Interesting research out of Italy is suggesting strongly that blocked veins in the neck preventing blood from draining out of the head is the trigger for the plaque formations that cause MS.
Multiple Sclerosis is a neurological, progressive disease where the insulating myelin sheaths that protect the brain and spinal cord are damaged, resulting in poor nerve conduction and messaging. Symptoms and disability vary significantly depending upon which parts of the brain and spinal cord are affected as well as the stage of the disease, but eventually sufferers develop cognitive as well as physical symptoms, including decreasing ability to walk, move and see. MS tends to strike young people more frequently than older, and women 2 to 3 times more frequently than men. MS has always been considered an auto-immune disease, where the body attacks itself, but why this happens has not been understood.
Well, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a physician in Ferrara Italy, may have figured it out. His wife suffered from MS, and after treating her 4 years ago, she has not had another acute attack, and her MS symptoms are gone. Furthermore, he has treated a total of 118 MS patients since then, and 100% of them had dramatic improvements in their symptoms.
What Dr. Zamboni discovered was that all the MS patients that he examined via Doppler ultrasound had blockages in the veins in the neck that drain the brain or in the azygos vein in the thorax. When he looked at people that did not have MS, both healthy as well as those that suffered from neurological problems other than MS, none of them had vein blockages. When he used angioplasty to unblock the veins, right away after surgery his MS patients noticed differences in how they felt. Two years post surgery, 100% of those that did not have re-narrowing of the veins had no MS relapses. If there was a relapse, a re-narrowing of the veins was found. So it appears that narrowing veins are directly linked to the progression of the disease.
Veins are the pipes that return de-oxygenated blood to the lungs and heart. Veins are not pressurized by the heart pumping to keep them open like arteries are (arteries carry oxygenated blood to the brain and body), so veins will collapse with external pressure. If a major vein like the jugular vein in the neck is narrowed or closed and the blood cannot drain properly from the head, a back-flow problem can develop, where the venous blood is actually going the wrong way. So a situation develops where blood is being pumped into the head, but has trouble getting out, pressure builds in the veins inside the brain, forcing the blood into the gray matter, creating damage.
If venous drainage is poor, iron accumulates in the brain causing cells to die, inflammation, immune problems, and the plaque lesions known to be found in those with MS. Dr. Zamboni found in post mortem studies of MS patients that the plaque lesions in the brain all had a vein at its center. And interestingly enough, the plaque lesions developed on the opposite side to the normal flow direction, suggesting that the blood was actually flowing the wrong way.
It is hypothesised that the inability to drain blood causes inflammation, excess iron deposition in the brain causing free radicals which kill cells, damaging the blood-brain barrier, and causing plaque lesions possibly triggering the auto-immune response in MS. For this reason, if this hypothesis is correct, it is vital that MS patients get their veins screened and cleared as early as possible after their diagnosis, so that plaque damage can be minimized.
However, this is still a very new idea, and many physicians either have not heard about this theory, or are not yet convinced that poor brain drainage may be the trigger for MS, so patients that want this treatment are having difficulty finding physicians that will do it.
More research is clearly needed to verify Dr. Zamboni's results. Dr. Haacke, at McMaster University is setting up a study involving many Canadian cities and some American ones, so if you have MS, ask your physician if you can be a part of the study. Dr. Haack wants MS patients to send him their MRI. One thousand patients are also being sought for a study in Buffalo New York done by Dr. Robert Zivadinov.
The question I am left with, is why are the veins becoming blocked? The vertebral vein can easily be blocked due to its location within the transverse foramen of the cervical vertebrae. So if one of the cervical vertebrae is rotated or sheared the vein could be compromised. But the blockages seem to be more common in the jugular veins which sit outside the vertebrae. Can they become twisted or narrowed due to tightness in the surrounding fascia and muscle? Might therapeutic massage resolve the problem without the need for surgery? I don't know, but the idea is intriguing.
If you want to learn more, see the full W5 show called "The Liberation Treatment" on CTV News.ca.
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Related Tips: The Liberation Treatment: A whole new approach to MS W5, CTV News.ca, Nov. 21, 2009.
Zamboni, Paolo et al. The value of cerebral Doppler venous haemodynamics in the assessment of multiple sclerosis. J Neurol Sci. 2009 Jul 15;282(1-2):21-7. Epub 2009 Jan 13. Singh AV, Zamboni P. Anomalous venous blood flow and iron deposition in multiple sclerosis. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2009 Sep 2. [Epub ahead of print] Zamboni P et al. Venous collateral circulation of the extracranial cerebrospinal outflow routes. Curr Neurovasc Res. 2009 Aug;6(3):204-12. Epub 2009 Aug 1. Zamboni P et al. Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency in patients with multiple sclerosis. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2009 Apr;80(4):392-9. Epub 2008 Dec 5. Menegatti E, Zamboni P. Doppler haemodynamics of cerebral venous return. Curr Neurovasc Res. 2008 Nov;5(4):260-5. Zamboni P et al. Inflammation in venous disease. Int Angiol. 2008 Oct;27(5):361-9. Zamboni P et al. Intracranial venous haemodynamics in multiple sclerosis. Curr Neurovasc Res. 2007 Nov;4(4):252-8. Schelling F. Damaging venous reflux into the skull or spine: relevance to multiple sclerosis. Med Hypotheses. 1986 Oct;21(2):141-8. Copyright 2009 Vreni Gurd
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