Nervous System Diseases

MS is one of several nervous system diseases. Besides multiple sclerosis, check out the following list. How many have you heard of? Or better still, how many can you pronounce?

Alzheimer Disease
Huntington Disease
Parkinsons Disease
Locked-In Syndrome
Wilson Disease
Parinaud Syndrome
Tourette Syndrome
Wallenberg Syndrome
Weber Syndrome
Broca Aphasia
Wernike Aphasia
Pituitary Adenoma
Choroid Plexus Papilloma

This is a pretty daunting list, I'm sure you will agree. If you categorize the things that can go wrong with the nervous system, there would be five categories.

maformation
infection
inflammation
vascular diseases
degenerative
neoplasm

Multiple sclerosis is in the inflammation category of nervous system diseases. Another in this category is Guillain-Barre syndrome which affects the peripheral nervous system. This inflammation causes an immune response (demyelination) to ones own tissues, in this case the nerves.

More often the nerves are damaged as a result of something happening to one of your other organs. This can be the heart, lungs, or the liver. Less often the damage occurs to the nerve itself. This can be the result of an infection.

Infections are one of the foremost thought-to-be causes of multiple sclerosis. And once you have MS, you should avoid infections because of your compromised immune system.

When the white blood cells attack the infection, they also overreact and attack healthy nerves as well. This then causes demyelination, which leads to the symptoms you have with MS.

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