Could You Or Someone You Love Have Multiple Sclerosis?

A high-school friend of mine has multiple sclerosis. It's kind of hard to picture a vibrant, energetic person such as her being 'held back' from the things she wants to do. She's in 'remission' now (meaning her symptoms aren't active), but she worries about the future.

What is MS?

Multiple sclerosis is an auto-immune disease-meaning, the body attacks itself. Rather than fighting bacteria or other pathogens, the immune system attacks healthy tissue. In this case, the tissue is on the brain and spinal cord. The nerves are cloaked in a substance called myelin that helps the brain send 'messages' to the rest of the body. MS attacks this myelin and instead produces scar tissue, rendering the nerves less able to work. The particular parts of the body affected and how much varies from person to person.

What are the symptoms?

The most common symptoms are:

-Vision problems such as partial blindness, blurriness and double vision.

-Fatigue

-Numbness and.or tingling

-Pain

-Bladder and/or bowel dysfunction

-Dizziness or vertigo. Basically, the room spins around and makes you feel like you're drunk.

-Muscle problems. The tremors caused by this are usually more annoying than anything else, but occasionally they can be severe enough to drastically inhibit your bodily functions. Tremors can affect your ability to walk, use your hands, feed yourself and other daily activities.

-Muscle stiffness or spasms

-Cognitive and/or speech problems

-Balance problems

Here's a more complete list of the symptoms. As you can see, many of them are also signs of other disorders.

One thing that is particularly odd about MS is that the symptoms can just come and go without explanations. This, along with the variation in severity and the sheer number of symptoms, make it very difficult for doctors to figure out what's going on. The symptoms can either show up alone or go along with other symptoms, which makes it that much harder. Depending on which type you have, the illness can worsen steadily over time or go in and out of remission while worsening. Medicine can alter the course of the illness and can reduce some symptoms, but there is still no cure.

There really isn't any single test for MS, so doctors will usually look at the person's medical history, do a neurologic exam, a lumbar puncture and blood tests to rule out other causes. Doctors will often order an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)...in other words, they insert you into a giant magnet in a tube that feels like a coffin to see how different parts of your nervous system work.

While there aren't any cures yet, treatments can make it very possible for a person to live long and happy lives. My friend is still the happy, vital person she was in school with a tremendous amount of faith in God. If you suddenly have any of the muscle or cognitive problems, get to an emergency room right away. If you think you have MS, talk to your doctor.

For more information on this confusing disease, check out http://ms.about.com/od/multiplesclerosis101/a/ms_intro.htm.