Having worked with Multiple Sclerosis patients for many years, the recent MS Breakthrough story grabbed my attention. With family and friends suffering from MS, I started reading all I could about this possible “cure”, since first coming across the news item last week. One courageous physician started it all by thinking like Albert Einstein, and he did it for the love of his, then 37 year-old, wife — a woman newly diagnosed with the horrible disease. Here are some highlights:
Dr. Zamboni’s studies began when his beloved wife developed MS in 1995 at the age of 37. He undertook a massive in-depth review of the literature, and modern imaging techniques such as ultrasound and MRI. His findings led him to believe that Multiple Sclerosis is not an autoimmune issue, but a vascular disease, a radical departure from current thinking.
Convinced that he was right, he performed experimental MS Breakthrough surgery on his wife. He insisted, “I am confident that this could be a revolution for the research and diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.”
He had found that over 90 percent of MS sufferers had blocked or deformed blood vessels draining from the brain. Thinking differently than current researchers, and seeking an urgent MS Breakthrough for Elena his wife, he theorized that iron is damaging the veins, and crossing the blood brain barrier, destroying myelin, the protective sheath of our nerves cells.
To treat his wife, he unclogged the brain draining veins with a simple catheter / angioplasty / balloon operation, getting blood flowing normally again. Many of her MS symptoms disappeared. She had the surgery three years ago and has not had an attack of Multiple Sclerosis symptoms since.
His theory in a nutshell is that the underlying cause of MS is what he calls chronic cerebro spinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI. Tackle CCSVI through repair of drainage malfunction from the brain, and successful treatment, or even prevention, of the disease is possible.
Skeptics are warning that the evidence is scant and Multiple Sclerosis societies are speaking out with words of caution, to patients and researchers. However, in Italy where the doctor works, 65 patients have since had the MS surgery, nicknamed the liberation procedure. Active lesions dropped to 12 percent, down from 50. In the two years since the operation, 73 percent of subjects are symptom-free.
Canadians in McMaster University and US researchers in Buffalo are looking into Dr. Zamboni’s premise and more clinical trials would be required before moving forward with this exciting new possibility.
If his theory proves to be correct, we will have crossed a long awaited milestone in medical advancement for MS. It would radically change how we think about and how we currently treat MS.
Whether or not Dr. Zamboni realized it, he was following in the footsteps of the great physicist Albert Einstein who advised, “The only way to solve a problem is to change the thinking that created it.”
Thinking differently can help us solve our own real problems as well, and could even benefit thousands of others half way round the world. Read more about how to think positively — as well as, outside the box — at my website, Women’s Law of Attraction Solutions.