White matter hyper intensities (WMH), are something I'd never heard of before three years ago. But since then the number of Reddit posts I've seen mentioning white matter hyper intensities has increased ten fold.

I mean, multiple posts, every single time I refresh my feed. Here's from just now:

The problem is not the frequency of these posts though. It's the ages of the individuals reporting them, and the absolute resounding dismissal by doctors and individuals alike who claim they are normal, common and unlikely to produce any symptoms.

This post is long because there is a lot of data to review, I wanted to include posts from the last few months so you could get a picture of how frequently this is being found in individuals under 30. Here's how we'll break it down:

  • History of white matter disease occurance
  • Review of Literature
  • Overwhelming dismissal by Doctors "It's normal"
  • Associated Symtoms
  • Types of White Matter Damage
  • Causes
  • Images
  • Reddit posts from the last 5 months
  • Studies which explain the associated to vaccines

White matter hyper intensities? No big deal! Those are normal! Everyone has them!

A Quick History

In 2003, Barkhof et al. reviewed the MRIs of healthy 20-30 year olds and found WMH in 1%, typically occurring with little clinical significance (ie without symptoms).

In 2010, 430 healthy college students age 18-29 received brain MRIs. WMH were found in 1.9% and out of those 1.9% the number of lesions identified was scarce (Kawaguchi et al., 2010).

Google Today VS Google 2010

Reviewing 30 Years Of Research

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/JAHA.114.001140

Overwhelming Dismissal By Doctors

What Symptoms Does WMH Present With?

The Different Kinds of White Matter Damage

What Can Cause White Matter Damage?

What Does It Look Like?

Just for reference, the image below is from a study of ADEM brain damage, with the image below presenting with significant brain damage. Now consider the image above: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1742586/pdf/v079p00011.pdf

What We're Seeing Across Reddit

White Matter Damage Being Seen In Children and Young Adults (A population where it was previous absent)

Studies Which Found Associations Between White Matter Artifacts And Various Vaccinations

Source