This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

All of those could be autonomic nervous system improvements, couldn't they? I got the perspiration, which is so strange to me, along with better heat tolerance, but I didn't get the warm feet. And, seriously, for a year before my procedure I kept reading from others about their warm feet and hands! Mine are as cold as humanly possible, or perhaps a bit inhumanly cold. Ah well.

Dlb, it was fun meeting you at the symposium, and I'm glad to read of continued improvements!

Dear Drs. Tucker and Beggs:

I somehow don't think you have as low an opinion of Engineering as some people seem to. We are limited by the laws of nature too!

I don't think you either have flow or pressure. Some might think that there can only be kinetic energy, but I think there can also be potential, as in a battery. That is what pressure is. It is the potential to cause the movement of fluid. That is why you feel something when you put your finger over the hose. You have stopped the flow (potential energy being converted to kinetic) but you feel the force of the water against your finger. There is no flow because the resistance to it (your finger) is strong. The pressure was always there, and the finger has not changed it. It has only stopped it from doing anything, by resisting it. If the resistance is less, the pressure will cause flow. If the resistance is infinite (or anyway enough to bung the hose) the flow will stop.

Do you, Dr. Tucker, think I have that about right? Or you, Dr. Beggs?

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

When your heart pumps, a big muscle pressurizes a lot of blood. This blood will move along the path of least resistance. The paths lead all over your body. If the path to your legs is easier (less resistance) than the path to your brain, guess where the blood will go? Stenosis anywhere causes the flow to be less at that location, and the path of least resistance downstream of any point in the circuit, is the path blood will seek. Downstream is anywhere blood flows toward (a circular definition). If there is a stenosis, less blood will flow toward that stenosis (in a given time) than if it were not there, along that path. Resistance to flow is always in the downstream direction. So if resistance increases downstream of the brain, (instantaneously, presuming collateral growth is not immediate) it is also increased in the direction arterial blood is flowing toward the brain. To the heart, the brain "loop" has had an increase in resistance. Less blood will flow in. If you want the same amount, you have to increase the pressure pushing it in. If you don't increase the pressure, or increase the resistance anywhere else, less blood will flow, in a given time, toward the brain. That means the movement of a given volume of blood has slowed down. Or that for a given amount of time, less blood will pass a given point. Same thing.

If the path towards the brain has more resistance, the path toward the feet may have an increased flow. That might have several effects. Initially, you might get warmer feet. But because the leg veins have to bring more blood up, they may wear out faster. The feet may swell, as well as being warmer.

One way we have of compensating for arteries congesting an area is to shrink the diameters of inflow or ouflow vessels feeding that area, thus increasing the resistance and slowing the flow. Note that this is a reaction in the feet, to a stenosis in a neck vein.

Now because of a neck vein stenosis, we can get rid of, and acquire less heat in our feet, because we have slowed the flow to allow more to reach the brain. Also, if there is less flow in the legs, to allow constant brain flow, the legs will have less energy available. Hands are a similar situation. Same with lungs, etc, probably following the order of their importance to our survival. The load on the heart for all this has to have increased, because it is easier to get blood down to the feet than up to the brain. Yeah, we might be more tired.

Now balloon the jugular stenosis. Bingo, circulation to the brain increases, and because of that we need to do less restricting of foot flow. Now all of a sudden, we can more easily (with less smooth muscle effort) get blood, and heat, into and out of the feet. We have to keep up our brain flow, even if it means the energy has to come from increasing brain blood pressure, and keeping hand and foot vessels smaller. Get rid of the neck stenosis, and all of the circulation benefits.

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

I think I now understand the frustration CCSVI medical professionals have when dealing with Neurologists..... some people just refuse to listen.

This thread is about FLUID DYNAMICS . Not about Electricity . Plumbing . Only plumbing.

CCSVI is about fluid dynamics . CCSVI is about plumbing . Some of the CCSVI medical experts that kindly drop by TIMS ..... jokingly refer to themselves as PLUMBERS .

The movement of a liquid is called FLUID DYNAMICS . The key word is DYNAMIC . In plain language it means " it moves " . The opposite is called STATIC . In plain talk .... this means .... " it stands still " . Thus .... you have either .... DYNAMIC [ moves] or STATIC [ does not move ] . The name of the game .... is the MOVEMENT of a fluid.Movement is good ..... not moving is bad.

And that fluid is - BLOOD - pumped throughout the body. Including the BRAIN .

Our body comes with a PUMP . We call this pump the heart. It's task is simple . To produce FLOW. Pumps produce FLOW ..... not pressure . FLOW.

RESISTANCE to flow ..... is called pressure . [ please re-read my garden hose example ]

So we can safely conclude ..... FLOW is DYNAMIC .....and PRESSURE is STATIC.

This is proven with measurement instruments .

CCSVI is the STATIC movement in the veins draining the head. Dr.Zamboni wants DYNAMIC movement ......


Mr.Success

Reflux is dynamic, just not the dynamic we want.

Play nice, friends! My understanding of pressure is that it is the force of the blood against the wall of the vein or artery. Arteries are high pressure, veins are low pressure.

Don't I always play nice ?

Yes , Cece ... your comments tell me you understand . I was hoping to give some basic fluid movement explanations . For those that do not appreciate my efforts .... I say go and do your own research .

Our Dr.Zamboni and his fine collection of CCSVI pioneer doctors ..... are facing exactly the same task I am dealing with ..... which is ........ leading a horse to water .... but you can't make it drink.

Until a person can grasp simple hydraulic principles ..... CCSVI will never be understood by them.

The obstructionist Neurologists are much like the stubborn person that cannot grasp that CCSVI cannot be explained using electricity as an example.

It is a PLUMBING issue. Flow ........ Pressure ........ Valves ......... Fluid viscosity .........

It is as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

Schools out.


Mr.Success

I just watched a video of Dr. Beggs in which he mentioned, of all things: Ohm's law in the context of blood flow, resistance to blood flow from stenosis, and blood pressure. It's a cool video. Both blood and electricity are fluids. It is directly analogous physical behaviour which follows fairly simple laws of physics.

It's here...

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

Problem 1 (Fluid Mechanics)
Electricity is understood as a kind of fluid. Conceptually, this hydraulic analogy is still useful today: The “across-variable” voltage corresponds to the pressure drop P and the “through-variable” current corresponds to the volumetric flow rate Q leading to an Ohm’s law of fluid mechanics of the form P =RQ, where R is known as “fluidic resistance”
a) Derive the expression for the fluidic resistance R for a round pipe of diameter D and length L from Hagen-Poiseuille’s law.
b) (Hint: In electronics we know how to deal with resistances in parallel and in series.). Compare two round tubes (tube1 and tube2, the wide and narrow segments of tube 1 are concentric) which are shown below in cross-section. Note that D2<D1. Assume that all flow is incompressible and the tubes are rigid.
a. For a given pressure drop between faces A and B calculate the volumetric flow through B for both tubes. In which tube will Q at B be higher?
b. Develop expressions for the maximum velocity in the two tubes. Which tube will generate the highest Vmax at B? How do the parameters L1 and L2 affect your results and tie in with the daily-life experience that you can spray water from a garden hose farther if you hold your finger over the end of the hose?
c. Now assume that a syringe pump is used to generate a fixed flow rate into each tube (analogous to a constant current source in electronics). For which tube is Q higher?
d. For which tube is Vmax at B higher? How do the parameters L1 and L2 affect your results? Compare the results you obtained and explain the difference between pressure-driven and volume-driven flow.

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

Another hint: it's a lot simpler than it looks.

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

The difference between pressure-driven and volume-driven flow depends on the force due to gravity, which ends up being a function of the mass of the volume, in plumbing. I think this has direct application to "MS". The flow of vertical blood has gravity as a component of the pressure. Above the heart it adds to arterial pressure, and subtracts from vein pressure. Below the heart, it adds to vein pressure, and subtracts from arterial pressure. When the body goes horizontal, the gravity component cancels out. Gravity is a constant current source.

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

If I might comment on this exchange, it seems to me that the Physics of Fluid Dynamics is a reasonably complete science unto itself. The Physics Of Electron Flow is another reasonably complete, but different, science. My perception is that electron flow is not a particularly good analogy for fluid flow - and the resulting phenomena can be substantially different. This discussion has raised the fluid flow analogy of steady-state (non-flucutating) electron flow in wires (not in non-linear devices like transistors) and in this case electron flow is governed by Ohm's Law. Ohm's Law is a simple linear relationship between current and voltage. (If one were to consider fluctuating, alternating or pulsative electron flow, one might have to include Maxwell's Equations to provide the solution for electron flow, however, that has not been the analogy used here.) On the other hand, Fluid Dynamics (which includes fluctuating or pulsative fluid flow) is governed by the Navier-Stokes equations, a set of coupled non-linear differential equations whose solution is substantially more complex than Ohm's Law. The solution of such non-linear differential equations can result in turbulent flow, a commonly observed phenomena in venous flow in MS patients. I suspect, myself, that such turbulence, together with the correct incorporation of vein elastance may be potentially a contributing factor to the disruption of the Blood-Brain Barrier in MS. (Ohm's Law does not predict turbulent flow). My recommendation for this thread would be that it down-plays somewhat simple analogies, if possible.
Trev. Tucker

Thanks for weighing in Dr Tucker.

I was trying to keep things simple and linear, like plumbing, and leave out things like eddy currents, pulse, and elasticity to demonstrate that if you do so, a network of veins and arteries is very analogous to both plumbing and electric circuits. I did some non-linear electronics, too, and I imagine things at the molecular level get very complex indeed.

The interesting thing to me was the realization that gravity in both plumbing and the human body is a constant current source, a "linear" gizmo which can be useful in electronics, linear and non-linear (and digital).

The exam that question came from was a 1st year midterm at Berkeley in Bioengineering, which concerns electronic sensors and medicine, as well as fluid dynamics.

I am not trying to say that electronics or engineering is more appropriate than plumbing. Only that blood and electricity can both be viewed simply as kinds of plumbing, where good engineering can avoid messes.

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience

The exam I posted shows there are many analogies to be explored between the two. I agree about wires. They are pipes of length approximately 0 and can be ignored except for routing. The Ohm's law of hydraulics is the same law and it is true for the same reasons in both cases.

I do not want to get into a discussion of physics with you. I am in many dark shadows and the much lighter ones of much taller individuals than I. I am trying to understand, but I am very sure there are many others who are much closer to it than I.

There are analogs of passive components which may be useful, and diodes are like working valves. I agree that the non-linear devices have few similarities. I have not seen Dr. Beggs' second talk but I am sure he will discuss concepts for which the two areas diverge completely and there are no analogies.

On the other hand I understand a series-connected string of diodes with capacitors attached is just like a leg vein in a way. There are possible analogies which help my understanding. I will try to restrain myself unless I come across something useful. I believe my statements about veins, arteries, posture and gravity are potentially meaningful.

_________________
"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'_MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience