Allen & Unwin

They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving, and because for a while at least they’d be able to draw unemploy

They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving, and because for a while at least they’d be able to draw unemploy

When I was five years old, I was taking my electronic toys apart to see how they worked. (I also attempted to put them back together, with mixed results.) I have always been a voracious reader. I was reading college-level physics books bought at garage sales in the second grade. I used to annoy my father to no end wanting to build scale models of nuclear reactors, submarines, trains, anything you could think of. I have only had very small groups of close friends. I always considered that odd but never knew how to go about correcting it. Quite frankly, I find most people quite annoying and illogical—probably another common Asperger trait. :)

The brain and spinal cord are mainly made of fat; the

type of fat depends on what we eat

The membranes of cells—their outer envelopes—are made of a double layer of fat. After changing to a diet consisting of different types of fats, there are quite marked changes in the make-up of these cell membranes

Importantly, because of the different melting points of the various different types of fats we eat, the cell membranes of people who consume mainly unsaturated fats are more fluid and pliable than those of people who consume saturated fats

For people who eat mainly saturated fats, cell membranes are more rigid and inflexible, and more prone to degenerative changes

Typically, inflammation of a portion of the myelin sheath of a nerve in the brain or

spinal cord is followed by loss of some of the myelin. This forms the so-called lesions of MS. In these inflammatory lesions, white cells of the immune system gain access to the myelin sheath, which they usually can’t do because of what is called the ‘blood–brain barrier’ (BBB), a tight junction between the blood vessels around the brain and the brain itself. Further white cells are probably attracted by some of the chemical messengers released by these initial white cells.