Archive for the Background Information category

Multiple Sclerosis - An Unpredictable Disease

By Sharon A Bell

In some people, it is a mild illness. In others, it can lead to permanent disability. This is the nature of multiple sclerosis, an unpredictable disease that affects 300,000 people in the United States alone.

Myelin is a fatlike substance that covers the nerve fiber found in the brain and spinal cord. It is an essential part of the nervous system since it enables the nerves to carry electrical impulses to and from the brain where they can be acted upon by the appropriate part of the body.

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Multiple Sclerosis - An Overview Of This Debilitating Condition

By Steve Dempster

You may have heard about the disease normally known as Multiple Sclerosis - but what is it and what causes it?

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting the central nervous system. First described by Jean-Martin Charcot in 1868, MS (formerly known as disseminated sclerosis) is more common in women than in men and typically affects - depending on country and actual population - between 2 and 150 people per 100,000. The disease usually has its onset in early adulthood.

The disease affects the ‘white matter’ of the brain. Cells in white matter - present in the brain and spinal cord - carry signals for processing to ‘grey matter’ areas and also between these areas and the rest of the body. MS affects the neurons in the white matter - specifically destroying the cells known as ‘oligodendrocytes’ that are cells responsible for creating the ‘myelin sheath’ - a fatty layer that assists the neurons in the carrying of electrical signals.

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Understand Multiple Sclerosis To Fight It

By Jon Arnold

Most people do not realize how wide-spread the affliction of multiple sclerosis is in today’s world. It affects tens of thousands of people, but it is one of those diseases where a very mild form of it could almost go unnoticed by the general public, and allow the patient to live a pretty normal day to day life. But for others, the effects of multiple sclerosis can be harsh.

Multiple sclerosis is generally considered to be a disease of the nervous system. With most patients, MS gets worse over time, although that time can be anywhere from a few weeks to several years, since the rate of degradation differs from person to person. The most obvious effect is the loss of motor controls within the central nervous system, starting with a loss of eeling and a loss of control over normal movements and speaking.

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Yoga and MS

By Jennifer Jordan

Yoga is known to improve health overall, with every aspect of it enhancing something, mind, body, or spirit. But, overall health aside, yoga is becoming known to be particularly helpful for relief from specific diseases. One of these diseases, Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, is a bit of a medical enigma, with no concrete causes and no concrete cure.

The course of MS is unpredictable. The four categories used to classify the clinical course in a person with MS are: Relapsing - remitting, Primary-progressive, Secondary-progressive, and Progressive-relapsing. In the absence of a resolution, several treatment options must step in to relieve the burden MS places on so many lives. Physical activity is extremely important for individuals with MS, and yoga is now recognized as an excellent means of MS management.

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General Information on Multiple Sclerosis

By Groshan Fabiola

Multiple sclerosis information – Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease that involves an inflammatory process at the level of the central nervous system. The disease causes dysfunctions of the body’s nervous cells (neurons), due to destruction of myelin, a substance that surrounds the neurons. Myelin is vital for the proper activity of the nervous system, as it facilitates the transmission of information between neurons. When the nervous cells’ myelin-containing membrane is damaged, the innervated tissues of the entire body can be seriously affected. Due to destruction of myelin, multiple sclerosis can cause dysfunctions of the musculoskeletal, sensorial and cognitive systems. Sometimes, the disease can also affect the activity of the internal organs (kidneys, gastrointestinal tract). People who suffer from multiple sclerosis can in time develop neuropsychological conditions, such as depression, mania or dementia.

Information on multiple sclerosis incidence – Research results reveal that multiple sclerosis affects around 2 million people worldwide. Statistics also indicate that there are more than 350.000 cases of multiple sclerosis in the United States. An interesting aspect of the disease is that it tends to affect young people. Although multiple sclerosis can also be developed by the elderly, the disease has the highest incidence in people with ages between 20 and 40. Another interesting feature of multiple sclerosis is that it predominantly affects women, rarely occurring in the opposite sex.

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Testing .. 1,2,3

See: HART-Empire Network

This site was one of the sites destroyed by our server September 29, 2006 .. I have recovered this myself, from my own backups however there are still issues and possible error messages that will be displayed. I hope to correct this by the end of this upcoming weekend.

If you see anything unusual .. please drop me a line .. hart (at) PETLVR (dot) com

Hormones And MS

It is interesting that pregnancy can be the healthiest time for many women. I am convinced that the hormones are very protective of our bodies.

I was 52 when diagnosed in 2000 and suffered quite a bit until I finally went to a wellness doctor instead of a sickness doctor :-) I was put on hormone replacement, but NOT Prempro or Premarin any longer. We use bio-identical hormones. The difference is remarkable. More →

So, what exactly is Multiple Sclerosis

“Ok then, what is Multiple Sclerosis?” Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the Central Nervous System (CNS) - that’s the brain and spinal cord. Predominantly, it is a disease of the “white matter” tissue. The white matter is made up of nerve fibres which are responsible for transmitting communication signals both internally within the CNS and between the CNS and the nerves supplying rest of the body.

In people affected by MS, patches of damage called plaques or lesions appear in seemingly random areas of the CNS white matter. At the site of a lesion, a nerve insulating material, called myelin, is lost. I shall explain this process in more detail later. Clinically, MS is a hard condition to characterise because it is very unpredictable and variable. Depending on which areas of the CNS are affected and how badly they are damaged, the type and severity of symptoms can vary greatly.

No two people get MS in exactly the same way and the expression of each individual’s disease is as unique as their fingerprints. However, the different courses of the disease, both within an individual and within the whole population, principally differ in their timing, location and severity. Underneath similar processes (including demyelination and sometimes other forms of nerve degeneration) are going on.

Read the whole article here

Symptoms of MS

When my husband was first experiencing symptoms of MS, the doctors told him it was “all in his head”. He also suffers from spinal arthritis. His whole spine is fused, from the top of the neck to the bottom of the spine. Often times, arthritis and MS go hand in hand. They are both auto-immune diseases. We live in Canada, and it took a trip to the Mayo Clinic to get a definite diagnosis. An MRI is usually what finally gives the affirmation, that, yes, you have MS. They say that MS is a very difficult disease to diagnose because it can mimmick so many other conditions. Ot times, MS is diagnosed only after all other options have been exhausted.


Multiple Sclerosis, also known more simply as MS, is a chronic disease that affects the central nervous system. It has been found to affect more young adults during their most productive years. Doctors have found many factors that contribute to the onset of Multiple Sclerosis. These etiologies range from viral and autoimmune etiologies as well as genetic factors that are said to contribute to the disease. However, no specific cause of MS has been found. More →