I think it's very interesting about the number of people on here who had mono. I never had it, but was exposed to two close friends in high school who were both hospitalized because of it.

I grew up in Canton, Ohio. We had very few sunny days compared to other parts of the rest of the country. It is also an industrial town. I had the usual measles, mumps and chicken pox as a kid. I also had a lot of chest infections for which the doc would give me a shot of penicillin in the behind.

In high school, I fell a few times. In my 20's, I started falling more often. I just thought I was exceptionally clumsy.

My DIL grew up in Kenya, and she told me that MS is very rare there. They are exposed to the sun a lot, do heavy outdoor work, and eat all natural foods. She used to plow a field with a wooden plow and a cow, and cut grass with a machete. Maybe that has something to do with it. I won't, but I could go on and on about Lenny. The stories she tells about her life are great.

I grew up loving vegetables, but we also ate a lot of junk food. I played outside, but never really worked hard as a kid.

David Osmond stated on his website bio that he had West Nile Disease and that was what caused his MS. He didn't go into detail or explain why they think that is the cause of his condition. I looked up West Nile and it says that the neurological damage can be long lasting or permanent. Some of the sx of West Nile are headache, high fever, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, and paralysis.

My DD had Shingles as a teenager. I think that is rare, so young.....It followed all the nerves around her back...very painul for her. Shingles, as Mono..EB..CP..etc, are all related to the Herpes 6 virus, I believe. Thus, why I think our particular MS was caused by this Virus.

I have come to believe that there is more than one cause for MS, more than one type of MS and many triggers, from meds to chems to food to stress to injury to.... whatever.

It's like asking the question, what came first, the chicken or the egg???????????

Weird that a few people had scarlet fever as a child as I did (I remember my mom calling it scarletina, which I believe is essentially the same thing). I had pneumonuia and strep a bunch too as well as chicken pox. They always seemed to come around Christmas time. By the time I went to middle school, I was completely healthy, most of my illnesses occurred from 4-8 years old.

Other than that, i grew up in a "cancer cluster" in New Jersey.

I have no family history of this disease, and tons of cousins that are fine.

It depends on my mood what I blame for my ms on any given day

Hi Dystopia, welcome to NeuroTalk and the MS forum. It is nice to meet you and I hope you enjoy it here.

I suspect these contributing factors:

1. I grew up in Canada, where the risk of MS is higher, just as it is in northern states, in Scandinavian countries, and in Australia. They suspect a connection with fewer hours of sunlight/vitamin D issues.
2. Although I am the only one with MS in my family, we have a lot of other auto-immune diseases.
3. Often times, stress can trigger the onset of MS. I had a lot of physical pain/stress, due to a tooth problem and need for a root canal just days before the onset of my first symptom/flare.

Don't know how I could have changed any of these things.

• I drank a lot of milk as a kid.
• Can't control my genes.
• Tooth problems can happen to anyone.

~ Faith

I grew up just north of New York City, so I fall into the northern climate bunch. However, I was always a big outdoorsy kid. In fact, I was out in the sun so much that I figured some day I would develop skin cancer! I never had mono or any of the other suggested viral triggers. I have always been very healthy, only being in the hospital to pop out babies. I never had any MS sx until two years ago, at age 58, when I woke up with my left side paralyzed. At first the Drs. thought I had had a stroke, then my MRI showed a big, honking lesion that at first they diagnosed as a brain tumor. My neuro said MS because apparently I had other old lesions. Since then, I have been fine (got about 95% of function of my left side back), knock on wood.

Go figure.

At this point, I believe there is something "mechanical" going wrong, and demyelination, exacerbations, psuedo exacerbations, 'triggers' (mono, accidents, stress), etc. are just how the underlying damage reveals itself.

Kinda' like a TIA is warning for a stroke, or angina is for a heart attack . . . our "mechanics" are faulty and we get warnings that we need repair by getting an exacerbation or symptoms. Since they haven't figured out what is actually wrong, our bodies just keep causing more damage to themselves, appearing as lesions. We blame the lesions for the problem, but I think they are mostly just the result of the problem.

A comparible example might be hardening of the arteries. For instance, if they hadn't figured out that cholesterol/plaque build-up causes hardening of the arteries, people would have kept having unnecessary heart attacks. I believe that if they could figure out where MS damage "stems from", mechanically, we might be able to stop having relapses, lesions, etc.

I think they are spending too much time on trying to manage the resulting damage (reducing inflammation, etc.), instead of trying to figure out what caused it and fixing that.

Just my latest theory.

Cherie

Apologies for digging up an old thread but I found these replies interesting.

I also had scarletina as a child.
I'm prone to cold sores at the drop of a hat, all over my face.
Despite hanging out with the chicken pox kids, I never caught it. I was tested as being susceptible to pox when started nursing (not immune). I had the vaccine and was re tested; still not immune. No natural or vaccine immunity but never had it either despite lots of contact.
Stressful childhood and youth. Never stopped worrying, anxiety and internal conflict most of the time.

finally, my mum's contribution to theories; as a child growing on a farm in the 80's, i frequently drank milk straight from the tank. After the chernobyl incident, we often had testers sample the milk for radiation. we never got results but fallout would have been recycled to rain, grass, cows, milk, me.
Oh and I'm white, female, childhood in wet dark wales.

Pud, Jim never had the chicken pox either despite being exposed to it on several occasions. I ran a Varicella test on him and it showed he never had the chicken pox when the boys came down with it. His doctor wont give him the vaccine.