Multiple Sclerosis, Explain "Localized Mechanical Damage" In The Lesions?

I can certainly understand your enthusiasm, but it's above my pay grade. I don't understand what's going on there.

My, (engineer), Dad, left me reams of notes on prostate cancer...causes, treatments, etc., many of them not recognized by the medical community. I'll read them all when I get the disease.

Congratulations on your wife's progress!!! That is awesome.

I'm always interested in reading about medical advances, and the causes of what ails us.

Thanks, kramarat. The topic is really about the possibility of this double liquid pumping valve acting as a "loudspeaker" each time it closes, sending out a wave pattern that travels up through the big veins and something in a tiny vein up in the top of the brain resonating with the tone that it made. So it is not like a big medical topic at all. But if it is possible, it might blow the whole MS mystery wide open. Nobody has ever looked at this possibility. I have emailed with the doctor in Austria and he says it is definitely worth looking at. But it is not his or my or any neurologists, field of expertize. (Lots of times people in one industry lack the insights that someone in another industry has). It is similar to a fluid mechanics or sound wave problem. Might this same effect happen in water pumps? And possibly cause resonance upstream from the pump? If so that is a proof of concept that it can happen. I have seen the water vibrate in the stream when my dads tractor driven sprayer pump sucked water out of a stream. So with the vein it would be like an inline pump having an effect in the water it is about to suck in. Almost like how a radio signal goes out. Anyway medicine is at war. The vascular surgeon branch of medicine recognizes this treatment, while the neurologist, pharmaceutical branch does not. This treatment is a lot cheaper than a years worth of MS drugs so there is a powerful financial incentive to discredit it. Thousands of people have felt better and been better at neurological tests after the angioplasty but that is now called "anecdote" and it is entirely discounted. The neurologist pharma branch are really keen on spreading the placebo concept into the development phase of surgical techniques. It is hard enough to design a placebo pill. Should it have a taste, or calorific value, etc. But when you spread to concept to a surgical technique, it gets many orders of magnitude more complicated. For Jade, we did neurological tests before the treatment (experiment) and the same tests after the experiment with a massive positive change. But somehow that means nothing to the crazy people because nobody took a placebo. I have brought up the whole issue in several "scientific" forums now and there is a trend. Most people completely ignore it. But those who are against it absolutely refuse to watch any video of people who had a good result following the angioplasty. And that includes people with MS relatives. It is a shallow kind of caring. It is absurd to think that I would fake the video, or to think that she faked her illness for over 4 years or her recovery but many many people think just that and chose to believe the MS society of Canada. (Who have lost a bunch of volunteer members to this treatment) Resigned or fired, I'm not sure. In Canada, People kind of lie low following it too. The medical powers that be take a very dim view indeed. A lady in sk died from renal failure because clinics refused to treat her due to her treatment abroad. Anyway, we helped a lady in the states called Jennifer to decide to get the treatment and she had a super result too. I feel it is like leading people out of a torture chamber. An important point is that nobody knows exactly why this treatment works. So it is like a modern penicillin. Nobody knew exactly why it worked either but they did not ban it. And same as this treatment penicillin gave great results. (Not as fast as this one, mind you) Some people have instant improvement as soon as a balloon is blown up! Nobody knows exactly why but hey! It sure worked for Jade, Jennifer, Jeff Beal, Montel Williams and many many others.

I would say that this is truly incredible.

One of the things that has always pissed me off, is the unwillingness to run experimental procedures on the terminally ill. If they are dying, and volunteer...why not?

It's a tough pill to swallow, when you realize that money is behind everything; it seems that way to me. Consider the lost revenue if cancer was cured.

What would government do if poverty went away? Drug use? Crime?

We wouldn't need them.

Sadly, I think that some of the same forces are at work in medicine. A cure puts an end to profit.

I will look into this.

In the meantime, gaze into the light that is shining through your wife's eyes, and enjoy every moment. I am very happy for both of you.

KRat, read these...you live in an area endemic to Lyme no matter what the NC Surgeon General says. I got it in Robbinsville, many of my friends from Florida who summer up there got it there and I got it the second time in Tellico Plains where the whole town has had it.

More likely than not if you are a 'woodsy' guy, you have been exposed to it but may have antibodies from when you were a kid and still had your thymus.

http://www.townsendletter.com/FebMar2006/lyme0206.htm

Very interesting indeed!

My wife has supposed nerve damage in her shoulder and back that hurts her all the time and give her migraine headaches.

The problem is when I massage her back in just the right places and pop two or three joints back into place in a certain spot from her lower neck to upper shoulder area all of the symptoms of the supposed nerve damage goes away. Sometimes for extended periods of days or more which suggests to me its not nerve damage but nerves being pinched or aggravated by a bad disk or displaced scar tissue of which both are rather easy fixes.

I think her excuse for it being supposedly permanent is so that she does not have to go get surgery done and actually have the problems fixed. If they were fixed it would be the direct loss of a whole load of excuses for not doing things when she doesn't want too.

Heaven forbid she didn't have actual medical problems for excuses as to why she wont do physical work. Without them she would have to admit to just being lazy and out of shape.

Easy there cowboy. There's a time and place for everything.

I'm reserving judgement, because if a, (fairly routine), angioplasty is the cure for MS, it would truly be goundbreaking...big time.

We'll see.

TCM- If your wife starts feeling better, it means she has a boyfriend...that cares.

I care. I just don't like seeing people suffer from things I have been through and know that can be fixed easily enough and I really hate hearing people use wask medical excuses for reasons for not doing things.

If many cases and symptoms of MS can and have been be alleviated or outright cured by a physical corrective procedure I am not going to bash it ever!

As my wife goes I just hate seeing how she finds reasons to not get what at our ages are easily fixable medical conditions taken care of. When we get older they will only get worse and far more expensive to deal with.

I just don't want us to be that couple you see in the mall with the fit and active old guy pushing his decrepit disease riddled shell of a wife around in a wheelchair because she wouldn't take care of herself properly when she still had the capacity to do so.

I enjoy giving you a hard time.

I can give you my complete list, but get you're wife on MSM and Move Free Advanced.

I never know how serious you are, and I suffer the same problem...I'm usually not.

I think my wife and I have an unspoken agreement that I will die first...that's what i'm told.

"I think my wife and I have an unspoken agreement that I will die first...that's what i'm told."

That was the understanding in my house too, "Daddy will smoke himself to death but Mum will still be around." That held until my wife died of cancer. About six months later, my daughters told me I had to quit smoking because the plan had been revised and I had to stay for a while longer. It was very tough but I did it back in 2002, and despite a hefty case of COPD, I am still here. I still miss smoking though.

Sorry for your loss.

I quit smoking for a year, got drunk and had a cigarette one time, and I was right back on them.

A few months ago, I quit for a week, using an electronic cigarette, and ended up back on the smokes.

Next week is vacation for us. After that, I'm done forever. The electric ones work, but you're still feeding the addiction.

My wife worries about my health, diet etc all the time! And I DID push her around in a wheelchair for several months after she came out of hospital. So, yeah I appreciate where you don't want to go! I am on warfarin because I have factor v lieden disorder. (Peasant whose blood clots too quick) and I love leafy green vegetables but must be careful to eat the same amount each time. Very hard to get her to even touch them but I think they are essential to good health! I would not have even known about this treatment, without a random sequence of events. It so happens that Bill Code, (a doctor with MS who had the procedure) lives about an hour from me. I have never met him but Jade has. He only realized after he had the angioplasty just how far his symptoms go back. There are several videos of him online. Another doctor who had the treatment is a heart surgeon called dr campolani and he was able to go back to heart surgery after it! Video of him are online too. Jades symptoms might even go back into childhood. she has had strange issues all her life.

One of the things the surgeon mentioned as a possibility for aftercare is some sort of fancy neck alignment therapy that some people had found to help. Another was yoga so that the brain properly renews contact with the bits that were asleep in a nightmare for 4 years. I forget why he mentioned NUCCA because whatever he did with the balloon worked like a miracle. I think it is "NUCCA correction of an Atlas misalignment" I don't know anything about it but maybe that or something similar is what you are doing to your wife? I cannot say anything one way or another about it. I just pasted it into a search and a site gave me this "The focus of the NUCCA work is on a small misalignment of the bone structure that connects the head and neck, a condition called the Atlas Subluxation Complex. This misalignment can block the communication between your brain and body causing pain, stress, tension, and overall physical and emotional dysfunction."

you are probably just tearing adhesions on the 'damaged' nerves loose, which is a good thing!

Lets get back to the transmission of wave fronts in fluid in tubes, shall we? I am really keen to know if that loudspeaker and the resonance in smaller tubes idea has any merit. Franz Schelling has been looking hard and he cannot figure out how the blood flow effects can be in so tiny of an area and not in adjoining places! but almost nobody else has looked. If my idea is unsound, he would welcome better ones. He is a good guy and he emailed back within 24 hours of my suggestion! There are some super minds here and it might just be a problem that fell through the cracks. It needs a different type of specialist to solve it. https://www.facebook.com/notes/ncs-the-national-ccsvi-society/dr-woodfield-to-speak-and-vip-guest-dr-franz-schelling-to-attend-ccsvi-conferenc/626756980678502

Congratulations on the progress and improvemetn in your wife's condition. Your question/idea has some merit and opens the box to new concepts.

I can think of two things that might be happening.

The first is that the "bounce" effect that you describe might be causing a dead section in the normal flow of blood through the brain tissue, esentially pulsing back a minute amount of de-oxygenated blood into the specific vessel that you mention, so that section of brain tissue receives inferior supply and thus deteriorates. The alteration to the operation of the valve changes that pulsation pattern and thus fresh blood is received and improvemetn is relatively immediate. (Provided the impairment has not progressed to irreversible damage.)

The other is that the angioplasty has increased the general blood flow in all the brain and the improved flow in that region is the major observed effect.

The way to test the first would be to examine the blood vessels (MRI) of MS sufferers and determine whether they have a different specific pattern of blood vessels. (Just like some people have two ducts from their kidneys, while one is standard.) This would indeed be a medical breakthrough because it would provide a causitive diagnostic tool.

The way to test the second would be to introduce a "hypoxic" condition and see whether this specifically made the symptoms worse. (Hypoxic means lower Oxygen concentration in the air and thus blood supply.)

Please pass my support onto your friend who is closely examining this treatment.

(I paid my way through university working as a lab technician for the lead professor in cardio physiology and specifically circulatory conditions, Oxygenation and anaesthetics.)

Thanks very much for that. But he is not my friend, I just exchanged a couple of emails with the man. If any of you have input, you certainly do not have to use me as a gateway. His email address is dr.franz.schelling@gmail.com and he is very receptive to ideas. His online book is a super introduction to the whole history of MS treatment and control. Anyway, Jades (and several other people's) return to normality, (except for her neuralgia) indicates that the "experts" have got almost everything wrong with this disease. And neuralgia was not her first symptom. These "experts" are still in complete control of the field and instead of the best interventional radiologists researching this, it is neurologists. It is simply not their field of expertise and many of them consult for the ms drug companies. The conflict of interests are huge. The FDA is unfortunately on the side of the drug companies and want to put surgery research through the whole placebo thing to slow it right down and maintain drug sales figures. This may be good for the economy in a perverse way. I noted recently that health insurance companies who are paying out could pay for this treatment for ms suffererers and save themselves big bux long term! Jeff Beal is still doing good, and his angioplasty was around 5 years ago. But others who didn't have the treatment are on disability and costing them 20 or thirty thousand per year! If a treatment costs 10,000, even if only 30% give huge relief, then paying for the treatment is worth it to the insurance company. Just a thought. Brian

What you are describing sounds very much like water hammer. If we can get water hammer in pipe systems that causes damage why would you not get damage in a vascular system if a similar fault exists.

The angioplasty treatment sounds like it would work in a similar way to the spring loaded diaphragm that you can fit to a pipe system to deaden water hammer by absorbing the shock wave and changing the volume of the system.

BAB

Thanks, great way of expressing it too!

I hate to interfere with a fascinating discussion of water hammer in MS by injecting a dose of physiological reality, but the fact is that by the time the blood flow reaches the veins it is is no longer pulsatile and therefore the effect cannot arise. Even in the aorta, where the pulsatile flow nature is at its maximum, there is no suggestion of its being the cause of a water hammer effect in the small arteries. Water hammer is not a feature of the human circulatory system, whether in health or in disease.

Furthermore, the sclerotic lesion in MS occurs around the nerve cells. Certainly the tiny blood vessels around the nerves may be blocked by the sclerotic process, but the said process does not involve any of the larger veins supplying organs, whether they be in the neck or the kidney.

I hate to say it but I think we are dealing with the work of a charlatan here. Snake oil always seems to sell well.

Actually the "Physiological reality" is that the brain has quite the pulsation going on! And it is enclosed in skull so the pulsation of the arteries transmits straight to the veins and it has nowhere else to go (closed system unlike the rest of the body). http://www.fluidsbarrierscns.com/content/8/1/5 Water hammer is too strong a term (but you have to relate to something). I refer you to this chapter http://www.ms-info.net/evo/msmanu/956.htm#level_5_1 that describes how the lesions develop and spread around veins. So the brain does have pulsation and the lesions are developing in nerve tissue around veins. Now to the difference between arteries and veins. Arteries are designed to take the heavy pulsing while veins are designed with valves to prevent pulsing. Veins have a diaphragm type valve. When a diaphragm type valve closes what exactly happens? Is the fluid behind the valve totally unaffected? Nope! Not possible. It would be hard to measure the effect with all the other pulsing going on in the head but it IS possible to model it. The moment the double valve in the jugular snaps shut, a tiny pressure wave gets sent from the valve itself up the blood in the jugular and into the head. It will dissipate as it goes but when it hits something that resonates with its wavelength, it will dissipate really fast right there. If we can prove that train is traveling in that direction, is big enough and wrecks at that spot we have a really strong case for looking for the cause of MS in a totally different area of the body. And I know the amount of energy that is going up the vein is a mickey mouse amount. But to bust the blood brain barrier in a vein or capillary and to shred the mylein sheath on a nerve, you don't need that much energy. And remember, all that is standing between the brain's weak veins and the heart itself is those double valves. What happens if they are not working properly? Pressure waves in the head? This needs to be addressed. Pump engineers and pipe engineers probably can provide unbiased input. And maybe there is a way to model this with thin walled rubber tubes in a closed tank of water? The neurological community are essentially saying blood flow and compromised valves have no impact and deny that they exist in MS. I find that highly disingenuous. Please do not compare this to snake oil. Nobody can explain the damage in the lesions accurately. And my wife doesn't even have them. But she sure looks like someone with ms to me. The lesions develop late in MS which makes them a symptom not a cause. But the neurological community is focused entirely on the lesions. You will never find the cause if you are looking in the wrong place and continually scream at people who suggest other potential causes. Note that I gave a link in another post to someone who measured wave propagation in dog veins and the distance they travelled depended on the frequency of the waves.

I think you need to read your own references more carefully. Figure 3 shows a representative pulsatile waveform in the ICP. Peak pressure change is only 6 mmHg and the pressure is back to baseline after 0.5 sec. Given a resting heart rate of 60-80 bpm, there is no evidence of resonance.
As for your second reference, the kindest thing to say about it is that it is outside mainstream science. Take this quote for example: "The specific brain plaques of multiple sclerosis can only be caused by energetic venous back-jets set in motion by intermittent rises in the pressure in the large collecting veins of the neck, but especially of the chest." Certainly rises in pressure in the neck veins may occur, e.g on coughing, but there is no evidence for "energetic back-jet", because that is what the venous valves are there to prevent. If theory that MS plaque formation was caused by retrograde flow in the veins then there should be a high association between MS and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. That, of course, does not exist.
"And I know the amount of energy that is going up the vein is a mickey mouse amount." Quite so.
"But to bust the blood brain barrier in a vein or capillary and to shred the mylein sheath on a nerve, you don't need that much energy." A string of words containing nonsense.
"The neurological community are essentially saying blood flow and compromised valves have no impact and deny that they exist in MS." That is mainstream science.

Mainstream scientists would also question the wisdom of balloon angioplasty of neck veins, which are inherently distensible. Either the valves remain undamaged, in which case nothing at all has been achieved, or the valves are damaged, in which case the backflow problems would be made worse.
Finally, let us not forget that MS plaques also occur in the spinal cord, outside the skull, where even these tiny pressure fluctuations do not occur. Balloon angioplasty of the renal vasculature is completely irrelevant. Snake oil is a bargain by comparison.

""The specific brain plaques of multiple sclerosis can only be caused by energetic venous back-jets set in motion by intermittent rises in the pressure in the large collecting veins of the neck, but especially of the chest." Certainly rises in pressure in the neck veins may occur, e.g on coughing, but there is no evidence for "energetic back-jet", because that is what the venous valves are there to prevent". Guess what, I have widened veins in my legs, with compromised valves. So why would you think that people who have ms with widened neck veins as noted by the Doctor, would not have compromised valves too? One piece of evidence for "energetic back-jet" is the widened veins in the head. Anyway, a valve is closed by back flow of blood and as it slams shut, you get a series of waves coming off the valve and up through the blood back into the head. This happens because it is physics and it happens whether you measure it or not and it might just be strong enough to bust a capillary if it was beamed at it long enough. I came to this forum because there are people here who can estimate the strength of this energy pulse and probably also estimate how far it will travel, how fast and what it will resonate with. Exactly like a light wave or sound wave will resonate with something. I was also aware of the risks (people like you reading ancient manuscripts).

"Anyway, a valve is closed by back flow of blood and as it slams shut, you get a series of waves coming off the valve and up through the blood back into the head. This happens because it is physics and it happens whether you measure it or not and it might just be strong enough to bust a capillary if it was beamed at it long enough."

The so-called vein valves are check or one way valves built-in the vein. Its main purpose is to help /assist blood go back to the heart to complete the circulatory circuit in the body! It helps by preventing back flow that in turn will increase the vascular resistance in that circuit!
If you are familiar with electrical circuits, the circulatory system is similar in nature.. The heart serving as the generator, while the arteries and veins serving as the conduits while the different organs in the body serving as the loads!
i.e., In one of the equivalent electrical branch circuits, as in the brain, the flow of blood is from the heart, (gen.), via arteries, going to the brain and back again to the heart, this time via the veins! Like in electrical, the current is only flowing in one direction.. So using your statement above, it is not quite possible for the vein valve to generate any additional forces or "series of waves back to the head" since that vein is the blood collections returning path back to heart!

Hi, Vsar, in the arteries the current is going in one direction and modulated a bit by the arteries contracting at the right times to even the flow somewhat but coming back to the heart it is start stop, start. stop. It cannot be moving forward when a valve is closed. I know a valve sends a tiny shock wave back through the fluid the moment it closes. There has to be an element of reflux to close a valve otherwise they would always be open and they would be pointless.

I'm sorry, Gaiatech, but it is time to wrap this up. Vsar is quite correct in comparing the circulation of the blood to the flow of current in a circuit. Employing the analogy further, we have a direct current with a small AC ripple. Even in the veins, the flow may be fractionally pulsatile but it is always forwards. It is not retrograde at any stage (unless the intrathoracic pressure is raised by coughing). Under normal conditions the valves in the neck veins never close, remaining open throughout the cardiac cycle. When you try to draw comparisons with retrograde flow though varicose veins in your legs, you have to remember the effect of gravity. In the legs, the return flow of blood is against gravity, which is why venous valves are necessary. In the neck the flow of venous blood is assisted by gravity, and the protection afforded by valves is not routinely required (unless you spend all your time coughing).
I'm afraid you will just have to face up to the fact that there is no basis for these little shockwaves you are trying to work into your theory of life and disease. They do not and cannot occur.

I'm sorry but your understanding and interpretation of your own body anatomy, how they function is a bit skewed... It is being clouded by the fact that you are personally and emotionally affected! As in any case, a denial phase sets in but reality always prevails!

You may need to step back, remove yourself from the scene, thus will enable your mind to be clear, to see a bigger picture!

I see the big picture, VSAR, and you should put your pretentious patronizing comments away. if you have nothing to offer why are you even commenting here? The double valves in the Jugular sends a little pulse of energy into the brain. (I did not make that up, it is physics and the valve obeys the laws of physics). The quote below is from a pdf from the American heart foundation. http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/23/4/539.full.pdf which was about measuring pressure waves travelling in a dogs aorta. Note that this was not waves generated in the heart, they generated them by "drumming" on the outside of the aorta. Well, guess what? The closed valve to the jugular is a lot more drum shaped that the side of the aorta.

"A quantitative evaluation of changes in the elastic properties of blood vessels on the basis of altered propagation characteristics of waves is only meaningful after a mathematical model has been established which predicts the dispersion and attenuation of the various waves with a reasonable accuracy. With such a model, it should be possible to apply the method described in this communication in a systematic study of the control mechanisms that may govern active changes in the elastic properties of blood vessels." You see??? If the autonomic system goes down, the elastic properties of veins might be "out of whack" or there could be throbbing arteries in the head and they (because the brain is enclosed in hard stuff) will transmit the throbbing directly and almost instantaneously to the venous system of the head. This type of throbbing may not even show up on the devices used to measure blood pressure because it is just measuring the average of many different systems all working at the same time.

I concur to most of the comments posted! Mine is for anyone to take the utmost care and precautions in selecting the medical practitioner who is going to do the procedure! Whatever it may be, the patient will be gambling, taking a big chance looking for a cure, to be better even for just a little! As you have already said,

" An important point is that nobody knows exactly why this treatment works. So it is like a modern penicillin. Nobody knew exactly why it worked either but they did not ban it. And same as this treatment penicillin gave great results. (Not as fast as this one, mind you) Some people have instant improvement as soon as a balloon is blown up! Nobody knows exactly why but hey! It sure worked for Jade, Jennifer, Jeff Beal, Montel Williams and many many others."

I've spent the last of 35 working years in a major clinical setting, and most of the time over those years I've learned that there were only 3 things possible that happens a patient. Either the patient's condition will improve, will deteriorate, or without any change in patient's condition! That's regardless of the "procedure" being considered. It can be routine or experimental, and all aided with the latest and most modern state of the art in technology in medicine!

The outcome most of the time only depends on who the practitioner(s) will be? Who is actually going to handle doing the procedure, his technique and compassion.. Since majority of them will be opting for surgery, one needs to be a very good craftsman on the operating table!

Having said that, one really needs to spend most of the time, being careful in selecting to whom you will entrust your patient's well being? Not only on the "procedure" that will be done!

I fully agree. The guy who did my wife's surgery does a lot of follow up. MP Kristy Duncan is the only Canadian Official who bothered collecting data about returning people who had this operation done. (It is Banned in Canada and the evil people in charge simply refuse to collect data on how well returning Canadians are doing). She found that roughly 1/3 had no improvement, 1/3 had slight improvement and 1/3 had huge improvement. This surgeon has found a strong co relationship between how patients perform a simple heart test and how likely they are to have improvement. He only treats those who are likely to benefit. He claims that 90% that he has treated show improvement! So, even though Jade did not have much wrong with her veins, did not have official MS, etc, he ballooned the veins because the heart test and her symptom list showed that she would probably benefit a lot. I think she was 3 standard deviations away from the norm for the heart tests. Frankly, I am still amazed that ballooning a vein can bring back reflexes in the bottom of your foot. She had no tickle reflex a day before and suddenly it is back after 4 years gone! Brian

I'm glad and hope for your wife's continued improvement.. There is a lot of uncertainties associated with our physical well being. It is very possible that by just opening the veins helps our bodies to cure itself! By improving oxygenated blood perfusion to all the different organs in the body, not only enables all necessary and needed nutrients to reach all tissues and organs throughout, it will also in turn enables these organs to properly function! Properly oxygenated blood is one of the basic necessity needed by our tissues / muscles to live and normally function..

I think this is basically what happens in your wife's case. By improving circulation and blood perfusion enabled those oxygen starved organs, specially the neurological functions of the brain be revitalized which in turn triggered it to start and do its function!

I don't know anatomy well enough to know if my question is a dumb one, but here goes; do you think that the balloon angioplasty is affecting structures other than the vein itself?

Jim

Jim,

My experience with the angioplasty procedure has always been directed to the vein. To increase or widen its opening through the use of an expanding /deflating balloon after it was inserted and properly positioned. To reduce the blockage by the repeated push-pull action of the inflated balloon, causing the plaques to be dislodged. or by pressing the plaques against the vein wall thereby creating a bigger opening. Another application is to assist, or to reduced the workload of a newly transplanted heart. Overall effectiveness measured thru increased blood flow!

Because of the nature of the procedure, I'm sure there will always be some effect due to the shock imparted or due to the push-pull action of the inflated balloon on the immediate tissues near or around where the lesions /plaque were! Whatever other side effect it may have would be considered minimal, and limited only around the vicinity of application.

Hope my explanation answered your question..

vsar

Hi Vsar, The angioplasty is to open a constricted vein in the neck and let the blood flow more freely away from the brain or to awaken the vagus nerve that runs beside the veins in the neck or both. They never go near the lesions which (if present) are up in the middle of the brain. My wife does not have lesions. The current protocol in Canada is no lesions= no MS even if you are in a wheelchair. They also have spread the rumour that this surgery is just producing a placebo effect so people simply tune out. However, I got the surprise of my life. If all surgeries worked this well we would be living in paradise. Remember that back home in Canada, they said there was nothing more they could do for her and about 5 days before this operation she lost the reflex in her left foot and was getting numbness in the left side of her face. Very rapid decline this year and "nothing we can do".

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzXlmAwZTZfQ01RnN-8Ip5lUz0HrNWzN

Hi, Jim, Dr Arata balloons veins in the neck and the renal vein. He used to do it to widen the veins where they were constricted in the jugular (that increases blood flow through the vein and speeds up the blood flow through the brain itself ). But from followup and observations he changed the procedure. He now does it to awaken sensors in the vagus nerve that runs beside the veins. He believes that awakening these sensors and perhaps even reawakening the nerve itself, gets many of the bodys automatic systems working again. It is hard to believe how sick people with ms are just from looking at them. Jades right arm and leg have burning pain and they were clammy and cold to the touch. (Like a zombie). She was close to incontinent and had no reflexes in her right foot. She had no balance and could not do "heel to toe" walking (even though she can walk almost normally when she takes steps). She had "brain fog" and massive fatigue every morning. Symptoms are at least 95% gone but neuralgia (the burning pain) and cluster headaches are still with her. So there are 2 main theories about why this works. First Theory The opening of blocked veins increases blood flow to the brain and it can work almost normally because it is fully oxygenated and waste is being removed and the second theory is Dr Arata's about the ballooning waking up the vagus nerve and getting the autonomic system working again. The autonomic system controls the bodys automatic functions like speeding up the heart when you are running, etc. Note that I have watched a lot of video about this. Dr Arata notes that he has had patients notice a difference and feel better as soon as a vein is ballooned on the operating table!. And he asked "how can that be?' because at that moment the balloon fills the vein and there is NO blood flow! Thats when he made the connection between ballooning and the vagus nerve. Anyway, I have seen 3 other vascular surgeons note the same thing happening on the operating table. But they did not make that connection. Dr Arata did and his tests and his follow up showed who was benefiting the most so now he only treats people that fall into those categories. He claims 9 out of 10 people see improvement following his operations and that is well above the industry average. He told me that there was nothing much wrong with Jades veins (so those who do this procedure based on blocked veins might not even have ballooned her). Anyway, touch wood, the improvement has been off the scale so far and way more than I hoped for.

I suggest you consult your textbook of anatomy. At the neck level the vagus nerve is indeed in close proximity to neck veins and at this level the vagus does contain both motor and sensory afferent fibres. The only problem is that it does not actually serve any sensory endings in this region. As far as the kidney is concerned, at that level the vagus contains purely motor fibres, and therefore cannot serve sensory endings at all.
I must emphasise that the vagus nerve does not itself contain any sort of sensor. It merely connects between various sensors in the body and the brain.
The snake oil bottle is getting empty.

Php001, you are extremely insulting. The whole problem is that you are consulting a textbook, written by a man who lived years ago but you believe it completely as if it was written by God. The man who wrote your holy book did not have access to the latest research. Since you clearly know everything, perhaps you could extend your insult to explain my wife's improvement? (It is actually a real thing that happened). I don't believe in Miracles or snake oil so why did it happen? http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzXlmAwZTZfQ01RnN-8Ip5lUz0HrNWzN Perhaps you might explain vagus nerve stimulation to us too? There are a number of things that are known to stimulate the Vagus nerve (at the neck level). for instance, how does yoga stimulate the vagus nerve?

I'm sorry that you find the truth insulting, but the truth is that I spent nearly 40 years in the profession of medicine, nearly 20 of those as consultant in intensive care. Before that my research project was on the respiratory centres of the brain. You might almost say that the vagus nerve is one of my special subjects.
Concerning your wife's improvement, I am pleased for her, but you must understand that the natural pattern of MS is one of relapse and remission. It is therefore not possible to assign any improvement in a single individual to the treatment being currently undertaken. This is a parallel situation to the 70 year-old man who declares "Well, I have smoked all my life and I'm still here, so smoking does not harm you". One can only conclude that a treatment brings benefit if a large number of people benefit from the treatment while a large number of untreated people do not benefit; in other words one needs a controlled trial with high-quality statistical analysis. (It was by this painstaking means that Professor Richard Doll convinced the world in 1950 that smoking kills.)
Finally, there is no evidence (I'm talking about evidence of scientific quality here) that yoga stimulates the vagus.

Nope, the truth is fine. But you are unable to see it is not just my wife. On average it is 6 out of 10 get immediate improvement with this operation. About 1/3 get the magnificent improvement that she got within hours of being operated on. And Arata has bumped the numbers up to 9 out of 10 getting improvement because he is selective. Your theory that this is just lucky timing, is completely naieve and schoolboy logic. With Jade, it has been 4 years unable to do heel to toe. So we are up well above 1000 to 1 for it to come back on that day. A facebook friend of ours (an american) was watching our learning process, and it convinced her to do it too. She also got the treatment a week after Jade. Her husband posted the big smiley face and it went super or something like that in the airport before they left California to go home and she has been glowing ever since. So the only people that I know that got this done in the last month both got huge improvement. If Jennifer is also a 4 year no heel to toe, you are up over a million to one on just 2 people getting their heel to toe back after the operation. (and I am being very kind pegging it as low as a million to one) Pretty statistically unlikely, wouldn't you think? Looks like you scientists need to go back to statistics school. I have watched videos of 3 vascular surgeons who have stated that patients (plural) have experienced symptom relief on the operating table. So we are talking many billions of billions to one that this is people just remitting at exactly the right moment. Please get real.

I am truly sorry for you, Gaiatech, in that you are unable to recognise that you may the victim of an ongoing fraud. The "statistics" you quote come out of nowhere but the interested party. I would be seriously interested in knowing which jurisdiction you are currently in, with a view to determining what Dr. Ariata's qualifications are, and whether he is entitled to practise in that jurisdiction.

If you bothered to read the thread you would know which jurisdiction he lives in. He is in the USA. He has published his findings, by the way and they are being peer reviewed. I find your comment about random improvements in MS neatly happening the day after this type of surgery, again and again and again, completely invalidates anything you have to say. Fraud is as fraud does. I personally know 4 people that this happened to and statistically the chance of that "day after improvement" happening at random is billions to 1. Back 50 years ago when you studied to be a doctor, did they not teach you statistics? One of those people had the no going back type of ms for more than a decade. I actually live with my wife. So I know when her skin is warmer, when she got back her tickle response in the bottom of her foot and I filmed her balance and walk etc. before and after her surgery and I put it on youtube so that people could check for themselves. And what I filmed was her performing pretty standard neurological tests by the way. The same tests that neurologists use to decide how bad a persons ms actually is. If you cannot tell the difference, you could never have been a worthwhile doctor. But no doubt, you did not even look. Shame on you.

"A controversial treatment for multiple sclerosis has been linked by U.S. health regulators to serious injuries including stroke, paralysis or even death, prompting them to issue an official warning to patients and physicians earlier this year."
" In its warning last May, the Food and Drug Administration said there is no clear evidence CCSVI exists in MS patients, and the procedure to treat it has not been shown to be safe or to help patients."
"Stanford University's CCSVI program was shut down in late 2009 after it acknowledged that one patient died of a brain hemorrhage and another needed emergency open-heart surgery after a stent migrated from the jugular vein to his heart. Last month two patients sued the university and Dr. Michael Dake, medical director of its catheterization and angiography laboratories, for performing dangerous experimental procedures on essentially healthy veins without properly informing patients of the risks."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/us-usa-health-ms-idUSBRE89416320121005
I thing I'll go with the FDA position. This is a treatment with a defined risk to life and of no proven benefit in MS

You do that, (stick with the FDA position), I love how you need someone else to do your thinking. Tysabri (approved by the fda) has an "undefined" risk to life. They do not know what percentage of people will die from PML caused by tysabri yet. All operations have a "defined risk to life". MS has a defined risk to life. (about 10 years per person). Given that I know 5 people who had dramatic improvment in their symptoms immediately following this operation, can you be so gracious as to call BS on your idea that improvement following the operation was just random chance? Jade (my wife) was 4.5 years unable to do heel to toe. So that is just over 1 in 1500 chance that her dramatic improvement following the operation was "random". Lori Batchelor was about 10 years in a wheelchair. So that is 1 in 3650 chance that her dramatic improvement following the operation was random. Chance that both were random, 1 in 5.47 million. And I got another 2 people Keri Cassidy and Denise Baillie! It may not be proven to you, because you don't understand probability and people would have to rise from the dead before you would believe them (and then only if the FDA approved) but it is definitely proven to them.

I'm with you on this one.

Without going into a full blown rant; I've known people with terminal cancer, (that are now dead), that were refused clinical trials of experimental drugs, because the FDA said the risks were unacceptable and wouldn't allow them. Nuff said.

Thanks for that. I have heard of the Vagus nerve running alongside the bronchia and that any stimulation of the nerve in that spot during bronchoscopy can lead to a heart attack. Having said that, however, that is in the line of what I was thinking. As Dr. Arata has noticed improvement whilst the artery is still blocked it most certainly indicates that something else is going on. Lymph nodes perhaps? I would cast doubt on the Vagus nerve theory purely based on what I said earlier. I must emphasise that I don't know my anatomy well enough to offer any truly sensible argument.

Jim

No.

Thanks, duly noted.

Jim

I'm a little confused...(not an unusual state for me )...

Did your wife have MS and then have a stroke, or did she have a stroke and then developed MS like symptoms? Has she been diagnosed with MS? It's hard to get a diagnosis and can take many years...my wife has been diagnosed but it took years of tests and various symptoms before they were sure. It's certainly a strange illness and can be aggravated by many environmental conditions such as heat, and stress. We are lucky that she has been relatively "good" for many years now, but we also know that can change at any time.

my wife of 40 years has been diagnosed with probable MS for over 42 years..She has done remarkably well until the last 5 years and is now virtually immobile requireing the usual assistance for things the rest of us take for granted..The discussion thus far focuses on a possible engineering flaw in the system and yet the lesions in the brain/spinal chord tracked by MIR over a number of decades indicate a continued decline in myelination...This may or may not be an autoimmune disease and it does show multiple iterations with no two individuals having identical symptoms/physical changes in the CNS etc..The water hammer notion presented would make sense except over the number of years it has been happening one would have expected complete renal failure or brain death due to starvation..the ground veins/arteries/lymph that keep our individual complement of cells fed and cleaned are certainly a key.major veins/arteries are given all the attention but the myriad microchannels probably are more important overall but of course much harder to quantify their effects.Glad your wife responded so well and apparently quite a few others..I've shared this with my facebook friends and that includes some MS activist groups..Thanks for sharing.

Hi, the water hammer I was thinking of is very subtle. I suggest it is produced from a vein valve each time it shuts. So imagine that pulse has to bounce through a bunch of veins, just like light waves or sound waves or water hammer before it reaches something to really HURT! The Austrian doctor in his book http://www.ms-info.net/evo/msmanu/984 notes that inside the lesion there is "mechanical damage" so think of the whispering wall in a cathedral, someone can speak quietly a hundred ft away and be heard clearly at that point. Dr Arata told us that Jades heartbeat was very even. That makes the pulse always the same strength and modulation so it will hit the same little vein for weeks. Then maybe the heart rate changes a little and another lesion gets set off. Read his account of Dawsons Fingers and he has histories of how the lesions develop over time. I believe the valves producing a signal and a small vein resonating with its wavelength can account for the mechanical damage. Ordinary people have variable heartrate so the signal that their valves send are variable too, they never get beamed at one spot for more than a few heartbeats. (I think). By all means suggest a better theory for why the mechanical damage is happening Thanks Brian

For all of you who are not keen on reading the entire manuscript by the Austrian Doctor, I have a link to part of a chapter. If you read down through that piece, is any of it consistent with the "waterhammer theory" or my "Vein valve as transmitter of waves" theory or the suggestion that in some capillaries may have no flow and low oxygen levels? One key piece is that the pattern of lesions spreads counter to the flow of blood through the veins. Other theories are of course welcome! http://www.ms-info.net/evo/msmanu/956.htm#level_5_1 The specific piece is lower in that chapter and it is headlined with:

Forces Behind Cerebral Plaque Expansion

Five features characterizing the spread of the specific brain lesions of multiple sclerosis prove useful for determining injurious impacts which cause the damages:

1. The common asymmetries of the plaque expansions away from their veins, especially in their bizarre extremes.
2. The plaques' emergence exclusively from certain segments or even sectors of the walls of their veins.
3. The consistent countercurrent spread of damage, i.e. its progression, without exception, in a direction diametrically opposite to the normal venous (and interstitial fluid) flow.

Since Lesions are generally defined as any abnormal growth in the tissue, caused by any number of things. Genetically, physically, environmentally, etc. Wherever it grows or located is understandably will alter the normal functioning of that location. By itself this lesion, plaque, or alteration can be labeled as a "mechanical defect" on that particular section, part or component of that body.. Also, every physical component has its own normal built-in characteristics, such as its natural resonance frequency.. that when hit and sustained may trigger its breaking point!

"Perhaps the autonomic system going down comes first, the pulse of energy causes the "mechanical damage" blood gets in past the blood brain barrier and only then does the nerve damage take place in the lesions. I would like my wife to have a long life and I think our angioplasty has bought her a year or two."

Angioplasty is just a simple medical procedure normally used to widen and remove blockage in a vein. It is very similar to a plumber's tool commonly called as roto-rooter! On the outside as you've probably observed is a machine that pumps helium gas pump into an enclosed, sealed and sterile catheter that was inserted into the groin via the large descending aorta. It is also used as an assist device for new heart transplants..

Since the body has its own natural frequency, based from its own internal sinus rhythm, the "waterhammer theory" IF at all plausible?, should be timed in conjunction with the pumping frequency of the IABP pump? One thing that clinician always see to it, that pumping action never go against blood flow and always synchronized with the patient's heart rate!

Good luck!

Well i must thank you for posting the entire article by Schilling..I am amazed at his astute observations.

As a hidden disease the pool of knowledge regarding MS includes many inacuracies that somehow rose to the generally accepted worlview in this case MS view held by neurologists etc..which would be based on their academic training and its concommitant influence on their daily practice with patients supplemented by papers presented at conferances they would attend regularly as well as readings they would do to stay current on any topic they dealt with ..

These conferences and published researchers are often heavily funded by drug companies ..Now i realize what has been an annoying thought that drug companies of course will push their world view research to the fore at these conferences and by supporting research that has potential to earn them profits..Based on Schillings presentation i believe drug companies efforts to modulate(mask) symptoms via various chemical regimes,often with disasterous results (read early death) have been doing ,in general, a disservice to the people affected with this ailment (and no doubt many others)..Be that as it may it is natural for attending physicians to attempt to modulate their clients symptoms with chemicals given the nicer sounding name of pharmaceuticals.

The Schilling paper makes sense but corrective surgery to clear up say 40 years of plaque formations does not..Over those 40 years or so the bodies own biological system has managed to circumnavigate these plaques to keep the brain in particular functioning..This is truly amazing .

Whether an earlier circulatory intervention would help long term is hard to say as results would take decades to be verifiable.

A better investment in research at this point would be to develop elctro-mechanical aids to help MS and other similar disease outcomes .

The other obvious highlight of this paper is the dependance of the current population of physicians on really dated observations to make their assesments..Modern techniques both autopsies,and live(MIR/Cat scans/nuclear medicine etc.)must have a clearer view of the etiology today..Surely..

"The Schilling paper makes sense but corrective surgery to clear up say 40 years of plaque formations does not..Over those 40 years or so the bodies own biological system has managed to circumnavigate these plaques to keep the brain in particular functioning..This is truly amazing ". I agree with most of your post but not sure what you mean in that sentence. Jade was falling to pieces and her brain was in a fog for 1/3 of the day! I am trying to investigate the possibility that the autonomic system disfunction comes first, and the lesion formation comes much later. A diagonsis with MS comes after finding the lesions and that is pretty late in the game and too late for many people. The key observations to me is that lesion number 1 forms and then the rest form further in. lesion formation is travelling up the bloodstream and not down it. That is highly unusual. Also there is "mechanical damage" right there inside on the vein wall in the lesion. We must give reasons for this damage. Key in another couple of interesting facts. MS sufferers have big jugulars, MS sufferers often have a very even heart rate. So I guess just 3 valves prevent backflow of blood up the jugular into the head. One in the heart and 2 in the jugular itself. The jugular does have a pulse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugular_venous_pressure (really back pressure from heart contractions) so I find it perfectly reasonable that either a damaged valve is letting blood back into the brain or a big wide valve in a big wide vein is transmitting a "signal" back up into the head and it is resonating in the lesions. AND, last night I found a paper where they checked how far a wave would go in a dogs vein. They made a wave by tapping the side of the vein or something like that and then they had sensors further down to see how far it travelled! Travel distance depends on the frequency among other things. And that brings us back to Dr Arata and his heart test on Jade. He only performs the ballooning if the heart test shows the very even heart rate and the fixable symptoms are there. If you have a very even heart rate, the frequency of those tiny waves back into the brain from the jugular valve are going to be the same every time. That means they will travel the same distance every time and the wave will crash in the same place every time and perhaps cause that tiny area of "mechanical damage". I know the wave will be tiny but the little veins and capillaries are tiny too. It might be enough to get lesions started. But nobody has checked into this. Everybody thinks of the forward wave from the heart through the arteries, but there has to be a tiny wave off the valves going back counter flow up the veins too. The autonomic system being compromised explains the even heart beat, (and possibly the jugular is contracting at the wrong time too if the autonomic receptors are not working properly). Thanks Brian. One of the dog vein tests is at this link http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/23/4/539.full.pdf and the graph of distance of wave train travel and frequency is on page 8 Thanks Brian

Hi, all, I know I am a pain here. But could anyone suggest a model to test this? Maybe something with rubber tubing of different diameters in a sealed container to mimic the brain. A little pump to be the heart and a suitable double valve for the jugular. Or maybe there is software to do it? We just need to see the wave fronts coming from the jugular valve up towards the brain. Or alternatively, an extra throbbing of the arteries gets transferred straight over to the veins in the sealed skull vessel. Remember that we can model a compromised autonomic system too! So, I think even the jugular between those 2 valves throbs. Maybe it throbs out of sinc in ms patients?

I am in several facebook groups for ccsvi advocates ( balloon angioplasty) and MS self help groups. The rest of the world sees them as pathetic sick losers and even though they speak truth to power, politicians, drug companies and ms societies have huge budgets to continue to paint them as irrational people and they will continue to walk on them because they are quite happy with the way things are. A model that shows that lesions are a secondary product of autonomic dis-function, not a cause of MS might help wake the rest of us up. Until something like this happens, those MS sufferers will continue to suffer. I think this suffering is largely avoidable. Thanks Brian White

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=244162897210 This is an interesting note in a CCSVI site especially because of the comments. It is like distilling the experiences of almost a hundred people! Many of the people talk about having heart palpitations and "heart murmurs" and the "MS Hug". Here is one of several comments about heart murmurs. "Would it be reasonable to assume that CCSVI could possibly induce heart murmurs? (Murmurs are extra heart sounds that are produced as a result of turbulent blood flow which is sufficient to produce audible noise.) I'm 37, diagnosed w/ MS 5 years ago and I've had a small murmur most of my life. I wonder if there is any connection." A heart murmur all his life fits with both autonomic system being down or the jugular valve popping off a signal into the head with each heart beat. An ms hug is unexplained extremely painful contractions of thorax muscles (which are controlled through the vagus nerve). The more you look, the more you see that that nerve should be front and centre in understanding MS.

To introduce yet more physiological reality:
1. Heart murmurs are a consequence of turbulent blood flow in the heart, as a result of valve abnormalities or of holes in the septum between left and right heart. There is no conceivable mechanism by which venous anatomy could influence heart murmurs.
2. The contraction of thoracic muscles is not, repeat not, controlled by the vagus nerve. The association of the vagus and MS exists only in your imagination.

"There is no conceivable mechanism by which venous anatomy could influence heart murmurs." It should be obvious that I was asking if heart murmurs could influence venous anatomy or could heart murmurs cause damage to vein valves?

Anyways, this is the place where Jade got treated. http://blog.synergyhealthconcepts.com/the-current-status-of-ccsvi-treatment/

I am disturbed that so few people take the word of the patient or the spouse about whether they are feeling better or not, even when it is backed up by extremely strong video evidence.

Whatever happened to people to make them like that?

I do know she is feeling better because I live with her, and I am getting back into the work routine again because there is no more of her morning "brain fog" to deal with. And her balance is healed so she will not suddenly flop over when she is walking down the road. Now back to these lesions that happen very late in the MS disease. What causes them? The disease is running its course long before these lesions appear. Most MS sufferers cannot pee or poo properly, can waste products be piling up in the blood? many have blue fingers from bad circulations, can this mess up the blood and make the white cells more aggressive? Many choke on their food or just choke with no food in their mouths. Many get heart palpitations. If we could find something that clearly causes the lesions, then the neurologists will have to look somewhere else and actually find the real cause of it. The real cause is almost certainly not in the lesions so it is time to look elsewhere.

A couple of recent research papers have showed reduced blood flow through the brain in early MS (Presumably long before lesions show up) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24039024/ from New Zealand and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24045400 from England that looks at arteries delivering less blood. "Bolus arrival time was longer in patients with greater disability independent of atrophy and T₂ lesion load," The London people suggest widespread inflammation as a possible reason for the reduced blood flow. (But the abstract does not say if there was widespread inflammation in those people). How about reduced blood flow being the reason or at least part of the reason for the greater disability ? And start looking in other places for the reason for the reduced blood flow? I think Dr Arata is correct and somehow the Vagus nerve has been compromised in those people. Time to start looking at how and why!

To inject yet another dose of reality. The fact that inflammation and reduced blood flow are associated is not in doubt. That is the case with all inflammatory processes, not just early MS. This does not prove that the reduced blood flow causes the inflammation. Indeed, it is far more likely that the inflammation comes first, and that the reduced blood flow is secondary. It is a laughable idea that dilating large veins will relieve the blockages in small veins in in small patches of inflamed tissue anyway. That will merely increase the flow in the normal veins around the edges, without benefit to the restricted veins.
Remember: Association is not the same as Causation. Even if A and B are associated, that is not automatic proof that one causes the other, and it is certainly not proof that A causes B rather than that B causes A. Don't forget that C may be associated with both A and B, and in fact C is the cause of both.
As for your obsession with the vagus nerve: cutting the vagus, or otherwise compromising its function, leads to an acceleration of the heartbeat and an increase in the cardiac output. So much for that idea.

Hi, phph001, the reality that you are ignoring is that the vagus nerve is a very clear link to most of the symptoms of MS. If the flaw is in the vagus nerve, you can explain nearly every symptom all at once. inflammation was associated (in the researchers minds) as a possible cause for the reduced blood flow. (And that is because they specalise in the brain). But they did not say they observed extra inflammation in those people. If you look at it logically, reduced blood flow could be controlled from elsewhere. Especially if the signals through the vagus nerve are not getting through on time. I am not obsessed with the vagus nerve. I never mentioned cutting the vagus nerve, (You did) I just mentioned getting it back working properly again. The vagus nerve is the link from the brain to pee and poo problems, automatic artery dilation when an organ needs more blood or oxygen, swallowing problems (my wife nearly choked, on nothing at all! one day when she got tired) and a few others that I forget. Probably balance. O, yeah, some people have noted that their voice changes after the angioplasty operation. (sounds different to other people). That is easily linked to the vagus nerve. So, Dr Arata and at least 2 other vascular surgeons have noted that some people have symptom relief "the instant that the balloon is inflated in the neck veins". So, you can talk till the cows come home about cause and effect being dissociated in your mind. It is just talk. Instant results implicate a nerve, and the symptoms effected implicate the vagus nerve. So the real issues in MS, is What compromised the vagus nerve in the first place? and what is the best way to wake it up again?

"To inject yet another dose of reality. The fact that inflammation and reduced blood flow are associated is not in doubt." You are confusing cause and effect. They say in this 2013 Sep;19 publication
(AbstractBACKGROUND:

Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is reduced in normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) of subjects with multiple sclerosis (MS), but the underlying mechanism is unknown.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23428956

In your version of reality, why did my wife and many other people have huge improvements and huge symptom relief immediately after having this operation? It may be a "laughable idea" that dilating large veins helps but it happened. It is helpful if you adjust to the real world. Dilating large veins helped my wife and thousands of other people. The type of symptom relief they received is consistent with an improvement in how the autonomic system works. We do not know why this happened. Any ideas? The job of a scientist is to explain reality, not to laugh at it.

Did you start this thread to argue?

An emotional connection to the subject matter, tends to skew science. It's a fact.

If you want to talk about this specific topic, start another thread, and leave your wife out it. Better yet...go spend some time with her.

As long as you associate your wife's improvement with this topic, it's no longer an objective discussion.

My dear friend, my wife got improvement from balloon angioplasty as did many other people. So please quit with the condecending attitude. This improvement is too big to be placebo effect, too common and too consistent to be random chance and it is clear improvement in video evidence time after time after time from many different people. I demonstrated that improvement with before and after videos but people in power now call that an "anecdote" (even when it clearly isn't and it was done just like a classical chemistry experiment, with measure-experiment-remeasure as the process) and people here and in the general public go along with the anecdote story because they are intellectually lazy. I started the thread to help find the root cause of her illness. The root cause of MS and similar illnesses is not in the lesions because the lesions develop very late in the game. People are arguing with me because they do not have a solution or do not care to look for one and they are bored and have nothing better to do with their lives. I am capable of looking at the issue coldly. That is why I put up those links. The cause of these MS like illnesses is probably not in the brain. Balloon angioplasty of the neck veins causes massive improvement, why is that? If you are objective, you can put up theories or compliment theories, if you only want to argue, you will argue. I will do both. If I had left it up to the medical profession in Canada, she would not be able to walk 50 meters to the end of our cul de sac. I will never achieve anything if I back down just because guys like kramarat tells me to back down. If you want to contribute, go ahead, if you want to argue for argument sake, why not do it somewhere else? The last 3 links (neurological research from 2013) I put up showed that blood flow is reduced in the MS brain. Well, neurologists have been saying that reduced blood flow is not a factor in MS for the last 4 years and they have been saying it to discredit balloon angioplasty of the neck veins. But their own research is finding reduced blood flow. Time to call them on stuff like that.

I'm not trying to pick any fights.

I wish you would have started this thread without the emotional baggage that came with your wife's recovery.

I'm happy for both of you, but the way you approached it...well, the same can be said for prayer and the placebo effect; which may be equally valid.

All of us have seen links like the one you posted...a miracle cure.

I guess I'm a little jaded, and I'm probably not alone. Between CR4 and the real world, we have seen cancer cures, cars that run on ordinary tap water, perpetual motion, over unity machines...the list is almost endless.

I'll look closer at your link, and the claims that he makes. If I think he's found a cure for MS and a host of other diseases, I'll scream it from the mountain tops; but I must reserve judgement, because I've been down this road before...as most of us have.

No offense intended; nor do I think you should back down.

Ok, sorry, he has not found a cure, but he has done very large symptom relief, we can learn a lot by studying how and why this happens. And about emotional baggage, nobody does anything without emotional baggage of some kind. I am selfish enough to admit that if I did not care about her, I would not have started the thread. People do not understand how it works to relieve symptoms so they deny that it exists at all! So first things first, hundreds of MS patients have done before and after videos, it is time to accept their video evidence as real scientific evidence that it works and do followup and find out why it is working and how long it lasts. This is a really productive way of answering questions. All those people have medical records so you can pick out trends and co relations really really quickly and it is also easy to compare them to the general MS population. In Canada, thousands of people have travelled to the USA, to Egypt, to Mexico and Poland and India to do this and the government here has refused to follow up to find out how they did long term. It is important to realize that individuals can make a difference. Joan Beal brought the procedure to America to save her husband (composer Jeff Beal) from his MS. Jeff was the first american to have it done. But for her, the procedure might never have even been allowed in the USA. Kerri Cassidy was number 1 or 2 in Australia and she has fought against her MS society from day one to get the thing allowed and tested properly. But the problem with clinical trials is that nobody knows exactly what they are testing. We know it is working but we do not know how it is working. And that means that clinical trials may be worthless. If as Dr Arata and others suggest, angioplasty is working on the autonomic nervous system all these studies of blocked veins are worthless. Because if it is autonomic, the problems are "probably" occuring because arteries leading into the skull are too constricted or constricting at the wrong time.

Research from Belgium http://iospress.metapress.com/content/40n14553gg00tk54/ "In MS patients, the early increase in heart rate during endurance exercise is significantly slowed, indicating a disturbed cardiac autonomic control" Dr Arata uses similar heart exercise test to help select patients for balloon angioplasty. Why is the autonomic control of the heart disturbed in the first place?

For a long time tree bark was known to ease the effects of malaria and was used for this purpose by western doctors long before the way it worked was understood. This century however, it is understood that a medicine or procedure will not be used unless it is first investigated to find the mechanism by which it works AND subsequently proven safe. If this regimen is not followed then the medicine or procedure is labeled "alternative". I know you are aware of this as it is implicit in your arguments. I would ask of you to accept the advice given by those who know what they are talking about ( after all that is why you raised the question ) and forget about the Vagus nerve. Dr Arata has suggested that it is worthy of research, no more, no less.

You originally hypothesized that the blood flow itself ( hammer ) may have an effect. This tells me that you too are looking for an alternative to the Vagus nerve theory.

I, for one, accept that the treatment works but I cannot even begin to imagine why.

Jim

Hi, Jimrat, I cannot accept the advice from those who know (because they don't know), and because they have no knowledge of pressure waves in fluids. I was reaching out to people who understand wave dynamics because the medically trained people have no clue about how destructive constant waves are. The reason for this thread is to try to see if a minor heart condition (an autonomic dysfunction as suggested in one of the papers I quoted above) or bad vein valves sends tiny pressure waves up the jugular that are just strong enough to "crash" in the locations where lesions form and to crash at the right strength to break the blood brain barrier. (I know little pressure waves must happen because they happen in every fluid in existence) So really this is a question for someone into pump design or even acoustic design and not a medical professional. It is wave physics. Your statement about how medicine or procedure is tested this century is simply untrue. Tysabri for MS treatment got fast-tracked even though the people in power know that it kills people (with pml) and they cannot quantify how many. The guy who made the chemical in tysabri has pleaded for it to be removed from sale. Canada has just fast tracked a procedure for renal denervation with Radio-frequency (RF) ablation for people with high blood pressure. Again, they did not test it here. Dr Arata is a highly qualified US Surgeon who is currently practising medicine in the USA which has according to one of my Canadian customers "the best doctors and hospitals in the world". I cannot forget the vagus nerve because it is right there beside that vein and it is linked to every symptom that jade got fixed. And as I posted before, some patients get relief the moment the balloon is blown up in their vein. That can only be a nerve thing because blood flow is shut off at that moment. I accept that the treatment works and I have to imagine why. The underlying condition that nobody understands is probably still there and immediately prior to this my wife could not even climb 1 flight of stairs. Dr Arata treats everyone who has a certain poor heart response to exercise, whether they have blocked veins or not. And he has a 90% success rate. That is a cause for concern because the other doctors average 2/3 success rate and they concentrate only on those with blocked veins. That means they are missing people with good veins who will respond to angioplasty. To me this is a humanitarian issue. We should not let bureaucracy gone mad stop good doctors from healing the sick.

My wife also puts up with MS and has for 40 plus years..Alternative treatments have been presented over the years..Steroids worked early on to minimize damage..Lately antispasmodics help her through her days..We watched the CCSV trials closely and noted those with early stage MS still in the relapsing remitting stage seemed to have a modicum of success but those with more long term experience with the disease had mariginal to no positive results so we didn't persue that route..After some deaths could be attributed to the surgery,at least indirectly,we stopped looking at this as a good route to take..

Lately the emphasis in treating MS is focused more on antioxidant ingestion...Food intake..This seems promising in at least modulating the disease.

Yelling verbally gets nothing accomplished..MS is a difficult disease and really varies from person to person in its presentation..Your wife had a good experience..Great..Thanks for sharing that..

"i think i think that i am ..i guess i am "

Hi, Martin, CCSVI results depends on the symptoms she has and the heart monitor tests. There will be no reality based ccsvi trials in the near future because only trainees are doing the angioplasty in trials. Would you let a trainee dentist near your wisdom teeth? Most people who had good results do seem to be in the early stages but there are exceptions! 2 of my facebook friends are Lori Batchelor who was too far into MS to get any MS drugs (around 20 years) and Denise Baillie who was classified as secondary progressive

"Secondary Progressive is nothing but a steady downhill slide to death;" and after the treatment her neurologist reclassified her as stable

"stable MS can remain that way for years or even decades!"

Her words are in brackets and she does not mind me sharing.

Anyway, now she tells me she only has altered perception in her leg and some minor muscle twitches. (Brain fog completely gone, fatigue 99% gone, etc) (and she has just got a job!)

"Beats the hell out of shopping for a wheelchair and deciding what kind of feeding tube I want! (My swallowing was getting bad before treatment)."

I guess you take the risks your are comfortable with.

I met a poor old guy when I had a haircut recently, he has felt drunk with vertigo from his ms for a couple of decades. He will "wait 10 years" to see how it works long term. I thought it was a shame because he had the fixable symptom set.

Jade was not stable, she was declining so fast, that I could not see her making it through the next 2 years.

I highlight things because I type a lot. So mostly I was not yelling. If they have highlighters, I can use them but bold type works pretty effectively to highlight stuff. Actually I found one of the first guys to get it done, from Barrie Ontario, yesterday. You can check how he is doing. https://www.facebook.com/Triskier and you can go back in his timeline to -

"Brent Boden

October 12, 2011 Leaving in 10 minutes for the hospital. I believe today will change my life."

I know people call this stuff "anecdotes" but to me they are real case histories and they tell their own story.

Brian

No point in explaining the nuances of ms as they are varied as are responses to treatment..Life is not permanent so we do the best we can for ourselves and our loved ones..Hope things continue to work for you and your wife..Thanks for sharing your story.

Sure Martin. I was explaining it for other people too. Believe what you want. Kirsty Duncan MP has collected the figures for good and bad outcomes that people coming back to Canada had. She finds that there is incredible unscientific resistance here This is responses she got from a leader in the medical profession. "I think there are going to be millions of dollars spent now to follow a hoax.... If I thought for one instant there was substance to this, I'd be all over it." And this is how she sees it:(Scientists do not pre-suppose results. They do not set-out to disprove a hypothesis, as one doctor clearly told me that he or she was going to do. In fact, the exact words to me were: "CCSVI is shit, and I'm setting out to prove that it is s**t."

-scientists ask a question, they collect data, and they draw conclusions based on evidence ). Anyway, in a research climate where the people investigating a procedure think that it is "shit" and that it is their duty and right to prove that it is "shit" by whatever means they can, there are serious problems. We have a Galileo situation. The truth is all around us! There are probably people in your town that you can contact who had this done but our "church of science" insists that this procedure does not work. It is scary how far we have come in 400 years. Just centimeters.

MS is an intriguing disease for a number of reasons. Two of which are its geographic distribution and demographic distribution.

Since this discussion about MS is outside the mainstream I wish to contribute this.

The associated brain lesions may be related to the physics of resonant response.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/11748

"The laws of physics are universal. If long thin membranes exist as part of the human nervous system, as indicated in my wife's nursing texts, then the potential for resonant effect exists." ------ " if the conditions exist for it to occur, it will occur, whether it be in a tether attached to a satellite or the spinal cord of a goat."

Very interesting. I was not even looking into electrical resonance. The surgeon seems adept at turning back on the "switches" that got turned of in peoples autonomic systems. (And nobody knows what turns them off in the first place!) Perhaps something electrical like this could turn off a nerve "switch" or sensor? The Surgeon who operated on my wife told me he only operates on people who have a heart with a very poor response to exercise (it does not speed up), so I thought perhaps the continuous even slow stroke was able to break something elsewhere (like a certain slow continuous wind being able to take down really strong bridges), and this could explain the mechanical damage in discrete areas of ms lesions in the brain. Anyways, thanks for contributing. I don't even know where the autonomic feedback sensors are, let alone what their electrical potential is. What could turn off individual nerves anyway? It has to be temporary, because a mechanical "shake" can wake them up again. Brian

http://www.uic.edu/labs/pimlab/reprints/Alperin-MS1.pdf The pulsation of the cerebrospinal fluid. It is fairly interesting stuff. Sometimes it pulses in harmony with the arterial pulse, sometimes it is more like the pressure rises and falls in the veins. (They don't seem to know why). It seems I have totally failed to get across the idea of resonance and little pressure waves bouncing around in the skull and causing damage. But, they must be happening otherwise, why would there be pressure waves in the cerebrospinal fluid? (The following also fits in with Dr Arata's theory that the autonomic system is somehow "turned down" in many people with MS. (So that the arteries are not pulsing as they should). That means that people with MS would have a venous type pulse in their brains even at normal blood pressure readings. "They demonstrated a tendency of the cisternal CSFpulsations to resemble arterial pulsations when the arterialpressure is low and attain a more venous like morphology athigh arterial blood pressure. They argued that at high bloodpressure, venous pulsation dominates the CSF pulse wavedue to the reduced ability of the arterial wall to pulsate. "

The reason why you have failed to get across the idea of of resonance is that it is not happening. The little pressure waves travel from the vasculature to the CSF and stop there - no reflection, no augmentation, no resonance. As for causing damage, try living in the real world and explaining how a pressure wave of a few millimeters of mercury can possibly damage anything. The alveoli of the lung are much more fragile than any structure in the brain, yet they tolerate much greater pressure differences without falling apart.

Thanks, Dr Arata in his 2011 talk showed how he was ballooning Jugular butterfly valves that were stuck in the half open position, and he was ignoring the rest of the vein. This was giving people a lot of relief because as soon as he ballooned the valve, the blood flow through the brain increased. So, if many people with ms have those faulty valves, is it reasonable that the pressure wave is much more than a few millimetres of mercury" much stronger and coming directly from the heart? I suspect that valves are there for a reason and if they are damaged, there are consequences. So, if you cough or sneeze and you don't have a fully functioning valve to protect your brain, what happens? Pressure wave? Blown capillaries and breach of the blood brain barrier? Or maybe those valves are some sort of useless appendix that evolved for no reason?

GT, if Dr Arata did indeed describe the jugular venous valve as a butterfly valve, then it was either through ignorance or with fraudulent intent. A butterfly valve is a device for regulating forward flow, not for preventing backflow. The jugular venous valve is not a butterfly valve. If you distend a venous valve with a balloon, you will not achieve a permanent increase in forward flow, but you are likely to damage the valve and actually encourage retrograde flow.
As for "Blown capillaries and breach of the blood brain barrier" may I remind you that the lung is the first port of call for pressures induced by coughing. The fragile alveoli of the lung are in intimate contact with the pulmonary capillaries. If those don't fall apart when you cough then no blood vessel in the brain is going to be bothered either.
I suspect that the only pathway being opened by balloon dilatation of the jugular veins is the pathway between your wallet and the operator's bank account.

Thanks, you suspect incorrectly, the effect is immediate and people walk much better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Le6rgS1l8 is an example. I cannot see any fraudulent intent in the video, can you? Denise by the way has come off of disability recently, and has gone back to work, she wore high heels on her first day back. Prior to the operation, she was trying to choose a suitable feeding tube because her choking on food was getting really bad. (you may not know it but choking is one of the common "MS" symptoms. In my world, and in dr Arata's world, and in Denises world, results count. I do not know which part of the vein dr Arata now balloons to get these results but whatever he does, the results are remarkable. They change peoples lives for the better. Rather than direct contempt and slander at him, it would be nice if we could figure out why the results are so good. Brian

Creating a retrograde backflow makes perfect sense as far as helping with clearing out the capillaries of the brain that have been clogged up because some little bacteria has stolen the ATP from precapillary sphincter muscles of the capillaries of the white matter of the brain.

All capillaries are roughly the same size, 5 microns in diameter on the interior. This restricts red blood cells to proceed through them in single file only. Everyone has billions of them. Stretched end to end, the capillaries of one average sized person would reach completely around the earth! There are basically 3 types of capillaries and they differ in their porosity. Slightly porous, medium porous, extremely porous. It is called fenestration. None of them have the smooth muscle layer that the rest of the larger veins, veinuoles and arterioles and arteries have, but all capillaries do have the pre-capillarial smooth muscle capillarial sphincters (CF) that control the flow through them. These sphincters tighten and release many times a minute under normal conditions. The capillaries are also arranged in a web-like pattern with varying numbers, inter-linked between the arteriole and veinuole that feed and drain them. The switching on and off of the CF's causes the blood to flow in a seemingly random pattern through the web allowing time for dispersion of nutrients and collection of cellular wastes and dissolved gasses and it is this relative combination and amounts of serum ingredients that determines the flow rate through the 'web'. Here is where we may find that Borellia is inadvertently able to close itself off inside one of the capillary branches by disallowing the pre-capillary sphincter to open, protecting the spirochete from the immune system and antibiotics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX0c7iOcGCw The really porous ones are in the organs that filter the blood such as the liver and kidneys or add things to the blood stream like the thyroid, etc. The mildly porous ones are throughout the rest of the body except the central nervous system. The slightly porous ones feed the Central Nervous System and create the infamous (to us Lymies) 'blood barrier'.

Because Borellia is so small, and wrapped basically in what is our own blood serum, which normally contains slight amounts of anti-coagulant, they can penetrate the fenestrated capillaries without causing them to bleed out or clot. They may actually go the route of least resistance and use the pores themselves to escape in and out by stretching them except in the Continuous Capillaries. I don't think they can do this to the relatively non-porous continuous capillaries of the CNS where the pores are of a different nature so they get trapped inside these and create the evenly distributed reduced blood flow images and swelling of the white matter.

Figure A here shows a Borrelia spirochete attaching itself to the precapillary sphincter. These are from this amazing work published in this paper:

http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?pid=S1139-67092004000200009&script=sci_arttext

These images show Borrelia escaping through the sidewalls of a vein I believe it is.

http://spirochetesunwound.blogspot.ca/2009/01/watch-videos-of-lyme-disease-spirochete.html This one is good because it shows the lyme drilling through a blood vessel. Hi, I don't think the retrograde backflow has any thing to do with clearing the capillaries. It is more likely an accident (those semi blocked valves) or the brain getting the wrong feedback and opening and closing the capillaries by mistake. I have characterised the retrograde flow as not so much flow but as a "wave" bouncing off a half open valve. A guy, I think his name is Colin Tucker characterises it as a "standing wave" with areas of high and low pressure along the vein. He has videos to show what he means. Or maybe the altered blood flow is something that is set up by the team of spirochetes to give the rest of them a better chance. MS lesions and perhaps Lyme lesions too start on the veins and the next lesions after the first ones occur retrograde of the blood flow. That is very difficult to explain. People expect that an infectious agent in the blood would infect at one point and then infect the next area further down the vein closer to the heart, instead it goes the other way. Perhaps the lesions slow the blood behind the lesion and this slowing and inflamation allows the lyme bacteria to make another breakthrough behind the "dam" where the "pressure" is greater. Brian

Lyme lesions in the vascular system are caused by the same reason the nerve myelin damage is caused by.

Look at the pictures above showing how the spirochetes squeeze themselves out through the sidewalls of the vein. It gets one end into the opening, then spirals itself halfway, then backs up, goes forward, backs up and finally gets a good run at it and squeezes itself all the way through.

I has to go through an opening so tight that it takes it 3 minutes and many forward/reverse movements (like when you try to get your car unstuck). As it finally shoots through the hole, all of it's outer surface lipposacharide (blood serum derived) coating gets stripped off including any outer surface proteins it might have exhibited on it's outer surface.

It is these stripped off 'foreign' OSP's that the T-cells, etc, recognize and attack on the inner surface of the blood vessel. That's what would cause the vascular lesions.

If one were able to scrape the lesion area and test it for samples of Borrelia OSP you could prove what is happening. The catch is that the OSP's will be different depending on the age and origin of the spirochete. If the spirochete is from a new infection, it may still exhibit OspA,B,and C. If it is a few generations removed from the initial infection the Outer Surface Proteins will be further down the alphabet but it will definetely have the OSP it uses to attach to the inside of the smooth muscle cells of the vein (and heart too).

Here is a video of Dr Arata in 2011 I found today. It is very informative. http://vimeo.com/28400815 At the time he was targeting the valves in the veins because he was finding them typically stuck at "half open", we go along to August 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wnk-l7kWG4 and his treatment has changed a lot. Again very informative. I believe this is the way research must be done. Nobody knows what causes ms and nobody yet understands why and how ballooning works. When you At least Dr Arata is working in the real world to relate the 2 things. Neurologists in Canada are working on cynical trials to convince the general public that the good results from this procedure are imaginary. So far this tactic is working. It is a terrible disregard for people's health and daily suffering.

Just a note that there have been bunch of leaps in MS and angioplasty research in the last couple of months (today is 21 November 2013). Artery pulses affecting the veins, (because the scull makes the brain act like a closed hydraulic system, a clostridial subtype which releases a toxin that causes nerve damage has been found in ms patients, Dr Arata has published his research. There appear to be very sensitive pressure detectors in the jugular veins and the very slight pressure change from angioplasty of a slight blockage causes a cascade of effects in the patients blood pressure. Links are below. The leaders of Canada's neurological community are still trying their best to keep the lid on the box (FDA are doing their best too) but the proof is there for all to see. Angioplasty works for a very large sub set of MS, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue sufferers. Very soon, despite the worst efforts of those leaders to deflect and discredit this research, http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/14/ms-specialist-accused-of-defaming-heart-surgeon-in-email-about-controversial-liberation-treatment/ we will know what causes MS (Likely a community of bacteria, in my opinion) and we will have decent working treatments for it. Plain and simple, there is a war going on, angioplasty at $5,000 to $10,000 per treatment (lasting up to 3 years) or immune system weakening drugs at $40,000 per year. That is the choice that patients, and tax payers and politicians and insurance companies face. Choose wisely! http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/813223 http://phl.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/18/0268355513512824.full https://www.facebook.com/notes/ncs-the-national-ccsvi-society/is-normal-pressure-hydrocephalus-a-component-of-multiple-sclerosis-pathology/667765816577618

None of that would surprise me in the least. I suspect that the same goes on with cancer...with the most profitable treatments taking precedent.

I was thinking about your thread the other day, when I came across an article about the possible role of vitamin D in MS.

https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vitamin-d-and-ms/AN01894

People that are caught withholding, or attempting to discredit promising research on MS, (or any other disease), based on profit motive, should be sent to jail.

I guess this answers my question to a great degree! If you are interested in scientific explanations for what happens following angioplasty, it is wort a look and a listen. From Dr Trevor Tucker in 2011, he shows how a wave can bounce from a damaged Jugular valve and cause lesions and reduced blood flow at Capillaries. He also shows that the waves can cause secondary stenosis a part wavelength away from the valve. Dr tucker is a physicist or fluid mechanics expert, His video part 2 of 3 is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g07XPAA_80E

'Autoimmune Disease' is a general label for something without an exact explanation of what is going on.

What the T-cells in MS (that are attacking the myelin tissues of nerves) are after are the bacterial markers left on the nerve tissue surface when the bacteria steal the acetylcholine molecules that nerves use to 're-set' themselves after firing.

In order to absorb the acetylcholine, the bacteria use an outer surface compound to grab the acetylcholine and bring it into the cell through porins. They steal glutamate the same way from the nerves in the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porin_%28protein%29

When they have enough to suit themselves, they discard the 'marker' on the surface of the myelin. The T-cells recognize this marker as a bacterial antigen and mistakenly chew up the myelin tissue at the marker site, thinking it is on a bacteria.

Glad to see such admirable improvement in your wife's Lyme Disease! Dr. Trevor Marshal's Plan uses a blood pressure medication called Olmesartan (Benicar) to open up the renal artery so that things can get back to normal over time, too.

However, your theory on the restoration of blood flow being related to lesions on the myelin sheath covering of nerves is a secondary result (or maybe three times removed) of restoring blood flow to the white matter of the brain and through the kidneys.

Once your kidneys are opened up, the Vitamin D cycle is restored giving you body the necessary tool to bring your immune system back up to speed.

"The initial vitamin D compound you eat or that is formed in the skin from sunlight is inactive and it is next hydroxylated in the liver to form 25 OH vitamin D3 (25 D). 25 D is also an inactive compound, but is the most reliable measurement of an individual's vitamin D status. It is converted in the kidney to the active compound 1,25 dihydroxy vitamin D (1,25 D) where it is re-absorbed through the renal artery."

The angioplasty to the neck causes a different effect on the capillaries of the white matter of the brain, allowing the ones plugged up with bacteria, etc, to clear out.

I can go into more depth if you want...

This is complete nonsense, from start to finish.

the acetylcholine molecules that nerves use to 're-set' themselves after firing.

The nerves do not use acetylcholine to reset themselves after firing. The acetylcholine is generated only at the nerve ending, where it is released following the passage of the nerve impulse. The released acetylcholine travels across a synapse to stimulate the next nerve or a neuromuscular junction to stimulate muscle. Once the acetylcholine has fulfilled its function it is broken down almost immediately by anticholinesterase enzymes. Any bacterium hoping to thieve the acetylcholine is going to remain disappointed.

Yes, the choline is preserved to be used again. BUT...

Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors

If the enzyme acetylcholinesterase is inhibited, the breakdown of acetylcholine is slowed down. Examples are neostigmine, physostigmine, pyridostigmine, edrophonium, various insecticides such as malathion and nerve gases such as sarin.

Borrelia burgdorferi produces a toxin similar to Clostridium botulinum (which is responsible for food poisoning) and affects the nervous system causing a temporary paralysis of the peripheral nervous system. The Bb toxin belongs to a family of toxic proteins known as "zinc endoproteinases" or "metalloproteases" which include the toxins from tetanus and clostridium botulinum.

The toxin from Bb acts by diminishing the release and the availability of the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a simple organic compound which is biosynthesized and is required in the transmission and action of nerves. Acetylcholine is responsible for muscle contraction in skeletal muscle, for the calming of smooth muscle found in the heart, intestines, uterus, and many other parts of the body. Because acetylcholine is found in all the nerves innervating all muscles, the Bb toxin can affect any and all body systems through the inactivation of acetylcholine.

***

In a 29-y-old male with neuroborreliosis, partially responsive to ceftriaxone, myasthenia gravis with acetylcholine-receptor antibodies elevated almost 1000 times the upper reference limit was diagnosed. Pyridostigmine resolved all remaining neurological deficits. During a 1-y follow-up the patient remained symptom free, despite persistently high acetylcholine-receptor antibodies. They were attributed to epitope homology of the acetylcholine receptors and Borrelia surface antigens.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=acetylcholine+receptors+%2B+Borrelia#

"One known inhibitor of toxin activity of Borrelia b. (affecting the nervous system) is the substance glycyrrhizic acid (GA), the active principle of licorice root, used in Oriental medicine for thousands of years.¹² GA is also the active principle of the American Biologics product, Biorizin™. The molecular structure of GA includes a steroid with large bulky substituents. Being a large molecule, GA is capable of binding into the active site of the toxin, thereby blocking the normal substrate, two adjacent amino acids in the protein SNAP-25."

Similar findings for Myasthenia gravis...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022510X9290165H

Since Borrelia would have to have an Outer Surface Acetylcholine Receptor to bind the acetylcholine, that would explain why Nicotine has some anti-bacterial qualities where Borrelia is concerned.

"Like other transmembrane receptors, acetylcholine receptors are classified according to their 'pharmacology', or according to their relative affinities and sensitivities to different molecules. Although all acetylcholine receptors, by definition, respond to acetylcholine, they respond to other molecules as well.

• Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR, also known as "ionotropic" acetylcholine receptors) are particularly responsive to nicotine. The nicotine ACh receptor is also a Na+ and K+ ion channel
• Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChR, also known as "metabotropic" acetylcholine receptors) are particularly responsive to muscarine.

Nicotinic and muscarinic are two main kinds of "cholinergic" receptors."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylcholine_receptor

Verbal diarrhoea does not help in reasoned argument. I need only point out that anticholinesterases play no part in either the processes of developing multiple sclerosis plaques or of borrelial infection; they are therefore irrelevant to the discussion.

Furthermore, I have to emphasise that although the symptoms may be similar, the mechanisms of the two diseases are completely different, and need to be discussed separately.

you wouldn't by chance go by the name of 'Keebler' on other websites, would you?

You are missing the point. All diseases boil down to the biochemistry related to the problems that disease causes. We are a mass of over 100,000 chemical reactions going on, about 40,000 of them at the same time.

All damage to the human bio-system results in the 'normal' chemistry being disrupted in one or more ways from the status quo.

Even physical damage is repaired through the chemistry of the body's repair systems.

If a bacteria wants to invade it must disrupt the chemical processes. Sometimes the disruption has effects to other systems seemingly not related to the original damage or intent of the bacteria to survive and replicate.

Survival and replication are pathogens' only agenda but they can wreck havoc in ways that are multiple times removed from their original needs.

Spirochetes have been know to cause Alzheimer's and Dementia for over 100 years!

Figuring out the complex maze of chemical relationships to the damage they cause has been the big problem because the human system is so complex and most of the chemical compounds have multiple roles.

The point to be made is that diseases originate from very different causes. Bacterial infections and autoimmune disease simply cannot be lumped together. If they attack the same body system, it is obvious that some of the biochemical disruptions may be similar but this is not guaranteed, and it certainly does not imply the same treatment is appropriate for both.

Why are you so sure that MS is autoimmune? Having inflamation and slowed blood flow in the brain and elsewhere is of great benifit to different bacteria, so it would be surprising if they did not cause it to help their survival. Is "ms" even a real disease? I am on several ms boards and numerous people get an ms diagnosis and years or even decades after, they get an additional diagnosis of Lyme, borrelia or Chlamydia pneumoniae. and there are others too. Also numerous people (roughly 1/3 of the people with "ms" who have the procedure) have the magical improvement that my wife had following balloon angioplasty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcI9bTNGo1Q So that indicates that at least 1/3 of ms is not autoimmune at all or at very least it has a huge vascular component. How can you close your eyes that that? Now the center for disease control in the USA are saying. "woopsie, we said that there are 30,000 new cases of borrelia a year, we actually meant 300,000" which is absolutely brutal. Borellia comes out of live red blood cells on microscope slides after about 15 minutes. (People get majorly upset when they see this after a negative diagnosis). And, this may be crucial to the spread of borrelia. We need to be able to diagnose this properly and promptly to prevent massive spread by blood transfusion. Joan Beal notes the the "mouse model" (where they immunise a mouse against its cns fluid) to give it "ms" lesions had a competitor where they tied off the neck veins of dogs (and gave them "ms" lesions). Seems to me that both models are equally valid. Which one is right? Perhaps both of them are correct in different instances. Many of the people who get the greatest improvement from angioplasty have a damaged valve in the Jugular. The surgeon who treated my wife, came out to me 20 minutes after the operation and could tell me that it was a great success, there and then even though she was sick from a reaction to the anesthetic (different formulation in US than what she had in Canada apparently). I don't believe in miracles so I have to conclude that the operation helped her a lot. What is your explanation for her recovery? Brian

It's very simple. MS is a disease of relapse and remissions. It's easy to prey on simple folk by parading only the "successes" in remission and hiding the ones in relapse. The easiest prey are those with half-baked ideas of science who are unable to join the dots up in the right order.

How come 1/3 of the remissions exactly time for during or within 24 hours of the operation? You would have to be daft or raving mad not to accept that co-relation. It is billions to one that the operation did NOT cause the remission. I did quality control and pretty advanced statistics yet we have these idiot doctors telling us that these remissions are mind over matter! If they are so sure that improvements that vast are just done by the mind, why do they not bring on the same improvement themselves? And I know people who were NOT relapsing remitting who also had the big improvement. They were told by those same mind over matter doctors that they would rapidly go into their wheelchairs and die. Denise Baillie comes to mind. Being fitted for the wheelchair before she went for the operation, and buying a bike after. AND her improvement began the moment the balloons were inflated. One set of improvements for each jugular. Explain that? Why did it happen? She went for angioplasty in desperation. I went because I was watching my wife suffer and die before my eyes. Your argument is based on illogic. Results matter.

ph...You must still be in high school biology classes getting your knowledge from cheating on your smart phone.

----------------------------

Obviously you've never had Lyme or MS and don't know anyone with either Lyme Disease or MS or you would know that inhibition of nerve impulses plays a major role in symptoms of both of them.

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We are still awaiting your knowledgeable explanation of the why the stints cured his wife's debilitating condition.

---------------------------

Or maybe you didn't watch her video....

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I've had severe Lyme in both 2009 and was re-bitten again in 2012 and cured myself both times and the currently accepted protocol for curing Lyme is named after me in the initial circles after I back tracked all the research already done but never assimilated to prove it to the scientific community. I also have a double major degree in Organic Chemistry and Sub-cellular Biology from Vincennes University and Indiana University Bloomington.

I've been 100% symptom free for almost 2 years now and I know exactly why it works.

Can we see some credentials and pertinent ideas instead of total 'head in the sand' ignorance on your part here.

Your coming across with a totally negative, unproductive attitude, not to mention condescending attitude, you may not deserve.

phph...read this and pay special attention to the paragraph titled 'Nerve Cells'.

http://www.townsendletter.com/FebMar2006/lyme0206.htm

I just came across it an hour ago.

I didn't write it but came to the same conclusion last year just reading research papers published over the last 20 years.