Someone emailed me earlier this week about this article, reporting on a small study using stem cells from MS patients' own fat. The study was too small (only three participants) to draw a lot of conclusions, but it does raise some interesting questions.

First off, who knew there were stem cells in fat? That's entirely new to me. And of course, it raises the question of whether those of us with abundant stores can donate to those poor skinny few.

Well, I'm kidding about that last part. Sort of.

We all know what a controversial issue stem cells have been because of the debate over embryonic stem cells. Some promising research has been done with adult stem cells, but the article seems to imply that deriving adult stem cells from fat is a simpler process.

Won't it be wonderful if this turns out to be an effective treatment? Although, you have to love the irony - the anecdotal evidence suggesting that diet plays a factor in the development of MS includes the fact that MS rates increase when a country's diet becomes Westernized. It would be just too rich if our lovehandles turned out to be the key to wellness.

Remember a few years ago when America Online was in the hot seat for releasing tons of data about the things people researched on the Internet? In what seemed like a matter of minutes, some web savants had tracked down individual, real people just by doing some quick logic based on the websites they visited. If such a thing ever happens to Google, the nosy folks who look through my searches are going to get an eyeful: sexual dysfunction, incontinence studies, depression – you name it. That’s because in order to keep the people who read our website, newsletter, magazines and publications well-informed, I need to be somewhat of an MS expert. If I don’t already know something about MS and its symptoms, I better know where to read up on the topic.

Part of this is in my blood. Before I started work at the Foundation, I was a reporter. I always enjoyed writing and interviewing people but I relished the research that came first; before I could explain something to the paper’s readers, I had to understand it myself. That wasn’t always a simple task. But as hard as it was to grasp Tax Increment Financing or to ferret out the details in a $1 billion school board budget, I sometimes find it even more frustrating to try and nail down the specifics of MS.

I like to deal in facts. With MS, few things are certain. Even the doctors who answer questions about MS on our online forum and in our magazine use what I like to call the “squishy” words: “usually,” “should,” “could,” “may” and “might.” We all want to give you a straight answer about your diagnosis and the symptoms you experience but in many cases the truth isn’t there, no matter how hard we look. As challenging as this is for me to accept, I know it must be more difficult for you.

As we prepare the Winter issue of the magazine, I recently read and reviewed a guide to healthy eating that was co-developed through the Harvard School of Public Health. In it, author Dr. Walter C. Willett talks about the crush of “breaking news” and “groundbreaking research” that seems to come out each day about what we eat and how it impacts our health. He points out that any one of those studies doesn’t present the answer to, say, what role cholesterol plays in our body, or if soy decreases or increases a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer. Instead, each piece of individual research is “like dropping stones onto an old-fashioned scale,” he writes. “The weight of evidence gradually tips the balance in favor of one idea or another.”

The same is true with MS. I hope that even though you might not always know for certain the wheres and whys, that you will all continue to add to the discussion and to look for answers. The more information that is gathered about MS and the ways it impacts the human body, the closer we will all be to replacing those “coulds” and “shoulds” with the facts.