Quote:
Originally Posted by braingonebad
I'm interested in what everyone has to say about the *Black hole* thing. Are you saying that any non enhancing lesion is called such, like a slang term?
Also, I'm not up on the Vit D/ms relationship. I had read, way back, that there was some talk of a link between Vit D deficiency and people developing ms, but not having low levels and relapsing or having more lesions. Makes sense though.
I only read up on it then because as a baby I was dx'd with Ricketts - genetic Vit D deficiency.
|
Re: black holes, no -- any lesion can be enhancing (active) or non-enhancing, denoting new activity or not. I never really got a definitive answer on this but I believe that the period of time in which a lesion stays enhanced is roughly about 6 weeks. So in other words, at some point in the last 15 months I had an active lesion -- saying this because it's a new one. (At least according to this report.)
I had previously thought black holes were just that, like a merging of lesions together creating the hole. I didn't realize they could be lesions unto themselves, depending on how they present (not just demyelinating but indicative of axonal damage). So because of that I was surprised that it specifically said it wasn't enhanced -- didn't know that black holes could be! Sally's info. confirms the axonal damage. I'll hopefully gain some more insight from tomorrow's appointment and then decide whether or not I'm going to go back to the MS specialist this year.
Re: vitamin D (specifically D3 aka cholecalciferol) -- oh yes, there is tons of info. There's been a big surge of news on it in the last year and a half or so but I stumbled upon some interesting stuff early about D3 early on and started taking it. At the risk of being redundant, I'd suggest you start by doing a search for the previous threads in this forum -- lots of good info. Essentially, D3 functions in the body more as a hormone than a vitamin, there is evidence that deficiency is higher within the MS community and among other things, D3 helps regulate the immune system.