Real Hope For MS Sufferers.

I have never been positively impacted by a medical breakthrough - until now.

I have scoffed at walks, marathons and fundraisers in support of medical research. I've viewed it as more hype than help. I have always thought that real progress and real relief comes from a deep desire, an intimate knowledge or a desperate need for change.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

Elena Ravalli was a seemingly healthy 37-year-old when she began to experience strange attacks of vertigo, numbness, temporary vision loss and crushing fatigue. They were classic signs of multiple sclerosis, a potentially debilitating neurological disease.

It was 1995 and her husband, Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, set out to help. He was determined to solve the mystery of MS – an illness that strikes people in the prime of their lives but whose causes are unknown and whose effective treatments are few.

What he learned in his medical detective work, scouring dusty old books and using ultra-modern imaging techniques, could well turn what we know about MS on its head: Dr. Zamboni's research suggests that MS is not, as widely believed, an autoimmune condition, but a vascular disease…

...Using ultrasound to examine the vessels leading in and out of the brain, Dr. Zamboni made a startling find: In more than 90 per cent of people with multiple sclerosis, including his spouse, the veins draining blood from the brain were malformed or blocked. In people without MS, they were not.

He hypothesized that iron was damaging the blood vessels and allowing the heavy metal, along with other unwelcome cells, to cross the crucial brain-blood barrier. (The barrier keeps blood and cerebrospinal fluid separate. In MS, immune cells cross the blood-brain barrier, where they destroy myelin, a crucial sheathing on nerves.

More striking still was that, when Dr. Zamboni performed a simple operation to unclog veins and get blood flowing normally again, many of the symptoms of MS disappeared. The procedure is similar to angioplasty, in which a catheter is threaded into the groin and up into the arteries, where a balloon is inflated to clear the blockages. His wife, who had the surgery three years ago, has not had an attack since.

The researcher's theory is simple: that the underlying cause of MS is a condition he has dubbed “chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency.” If you tackle CCSVI by repairing the drainage problems from the brain, you can successfully treat, or better still prevent, the disease.

“If this is proven correct, it will be a very, very big discovery because we'll completely change the way we think about MS, and how we'll treat it,” said Bianca Weinstock-Guttman, an associate professor of neurology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

I remember the first episode I ever experienced. I was so scared. Many doctor's and many dollars later, I had few answers. MS is most often diagnosed by default, by ruling out other conditions.

Sadly, many MS sufferers are made to feel like it's all in their head. Doctor's prescribe useless or needless regimes and loved ones sometimes become exasperated.

The way I have dealt with it was through one part denial and two parts control. I thought that if I pretended that it wasn't a problem, it would go away. I thought that if I strictly regulated the chemical load on my body and adopted a mostly holistic lifestyle, it would go away. I was only about 75% right. The rest of the time I was faking it for my loved ones. It was always there.

I pray this is real. I hope the answer is this easy. I'm so thankful that there are people like Dr. Zamboni who think outside the box and who possess the compassion and commitment to see it through.

Thanks for posting this.

My friends mum suffers from MS very badly and she is unable to move unaided and has been for some time now.
It has brought a lot of heartache and problems for the family as she was in the prime of her life and had just given birth to my friends younger sister.

Any bit of hope is a good thing for them so thanks again for this and of course thanks for the dedication of the doctor in making this breakthrough.

Good luck for the future, hopefully this treatment will make it through clinical trials and isn't red taped for too long if successful.

Thank you for posting this. I'm going to pass this along to my sister who has MS.

Thanks KosmicJack !

I really hope there is something to this .

---------------------------------------------

Too late for my mother , but perhaps a chink of light for a dear friend .

my wide has MS so there are alot of things out there that i have read.

while this sounds good, another area that also appears to be the culprit is called mycoplasmas.

www.newtreatments.org...'s%20cause%20MS,%20Parkinson,%20CFS,%20etc

what is wrong is that moderm medicine refuses to look at MS and other immune deficiencies as external pathogens, but stays focussed on what they think.

only one nuerologist i have ever met has actually listened to MY reasearch on th esubject...

it felt good when he did, and took me seriously!

good luck to us all in curing this issue

*hmm double post*

[edit on 22-11-2009 by okamitengu]

Ive got several friends with MS i really hope this leads to a breakthrough.

A cure for MS that doesn't involve expensive and prolonged drug therapy?

There's no money in CURING people, only in suppressing the symptoms and misinforming the public of the causes.

Expect for this find to be attacked remorselessly by the medical establishment. They're only in it for the money, they don't give a darn about actually curing anything.

My sister also has MS, I'm going to pass this along. Thanks!

I pray that this is at least one good break in treating or curing this terrible disease. I know people that have this, and one real close friend in CA.

In college, I spent a week in the hospital, which, they thought I might have MS. I turned out I didn't.

My brother in law was just diagnosed a few weeks ago. I'm going to translate this for him. This will provide him and my sister in law a serious dose of optimism. Thanks for sharing this information!

That's right on! I am going to show this to my dad! He has MS and has been going down hill. He is known to have poor blood pressure so this might be worth looking into. I hope this helps his outlook.... but maybe not we don't have the money to go to Italy... Do they do this operation here in the states?




Thank you much for posting this it does me good to see this!



DK

[edit on 23-11-2009 by tensetek]

Wow! Good news for a change! I like that, and good news with some real science behind it. Thanks much for sharing this with us KosmicJack.

It seems more and more lately that oxygenation or binders that prevent same are looking to be the cause of many of our ailments.

Best of luck to you and other sufferers of MS.

reply to post by kosmicjack


medical science got it wrong the whole time, huh...and it seems iron is the culprit. I wonder what else its got wrong

goodluck, kosmicjack

s&f

Unfortunately, this post has come too late for me, as my Uncle died of complications from MS a couple of years ago. This, however is a great find and I hope it can help others and prevent the pain that my family went through.

S&F

I hope your post is right. I've had MS for approx 15yrs. I have been through stem cell transplants among other procedures.

It hasn't been easy

BUMP WOW how wierd that this topic came up I was listening to a medical show working nights on 890 am here is what I learned

1 Treatment of Bone marrow stem cell
1 Treatment of Light Chemo to reset the imunine system
A medicine called Betainfuron
A vitamine called Turmaric (sp?) used widley in India
Contact Dr. Robert Burt at the Fienburg school of medicine at Northwestern in Chicago IL.

they are claiming great strides in riding people of this problem

New therapy for many auto immune disorders is called Helminthic therapy (worm therapy). While many trials are ongoing, the results from one trial resulted in 21 Crohn's patients (out of 29 patients) in complete remission! I have read medical articles covering trials for MS sufferers with positive results. If you google worm therapy and your autoimmune disease, you will find current information on therapies and trials.

This therapy is based on the premise that for 165,000 years, humans have lived with internal parasites. Our immune systems evolved incorporating these creatures into our bodies. Since the 1950's, Americans, in particular, have slowly been relieved of these parasites due to new drugs developed (particularly the mycin class of antibiotics) for disease treatment which also wipes out helpful bacteria and organisms.

While this is not medical advice, I am so excited with the information because my best friend is slowly dying from her auto immune disease (Stills Disease). This is bringing new hope for her treatment as well as her sister in law who has MS! Good luck & may the Force be with you.

Originally posted by tensetek
That's right on!

I am going to show this to my dad! He has MS and has been going down hill. He is known to have poor blood pressure so this might be worth looking into. I hope this helps his outlook.... but maybe not we don't have the money to go to Italy...

Do they do this operation here in the states?

Thank you much for posting this it does me good to see this!

DK

[edit on 23-11-2009 by tensetek]

It states in the OP, that it's a procedure similar to an angioplasty. Those are pretty common.

reply to post by Bachrk


I'm very sorry.

I hope this news provides you with a bit of hope and ultimately with relief.

Many sufferers experience a downward spiral as time progresses and go to great lengths and expense trying to combat it. Fortunately for me, my symptoms are very mild and my episodes very sporadic.

Just getting a proper diagnosis is traumatic in itself. It can take years and there is a sort of stigma that is attached to it with in the medical community, at least from my experience. That's why I was so touched by Dr. Zamboni's belief in and dedication to his wife.

There are so many charlatans who profess to have answers to MS and/or other auto-immune diseases. I am a huge skeptic of anything other than a holistic and chemical-free approach. However, the great thing about this news is that it may not even be an autoimmune disease at all. More of a plumbing issue. Who would have ever guessed that?