This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Hello all,

Just a bit of info, when my wife (who has ms since 97) became pregnant with our daughter in january 2009 all her ms sympoms disappeared, she felt great ms wise but hated pregnancy.

She had all the normall pregnancy blood tests and check ups, then her doctor phoned to say she is very anemic and would have to have iron tablets called pregaday, which she took but all through the pregnancy she was allways very low on iron, but no ms sympoms.

Our daughter was born in august 4 weeks early, wife and daughter was fine.
She was still anemic and had to continue the iron tablets, then she had a blood test to check on iron levels a month after giving birth which was back to normal, then as soon as they where back to normal she had a bad relapse and now can barly walk.

Why when pregnant and anemic did she have no ms symptoms, then when her iron levels where fine did she go down hill?

Does this support CCSVI and iron deposits in the brain?

Hi snowfire77,

First, I am glad wife and baby are well.

You'll have to forgive my half measures, because I forget names of things, but 1) there is a lot on this thread about iron in the blood and ccsvi, I sure won't have to look to far to find the info, many people are iron chelating to remove iron, not too much, others are donating blood regularly also and say this helps them feel incredible.

2) there is a hormone released during pregnancy, I hear, that actually puts MS in remission. I do not know the name of it but I am sure if you google long enough you can find info. I have read that this hormone is actually being used as therapy for MS, it's in experimental stages though...

That's what I know, not a science person, but I just know someone in this forum will jump on with much more precise info..

I hope your wife recovers well from this relapse, maybe you could talk to doctor about the hormone treatment?

Good luck,
Zina

OLder post



I feel that MS is a result of three things, Possibly stating the obvious.

Stenosis
Time
Iron content of diet especially water soluble iron.

Draw yourself a simple Venn diagram, Assign each circle one of the above.

The intersection MAY be when MS occours.

Have a look at this please

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Multi ... HO2002.svg

and this.

http://www.who.int/vmnis/anaemia/preval ... naemia.pdf

It is the iron in our diets combined with CCSVI that causes MS.

Of note is this country, it sticks out like a sore thumb.... and is a paradox

http://geography.about.com/library/cia/ ... guiana.htm

Why do they have such a prevalence of MS when the others surrounding countries do not ???

The Geology of this nation tells the story, High in water soluble iron it looks like, and it gets into all the foods, plants etc, ( still researching). Friends of mine are from the area have have extremely high levels of iron in their blood that has alarmed their Canadian Doctors.

If you draw a venn diagram and assign Stenosis to one circle, Time to the other and Diet / iron to the third the intersection of these produces MS

The larger any one of the circles is the greater the chance of having MS. If you do not have CCSVI then you will not get Clinically defined MS. If you have a diet with no iron, you will not get MS. (this is impossible though as Iron is in everything). Time is time and you cannot eliminate that.

I have reduced iron in my diet. I have reduced Vitamin C in all forms completely becuase

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3304065

Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1987;498:324-32.

Is there a physiological role of vitamin C in iron absorption?
Hallberg L, Brune M, Rossander-Hulthén L.

Nonheme iron usually constitutes more than 90% of the dietary iron. Its absorbability is a resultant of the balance between factors enhancing and inhibiting the absorption. Ascorbic acid is the most potent enhancer, and is the same for native and synthetic AA. The enhancing effect is strongly dose related (log dose/effect), and is different for different meals probably mainly due to varying content of inhibitors in the meals. AA also increases the iron absorption from simple meals with no known inhibitor, probably because AA impairs the formation of unavailable iron complexes with ligands normally present in the gastrointestinal lumen. The effect of AA is so unequivocal and marked that it must be considered as a physiological factor essential for the absorption of dietary iron.

PMID: 3304065 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

I will somehow get the CCSVI operation.

I have to get back to work now.

Gord

PS sorry about the spelling (Cheerleader !)

Hi Snowfire, I'm one of the "blood-letting" people

I was pre-MS in my last pregnancy in 1999, my iron levels were pretty high, at the top of the range in my third trimester, even though i didn't take iron supplements. It was not a good pregnancy, and my baby was induced 2 weeks early, only weighing 4lb, normal length but incredibly skinny. They had no idea what went wrong, as in my first pregnancy my baby weighed 9lb. During that last pregnancy one of my legs would give way unexpectedly and i didn't feel right. I had massive hemoraging after that birth and felt really well for a long while afterwards. Lots of energy.

By 2007 my iron levels had built back up to over the normal range, and in early 2008 I got my first lesion and lost use of my right hand, and I had fatigue ++. Neuro said it was probably MS, as my sister has been diagnosed 20 yrs ago. Wait and see stuff. I was so fatigued I couldn't even work most of the time. I noticed that during menstruation the fatigue abated a lot as did the daytime sleeping. I had monthly MS!?!?
Towards Dec2009 it got a lot worse and I was fatigued and sleeping every day.

So early this year, thought i had better go back to the Doctor as i was going downhill and I had a huge blood test, and my fatigue and daytime sleeping just disappeared for 4 days. Doctors didn't believe me, so I became a blood donor. 6 months and two phlebs later the fatigue has gone. I feel light and pretty energetic, I reckon I have about 95% of my hand use back, and no more "hand goes numb in the shower" symptom.
I still need to sleep during the daytime occassionally, but it's gone from 100% in Dec 2009 down to 25% now, I'm hoping I can get that down to 0% with a few more blood donations. I am getting some bouts of nerve pain in my extremeties and lower back, but nothing I can't live with.

I hated giving up my life to the "Sleep Monster"!

I went back to the Neuro last week. He now says "You do not have MS".

PS: My sister with the MS DX, also has high iron levels over the normal range, but has no way to lower these, other than diet, because of rules restricting people with MS from donating blood (the quickest way to achieve this by far). She has cut down on meat over the last few years and is improving slowly. Her main symptom is also fatigue and daytime sleeping.

The ideas I have on why all this happened, differ a bit from the theory of iron deposition in the brain, as the effects on me from blood taking were immediate. Immediate relief from symptoms, such as seems to be happeneing in CCSVI. Iron just wouldn't diminish in the brain this quickly, so other effect must be at play.

But then I apparently don't have MS, now that my iron levels are down!
Neuro wasn't saying that in 2008.

All food for thought.

One of the neurologists I have seen for my M.S. told me last week that " one of the big holes in Dr. Zamboni's theory is in regards to the source of iron found in MS brains". This neurologist claims ( through his own research ) that " increased iron in the MS brain is an accumulation ( for some reason ) of iron normally found in the brain and is different than iron that would be found there if it's source was reflux of blood from jugular veins".
Now, does anyone know what this difference might be?
I had so many questions for him I forgot to get him to clarify what he felt was different .

I just wrote a long post Phlebotomy thread about my spasms and iron deficiency and I am certainly confused, I think the 'perfect' iron level must be quite a bit lower than at least my doctors recommend judging from how I feel, when my iron saturation was 6% I had lots of spasms when I started taking an herbal iron product (vital herbs) theyu disappeared after a couple of weeks even though my saturation level was still only 7% ferritin went from 6-28. I also tried iron in pill form "Bifera" which did not seem to help as much even though my GI says it contains more iron and it is supposed to be easier to absorb. So mys regiment ended up being twice a day vital herbs and 1 pill of Bifera.

At any rate was never tired and never anemic, my hemocrit, hemoglobin and rbc was in the "range" when saturation was 6% but actually under the range when the saturation was 7% go figure. I am confused about iron to say the least.

Now I am thinking it might be best to have a saturation level of no more than 10% even though my gi likes to 20%, my gi and neurologist have no opinion about iron with respect to MS so they just recommend the average for the general population.

I think my iron deficiency was the result of mercury or lead exposure. My MS symptoms have been the same with lower and higher iron levels except for muscle spasms.

It will be interesting to see what they find at Euromedic whenever I get to go.

Jamit, you might be interested in this study
http://users.stargate.net/~rnr/research.html




Cheers........

Interesting study except. In my case I should think the iron deficiency is due to mercury and or interferons nothing to do with genetics the environment or anyting else. I have only been deficient for probably less than a 1.5 years since I never got anemic and I have had MS diagnosed for 20 years with no attack and little progression the first 10 years when my iron levels were within the normal to high range.

Have not been posting for a while. Working on leaky gut issues. I did something called an indican test and came back at three meaning I was highly positive. This is no surprise to me, because I was on antibiotics for literally years. My chronic bladder infections almost killed me, they were completely intractable. Six months after I had 16 fillings removed, the infections disappeared! So I am one that benefited from amalgam removal. I tested high off the scale for Mercury, and I think that that is part of my MS trigger. I think the Mercury also nuked my thyroid because I could not convert T4 to T3... LONG STORY

There is a theory that red blood cells are made in the intestines, not in the bone marrow unless you are in starvation mode... I don't know whether my hemoglobin is not bouncing back because of my digestion issues, but my therapeutic phlebotomy had to come to an end. Instead I have been removing about 100 mL per month. Tried to do it at home, but getting a needle in properly and using a syringe turned out to be a little more difficult than expected. So I have had a naturopathic Dr. remove some. I am waiting for my hematologist to give me my report on my last blood investigations to see whether she sees anything that can account for my relief of MS symptoms when I remove blood. Especially spasticity... I have found such relief by bloodletting. The hematologist listened to my story, and I was supposed to see her yesterday, but I had to cancel the appointment. I have been taking nystatin and I found the remarks about it thickening blood very interesting. Not something I want to do, because it takes me 20 minutes to fill up a blood bag of 500 mL. I think my blood is too thick, that I have hypercoaguabilaty, common in MS. I do not have Hughes Syndrome, I did test for antiphospholipid antibodies.

My naturopathic Dr. said she sees people with a ferritin of five and they are perfectly functioning people. But it probably depends on the individual. I found that when I ferritin went very low, to 10, I felt short of breath. But far less spasticity and other problems.

So it's all very mysterious! But I suspect that we have a substance in our blood that is causing immune reactions. Is it a reaction to mycotoxins? I mean fungi needs iron, it feeds on iron... I am having very strong reactions to the nystatin, it makes me feel very nauseous, and I am having trouble tolerating digestive enzymes. They make my guts ache so bad, that I suspect I have no mucosal barrier in my intestines. I have tested for celiac disease, negative for that. Of course a lack of good bacteria, combined with a gut full of bad bacteria will make it very hard to replace the mucosal barrier properly.

Anyway, I am glad that some people are finding some relief with the bloodletting. Me too, I just need to get my hemoglobin to normalize. I have studied the whole Candida/Leaky Gut thing for years, but I don't know that I have ever managed to rectify the damage from years of antibiotics. So still working on the whole blood mystery!

The experience of having MS symptoms subside during pregnancy and roar back 1-3 months later, or when breastfeeding slows or stops is very common.

In fact research is being done, especially re: estriol, to see if there is some way that hormone therapy could help with MS.

Hi Merlyn,
Good to see you back here! I just posted on your Phlebotomy anyone thread--I am indeed with a mutated gene, heterozygous for H63D mutation--

Garyak
did you google your dr to see if anything published on this? Keep us posted, very interesting and very important if correct.

I will check it out.

My brother is a PhD scientist at U of Alberta where this neurologist is a professor. My brother informed me that this neurologist has not published his results yet but this is what his research is about;

Iron-Sensitive Quantitative Methods for Multiple Sclerosis: Lesion Evolution and Deep Grey Matter Iron Deposition

Garyak
I googled the title--it was presented in a Scientific forum in Stolkholm in May--but paper not produced on the site.

It also does seem to be on a webpage, but when I tried to access it, Windows alerted me that this was not a proper website security certificate, and advised me to close out rather than proceed. Probably is okay, but not computer savvy enough to fix whatever damage that might accrue if I proceeded.
Maybe someone with good virus etc protection would feel okay opening it. I am curious--From what you say, this could be very interesting.