Article on the Vascular System and Multiple Sclerosis

I came across a post today from one of the Facebook pages I follow, and I thought you might be able to get something not only out of the article but also out of ways the article suggests to help with Vascular health.  CCSVI has been a hot topic for a few years now and the link between our Vascular system and Multiple Sclerosis is heating up as more and more Research is done.  There is a lot of information out now about CCSVI and MS, and to be honest I haven't had the time until recently to start really looking at it again but I will try to get more information on here about the newest findings. 

Here is the article about Endothelial Health and MS, and the authors recommendations to have a Healthy Vascular System - http://ccsvi.org/index.php/helping-myself/endothelial-health.  Hope this helps!

New CCSVI Detection Technique from Dr Zamboni

Wow, Dr Zamboni just keeps pushing forward with ways to help the MS community. One of the issues with CCSVI detection to the point has been the detection of a blockage by neurologists. So, you have many MS patients being misdiagnosed because of a flawed detection process. Now, Dr Zamboni has figured out a way to take the user error out of the equation. He has come up with a process that records blood flow through a plethysmography machine to see if you have blockage. This method eliminates the operator's special training dependency, and makes detection so much quicker and easier.

Here are the details I have right now. The patient wears a collar that measures the volume of fluids in the neck. At first, the patient sits upright in a chair. When the volume stabilizes, the chair is aggessively tilted and the patient is in the supine position. The volume is continuously measured, and this position increases the volume in the neck. Again, the patient is agressively tilted back into an upright position and whamo, an MS patients blood flow takes a long time to decrease again. A normal subjects blood flow decreases almost instantly.

This is so much simpler and more accurate to see if a patient has CCSVI present or not. After they get a positive that the patient has blockage, then they can use doppler and see what extent the blood flow is impeded. This is going to be so much simpler and more effective in diagnosing since it will remove the user error. This is literally a push button method of testing, which should in turn make the whole diagnostic process easier and more reliable. Thank you Dr Zamboni for continuing to find new and creative ways to help MS sufferers. I am so grateful for men like Dr Zamboni and Dr Swank for not giving up when the medical community pushed back on them and tried to disprove their theories. I will keep my eyes open for a diagnostic center that begins to use this technique, and have my wife and daughter tested.

Spinning Head With MS

Yesterday my wife woke up feeling pretty good, other than an unsettled stomach. She met me for lunch and right after she arrived home, her head started spinning and she began to vomit. She wasn't able to leave the bed for the rest of the day, with her head spinning. By mid afternoon her head hurt so bad that she wasn't able to sleep, and she was trying everything to relieve the pain and spinning. She wasn't able to sleep well through the night, and woke up feeling worse. From the time the spinning started, her body struggled to regulate her body temperature. She would become overheated easy which made the feelings of sickness even worse.

This morning I offered to take her to our Pro Adjuster Chiropractor and she felt like she would get better as the day went on. Around lunch time she showed up at my office struggling to stay on her feet, dizzier than the day before. We immediately contacted the Chiropractor and headed the 2 hours to see him. He adjusted her in about 10 minutes and she began to feel the rush of blood flow and feeling spread through her body and head. After about 10 minutes her headache had subsided to a dull pain and her dizziness was almost gone. After another 30 minutes we were sitting in a restaurant eating, with her continuing to feel better, laughing and talking like nothing was wrong. It still amazes me that a simple adjustment can radically change her well being.

While at the Chiropractor's office I spoke with him about the CCSVI research I have been studying. I explained the lack of blood flow due to twisted veins, especially the jugular veins, and asked him how the adjustments might affect this issue. As we talked about my wife's specific issues he adjusted each time she visited, he pointed out that the C1 and C2 vertebrae were always an issue for her. He explained to me that the jugular vein can easily be affected by these two vertebrae and that today was no exception. He also explained that a Chiropractor adjusts to affect nerves, but an Osteopath adjusts for blood flow. We talked for some time about how both of these issues, nerves and blood flow, are affected by adjustment and how my wife can see such drastic results from the adjustments time and time again. I am definitely not a doctor, and I am only passing along what this particular Chiropractor spoke to me about, but it sure does seem to make sense after he explained how the adjustments could be affecting the blood flow and potentially a CCSVI issue. We will continue to work with Chiropractic care until we decide whether we are going to pursue the Liberation treatment. I can honestly say that we are very excited about the future and my wife's health, and am very pleased with the current treatments we have found to help along the journey.

Forgiving with Multiple Sclerosis

My wife and I joke all the time that she is a very forgiving person, which she really is, but our joke has to do with her lack of memory. We were having a conversation the other day and I brought up something that she had been upset with me about, and she had to ask me when it had happened. She didn't remember any of it, and this is a very common occurance. She and I will have a disagreement and within a few hours, she has completely forgotten about it. I have noticed that this happens more often when she is stressed, and it has seemed to happen a lot lately. I can tell when her memory is slipping because she will forget simple things that normally she is very good about remembering. It definatley makes for some interesting disagreements because she will get fired up about something, then totally forget it within a short amount of time. Some of this is probably her ADD. She always struggles to stay focused, and I know that is one of the reasons she forgets so easily, but I also know that her memory comes and goes depending on how she is doing physically and emotionally.

I am not sure how much of all of this is MS, or if any of it is MS, but I know from some of the studies being put out right now about CCSVI that there are some major issues that can result from the blood flow being restricted. I read a study the other day talking about how the blood going into the brain is actually cooled down before it enters, and how the blood flow affects how our bodies deals with temperature changes and all sorts of other issues. I want to write more about this later, but for now, I guess I am just curious if anyone else out there is struggling with memory issues. Multiple Sclerosis affects so many different areas of your life, and this is one that has helped my wife in some ways. Because she forgets some things so easily, it actually lessens the stress on her body and she forgives very easily. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some things that she never forgets and she definately reminds me of some of those on a regular basis. :) She really is an amazing woman that is truly forgiving and is always trying to make the right decision, no matter how hard that is on her. Dr Swank used to talk about how amazing the MS patients were that he treated, and I would have to agree that I have an amazing MS woman!

New Year, New MS Discoveries?

2011 could shape up to be an amazing year. With Dr. Zamboni getting the OK to start his Clinical Trial for CCSVI and MS, many others already having the Liberation treatment done and so much dialogue being done about new ideas about Multiple Sclerosis, this year could be a turning point for so many facing this disease. My wife and I have been following all of this very closely but are not at a point to where we feel ready to jump in yet. There is still a lot of details to be worked out concerning after care and a way to create long term opening of the veins, that we are not ready to move forward with the procedure. But, it has been amazing to read stories about progressive MS patients that have seen miraculous recovery from this surgery. We will be following everything with anticipation to see what new technology or technique or method may fix some of the issues that are currently hindering a full recovery for many of the patients.

I know for my wife, the last year and a half have been very interesting. I can honestly say she has had more daily issues with her MS where we live now than almost any other time since her diagnosis. She hasn't had any major attacks or major issues, just annoying issues that have disrupted the routines of our life and affected our daily living. We have made some commitments in 2011 to begin to shape our lives better so we can control more of the things that we know are affecting her health. She is already beginning to take control of some of her dietary habits again, and we are gearing up for some much needed physical training to strengthen and build up our bodies. We have already began to make some major changes in our lives, and I am excited about what the future holds for treatment of MS.

No MS Symptoms During Pregnancy

I've been thinking through all of the different situations I have seen with my wife's MS, and one of the strangest was during pregnancy. When my wife first became pregnant she thought she was depressed due to the emotional swings and the crying. After about a week of that, she decided to see if she was pregnant. I'll never forget her sharing with me that she was pregnant. I was excited and scared out of my mind all at the same time. After we found out, she noticed the depression went away along with her MS. She had normal pregnancy issues like weird food cravings and morning sickness, but she didn't have any MS problems.

I think it took a little while for me to notice it, but her fatigue was gone and she generally felt better. We were both amazed at how well she felt and how she didn't have any numbness, fatigue, tingling, eye problems or other common MS issues. This always intrigued me because it was the most normal 9 months of our marriage. I have spoken with many doctors and MS patients and many of them have seen the same thing. So, why does this happen? Some of the doctors have talked about the hormone shifts in the body and how they could be affecting the MS. I wonder now if this has something to do with the vascular issues in CCSVI. Could the changes in the body during pregnancy affect the veins and how well they function? I have no idea, but it sure poses an interesting set of questions. Maybe we'll learn more as the research keeps coming out at the multiple Universities in the US performing trials.

Thoughts on CCSVI and Dr. Paolo Zamboni's Research

I have been reading articles and posts all over the net about Dr. Zamboni's research and Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency. One article by Erika Milvy states, "Dr. Zamboni found that, in over 90 percent of people with Multiple Sclerosis, the veins draining blood from the brain were constricted and this led to a buildup of iron in the brain that, he theorized, causes the neurological symptoms of MS." Dr. Zamboni seems to have been driven to this conclusion by his desire to help his wife Elena Zamboni. Dr. Zamboni performed a surgical procedure on his wife to correct this issue and she was one of his first success stories.

After reading these articles I have tried to stay up on the research being done by different universities across the US and Canada. In February more information is supposed to be released and until then we will wait with anticipation. For the past 14 years I have watched as "miracle" cures have hit the media for Multiple Sclerosis, and I have tried to hold on to what we have learned through our own experiences. One of those "miracle" cures was a drug that my wife was set to take in 1990. Fortunately she chose not to take it because it caused major organ failure in the majority of patients that tried it. We have tried to look at this new finding through the lens of these experiences but feel very excited about the possiblities.

After reading one night I asked my wife how she thought life would change if she didn't have to deal with MS everyday. What would change? We sat and dreamed about no fatigue, no worries about over working her body, no worries about going numb or losing eyesight, no more missing events and activities that we have to miss now, and so many other things that we have made choices about that specifically have to do with her MS. It is the first time in our marriage that I can say that we really wondered what it would be like to have true health together, and actually feel there may be a way for that to happen.

I don't know how successful the trials will be, but I do have hope that it may be the beginning of the end. I know that we have personally tested my wife for iron overload and have been baffled by some of the things that have worked and not worked with the treatments we have chosen. I remember her sitting in a magnetic field chair when she was being treated by our naturopath after going numb from the chest down, and she felt great after the treatment. She tried to use the same treatment a year later and it made her feel ill. We had no idea why it made her feel great one time and made her feel awful the next. We still have no solid answer to why, but iron content was one of the issues we were looking at after the treatment. I will share more thoughts later, but for now I wanted to at least acknowledge that we are watching this play out with anticipation and excitement. Our hope is that this research will truly change the way MS is treated.