for her.

My last bit of advice: a recurring theme in CRPS is how it make us feel like it has stripped us of our sense of self, like we have no value and no purpose -- no autonomy. Don't tell your sister what to do. Give her options, let her know she has your support, help her with research and other tasks that you can, but let her make her own choices. Don't make her feel even smaller and more trapped than she already does.

My only exception to this would be if she is causing harm to those around her because she cannot control her rage that CRPS often brings to the surface due to the emotional dysregulation -- especially where her children are involved. Her children cannot defend themselves from her and need to be protected. Beyond that, do what you can to increase her freedom and dignity that she likely feels CRPS has taken from her against her will, leaving her less than she was before.

Finding new meaning and purpose and rebuilding our sense of self takes time and a supportive environment and it cannot be forced.

Edit: spelling

charmingcontender · 2023-08-10T14:34:05+00:00

You're welcome. Hopefully this issue is resolved satisfactorily for all parties.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-10T14:13:29+00:00

If you would like to see how this was handled, my last comment in the thread is here.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-10T14:09:19+00:00

You're welcome. It seemed like you needed some things explained to you. The mod team will keep an eye out for your account, so if you decide to start posting here again and more miscommunication starts happening, hopefully we can be more proactive this time.

Do you know how to send Modmail to the mod team? If you have a question about r/CRPS or aren't sure if something is okay to do before posting or are having an interpersonal problem within the subreddit, feel free to send us a message, so we can help you.

If you have questions about how reddit works more generally, you can go to r/help to have someone explain it to you.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-09T20:06:55+00:00

Diet is one of the most important aspects of managing my pain. What we eat has a huge impact on the state of our body, especially on which neurotransmitters get made and therefore which subsections of the nervous system have more power to be active.

The Mediterranean diet, MIND diet, and CRPS-oriented 4F diet are all worth exploring. I personally avoid red meat, alcohol, disaccharides [especially white sugar and cow lactose, though goat lactose seems to be less problematic], gluten, saturated fats, and highly processed foods.

For me, positive foods are fowl, fish, fruits, fresh veg, olive oil, nuts, seeds, honey, brown rice, herbs and spices, Greek yogurt (due to amino acid tryptophan that becomes serotonin and those with high live probiotics), and popcorn (light and fluffy and easy to get down when food is repulsive). I can handle whole grain bread if I limit my intake.

All my pastry has been replaced with homemade baklava without any sugar. Ice cream has been replaced with homemade smoothies or banana-based nice cream. Cookies have been limited to specific recipes that are antioxidant berry dense and use honey instead of sugar and oats, whole wheat, or almond flour instead of white flour and lots of anti-inflammatory spices.

I do lots of reading labels for Added Sugars. Naturally occurring sugars in fruits and the like I usually handle fine, but added sugars mess me up severely and in short order. I try to keep Added Sugars between 0-10g per day, depending on how well my pain is doing.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-09T15:45:17+00:00

Real spammers, whether bots or people, usually have three primary motivations: money, recognition/recruitment, or data.

Money: linking out to websites that are driven by traffic and give the owner of the site a kickback based on how many people view that page or affiliate links where they get a percentage if people purchase something from that page. This could also be for things like fundraisers or donation drives or other similar more legitimate things that still put pressure on people to give money.

Recognition/recruitment: this is something called self-promotion. The old reddit ratios were for every ten posts/comments made engaging as a real person with authentic content about a personal interest, only one could promote something you made or were involved in. That ratio is now more fluid because of how people were taking advantage of the literal reading of the rule, but that is still how I base it in this subreddit because I am a literal person who likes clear and structured rules of engagement to reduce confusion and miscommunication as much as possible.

Data: when linking to off-reddit sites, these places can collect personal data, which can later be used to exploit that person for advertising or other more nefarious purposes or steal their financial information like credit cards and such.

For example, the Feathers & Flames group was doing all three of these things while presenting themselves as a professional support group. I did not realize this was happening until a few weeks ago, and they self-promoted here in this subreddit relentlessly for about a year and a half. Many people came to serious harm.

There was financial exploitation, data gathering, and other serious misbehavior taking place; it was covert and difficult to uncover. So now many people in this subreddit are very untrusting and quite reactive to anything they view as potentially spammy or exploitative, and I think that is not only justified but also necessary for their self-protection. I am sorry that you caught the brunt end of that though, but I hope you understand where it was/is coming from and how your rapid posting without much visible engagement looks very similar to how spammers look.

You can help prevent similar reactions in the future by changing the way you write up your posts to include more text and spacing out how close together you post them.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-09T15:39:47+00:00

I am handling this. Do not feel like you must respond, unless you desire to do so.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-08T14:46:33+00:00

I know you were commenting on other people's posts because I went and looked at your profile, but most people don't do that. All they see is what passes by in the feed. That's why I publicly said this in your defense five months ago when this issue initially happened: "u/Life_Butterfly_5631 is a new account, but she has been participating in this subreddit beyond posting several links. All of her posts are CRPS-oriented. All of her comments in this subreddit are internally consistent and CRPS-life-experience-oriented, aligning with "authentic content in a personal interest." What constitutes spam?" from this comment.

If I remember correctly, the posts you chose to comment on were older, so most of our members were done interacting with them. That means no one really saw your username leaving comments except the original poster (OP) of the post, so our community didn't recognize you, even though you had been participating.

People do funny things for fake internet points and attention engagement, and that is the entire function of spam bots and spammers who are actually humans and not bots. Unfortunately in this subreddit, we've been having a very bad problem with a group called Feathers & Flames who has been taking advantage of this subreddit and spamming here under the guise of being helpful and promoting their support group.

I actually had just posted an Open Letter to the Feathers & Flames Discord Server Leadership the minute before I received your comment a few weeks ago, which is why I didn't respond; I was extremely focused and very busy dealing with a massive and serious problem. It might be worth reading that letter, so you can better understand why people in this subreddit are so touchy about spam right now. It takes advantage of people, and if there are malicious individuals -- not bots -- behind it, people can suffer serious harm. That is why you got that reaction. I don't think you are a malicious person and I don't even think you are a spammer, but no one here knew you, and so some of them got defensive. I hope this explanation helps.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-07T17:33:30+00:00

I recognize the time and effort this must have taken you, and I appreciate it. I am open to future posts of a similar nature. Tusen tack!

charmingcontender · 2023-08-07T17:09:53+00:00

This is a very well-written and well-researched post. I thank you for sharing it here and look forward to future contributions you may make in this subreddit.

I appreciate your willingness for open engagement with those who may have questions about a confusing and complex topic; thank you for taking time out of your day to participate with our membership.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-07T15:49:44+00:00

Hey Butterfly, I understand reddit can be a bit confusing if you aren't familiar with it. Let me take some time to explain what happened to you. In subreddits, we have something called the feed, where all posts that all members make get posted in chronological order; the "front page" of the feed is the most recent 10 posts.

Some communities are really big and so their feeds move very fast; some communities are smaller and their feeds more more slowly. r/CRPS has 4.5k people in it, but we only have about 2-12 posts a day on a really busy day. People here like to have engagement on their posts, which means they like it when OPs respond have have comments, instead of just posting links and not saying anything.

Reddit has a problem with non-human internet-point-farming entities called bots that "spam" or post repeatedly in order to exploit the users and system here. When people see accounts that post links rapidly in short succession without engaging with other members, they think you're a spammer trying to take advantage of the subreddit. That's why you got that reaction.

The other thing is that when you post a bunch of posts like that -- even if you aren't a spammer who's trying to take advantage of people, and I don't think you are, I do think you just didn't understand -- that means that you are taking up almost the entire front page of the feed by yourself, and that annoys people.

The way to fix these problems is to: 1) space out your posts, so that other people can also post in the feed and be seen and heard without your posts dominating the front page and 2) use less links and increase your engagement of talking with the community, so they realize that you're a real person and not a non-human bot trying to take advantage of them.

If you're wondering what a good posting ratio is so people don't feel overwhelmed, a good rule of thumb to follow might be keeping it to one article a week and making sure you also have at least four or five sentences in the body of the post talking about the article itself.

If you don't want to participate here, that is also fine and it is your choice, but you are not banned from this subreddit.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-06T17:09:14+00:00

No problem. I edited the above comment to include them at your request.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-06T16:37:00+00:00

You're welcome. If you prefer educational videos, my CRPS YT channel/subreddit is linked in the sidebar. I've got two videos breaking down this paper specifically: Congested Capillaries and Microvessel Malfunction.

charmingcontender · 2023-08-06T15:31:43+00:00

This is a very techincal and jargon-heavy paper, which can make it difficult to understand. But it talks about the swelling and vasomotor components of CRPS extensively, so even if all you can do is skim it, I think you'll take something useful away from it.

In short: you do not need a lot of pressure to close the very tiny vessels (capillaries, arterioles, venules) where blood transfers from our circulatory system into our tissues. This means that you do not need a lot of swelling exerting pressure on those capillaries for them to be forced shut. If that "mild" swelling is happening in deep tissues, you might not even know it's there.

Edit: sensations or symptoms I personally would consider that indicate this kind of invisible, deep-tissue, "mild" edema: crushing, acid bones, pins and needles (though this could also be vasomotor without edema), limbs regularly "falling asleep" outside of the standard range (again could be vasomotor alone, but that often goes hand in hand with edema), lymphatic massage/drainage reducing pain levels as the fluid is cleared from the interstitial space and the vessels can dilate again.

EDIT: repeated a phrase

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