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Firstly thank Lyndacarol for starting this thread and also for replying to my Intro, checked out the links and then followed your sneaky hint to this thread.
Sorry about the post length, hope there is some value in it.
I am still trying to work my way through the mountain of info, have been trying to read all the dietary threads, this is a primary interest for me, had a quick look at the treatment section & meds, felt like a stranger in a strange land trying to comprehend a strange language, hasty retreat to safer teritory, diet & general discussion.
I have read this thread from start to end, well did scan over some bits, and haven't followed all links either, great info, my input may be a bit scattered as I am a latecomer to the discussion, but here are some things, in point form.
The insulin issue, definetly a critical part of the equation, but like all the manifested symptoms & effects, hard to know what came first.
I had done quite a bit of reading before I got onto this site and even though their was no definitive claim I could put my finger on, I just had this strong feeling that Dairy was closely involved with the primary causes of the antibody response, so seeing Nicks response half way through, and the other day reading through the BB diet thread, think it was a reference to the Jelenik protocol adding dairy to their banned list (probably old info for most of you) just rang true. Not to say that dairy consumption had to be excessive as I believe the body is weakened by other factors and the dairy just provides the appropriate protein for the autoimmune response. So from that, although I think Swank needs credit for the work he did, I feel the interpretation of the original data needs to be reconsidered, I don't think saturated animal fats are necesarily the culprit, think that may be a "Red Herring", there is more smoke at the Dairy farm than the Beef ranch.
The discussion on the Inuit is not alone, there have been a number of other studies done on the excessive rate of Type 2 Diabetes through indegenous populations, when these individuals were returned to a more traditional diet, some had complete remission & most others could go to a significantly reduced dose, the time duration in most cases was about 6 months I believe, it has been done with the Inuit, Australian Aborigines & others that I can't recall. the other more relevant Indigineous population is the Sami, indegenous inhabitants of Norway, they have virtually no incidence of MS at all, but the rest of the population shows a north/south as well as an inland (Dairy) / coastal(Fish) gradient. The Sami's traditional diet was either Reindeer & berries or Fish & Berries, they lived alongside the later Imigrants (Norwegians for want of a better word) for many centuries, but never took up their farming, dairy or diatary habits.
Another thing that may be related is in utero exposure, this may possibly add to the causal variety of symptomatic expression, I believe it has been documented a number of times, but the one I'm most familiar with was the "Dutch starvation babies". The children that were concieved during the starvation period in the later part of WW2 had something like 6 times the incidence of Diabetes 2 & associated issues, yet those born just before, of concieved just after that period had the same incidence as normal populations around the world. This particular factor may not be related to MS, but there may also be similar issues at play with MS.
The whole Hypothalmus Pituitary "other vital organ" axis, my studies have usually seen the thyroid as the third organ, in that case the Thyroid does not have any self regulation ability, the regulation occurs from the Pituitary and Hypothalmic response. Hypothalmus secretes the Thyrotropin Release Hormone (TRH) into the Pituitary, which in turn releases Thyrotropin aka Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH), this then acts on the thyroid TSH receptors which produces thyroid hormones. The Pituitary also has TSH receptors which act in a closed loop regulation system, later in my shearching I also found out that the body is riddled with TSH receptors, brain, bone, muscle & most major organs, but their function is unknown. When the thyroid autoimmune antibodies are activated the primary symptom is the thyroid, overactivity, underactivity it is related to the Antibodies attaching to the Thyroid receptors, hence preventing TSH reaching the receptor and breaking the regulation loop, often they also attach in the pituitary and prevent TSH production as well. So I wondered what the role of TSH was elswhere in the body, and some individuals, particularly the Hypo can go for years with no TSH, their Thyroid hormone levels are maintained by suplimentation, but even though they are "kind of ok" they go on with a multitude of nagging symptoms.
I wonder what else happens in the pituitary or other vital control functions with MS or other autoimmune diseases, how many are being blocked, BTW my partners Endo doesn't really consider the pituitary as important in considerations of thyroid disease, yet a quick google puts it at the centre of the story. I did see some references to the Growth hormone in the threads, don't understand that fully, need to go back and do some re reading.
The other thing I would like to raise is Acetyl L Carnitine, we included it in my partners program for a variety of reasons, fatigue, brain fog, thyroid hormone modulation and others, she and others we know benefited from using it. In relation to the discussion here, no please correct me if I am wrong, but in simplistic terms:
The body basically has two major energy pathways, glucose & fat, the glucose provides the instant power, emergency power, but baseload power, which is the majority, comes from fatty acids. When we swing to a majority carbohydrate diet, that does two things, it swings us to the glucose side more and also deprives us of the amino acids to produce carnitine which is essential to transport fatty acids across cell membranes to the mitochondria, essentially "someone stole the wheelbarrow to take coal to the boiler". This added demand on the insulin/glucose system is ok for an emergency, but not on a long term basis as it was never designed for it, so eventually other systems also begin to suffer. One of the key factors in obesity are carbs & sugars, the insulin system can put glucose into storage by conversion to fat, but the Carnitine side has been weakened so we are not effective at drawing on those fat stores, hence as soon as blood sugar levels fall starvation hits even though we may be carrying 50kg of pure energy, we don't have the key to get it out. So at least for the early stages of a diet change, or even if you aren't changing diet Carnitine supplimentation may be beneficial for some individuals, the other point being if your body is purely relient on the "emergency" supply of energy what kinds of emergency measures does it put in place for a survival plan? As an individual or society the first thing would be rationing, limit non emergency maintenance, eventually the entire body starts to fall into disrepair, so is it a case that by being on a high carb diet our body is always teetering on the fight/flight position? The body is a wonderful instrument and has multiple back up systems, but we have lost the ability to hear when a system is failing and we are going to emergency power, so we just go on our merry way till one day.
I have often used the "castle siege" analogy in Graves disease discussions where you have a large castle with multiple defenses besieged by an enemy, every time a defense is breached a messenger is sent to the great hall where the almighty emperror (Ego) is feasting and entertaining his/her court of tales of past glories and future conquests, completely self indulgent, dismisses the messenger, can't you see I am dealing with very important business here, this happens repeatedly over the years, until finally the enemy has broken through and runs amok in the great hall and the Ego now full of self pity, still completly self indulgent asks how could this happen to me.
I do recognise that a certain portion of this family of diseases is due to genetic predisposition, but the rest is environment and that is something that can be changed, not just diet, but attitude, habits etc.
A lot of individuals argue why deprive yourself if nothing has been scientifically proven, well modern medicine is practicing the research of 50 years ago, most of us will be dead when current research has been fully proven and is applied daily in medicine, so if you don't try to understand how to listen to your body, don't expect your doctor to do any better and in addition to that I also believe that attitude plays a vital role, the difference between running toward something vs running away from something, same physical expenditure of energy, but one is a positive expression with a target and the other is a negative expression that is aimless.
Congrats if you got this far.
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I am just an interested individual trying to crack the autoimmune nut.
Partner has Graves Disease, 5 years, showing good test results, looking forward to potential remission in the near future.
3 friends have MS, 1 just recently diagnosed, severity 7/10.
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