The Terminal Disease Affecting Many, but Noticed by Few

By: Holly Kendall

This is Allan Nef. He is the owner of a smog shop in Clovis, CA. He is a husband,
and father to four children. From the outside, nothing seems to be wrong.
Allan was diagnosed with M.S. at age 40, showing signs of the disease since age 15. 

MS. Do you know what that is? Surely you’ve heard of it. Someone around you has said those two letters before. It’s some kind of illness right?

Multiple Sclerosis. That’s what those two letters stand for. And yes, you are correct; it is an illness. Most people only know that much. But there is so much more to it.

Photo credit: Healthline.com

MS is a neurological disease where your body’s immune system attacks your central nervous system. Think back to when you were in your biology class. Remember that one lesson about the tiny neurons in your body that make up the connections from your brain to the rest of your body? See those little neurons have what we call myelin sheath, that helps speed up the signals from your brain that travel throughout the body.

Now why is this important? Why are you getting a biology lecture? Multiple sclerosis attacks the myelin sheath surrounding your neurons. The signals now travel slower in your body. At some point those connections in your neurons are cut off, and no longer work. This leads patients with MS into a wheelchair. The brain can no longer communicate with the legs.

M.S. patients develop scar tissue in the brain due to the loss of myelin in the neurons. 

Multiple Sclerosis affects over 2.3 million people in the world, with 200,000 new cases a year in the U.S. (National Multiple Sclerosis Society). Whoa. That’s a significant amount of people. There must be an easy fix since we don’t hear a lot about it right? Wrong.

There is no cure to MS. We don’t even know where it comes from! Is it genetic? Maybe. Is it due to the environment you live in? Could be. Most people have less than a .1% chance of getting MS, unless a parent has been diagnosed, raising it to 3-5% (Healthline). For reasons unknown, people that live in the Northern Hemisphere have a higher chance of getting MS than those in the Southern Hemisphere (National Multiple Sclerosis Society).

Photo credit: Healthline.com

Now, why should you care? None of this seems to apply to you. You should care because it’s affecting 2.3 million people. Research still doesn’t have concrete facts as to where the disease actually comes from. There may be a time in your life when you meet an individual with MS, a family member gets diagnosed, or even you yourself get the news from your doctor saying you have the disease. The more aware we are, the stronger we are.

Are there treatments? Yes, but they only help lessen the symptoms. The medication can postpone relapses, but ultimately, MS patients will die from the disease.

If the disease is terminal, what is there for you to do? Support MS fundraisers, donate to the research, become aware. With these small steps, you could ultimately make a difference in finding a cure. Let’s change MS from terminal, to curable.