Myelin, the insulating sheath around all of our nerves,  is damaged by an auto-immune reaction in stroke, spinal cord injury, neurovascular disease, dementia, and carbon monoxide poisoning.  This is a fact.

Here's the research I put together on this.  All of the papers and facts.

http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-14856.html

In every single one of these instances, antigens (attackers) to myelin basic protein (MBP reactive t-cells) go after the myelin and destroy it. This is considered an "auto-immune" response.

But in stroke, vascular disease, spinal injury, dementia and CO poisoning, the real culprit, ischemia (injury due to low oxygen) and a break in the blood brain barrier is known.  

-No one calls a stroke an "auto immune disease."

What is the culprit in MS?  Why doesn't the myelin repair in MS?    What activates this auto immune response? The answer has been that it's just a faulty immune system...

EAE, the current mouse model for MS, doesn't look like MS...it doesn't relapse and remit, like MS in people.

But Dr. Zamboni has found a reason for the antigenic response to MBP.  It's called CCSVI.  

A chronic vascular disorder that waxes and wanes.  Just like all the other reasons why MBP reactive t-cells form in all the other instances---blood flow, inflammation and oxygenation.

It's time to look at MS as a potential chronic disease of ongoing diffuse cerebral hypoxia and inflammation, with breaks in the blood brain barrier as separate injurious "events." 

It's time to measure perfusion before and after angioplasty (like the wonderful Haacke protocol)

It's time to look at brain oxygenation in MS--the same way we look at stroke, arterial occlusion, hypoxia.