In all the reading/research I have done, your theory is not mentioned at all, even as a hypothetical. The “lack of fuel” hypothesis has been directly proven by brain imaging with PET.
You sound like an independent researcher who does their homework.
About 100 years ago, there was a doctor touting an exercise he called “The Giant Swing,” which was simply standing and rotating the head 360 degrees — and letting the rest of the body follow through. It was a small booklet of about 20 chapters in which he claimed that The Giant Swing was the cure for various and sundry ailments. He didn’t do much theorizing but simply advised that was the cure.
Unlike a lot of lifelong exercisers, I did not spend all my time around jocks, but came into contact with many seniors, disabled, and even terminal people — to whom even in their seemingly hopeless conditions, I felt there was something they could do to improve their condition and health — especially when the medical professionals had abandoned all hope for them.
Thus they were avid learners — realizing they had everything to gain and very little to lose — by trying anything that made sense to them. But when one is given no hope otherwise, that is a very powerful motivator — if they recognize that urgency and are determined to do whatever necessary and possible.
The notable failings of the human body, are foot strength (balance), grip strength, and increasingly, cognitive function — caused by a sedentary lifestyle that no longer requires head, hand and foot movement — which is what the human body is uniquely designed to do. And so those areas atrophy — and is particularly disturbing at the neck — and most people think there is nothing they can do about it!
But the movement performers — such as dancers, especially, cultivate that distinctive development of neck muscles as a requirement for spatial awareness. And that is what turning the head allows one to do — remain aware of what is going on — in a way that just looking at a television screen all day does not. A full range movement requires the muscle to move from fullest contraction to fullest relaxation, which is like the action of the heart in pumping blood out to the extremities. But to complete that circuit, the muscles at the extremity have to pump the blood back towards the heart — with their own movements. When those are nonexistent as they even are in prolonged running, walking and treadmilling, the resulting development is to enlarge the heart which weakens it, while the rest of the musculature atrophies.
That is what we know of the effect of exercise. Those muscles specifically worked, continue to function well, and can be optimized — while those muscles not specifically exercised, atrophy. The effect of pumping the fluids out of the tissues is that it creates the space for the new life and health giving fluids (nutrients) to enter — just as Dr Jason Fung, the expositor of Intermittent Fasting points out. You first have to get rid of the old, before you can build the new — and better. That is the greatest deterrent to deterioration — by actually producing health.