A great new blog I found in my search for MS related blogs. Relative MS.

Catharsis

A great blog I came across –  PasstheMSplease

Gibberish

I saw this on Facebook the other day: “Every time I see a math word problem it looks like this: If I have 10 ice cubes and you have 11 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof? Answer: Purple, because aliens don’t wear hats.” Unfortunately, this makes sense to me!

When I was in school, math was one of my best subjects. English and Literature were my next best. Now, none of the above makes much sense when I am trying to figure something out.

Besides fatigue, cognition (knowledge acquired through reasoning, intuition, or perception) is my biggest problem. Without the ability to use the knowledge that we have acquired during our lifetime, we are at a standstill with normal activities.

We use cognition for every aspect of life. When cooking, we need to know how to read and interpret a recipe. When writing a check, we need to know not only how to write it, but how to add and/or subtract the amount of the check. When driving, we need to be able to quickly react to the other drivers around us and know the route we are taking. These are just a few examples of everyday life where cognition is important.

To those who do not have MS or other diseases that make “thinking” difficult, these things seem so natural that they often lose patience with our bumbling around and trying to do things. I would not ever wish our problems on anyone else. But sometimes I do wish some of these people could spend a few hours in our shoes so they could better understand our struggles and know that we are not purposely trying to “upset the apple cart”.

I have not driven or written a check in about two years. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but it is a major thing to me. It means that I am giving up a part of my life because I can no longer do these things, not because I just want to give them up and let someone else handle them. To those of you that are having to give up a part of yourselves and your independence each day, my heart goes out to you. I know how you feel. It is not easy and without the love and support of my husband, I would live on that pity pot I have talked about in previous blogs. As it is, I do visit it more often than I would like!

I realized a few weeks ago that I need to write these blogs when the idea comes to mind. If not, it is lost in that hole of “never to be found again”. With the slowness of my thoughts and typing abilities at this time, writing one of these can take anywhere from an hour, to writing a little bit at a time over several days. I try to stay one or two ahead for those days I am in that nothing zone that MSers get in sometime.

I do love purple and think it is a good answer to the question asked in the first paragraph of this blog………….and aliens DO wear hats…….but I am pretty sure they are usually green……….. 🙂

Read original post here.

Read full article here.

In the past, it was quite common for doctors not to tell people they had multiple sclerosis after making the diagnosis, so as to spare them anxiety or worry about the future. Even today, some doctors still avoid such disclosure. New research from Bologna in Italy sheds important light on this question. Researchers enrolled 229 people with MS or clinically isolated syndrome (a single attack not yet diagnosed as definite MS) in the study. Of these 229, 93 were unaware of their diagnosis, suggesting this practice on the part of treating doctors of not disclosing the diagnosis is still relatively common. The diagnosis was then disclosed to these people, after measuring their quality of life and psychological state before disclosure. Interestingly, 30 days after this disclosure, measures of quality of life, anxiety and depression were better than before the patients knew the diagnosis, and this improvement in quality of life and psychological wellbeing persisted over the following two years. Read full article here.

Interesting article. Full original post here.

1. Molecular pieces of bacteria (mimicry) have been identified that can cause autoimmune response against nerve insulation (myelin).
2. Accidental discovery that Fecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT) in 3 MS patients led to a reversal of the disease.
3. Dietary changes have been reported to reverse disease symptoms in some people.
4. Vitamin D deficiencies are widely observed across many autoimmune diseases.
5. Abnormal obstructions in the veins in the necks of MS patients are being studied with MRI and the blood flows are being measured with Doppler MRI techniques.  Some have claimed reversal after balloon angioplasty to open the blockages.  Many trials are on the way.  This remains a controversial bit of research.

The five items above are described further below.

Professor Westall Discovers the Connection Between Gut Bacteria and Multiple Sclerosis

Professor Frederick Westall has a doctorate degree in chemistry and worked with Dr. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the Salk vaccine for polio, for over 12 years at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.  Dr. Salk chose Professor Westall to be in charge of the experimental development of the multiple sclerosis vaccine that occurred in the 1970′s and 80′s because Professor Westall was the first person to discover and synthesize a chemical that could induce an experimental version of multiple sclerosis in animals.  The vaccine worked in animal trials but did not perform as expected in human trials due to subtle differences between the immune systems of the animal and human.  After leaving wrapping up his research at Salk, he accepted a position to teach chemistry at Cal Poly Pomona.  After retiring from Pomona, Professor Westall has continued to self-fund his research to find the cause and cure for multiple sclerosis.  In 2006 he published the following landmark paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology where he discovered that pieces from a person’s normal gut bacteria could provide the irritating chemicals, known as antigens, to drive the autoimmune condition for multiple sclerosis.  By utilizing the vast genetic database of the National Institute of Health, he identified candidate bacterial species that were capable of producing the antigens that excited the immune system to attack the nerve tissue in the brain.

Molecular mimicry revisited: gut bacteria and multiple sclerosis.

Westall FC.