Why do so many Canadians have Multiple Sclerosis?

Hi ya! Thanks for clicking by today. Always a treat to see you and speaking of treats, help yourself to a refreshing mug of coffee and a virtual doughnut, muffin or pastry. Y’know, I saw something on TV a while ago that bothered me to the point where I wanted to know more about it... the high incidence (some say the highest in the world) of MS...Multiple Sclerosis.

Could living in Canada be what is causing so many Canadians to develop multiple sclerosis? A campaign by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada brands MS as “Canada’s disease” based on data that the country is home to the world’s highest incidence of the incurable degenerative condition.

 “Welcome to MS nation,” one billboard reads. “World leader in hockey, maple syrup and multiple sclerosis,” the EndMS.ca website claims. Some messaging appears designed to quash the country’s appeal as an immigration destination: “In Canada, you have a greater risk of developing MS than in any other country,” the campaign reports, noting risk jumps for those who immigrate. The whys of this dubious distinction remain unanswered: “Is it our climate? Our diet? A lack of vitamin D?” No answers are given. But, as with all advertising, hope is extended: “We’re getting close to understanding why.”

Fighting MS, like fighting terror, is waging war on an indeterminate enemy. Symptoms and disease progression vary so widely from person to person that it might seem logical to see MS as resulting from varying causes. But as Richard Swiderski, an American medical doctor with MS writes in his 1998 book, Multiple Sclerosis Through History and Human Life, medicine has always assumed that MS has one cause: “The cliché that multiple sclerosis is idiosyncratic and affects each person differently overlies an assumption that it has a single cause.”

The map above indicates MS incidence has more than doubled in Canada in five years. The first MS atlas, published in 2008, ranked Canada fifth at 132.5 per 100,000, behind Hungary (176), Slovenia (150), Germany (149) and the U.S. (135). Why the number rose so steeply, compared with a 10 per cent rise in global MS incidence, is unclear.

The direct costs of caring for and treating Canadians with MS is estimated at $139 million annually, with drugs accounting for almost half of that. The high costs of MS drugs, which are priced on the assumption they delay disease progression and relapses, have come under fire. A study published in the journal Neurology in 2011 reported that the cost-benefit ratio of MS drugs was wildly out of whack and concluded there was urgent need for discussion on how to bring costs down.

MS has been a crisis in plain sight for decades. We’ve seen rising rates since the ’30s. We have a disease that costs a couple of million a lifetime; it’s gender-specific, with three times as many women being diagnosed. It should have been treated as a four-alarm fire. And as those diagnosed with MS know, that fire still rages.

Read the full story here:

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/could-canada-cause-multiple-sclerosis/

This is a killer we need to treat as we would any other killer. Seek and stop ASAP!

See ya, eh!

Bob