A Drug made specifics for MS patients, for increased walking speed. Could Ampyra do all that? It is in a timed released pill that is taken every twelve hours.
dalfampridine, also known as Ampyra, is made specifically for MS and walking. It is derived from a toxic substances used to kill birds, or deter them from parking lots, or unwanted areas.
Ampyra helps electrical signals move better along the nerves in your brain and spinal cord. When you have MS, your nerves lose the protective coating, called myelin, that helps messages zip up and down your body.
Ampyra does have the same active ingredient as an avian poison. Many drugs are based on toxic substances, such as rat poisons. Experimentation has even been done with spider and scorpion venom to treat various diseases. botulinum is a deadly bacteria. It's the way they are dosed and tweaked that make them safe to use as directed.
You also have to keep in mind, we are not birds or rats. We can test our drugs on animals, but sooner or later, those tests move on to humans..
Something toxic to them may be beneficial to us or vice versa. Look at how many things we happily and safely eat that could kill our pets...things like chocolate, avacado and grapes, for example.
what can kill or harm one animal ( a bird in this case) doesn't necessarily have to kill or harm another (human). 4-AP, the compounded in original version of Ampyra (still available) has been safely used for many years.
Hamlet, Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Funny how the name attached to something turns it either good or bad.
Chemotherapy for cancer treatment is a kind of poison, but it's fine-tuned for the purpose and, although it makes people sick by itself, people wanting to survive cancer are willing to to take poison to defeat a greater evil.
Nicotine has been used as an insecticide, and ethanol can be poisonous, yet people smoke and drink without much concern about the poisonous effects because they like the other effects they get from those chemicals.
In a parallel life, 4AP is used as an avicide -- bird poison. But in controlled doses, the neurotoxin effect that kills pigeons can be used to counteract the effects of demyelination in humans. When used unwisely in humans, or in particularly susceptible individuals, 4AP and Ampyra can cause seizures. That's a lesser effect of how it kills birds. (Ever stop to think about how insects die when you use bug spray on them?) But when used in a controlled way, the same chemical allows people to walk better and resume doing things they couldn't do otherwise.
But 4AP's double life as a killer and a helper isn't much different than that of botulinum toxin.
Botulism for clostridiym botulinum can kill people, but when the toxin is refined and used selectively and appropriately, such as onabotulinumtoxinA (Botox), can relieve spasticity and make people's lives significantly better.
Botox has risks, and those risks have to be weighed against its benefits. Ampyra is no different.
Brain & Life, the April/May 2018 has a great article.
Brain&Life
A must read, on how it can relax muscles, as brain signals, which are damaged by MS, sending the nerves), to contract.
I do get Botulism Toxin injected into both calfs, into my neck and shoulder muscles since the beginning of MS, done by my Neurologist.
Ampyra has also helped keep me walking at a faster speed, and has helped in other ways to be explained.
Thanks for reading
JoeY
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