Medical Information on MS

Multiple sclerosis strikes people who are otherwise healthy, sometimes causing significant disability and other times, causing few visible symptoms. What causes MS is still not completely understood or known, but several factors seem to combine to cause the disease to strike its victims.

Identification

• Multiple sclerosis or MS is a disease affecting your central nervous system. Its main effects center on the spinal cord and brain, causing symptoms that range throughout the body. Depending on the nerves that are affected and how severe the symptoms are, you can lose your ability to walk or speak.

  You can have one of four different manifestations of MS and these include relapsing remitting; secondary progressive, which is when relapsing remitting begins to progress; primary progressive; and progressive relapsing, which is a combination of the relapsing remitting type and a form that progresses right from the outset of the disease.

Significance

• When MS is active, white blood cells congregate around the white matter of your brain neurons. These blood cells begin an inflammatory response, similar to a pimple you'd get on your face. This inflammatory response destroys the fatty myelin sheath from the portion of the neuron called the axon. After the myelin sheath has been damaged and stripped from the axon, the electrical activity in the affected neurons shorts out, causing your central nervous system's ability to transmit messages to be stopped or slowed.

  As your disease progresses, the axons continue dying even though they are no longer being destroyed by the white cell inflammatory response.

Features

• You could have a genetic predisposition to developing MS. Other factors that could predispose you toward developing this illness could include immune system issues and environmental factors.

  The farther from the equator you live increases your risk of developing MS. If you move to a high-risk area before your 15th birthday, your risk is as high as someone who was born in the area. Smokers are at a higher risk of developing MS. This disease affects women more than men, although men can get it. If you have an immediate relative with MS, you're at higher risk of developing this illness. If you're an identical twin, you're more likely to develop MS. If you have a vitamin D deficiency, you're more likely to come down with MS as well. People of northern European ancestry are more likely to develop MS.

Effects

• When you develop MS, you can begin to feel numbness in your legs or arms, on one side or both and on the top and/or bottom half of your body. You may experience double vision or blurry vision. You could partially or completely lose vision in one eye at a time, and you'll also feel pain when you move your eyes--this is called optic neuritis.

  You could also develop pain and tingling in different areas of your body, electric shock sensations that come when you move your head certain ways, fatigue, tremors, an unsteady walk or lack of coordination. You could also experience dizziness.

Considerations

• You won't always have the same symptoms all the time. You may have periods when you feel normal--called remission and times when you have different sets of symptoms.

  It's not possible to predict how your MS will progress. Your case progresses differently from other patients suffering from this disease. Some people experience a more significant disability almost from the outset of their disease while others have milder symptoms and can continue living a near-normal life.