I received a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2008 and my life greatly altered starting that year. I’m not a doctor but want to explain some things about MS
in a way that people can understand.
WHAT
IS MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS?
Multiple
Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune disease that attacks the Central Nervous
System (CNS) including the brain, brain stem, spinal cord and optic nerves. MS
could attack one part of the CNS or any combination. Therefore, each person’s
symptoms are unique and the disease is very hard to diagnose. When a person has
something chronic that means they will have it forever not just temporarily.
Autoimmune diseases cause the body to attack itself. MS is one of many
autoimmune diseases like Arthritis and Psoriasis. A sclerosis, which doctors
sometimes call a lesion, is a scar and is detected on an MRI scan. A person who
has MS has a disease they will have forever (unless a cure is found), it
attacks the body, and the disease causes scars.
Most people don’t know much about
Multiple Sclerosis. They don’t realize there is no cure for it and they think
everyone who has MS is the same.
Everyone who has MS is not the same
since the disease can attack anywhere in the CNS causing each person to experience
different symptoms. The thing that makes one person feel better won’t
necessarily help the next person. And
the disease could progress rapidly or slowly. Doctors don’t know why people get
MS but more research is being done now to figure this out. Medicine for those
who have MS has only been available for about ten years. Before MS medicine
became available there wasn’t anything other than alternative therapy to help
people. In the “olden days” (before MS medicine) a person with MS most likely
had a shorter life expectancy and ended up in a wheel chair. Now you wouldn’t
know that most people recently diagnosed with MS have it unless they tell you.
With medicine, they continue to work and live their lives.
However, even though people with MS seem fine on the outside, they are sick on
the inside.
MS
SYMPTOMS
Everyone
with MS has different symptoms because the disease could be anywhere in the CNS
and affect any nerve. One person might have problems with their optic nerves
whereas another person might not. MS is very hard to diagnose and is usually
done by process of elimination. If a person goes to their Primary Care
Physician with symptoms, when that doctor can’t figure it out they refer the
person to see a specialist, usually a Neurologist. When the Neurologist rules
out sicknesses based upon the person’s symptoms, they consider diseases and
syndromes. This process takes time to figure out and can be frustrating to the
person with symptoms.
TYPES
OF MS
There
are four kinds of MS. Relapse-Remitting, Primary Progressive, Secondary
Progressive, and Progressive-Relapsing.
Most
people (85%) have Relapse-Remitting MS
(RRMS). They get sick then they get better and you’d never know they have
MS unless they told you. They have symptoms but usually they are things you
can’t see. When they get sick they say they had an attack. Technically an
attack is called an Exacerbation. A person could go for years without having
another attack and some say they are cured because of this but just because the
disease doesn’t show on the outside doesn’t mean it isn’t active on the inside.
Some people say a certain diet and/or exercise helps them feel better, some
feel better about taking herbs as opposed to drugs. Some people feel good about
doing nothing.
When a person has RRMS each attack is worse
than the last. Scientists say eventually a person with RRMS will get SPMS.
A person with RRMS can usually resume
what they did before. If they worked, most likely they will be able to continue. This is because the attack doesn’t cause them to become permanently
disabled. If they have had symptoms for more than six months they will probably
always have them but their symptoms won’t get worse with RRMS.
Primary
Progressive (PPMS) is the second kind of MS and rarer. According
to the National MS Society only 10% of people with MS have the primary
progressive kind. With PPMS, a person’s symptoms never go away and continue to
get worse. There are two methods of thought that doctors have. One is that a
person has PPMS if they get a new symptom thus their symptoms progress. The
other is that a person has PPMS if the symptoms they have progressively get
worse. These two methods of thought are confusing and I don’t think doctors
know which is right because this kind of MS is rare.
Secondary
Progressive (SPMS) is the third kind of MS. People
familiar with the disease say that a person who has RRMS will eventually get
SPMS. This kind of MS causes a person’s symptoms to progress more rapidly and
they may or may not also have attacks. Researchers aren’t sure if people will
still get SPMS when they’ve been taking medication for RRMS. They hope people
with RRMS won’t develop SPMS but the truth is simply that they don’t know.
Progressive-Relapsing
(PRMS) is the fourth and rarest kind of MS with only 5%
of people getting it. When a person has PRMS their symptoms never go away and
they also clearly have attacks making their symptoms worse.
WHAT
CAUSES MS?
A
person doesn’t do something to get MS they just get it. It doesn’t matter if
they are over or under weight, eat healthy or unhealthy, smoke or don’t smoke,
etc. Research shows that the causes of MS may be 1) if a person lives in the northern
hemisphere (researchers say people get MS less in the southern hemisphere) 2)
if a person is low in Vitamin D (research shows some kind of link between a lack of
Vitamin D and MS) 3) if a person has had a virus (researchers think a virus causes
MS) or 4) if a person is prone to it (genetically speaking, some people are more
prone to autoimmune diseases and some are not). A person who gets MS could have
one cause or any combination but they don’t do anything to get MS.
WHO
GETS MS?
If
someone else has MS in the family some researchers say a person's chances to get it
increase by seven times. Usually young people ages 20 to 40 get it, and women
get it more than men. It’s rarely developed in children and the elderly. Some
researchers say people tend to get MS before they are 60 and some say before
they are 40. MS isn’t more prevalent in a certain race but more Caucasians get
it.
MS
TREATMENT
Disease
Modifying Drugs help all people who are newly diagnosed with MS but if they
don’t have RRMS the medication will eventually stop working. Currently there
aren’t any drugs available for people with progressive types of MS but studies
and clinical trials are being done and in a few years that could change. Since
several types of medication are available for people with RRMS researchers
continue to study other kinds of MS to find treatment. Hopefully as new drugs
are tested and approved, they will be for people who have other kinds of MS. As
drugs are approved by the FDA they are posted on the National MS Society
website (www.nationalmssociety.org).
Not only are there drugs to slow or stop
MS from progressing but there are drugs available to treat certain symptoms
like chronic fatigue, poor walking, and uncontrollable laughing and crying.
Stem Cell Transplants are a hot topic in
the MS community right now. Some people in foreign countries claim to have had
a stem cell transplant and are free of MS. This is not an approved method of
treatment in the United States. Doctors and Researchers don’t know enough about
it yet to say whether or not a person can get permanent relief from MS. Research
on stem cell transplants is in the beginning stages and it will be years before
this is an approved treatment if at all. Researchers in the U.S. are also
collaborating with researchers in foreign countries.
A lot of people with MS also or only use
alternative medicine and techniques to provide them with relief. Alternative
medicines are herbs and medicines not approved of by the FDA. People take
alternative medicine when they want to take the natural approach and not take
drugs. They also take them if drugs aren’t helping them. A lot of people find
relief from alternative medicines and swear by them. Pharmaceutical companies don’t want people
to use them instead of their drugs and try to scare people by implying that
their drugs are the only things that will stop the disease from progressing so
they better stay on it. There aren’t drugs available to help every symptom and
most drugs have side-effects so people turn to nature.
