Hello Marie,
I am new to this forum, was looking for "varicosis" and found this thread of 2009.
After searching for MS causes for more than 20 years I want to pass on some info:
(0. The basis for MS is laid until about puberty, textbook knowledge.)
1. Identical = monozygous twins (MZ) are typically discordant for MS; recent analysis from Sweden: if one twin has MS, the risk of the other one is below 20%. And their common environment at home - food etc. - is without effect on the MS risk. The twins have the same sun exposure and vitamin D supply by food: Forget sun and vitamin D as CAUSE of MS; however, they may influence the course of MS later on...
These facts leave few alternatives for the "all or none" exogenous cause of MS. Accidents? No, would have been clarified a century ago...
If you think it over it seems probable that one of the MZ aquires a relatively rare infection outside of the home (or kindergarten, school...; NOT a typical childhood disease), an infection which in childhood until puberty is either not recognised or forgotten many years later ...
2. What comes to mind are tick bites which may transmit quite a number of chronic infections. Thinking along these lines Prof. Gabriel Steiner (1883-1965), at that time at the Univ. of Heidelberg / Germany, in 1922(!) published the analysis of some 90 histories of MS patients suggesting that the chronic infection he suspected as the cause of MS (in analogy to MS-like symptomatology in some patients with late neuro syphilis) seems to be transmitted by ticks.
(Btw: at that time more men had MS than women - which dictates that the cause of MS has impacted women more often in recent decades to yield 2-3(-4) times higher incidence in women now.)
3. Because Prof. G.Steiner suspected spirochetes as the cause of MS (similar to T.pallidum discovered 1905 in Berlin as the cause of syphilis), and spirochetes are very slim, at or below the resolution of light microscopy, he developed a silver staining method to increase the diameter of those very slim bacteria: Late in the 1920s he started to publish his findings.
As an old man he summed up the results of his life-long research on the etiology of MS in 1962 (now at Detroit), in German (he was 53 when he emigrated to the USA, so he stuck with his native language in explaining complex findings, thoughts...):
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2 ... 42-87571-7
When you scroll down to the chapter "Die Spirochaeta myelo...", click on "Look inside" and go to the second page offered for preview (p.37 in the book), you see 4x4 =16 micrographs of the spirochetes IN active MS lesions of autopsied brains.
Further on in the book these spirochetes are classified as borreliae. (G.Steiner also lists more than half a dozen results of other groups supporting his findings, i.e. from Stanford 1958:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/13608292/
4. Meanwhile there have been more supportive findings, i.e. by Brorson et al. from Norway:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11787831
The evidence for borreliae (transmitted by ticks...) as cause of MS is overwhelming by now - my impression after more than 2 decades of searching.
Could it be chance that Willy Burgdorfer in ?1981 found borreliae in ticks he had collected? And that these borreliae soon were identified as the cause of "Lyme disease", including late (CNS) neuroboreliosis? And that such neuroborreliosis is indistiguishable from MS (as was true for some cases of late neurosyphilis, giving rise to the search of Gabriel Steiner in the first place)?
5. Meanwhile quite a number of studies show mino- and doxycycline to be highly effective in (active) MS. Doxycycline has been the standard therapy for tick borreliosis for decades by now: 2-3 weeks of 200 or 300 mg per day (not for children...).
Doxycycline is to be preferred, especially in MS, because minocycline quite often causes vertigo, which could be a symptom of MS...
6. B.burgdorferi is transmitted by hard ticks, abundant in moderate climate with high humidity (ticks cannot drink, as far as I know, will dehydrate and die when the soil where they hide dries out).
MS is distributed geografically following hard tick prevalence as well as genetic predisposition and the activity patterns of local people at risk. (I.e. walking dogs in "tick habitats", including many parks in cities.)
------------------------------------------------------------
Details "fill books", but the consequences should be clear from the facts listed above.
(I myself have done accordingly, starting in 1993. One of my observations: neurological symptoms suggestive of MS started in the 1980s in parallel with quite rapidly advancing varicosis in my lower legs - where dozens of ticks had bitten me from childhood onward - but I was always sero-negative for borreliosis, tested repeatedly 1991...1996, including CSF twice. Looking back the varicosis stopped advancing after 1993...)
I wonder if this information will be wellcomed on this board - in Germany it seems to be hated, quite strange... (However, a few persons with MS have tried 2-3 weeks of doxycycline, and ?all report improvements, some "dramatic" like "feel like living again", brain fog gone, slow improvement of impairment...
In one postmenopausal SP-MS patient in California, who was on Teriflunomide 14 mg/d before, the progression seems to have stopped, as far as can be judged after just 2 years. But she has depleted her iron stores by blood donations, in addition, as I did 2 decades ago, so the effect could result from more than just taking doxycyline...)
My goal: start a turnaround towards "a world without MS".
chenman
mrhodes40 wrote:This has actually been tossed out about three times in the forum here as the reason this can't be the cause of MS.
I don't know if CCSVI is the cause of MS but I know it is associated. But there is a significant difference in vitamin d levels of people in lower latitudes and I assume it has to do with that which is exactly where the rest of MS research is with regards to vitamin D...in other words they have now figured out that vitamin d levels are low that d levels have something to do with it but they do not know exactly, precisely what it has to do with lesion formation.
The different theories have different ideas, for example if you are a germ person it is all about cathelicidins, if you are autoimmune it has to do probably with the overactive immunity being allowed to go out of control because d dampens it somewhat.
Whether MS is autoimmune, germs or CCSVI or a combination of those, in some way vitamin D plays in, and no one knows exactly how yet. But ... (... ...)
......
Oh sure, blame the new guy! 
