This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

I think the important thing which we are all saying by piecing everything together is that the current theories of why we have ms are inadequate. they do not satisfy all of our questions. the lesions do not account for "MS" as a whole. that the sum of MS is not equal to lesions on the brain alone. there is an entire mechanism with in the body that is occuring with such complexity that it has become an algebraic equation I know that there is a single point of causation because thats what logic tells me. I was not born with MS. something happened. we are actually factoring symptoms to find the simpliest common factor in this whole thing. This is actually contrary to what the average doctor seems to insinuate when using standard diagnositc criteria. So heres where it gets confusing if I with an average IQ can see this, how come this is so baffling to those who spent so much time in medical school. Unless they are not trained to think but to just do. just follow a protocal dictated by whomever has designed this reality. the answer is at the very least more simple that the manifestation.

MSers are
prediabetic or diabetic
suseptable to bacterial infection
low in uric acid
high in folic acid
low in b12
have ccsvi
high in intesinal flora
have epv or herpes
have a genetic factor
and we can list on and on things which have nothing to do with lesions on the brain but rather have an end result in lesions on the brain. what happens when this disease pathology takes a different turn?

From the book by Richard Panek entitled the 4% universe:

When Plato challenged his student, in the fourth century B.C., to describe the motions of the celestial bodies through geometry, he didn't expect the answers on paper to represent what was actually happening in the heavens. That knowledge was unknowable because it was unattainable; you couldn't go into the sky and examine it for yourself. What Plato wanted instead was an approximation of the knowledge. He wanted his student to try to find the math to match not the facts but the appearances. ..

A student of Plato, Aristotle, amended this system. He assumed the spheres where not just mathematical constructs but physical realities; to accommodate the mechanics of an interlocking system, he added counterturning spheres. His total: fifty-six. ..

.. the 1543 publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the heavenly Spheres), by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, is synonymous with the invention of a new universe: the Copernican Revolution. ..

In 1687 the English mathematician Isaac Newton provided two of those explanations in Philosophioe Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). He reasoned that if Earth is a planet, then the formulae that apply in the terrestrial realm must apply in the celestial as well. Building on the mathematical work of Johannes Kepler and observations of Galileo and his successors in astronomy, he concluded that the motions of the heavens require not dozens of spheres but a single law: gravitation. ..

In one of his letters about the stability of a universe operating under the influence of gravity, Newton wrote that the notion of a force of attraction existing between two distant objects is "so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it." Nearly two centuries later, the German philosopher-scientist Ernst Mach wrote, "The Newtonian theory of gravitation, on its appearance, disturbed almost all investigators of nature because it was founded on an uncommon unintelligibility." Now, he went on, "it has become common unintelligibility."

Einstein endowed gravity with intelligibility by defining it not was some mysterious force between two objects but as a property of space itself, and he redefined Newton's equations so that the presence of matter and the geometry of space are interdependent. Most of the interpretations of dark matter and dark energy arose from the right-hand side of the equation for general relativity, the side where Einstein would put matter and energy. But there are two sides to every equation and in this case what was on the other side was gravity. ..

[Astronomers, scientists and physicists have since been testing gravity and searching for dark matter and energy. .. always aware that they are the prisoners of their perceptions. .. ]
..
If our luck did hold, and another Newton did come along, and the universe turned out once again to be simple in ways we couldn't have previously imagined, then Saul Perlmutter's daughter or Vera Rubin's grandchildren's grandchildren would not be seeing the same sky that they did, because they would not be thinking of it in the same way. They would see the same stars, and they would marvel at the hundreds of billions of galaxies other than our own. But they would sense the dark too. And to them that darkness would represent a path toward knowledge – toward the kind of discoveries that we all once called, with understandable innocence, the light.

I have just barely come to understand the nature of reality last year. I, like so many others have been lost in a world of what where and when and with these questions relationship can be observed but it is the passing of the shadows. you must ask the questions how and then why. the answer to why is because or the reason is that. no one asks that question anymore. they cannot see tht it is because they focus on the differences not the similarities and believe that everthing is so autonomous that each of my organs deserves a separate doctor. not only do each of my organs work together to form a system but I myself am part of a system and so on. we are so sadly canfused and yes the answwer is going to be so simple it is either right before our eyes or is in the last place we would look who knows.

Let's get down to Earth.

In the context of the prediabetic condition of MS patients, this thread on the endothelium on TIMS is interesting: http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-15993.html

I find the reference to the point 8 on sugar consumption in Joan's "cliff note" of particular interest http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dmrr.613/pdf
Constant and intermittent high glucose enhances endothelial cell apoptosis through mitochondrial superoxide overproduction.

In this same context, this article from 2009 would seem to suggest a similar course: http://ajpheart.physiology.org/content/298/1/H171.full
Collectively, these results suggest that endothelial cells may react in a biphasic way to HG [=High Glucose] conditions with a short-term exposure resulting in an enhanced Cai2+ response to Ca2+ mobilizing agents and an increase in NO generation while chronic exposure to HG impairs function. Reports that NO generation and blood flow increased and peripheral resistance decreased in the early stages of diabetes (32, 51) whereas long-term diabetes leads to macro- and microangiopathy with reduced vascular reactivity (3, 52) lend support to the concept of HG-induced time-dependent changes in endothelial function.

I am convinced that a high sugar consumption is bad for my health. But, although I am quite a disciplined person, I have some difficulty to reduce the consumption because my neurons are crying for the glucose/nutrition; and I feel worse when I cut down.

What would/could help?
- Take Metformin to improve glucose transport and lower sugar intake, although I have not (yet) been diagnosed with diabetes but there is a predisposition?
- Use glutamine as an alternative source of nutrition to sugar?

Lindacarol wrote:

#2 Several years ago there was successful treatment of children with seizures at Johns Hopkins. The treatment was a ketogenic diet (diet high in fats and protein) and did control the seizures. As I recall, the finding was that the brain could function just fine on ketones – that glucose was not necessary for brain function.

In the 1920s anthropologist-turned-Arctic-explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, spent a decade among the Inuit, eating nothing but meat, no vegetables or fruit. His observation was that those who lived on this diet were among the healthiest imaginable. His observations contradicted conventional wisdom at that time that a varied diet was essential for good health. "It is a misconception that the brain and central nervous system require dietary glucose to function." See pages 319-325 of Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
p.s. copied this as I haven't figured out how to quote yet

Fat can be broken down into glycerol and fatty acids. The glycerol can be converted to glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate in the liver, which in turn can be used in glycolysis in place of glucose. I understood it better after reading wikipedia.
Fat
Glycerol

I then wondered if the brain could also use glycerol and found this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12716415

Although I think the brain prefers to use glucose in astrocytes to produce lactate for neurons and oligodendrocytes. However, the glycolysis in MSers isn't working properly causing lactate production problems and energy fluctuations in the brain. I found this article which i think is very similar to what is happening in ms though it is a completely different medical condition.
ADHD

Also some other cells that need glycolysis to work correctly are endothelial cells and red blood cells.

Zinc as activating cation for muscle glycolysis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6327959

Abstract
Zinc cation performed a role of activator as well as inhibitor for production of lactate from glucose 6-phosphate in the cytosol fraction of rat muscle. The pH optimum for glycolysis was 7.3 when Zn2+ acted as an activator. At concentrations lower than 0.46 mM, Zn2+ was shown to be a more effective activator than Mg2+ with an apparent K 1/2 of approximately 0.1 mM. However, at concentrations higher than 0.5 mM, Zn2+ inhibited lactate production. The activatory as well as inhibitory effect of Zn2+ on lactate production was investigated by the estimation of glycolytic intermediates. From the crossover plot, lactate production reflected phosphofructokinase activity, when Zn2+ was used as a catalytic cation for both reactions. Phosphofructokinase activity in purified muscle was activated by Zn2+ with an apparent Km of approximately 0.05 mM, but at high Zn2+ concentrations, the enzyme activity was inhibited with an I50 of 0.23 mM in the presence of ATP. From these findings, it appears that lactate production might also depend on phosphofructokinase activity when Zn2+ is used as an activating cation.

i'm not taking the time right now to understand all that thoroughly but it looks interesting

_________________
my approach: no meds so far - just balanced whole foods (partial 'paleo', much less outright elimination), science, supplements, & bloodwork
my regimen - www.thisisms.com/ftopict-2489.html
www.whfoods.com, www.nutritiondata.com

- just an anecdotal data point here, but zinc (50mg?) seems to have nicely solved my IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) problem, at least for now. Incidentally, LDN, initially taken for MS was a silver bullet for IBD for 8 months and I still use intermittantly! LDN I find interrupts sleep nowadays.

PN

thumbs up PN, i used to have some sort of unpleasant GI thing going on and it's better now coincidentally (or, rather not) since fixing zinc deficiency. right on!

_________________
my approach: no meds so far - just balanced whole foods (partial 'paleo', much less outright elimination), science, supplements, & bloodwork
my regimen - www.thisisms.com/ftopict-2489.html
www.whfoods.com, www.nutritiondata.com

from Lyndacarol on http://www.thisisms.com/ftopic-16049-da ... asc-0.html

quote:
The human body functions perfectly well with fats as the energy source. Glucose is not the only possible energy source; glucose is not absolutely necessary; fats are. This is a generally accepted fact today and has been stated in many places:

Several years ago there was successful treatment of children with seizures at Johns Hopkins. The treatment was a ketogenic diet (diet high in fats and protein-- NO direct glucose source) and did control the seizures. The brains of the children could function just fine on ketones – glucose was not necessary for brain function.

In the 1920s anthropologist-turned-Arctic-explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, spent a decade among the Inuit, eating nothing but meat, no vegetables or fruit. His observation was that those who lived on this diet were among the healthiest imaginable. His observations contradicted conventional wisdom at that time that a varied diet was essential for good health. "It is a misconception that the brain and central nervous system require dietary glucose to function." See pages 319-325 of Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

A few months ago, 1-18-11, on the TV program, The Dr. Oz Show, Dr. Joseph Mercola stated that ketone bodies serve as an alternative fuel source to glucose: about 4:20 in the video at

http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/alternat ... versy-pt-2

I believe in my case my pancreas continues to pump out insulin in response to the slightest bit of glucose in my system and in response to even a sweet taste in my mouth (such as from the sugar alcohol – sorbitol, xylitol, mannitol, erythritol, etc. – in toothpaste, mouthwash, some chewing gum, even fish oil capsules). Insulin is a caustic substance; I think it damages the villi in the small intestine (resulting in poor absorption of vitamins and minerals) and once it is absorbed into the bloodstream, it damages the inside of the blood vessels, and it thickens and stiffens smooth muscles (Smooth muscles compose the walls of blood vessels, the human urinary bladder, and sphincter muscles.). Insulin passes through the blood brain barrier, able to damage myelin on nerve cells.

So goes the insulin hypothesis!

unquote

I believe there is a lot of truth in this.
When I had the stenoses in the neck veins, I eat low fat because too much fat would risk to thicken the blood, reduce the blood flow and the supply of energy even further.
But after liberation, my veins are wide open so I could theoretically take more fat.
As the BBB gets to withstand a lot more insulin now (because of hugely improved blood flow), I am convinced I need to cut down on sugar consumption.
But then, should I increase my fat consumption at the same time, to get the ketone supply mechanism to work?

intresting


.....................................................

This paper looks interesting: http://www.coconutketones.com/whatifcure.pdf

quote
It appears that persons with Parkinson’s disease,6 Huntington’s disease, 7 multiple sclerosis and ALS9 have a similar defect in utilizing glucose but in different areas of the brain or spinal cord.

MCT oil is digested differently by the body than other fats. Instead of storing all MCTs as fat, the liver converts them directly to ketone bodies, which are then available for use as energy. Oral and intravenous administration of MCT oil produces hyperketonemia, 10 or circulating ketone bodies, which are then available to the brain for energy, in the absence of glucose19 and even in the presence of glucose.22

unquote

and its ref 8: 8. “Reduced glucose metabolism in the frontal cortex and basal ganglia of multiple sclerosis patients with fatigue: a 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography study,” U Roelcke, et. al., Neurology, 1997, Vol. 48, Issue 6, 1566-1571.

This fairly recent patent application on the use of ketones also suggests suppression of inflammation: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2010/0075931.html
It would be my guess that the ketones get the inflammation down because of a better nutrition, where the underlying mechanism works just the other way around i.e. that it is not a suppression as such but rather that the inflammation calms down because of a better nutrition of the cells.

The same can be said for this http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100029939
Again reasoning from the point of view of suppression (shows how deep the believe in auto immunity is rooted..) but again perhaps the real mechanism works just the other way around.

This is also quite interesting. It suggests that ketones bring Alzheimer's patient back from the brink where damaged neurons that can't metabolize glucose thrive on ketones:
http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/25 ... the-brink/
Is here also a path towards a possible cure for us?

My father had similar problems with walking the stairs than I have, even the same knee, but he never had MS. He was diagnosed with diabetes2 around more or less the same time. This is about 25 years ago.
His sugar consumption was very high prior to his diagnosis, so my mother tells me. He cut down drastically on sugar; and started using his diabetes2 medication. I think he went to a difficult period of 1/2 to a year. He would n't say so but my wife saw this; she sees these things.
We are now 25 years later. My father is 83 years old and in good health, walks fine, controls his diabetes2 with oral pills.
Now I ask myself: has his metabolism for energy supply changed from glucose (and the damaging alterations of insulin) to ketones?
In Dutch we have a saying: "The apple does not fall far from the tree".
So can I learn from this?

On the use of ketone bodies by the brains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies

quote
The brain gets its energy from ketone bodies when glucose is less available (e.g., when fasting). In the event of low blood glucose, most other tissues have additional energy sources besides ketone bodies (such as fatty acids), but the brain does not. After the diet has been changed to lower blood glucose for 3 days, the brain gets 30% of its energy from ketone bodies.[5] After about 40 days, this goes up to 70% (during the initial stages the brain does not burn ketones, since they are an important substrate for lipid synthesis in the brain). In time the brain reduces its glucose requirements from 120g to 40g per day.[6]
unquote

I know, this entire thread is one big speculation. Notwithstanding, this does not mean to say its results are useless.
It's like a brainstorm. And we certainly have succeeded there in generating a large number of ideas to help solve the problem.
From Wikipedia: ... electronic brainstorming stands out. Mainly through anonymization and parallelization of input, electronic brainstorming enforces the ground rules of effective brainstorming and thereby eliminates most of the deleterious or inhibitive effects of group work.[7] The positive effects of electronic brainstorming become more pronounced with group size.[8]
Oh boy, is that true here!

If you ask me, MS is primarily a condition of malnutrition of the nervous cells. The vascular insufficiency in the neck is a causative factor. MSers with an early onset will have more severe strictures; for late onset MSers (who will also have strictures but less severe) mid-age hardening/calcification becomes an important factor (with a possible genetic predisposition for diabetes2). This calcification process is possibly augmented by the poor energy supply conditions (where the calcification of the cells is a self-protective mechanism of these cells). The inflammation itself is a secondary issue. In fact it is just the alarm bell at the end of the belt; it is the visible sign at the end of a cascade of reactions where the immune system kicks in to protect/heal what it can.

Let us just hope that all these tests that are underway (including for instance the Buffalo program) will take the nutrition dimension into account. Any program that would not take account of the micro-cellular feeding aspects would yield incomplete results. Any conclusion drawn without taking full account of the nutrition dimension would be flawed.

This is my first time writing and I had to reply to this very interesting thread!

A bit about myself in relation to what you are all hypothesizing:

I am in the process of diagnosis, but with no "typical" MS attack, though all the doctors are telling me it is only a matter of time (parasthesias and twitches all over).

In my first clinical exam, the neuro heard that my toe had been numb, etc., and said, "that is strange...it sounds like diabetes but you are so skinny" (I am 29/f, so in the first peak...).

Then on my very thorough blood tests, the only thing outside of normal was that my amylase was high. My guess? My brain is crying out for sugar so badly that it is overworking the enzymes or that the enzymes are out of wack.

I have been to a nutritionist and he says that I am borderline pre-diabetic (I have not had the fasting test) and has me eating very few grains and fruit and no sugar.

I had a hair test with the nutritionist and if you look at the mineral deposits, calcium is off the chart high in my hair. What does this mean? That it is leaving my body into my hair, for whatever reason (too much? malabsorbed?).

I was a vegetarian (plus some fish and eggs) starting 10 years ago. I think during this time I was malnourished, esp with protein and B12 (and was found to be anemic 4 years in).

So add me to the list of those who think there is a malnourishment, glucose/insulin, absorption problem + whatever structural issues into the mix. Fascinating what you guys have come up with so far!