Dr. Roy Swank identified MS as a vascular disease (blood and circulatory system) and in the MS Recovery Diet; we explain his findings and incorporate his suggestion to ingest very little saturated fat. Now an Italian vascular researcher/surgeon named Paolo Zamboni is expanding on Swank’s concepts with some very interesting findings thanks to the advances in technology.
He found that the main drainage pathways for blood to flow out of the brain were narrowed or blocked in MS patients. More, the blood would flow back and form new pathways around the blockages. They named this “chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency” or CCSVI. As always with MS, it is not clear if this is a cause of an effect of the disease.
Like Swank, Zamboni’s findings would suggest that the breach of the blood brain barrier, resulting from the venous damage, results in the cascade of events that we describe as MS. A possible refinement is that the differing pattern of pathways the blood uses to flow back to the brain enable researchers to differentiate the various types of MS; primary progressive, secondary, relapsing/remitting.
The medical treatment for this is called “the liberation procedure”, using balloon angioplasty and/or stents in the veins identified as problematic. Interestingly, the surgeon giving this treatment to one MS person told him that it was a good thing that he was following the MS Recovery Diet with its focus on low fat.
There are still manly questions, but these findings do add another piece to the MS puzzle and add to the work of Dr. Swank. MS is a very complex multifaceted disease, being a neurodegenerative disease, an autoimmune disease, and a vascular disease.
The good news is that the diet, because it evolved empirically does in part address the issue of fats in the vascular system. So now we can even more see why the low fat component of the diet is so important. Ashton Embry is going to focus his efforts to see how the diet can be further refined to make the nutritional treatment of MS even more effective.