He can’t hear the first question, blames it on Led Zeppelin in the summer of 1969 … person repeats it:
What about improving myelin from dietary changes?
(Apparently this is a thing) He says it’s a very good question that needs more study.
This makes me slightly crazy. Improving myelin needs more study?! I get up to ask him why — if the functional return wasn’t there from remyelinated axons, why are we bothering?
He says we have to make the existing myelin stronger and thicker and better.
I don’t understand this at all, because he just explained that it made no functional difference to remove myelin from axons in his test mice, but before I can follow that up, he says that he might not want to say it in this room, but there appears to be a gradual deterioration of myelin over time. (He means, we should study how to improve myelin because it’s being progressively lost in chronic injuries.)
I say that this is exactly the room where you’d want to say that. It’s why we’re here, so we can understand what’s happening to us and how to repair it.
There are a few more questions, but I got a little wound up there and missed them.
Sorry. It’s the end of the day and I think we’re all getting a little twitchy.
W2W2018 Live Blog 
I asked if we could just forget Schwann cell transplants since myelin transplants don’t work. Then asked if doing more in the gray matter was the next thing. Like you I was rather floored by the apparent waste of decades and 10s of millions spent on remyelination.
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Right! Thanks for reminding me. I think he said that Schwannn cells have other purposes, but I’m not recalling how he answered the gray matter question.
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