This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

I've worn one of those pulse-ox things on my finger before and my oxygenation levels were normal, I think 100%.

Studies into the effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and MS have never shown any benefit to us either in terms of disease progression.

So....???

Hello Cheer,
Thank you for the links, I did check them out, and they were very helpful!
Yes, it is all so interesting. Anyone who could call this amazing breakthrough discovery a hoax or hope mongering is obviously not taking an objective look. It all makes so much sense!

Hoodyup,
Thanks for your posts, they were very helpful.

Brightspot,
Okay, I will recount a couple of recent events concerning my personal experience with oxygen.

My first clue that something was going on with my oxygen level almost three years ago. After a hospital stay for an MS exacerbation, I was back home. I found myself taking periodic deep breaths of air. It was a strange sensation I had never experienced before. I would simply pull in very deep breaths every few minutes. This concerned me to the point that I was not able to sleep the entire night. This continued a few days, and I guessed that it must be a reaction to one of the new medications I had just been prescribed. I actually stopped all my medications in an attempt to test and see if the strange breathing pattern would also stop. Unfortunately, it didn't, but eventually the deep breaths became fewer and fewer as I recovered from the attack.

Six months later, during another attack, I noticed the strange breathing return. It was also accompanied with shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, chest pressure, and even a little chest pain.

And then, three months ago, another attack. Yes, the breathing returned! All the previous symptoms were more pronounced. And yet, another strange new symptom. I noticed I was yawning in a strange sort of way! How do I explain it? Well, it was like a fake yawn. A yawn where I just open my mouth involuntarily, but it was not refreshing. It is actually very annoying, as my body seems to know I need more oxygen, but is not succeeding very well in satisfying the need.

A few weeks ago, during this ongoing exacerbation, we had a very cold and snowy day. I had spent the day in bed because of extreme fatigue. Sometime in the evening, I noticed something VERY odd. I began to breathe in such a way that was completely refreshing! It actually felt foreign to me as I pulled the breaths in, I could feel refreshment all the way down my chest! It felt ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL! I can't explain this feeling, but it overwhelmed me so much, I actually cried tears of joy!

My husband came home from work and gasped at how cold it was in the room! He practically never wears a coat. Here I was, with not a single chill bump, and his teeth were chattering! Tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to explain to him that I didn't remember breathing could be so refreshing. I literally laid there, just enjoying taking in breaths. My husband slept bundled in a coat that night because I begged him not to turn the heater on! My body temperature was doing very weird things, but it allowed me to experience the best breathing I had known since I could remember. I later learned that cold air is more dense, therefore has more oxygen.

And now for today. I had a treadmill stress test because of the rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, chest pressure, etc... Within four minutes of walking, my heart rate was at 184, which is above my maximum recommended heart rate. Once off the treadmill, my heart rate did not recover very quickly. It stayed well above 100 bpm. The technician kept asking me if I needed oxygen, and I declined. I was actually very curious to see how I would respond to the oxygen, but did not want to appear as someone who over dramatized my condition. She checked my oxygen level by putting the little reader on my finger. My oxygen was at 99%, yet I was breathing very hard, and my face was flushed. I also had tingling in both legs and my lips were starting to tingle. Then as I lay there trying to rest, my heart rate shot back up instead of going down. At that point, she insisted I have oxygen, even though my oxygen level was reading 99%! Ahhhhhhhh, again, the refreshment the oxygen brought was overwhelming! Try as I might, I could not hold back a few stray tears. It was like a rare treat to feel such relief from simply breathing!

As we waited for my heart rate to return to something that was acceptable, I talked to the nurse about CCSVI. She seemed interested, and I brought up a question I had. I have heard that a person can have a different blood pressure in their head than in their arm. If this is true, would it not stand to reason, that the oxygen level (which is carried by the blood) could also be different? Is is possible that we need to be checking the oxygen level in our brains, not our finger?

All I know is, I tried the oxygen, and it works. For me, it's like a thirsty traveler in the desert finally getting water.

_________________
Together, our voices are louder!
http://ccsvivictory.club.officelive.com/default.aspx

Vonna, this is very interesting to me. I was thinking along similar lines and wondering how you measure the difference in oxygen saturation in the brain vs. the rest of the body. I have had the same experience -- the finger clamp gives a beautiful saturation reading, and yet oxygen makes you feel fantastic!

Great observations and details. Thank you.

The pulse -ox machine measures the oxygen level at your finger tips....
not much help in measuring oxygen perfusion in the brain if the blood flow is slowed by ccsvi

its pretty important to distinguish between global effects and local. Hypoxia is a measure of o2 in the whole body. MS patients as far as I know don't have low oxygen levels over the whole body. Locally, beause of ccsvi there is probably some deoxygenated blood that isn't escaping the cns correctly and is causing some damage...



I dont get this. Oxygenated blood comes from the heart and flows up to the brain where most of the oxygen gets used up.(or is that it, not all?) By opening the jugular deoxygenated blood can flow better. I have ms and in the last few months my mental errors are like 50% but fwiw I need that clarified.

I mean the fatigue thing seems to be from neural turbulance. I was jogging 5 miles a day last spring now I can do a few blocks. This is because after a while it becomes exhausting just to go in a line. There are so many incorrect neural signals to correct in each stride that I get really tired really fast. So a brain that can clear itself isnt going to send as many bad signals, but its nothing global. That metre on the finger isnt going to change because of a ccsvi operation is it?

It's all about slowed cerebral perfusion and mean transit time. The longer it takes deoxygenated blood to get out, the longer it takes oxygenated blood to get in. Yes, it is localized hypoxia....it's only the brain. A faster mean transit time, thanks to correct venous return, allows for oxygenation.

Dr. Dake believes the relief in Jeff's fatigue is because he no longer has venous congestion. Fatigue in MS is related to slowed perfusion in gray matter.

Here's some research on this:




http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... t/64/2/196

Here's the abstract for Dr. Z's new paper to be presented in Toronto next month at the ANA meeting-



Jeff had his first big flare and diagnosis after a week at high altitude in '07....his blood numbers were really weird, looked like the coagulation cascade- but his neuro said it was nothing. I started researching the vascular connection and we found ourselves at CCSVI-
cheer

_________________
Husband dx RRMS 3/07
dx dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) 4/09
dual stents placed 5/09
CCSVI in MS

The fatigue is largely from interleukin-6 and other heat cytokines.
Paracetamol will do the trick. One of the most famous anti-pyretics
ever discovered. My guess is the brain is trying to salvage itself
and is creating heat to use as a protective mechanism. Vein blood
is not entirely devoid of oxygen but very low in it. Carbon molecules
are also very important in relation to oxygen.

didnt know that.

I remember reading an article in Prevention magazine about how blueberries, among their many other health benefits, help increase oxygen in the brain. I regularly have a big bag of frozen organic blueberries in my refridgerator which I often put in a morning smoothie with a banana, rice milk or almond milk and frozen acai berry pulp that I get from local Brazilian stores here in South Florida. My toddler daughter loves blueberries too so we will have them fresh every so often too.

http://www.trueblueberry.com/blueberry/memory.asp

WeWillBeatMS

elderberries are also thought to be very good but don't know why

Sclafani mentioned it too in his thread a week or two ago...reduced outflow means reduced inflow...

_________________
"However, the truth in science ultimately emerges, although sometimes it takes a very long time," Arthur Silverstein, Autoimmunity: A History of the Early Struggle for Recognition

Just got this through from the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. It shows how hypoxia breaks down the blood brain barrier.


[color=blue]
It's also on Pubmed but the url is just generic to the site for some reason.

I believe minocycline inhibits MMP9 as does salvia miltiorrhiza:



Zhong Xi Yi Jie He Xue Bao. 2009 Feb;7(2):145-50.

[color=blue]

[color=blue]

_________________
3 years antibiotics, 06/09 bilateral jug stents at C1, 05/11 ballooning of both jug valves, 07/12 stenting of renal vein, azygos & jug valve ballooning,

gibbledygook,
This was very technical information for my simple mind, but I did get the part about hypoxia breaking down the blood brain barrier. Very interesting!

_________________
Together, our voices are louder!
http://ccsvivictory.club.officelive.com/default.aspx

Wow, that does tie together.

_________________
"However, the truth in science ultimately emerges, although sometimes it takes a very long time," Arthur Silverstein, Autoimmunity: A History of the Early Struggle for Recognition

Here is an older piece of research into Minocycline as it relates to RA & scleroderma skin manifestations & atherosclerosis

http://www.roadback.org/index.cfm?fusea ... lay_id=113




Good article & food for thought.