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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 occurs where blood is being pumped into the head, but has trouble getting out, pressure builds in the veins inside the brain, possibly forcing the blood into the gray matter, creating damage.

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 hypothesized 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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Climate change has altered the migratory pattern of the sockeye salmon, which due to lengthened daylight exposure pushes their reproductive cycle, forcing them back to spawn too early while the water is still too warm.

I went to a very interesting lecture a few weeks ago about the decline of the Fraser River sockeye salmon stocks, presented by Dr. Glenn Crossin from the University of British Columbia. His studies of the Fraser River sockeye implicate climate change as one of the most important factors in their almost complete collapse this year. Ten million salmon that were expected to return to the Fraser River, simply did not show up at all. This disastrous collapse has caused the Canadian Government to launch a public inquiry in the hopes that we will not have a repeat of the cod fishery collapse of the early '90soff the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Fraser River does not have fish farms, so for this stock at least, they are not to blame for the decline. It is known that the salmon smolts made it safely out to the ocean. Dr. Crossin’s research points to climate change being a key factor, as the warmer the water, the harder it is for the fish to survive. River water below 18C is tolerable to sockeye, but as the water warms beyond that mortality rates increase. However, river water temperatures were not the problem for the 10 million fish that never even made it back into the river system at all. Something affected the salmon during the time they were in the ocean.

It is known that the warmer ocean waters are forcing the salmon further north where the water is cooler and more habitable to them. Dr. Crossin's research suggests that this new more northern migration is affecting the hormone systems of the fish. The further north one goes during the summer months, the longer the daytime light. Near Prince Rupert at the summer solstice, the sun sets at around 11pm. Further north is the land of the midnight sun. As I have suggested in multiple posts previously, the light/dark cycle is a strong hormone regulator in living organisms including humans, and when a light/dark cycle is altered there will be hormonal consequences. For salmon, all that extra daylight causes an increase in testosterone levels, which makes them want to return to the rivers to spawn. The longer the length of daytime light, the higher the testosterone levels, the more urgent the drive to spawn.

So, the sockeye are starting their migration south back to the spawning rivers early, while the waters are still warmer. In 2006, Dr. Crossin tagged 195 sockeye salmon with accoustic transmitters in the north off the west coast of the Queen Charlottes in order to follow their journey back south. But in July the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) opened a salmon fishery at the north end of Vancouver Island, and only 12 (6%) of his 195 tagged fish made it back to the Strait of Georgia. It is probably a  stretch to say that that fishery caught 94% of all the returning fish at that time, but clearly that fishery had a big impact.

Before 1995, the late-run sockeye would return to the Straight of Georgia (Salish Sea) in August like clockwork and spend about a month to 6 weeks there before heading into the river systems in late September to mid October when the water was cooler. But since 1995, between 60 and 90% are not waiting in the Straight, and instead are heading directly into the rivers in August while the water is at its hottest, probably because of their high testosterone levels and their accelerated drive to spawn. High water temperatures are resulting in high fish mortality before they can reach the spawning grounds. It is predicted that if nothing is done to slow down climate change, summer river temperatures will hit 25C soon, which will be lethal to all Sockeye salmon in the river at the time.

So, between the warmer ocean waters forcing the salmon to migrate further north impacting their hormonal system and making them return to spawn earlier in the year, mixed with an ill-timed fishery and/or
overfishing and who knows what else, the result was very few salmon making it back to the Fraser estuary this year. Depending upon the salmon stock we are talking about, climate change, over-fishing, predation, the sea lice problem, the damming of rivers for hydro-electric power, pollution, chemicals and medical drug residues from sewage finding its way into the rivers, and the break-outs of farmed Atlantic salmon, wild Pacific salmon have a lot to contend with if they are going to survive.

Is ocean fishing as sustainable as it is claimed to be? I'm not so sure, because one has no idea what salmon stock is affected by catching a salmon in the ocean. If that salmon is destined for a healthy Alaskan river, perhaps there is little or no harm, but if that salmon is destined for the Fraser, harm is clearly done even if it is caught in the open ocean north of Vancouver Island.

So I ask again. Should we be eating salmon at all? I don't think we should be eating any sockeye. These fish need all the breaks they can get right now, as it is looking like climate change is forcing them onto the endangered list without any help from humans fishing them. Chinook and Coho numbers are also declining markedly, perhaps for the same reasons. Pink salmon seem to be the only bright spot, so if we want a salmon dinner, pink may be the only sustainable type of salmon to eat.

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