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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