09. Potential Causes of MS

When I was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (ms), I immediately thought what would have caused this. The problem is no one knows what exactly causes someone to develop ms. Doctors instead believe that a multitude of factors mixing together over time will culminate and create a perfect storm that can cause ms to develop. This means that ms is some sort of multifactorial condition, wherein which a variety of characteristics, components, and events, such as genetic vulnerabilities and environmental factors in combination together can trigger the immune system to attack the myelin sheath, nerves and neurons and cause ms.

The ultimate cause of ms is damage to the myelin sheath, nerves and neurons in the brain and on the spinal cord by the immune system. But what triggers that reaction?

Some of the potential factors and causes are thought to be the following:

• immune system thinking normal brain cells are foreign
• family history and genetic factors
• certain personal behaviors and activities
• various environmental exposures

Immune System

There is a barrier that surrounds the brain called the blood-brain barrier. It separates the brain and the spinal cord from the immune system. If there is a break in this barrier, then the brain and the spinal cord are unfortunately exposed to the immune system for the first time. Upon this exposure, the immunity say may wrongly think the spin and the brain are “foreign” and consequently, attack both.

Family History & Genetic Factors

You are more likely to acquire ms if you have a family relative that has ms. Various experts estimate that about 15% of individuals with MS have one or more relatives that also has ms. However, identical twins with identical DNA have a 33.33% chance of both having ms.  This means that ms is not fully dictated by one’s genetic makeup. Other factors have to come into play.

Some newer research suggests that there are a bunch of variations in the genetic code, and some of these genetic variances can combine with one another and create a vulnerability to ms. A lot of the varying genes have something to do with the immune system, which would make a lot of sense since that’s what attacks the myelin, nerves and neurons. But, overall, there are about 200 genes that have been identified and thought to contribute to the risk of developing ms. That is a rather large amount of genes to sift through and determine how they relate to ms.

Also, women are now four times or so more likely to be diagnosed with ms than men are to be diagnosed.  However, even though women are more likely to develop ms than men, the disease tends to be more severe in men.

What is so terrible, is having one autoimmune disease kind of opens pandora’s box and makes you more likely to get a second autoimmune disease. These disease for whatever reason make friends and cluster.  However, the link between ms and other autoimmune diseases is not as strong as with some other diseases. For example, those with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis are extremely likely to have another autoimmune disease, whereas if you have ms, you may get another autoimmune disease but it’s not as strong of a chance. Thankfully, I only have ms at the moment.

Certain Personal Behaviors and Exposures

It has been said that being overweight and obese during your childhood, particularly for girls, may make someone more susceptible to ms later in life.  Some other studies say being overweight or obese in early adulthood may also play a role.  Being overweight and/or obese does contribute to inflammation, which exacerbates ms, so it is the best idea to just be as healthy as possible. I was always 90^th percentile as a child, so I was never overweight per say but I was always tall and “healthy”.  There was a time in my pre-teens where my best friend and I were a tad chubby, but we liked to snack on pizza bites, ragu, chef boyardee and tina’s burritos after school.  And, when I snack, I mean eat a full meal after school.  We grew out of that after a couple years though, but who knows, maybe that played a role in my ms.

Literally everyone knows smoking will kill you.  It is one of the, if not the worst and dirtiest habit there is. But, smoking also makes you more susceptible to ms.  Also, if you start smoking or continue to smoke after being diagnosed with ms, your case of ms will most likely be worse and more debilitating.  Smokers will generally have more lesions and brain shrinkage in larger amounts.  Being around people who smoke is almost just as worst. So, do yourself a favor and just don’t smoke and avoid those who do the best you can. I pride myself on never smoking a cigarette in my life, including those e-cigs or whatever else there is out there these days. I love being able to tell the doctor or nurse when they ask if I smoke, “Never”.

Spring babies have a higher risk of acquiring ms. One study shows that a baby born in April is 9.4% more likely to be diagnosed with ms than a baby born in November.  The November baby has a 11.1% lower risk. This could be because if you are born in spring, the pregnant mother’s vitamin d levels may be lower since she was pregnant during the wintertime. This is thought to be the case because ms is more common among people who have less exposure to the sun, which is necessary for the body to create and produce vitamin d. Like in previous posts, low levels of vitamin d are thought to affect your immune system function and potentially cause ms. Those who live closer to the equator are less likely to get ms because those people are exposed to more sunlight and are less likely to have a vitamin d deficiency. Those without a vitamin d deficiency have better and more normal immune system functions than those who are deficient. I was a summer baby, so this does not really help explain why I got ms, but right before I was diagnosed with ms, I was extremely vitamin d deficient.

There is another vitamin deficiency that is thought to make someone more at risk of acquiring ms.  This deficiency is a vitamin b deficiency.  The body uses vitamin b when it produces myelin, which is what is attacked by our immune systems when you have ms.  So, a lack of this vitamin may increase one’s risk.  Like with vitamin d, I was extremely deficient in vitamin b when I was diagnosed with ms.

Also, children who have had multiple concussions at a young age are more susceptible to ms.

I have discussed gut health in previous posts, but your gut is extremely important. And recent research has shown that interactions between your body’s microbiome and immune cells may contribute to the development of ms and other diseases. The microbiome is the culmination of tons and tons of bacteria in your body, but the most important is bacteria in your intestines (a.k.a. your gut).  Researchers now believe that imbalances in the different strains of bacteria in your gut can cause the immune systems to activate itself at the wrong time and start attacking healthy parts of your insides, such as your myelin, nerves and neurons.  I don’t really know what my gut health was like at the time I was diagnosed with ms, but I currently take a very high-quality probiotic daily, and I could not recommend doing so enough. 

Various Environmental Exposures

Exposure to certain viruses, such as the Epstein-Barr virus or mononucleosis may increase someone’s likelihood of developing ms.  I never had either virus, so this also doesn’t help explain my diagnosis. A lot of people I know who have ms now though did have one of these viruses, so there is thought to be a real connection between the two.

The Epstein-Barr virus and mononucleosis are slow-acting viruses.  Measles, herpes, and human T-cell lymphoma are also slow-acting viruses.  It is thought that slow-acting virus, because they remain dormant for many years may cause ms to develop within people that are already genetically susceptible to the virus and then are exposed to one of these viruses. Other childhood viral infections that reach the brain can make that person more likely to develop ms later in life, such as meningitis. Again, I haven’t had any of these viruses, so I am not sure what really triggered ms for me.  I did suffer from the childhood coughing disease, croup, as a child, and I never really grew out of it. It would just turn in to bronchitis as an adult.  This could have a role in my development of ms, but I haven’t been able to find research on this.

Stress and extreme grief can increase the risk of developing ms.  One study found that parents of children who died were more likely than other parents to develop ms and the risk seemed even higher if the death was unexpected.  Also, stress and grief can cause ms symptoms and disease activity to flare up.  I can specifically attest to this.  If I get extremely upset or am very stressed, I can cause my body to go numb or can cause a shooting pain to travel through my body.

One last potential cause of ms is vaccines. Vaccines are provided to prevent certain infections, but many of them also carry a risk for the same or other diseases. Because of their makeup, vaccines can potentially be considered as toxic and infectious agents. They contain pathogens, pathogenic toxoids, carcinogens, additives, and other preservatives. The purpose of vaccines is to cause the immune to respond in a way to defend the body if and when there is exposure to the infection. Since vaccines are meant to activate the immune system, and the immune system is what attacks the myelin, nerves and neurons, it is conceivable that vaccines in some instances may play a role in ms. For example, molecular mimicry, or immunologic similarity between an antigen in a vaccine and an autoantigen such as a myelin peptide, could trigger an immune response against the autoantigen. Vaccines could also contain superantigens that might set off a widespread immune response that somehow leads to or exacerbates disease processes in the central nervous system.  There have been multiple studies done to determine the role vaccines have on those diagnosed with ms. 

The vaccine most intensively studied in connection with ms onset is the hepatitis B vaccine. The focus on this vaccine followed case reports of post-vaccination demyelinating disease in Belgium and France, which actually caused France to completely halt a large-scale vaccination program in schools.  However, studies have not been able to prove that this vaccine really caused ms in individuals.  Other vaccines that have been studied in conjunction with ms include tetanus, influenza, and measles vaccines, but like with hepatitis B, researches and doctors have not been able to find a specific connection.   Additionally, most other vaccines have not been analyzed in great detail. 

One anecdote to this is that I went to Asia in August and September of 2017, and prior to my trip, I had the following vaccines: typhoid, yellow fever, and Tdap.  Then, I had ms symptoms beginning October 2017, and I was officially diagnosed with ms in March 2018.  So, even though the research has not been specifically proven to show a connection between vaccines and ms, I am suspicious that there is something there since I had a few vaccines so close to my diagnosis.

Additionally, most doctors are now saying that if you do have ms, you should not get a live or live-attenuated vaccine.  Some of these types of vaccines are as follows: (a) certain flu vaccines, (b) typhoid, (c) rotavirus, (d) polio and (e) yellow fever. Because of all of this, I am apprehensive about getting vaccines and will weigh the pluses and minuses of each vaccine before getting a new one myself. But, regardless of what you decide to do personally, this is something to decide with your family and doctors. The issue with live or live-attenuated vaccines is that these vaccines weaken our immune systems when administered, and in most cases, the treatment for ms is doing the same thing (or at a minimum is trying to regulate or suppress the immune system a little bit).  So, getting a vaccine when your immune system is already down can cause you to get sick or can cause a flare up.

Separately, many vaccines have terrible ingredients in them, including heavy metals, preservatives and artificial dyes.  If you were to get a vaccine, I would search for my post on detoxing and consider following those steps.

In summary, no really knows what specifically causes ms, but it is likely a culmination of multiple factors that mix altogether and cause the immune system to attack your myelin, neurons and nerves.

Always,

Taylor