Where ms comes from and how to get over it

I don't know the answer to either of those things, but I do have some leads.  MS drives me crazy, and the doctors, and the drugs.  MS, 'Multiple Sclerosis'... literally 'Many Scars'.  What the heck?!  The doctor and the drug companies figure they can treat my 'scars'?  Whatever.  What I have learned in life is that scars can't be healed, they are the healing of damage that has occurred, I can look at my arms and hands and see that -  these now small scars are what is left of a run in with a barb wire fence a couple years ago (look at the lower left hand corner and a still red mark in my hand in the lower right).

So,  why don't I hear about them finding out WHY ms patient's brains and spinal cords have scars?  Because they don't know why.  My grandmother's recovery from the throws of ms prompted me to write about this today.  At the end of this, I am going to attach a letter she had written about her experience with ms and how she recovered from it.  Recovered you say, got back what she'd lost anyway.  When I knew her I would have never guessed she had ms, she was just another old woman with a walker, and my grandmother.  Dad told me she was bedridden, blind and incontinent in the '60s.  I know you can recover from ms, because I feel that that is what I have been doing with my PT, and I need to do more of the diet stuff that she outlined in her letter.

They THINK it's an auto immune disease, so the current 'main stream' (doctor recommended) treatments suppress the immune system... I liked this site that came up when I googled my question for explaining ms: http://neurology.ucsf.edu/msc/faq.htm

I also like About.com:

Causes of Multiple Sclerosis:

No one knows what causes multiple sclerosis (MS). Four main theories have emerged to attempt to explain MS. Each of these theories can explain a piece of the MS puzzle, but none explain everything. It is likely that the cause of MS is a complicated interaction of these four theories: the immune system, the environment, infectious diseases and genetics.

Though no one knows why, most researchers agree that multiple sclerosis (MS) is caused by the immune system attacking the body. Specifically, the immune system’s T-cells attack cells in the brain and spinal cord, damaging the outer sheath (myelin) of nerves. The damage impacts how well those nerves function – the source of MS symptoms and disability. The disease-modifying treatments work by using different mechanisms to prevent the body’s immune system from attacking the nervous system. 
Okay, how do they know it's the immune system attacking the nerves...?

Environmental:

People in certain regions and areas have a higher risk for MS than others. By studying people who move from one area to another, researchers have learned that individual risk changes based on location. They have concluded that some exposure in the environment increases the risk for MS.
MS occurs more in places farther from the equator. Some researchers to believe that vitamin D may be involved in MS. Vitamin D is produced by the body when the skin is exposed to sunlight. In regions far from the equator, the atmosphere filters out more of the sun’s rays which decreases vitamin D production in the body. 
Sure, I was born in SD and spent most of my life there and in MN...

Infection:

Viruses are known to cause damage similar to that seen in MS. Some researchers believe that infections may somehow trigger the immune system to attack nerve cells. Basically, the virus (or bacteria) that causes an initial infection “looks” like a nerve cell. The immune system develops T-cells to fight off the virus. Those T-cells remain in your body after the infection is gone and become confused when they “see” a nerve cell, mistaking it for an invader. The result is that your immune system attacks your nervous system. 
Possibly...

Genetic:

A person’s chances of developing MS increase if he or she has a relative with MS. Researchers believe that certain genetic combinations increase the likelihood of a person to develop MS. However the increase in risk is not high enough to call MS a “genetic disease.” Instead, it seems that genes are one factor, among many, that determine a person’s risk for MS. Your chances of developing MS are:

• 1 in 1000 if you have no relatives with MS
• 1 in 100 if you have a second-degree relative (grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc.) with MS
• 1 in 40 if you have a parent or sibling with MS
• 1 in 4 if your identical twin has MS 

Yep, my grandmother had ms.

Not found in a basic search is the veins and circulatory system being involved, or CCSVI.  CCVSI.org defines CCSVI as "“Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency,” a condition where people have obstructed blood flow in the veins that drain the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). Research indicates that CCSVI is significantly correlated with multiple sclerosis."  A 2009 article in Nutrion & Life say that

Research is suggesting that blocked veins in the neck prevent blood from draining from the head triggering plaque formations that cause MS.

Multiple Sclerosis is a neurological, progressive disease where the insulating myelin sheaths that protect the brain and spinal cord are damaged, resulting in poor nerve conduction and messaging. Symptoms and disability vary significantly depending upon which parts of the brain and spinal cord are affected as well as the stage of the disease, but eventually sufferers develop cognitive as well as physical symptoms, including decreasing ability to walk, move and see. MS tends to strike young people more frequently than older, and women 2 to 3 times more frequently than men. MS has always been considered an auto-immune disease, where the body attacks itself, but why this happens has not been understood.
Well, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a physician in Ferrara Italy, may have figured it out. His wife suffered from MS, and after treating her 4 years ago, she has not had another acute attack, and her MS symptoms are gone. Furthermore, he has treated a total of 118 MS patients since then, and 100% of them had dramatic improvements in their symptoms.
What Dr. Zamboni discovered was that all the MS patients that he examined via Doppler ultrasound had blockages in the veins in the neck that drain the brain or in the azygos vein in the thorax. When he looked at people that did not have MS, both healthy as well as those that suffered from neurological problems other than MS, none of them had vein blockages. When he used angioplasty to unblock the veins, right away after surgery his MS patients noticed differences in how they felt. Two years post surgery, 100% of those that did not have re-narrowing of the veins had no MS relapses. If there was a relapse, a re-narrowing of the veins was found. So it appears that narrowing veins are directly linked to the progression of the disease.
Veins are the pipes that return de-oxygenated blood to the lungs and heart. Veins are not pressurized by the heart pumping to keep them open like arteries are (arteries carry oxygenated blood to the brain and body), so veins will collapse with external pressure. If a major vein like the jugular vein in the neck is narrowed or closed and the blood cannot drain properly from the head, a back-flow problem can develop, where the venous blood is actually going the wrong way. So a situation develops where blood is being pumped into the head, but has trouble getting out, pressure builds in the veins inside the brain, forcing the blood into the gray matter, creating damage.
If venous drainage is poor, iron accumulates in the brain causing cells to die, inflammation, immune problems, and the plaque lesions known to be found in those with MS. Dr. Zamboni found in post mortem studies of MS patients that the plaque lesions in the brain all had a vein at its center. And interestingly enough, the plaque lesions developed on the opposite side to the normal flow direction, suggesting that the blood was actually flowing the wrong way.
It is hypothesised that the inability to drain blood causes inflammation, excess iron deposition in the brain causing free radicals which kill cells, damaging the blood-brain barrier, and causing plaque lesions possibly triggering the auto-immune response in MS. For this reason, if this hypothesis is correct, it is vital that MS patients get their veins screened and cleared as early as possible after their diagnosis, so that plaque damage can be minimized.
However, this is still a very new idea, and many physicians either have not heard about this theory, or are not yet convinced that poor brain drainage may be the trigger for MS, so patients that want this treatment are having difficulty finding physicians that will do it.

Full article: Are vein blockages the trigger for Multiple Sclerosis? | Trusted.MD Network http://trusted.md/blog/vreni_gurd/2009/12/06/are_vein_blockages_the_trigger_for_multiple_sclerosis#ixzz1LQBD4VTe
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Research they are doing, and have found a definite correlation, but the doctors, mine anyway, want definitive proof before they'll send people for the treatment - Liberation Treatment.  So, many people are going to the coast, namely CA and FL, to get tested and have the procedure, and paying out of pocket.  What I have seen on Face Book looks promising, but those are the ones who have done it and it has helped.  I've yet to see the statistics on how many the Liberation Treatment has relieved of their ms symptoms.

Stem cells have also been used,  but I do not know to what amount and sucess.  I'm definitely hearing less of them than I did a few years ago.

Now to grandma, and a test of my computer skills in trying to share the 10 pages that I scanned... I don't know how to easily link this, so I will just put the letter here... which I can't figure out either, so more learning to do on my part, and I will share my grandma's regimen for getting over ms at another time.