MS is . . .

The Women's Fair seemed to go over pretty well, hopefully we were able to encourage people to join the Walk - new walker's are always a plus!

While working the booth at the Women's Fair, I was asked what exactly is MS.  It dawned on me that I have been blogging about how MS has affected me and the up and coming therapies for MS, but I never mentioned anything about what MS is.  For those who don't know, Multiple Sclerosis occurs when the immune system attacks the central nervous system.  Essentially people with MS have an overactive immune system that begins to identify the central nervous system (CNS) as a foreign invader and begins to attack the CNS.  If you think of the CNS as a set of wires that carry electrical impulses throughout your body telling your body what to do, how to feel, etc.  Then the wires are protected by an outer covering (called myelin).  In MS patients, the immune system attacks the myelin sheath.  When the myelin sheath is damaged then the CNS can no longer carry a clear signal because those electrical impulses can no longer be carried throughout the body without interruption.

I hope this helps some of you to better understand what MS is; for more information, you can click through the following links:

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/about-multiple-sclerosis/index.aspx

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/multiple-sclerosis/DS00188

http://www.medicinenet.com/multiple_sclerosis/article.htm

http://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/guide/multiple-sclerosis-overview-facts

In my next post, I will begin to eleborate on the up and coming therapies that I discussed in the "Teleconference Update."