What do you know about multiple sclerosis with pain management?
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at
7:26 am
I am not taking any medication because I have a reaction to all the pain medication, what do you do for pain? I use to work....it has been two years since I have been diagnosed. I am looking for a better nero. Thanks
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Tagged with: medication • pain medication
Filed under: Pain Management
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I know my partner uses muscle relaxers, like methocarbamol, to deal with muscle spasms. It also helps her if she’s having issues with nerve sensitivity.
Are you taking any medication to manage the illness, like Copaxone or Avonex? They are really expensive, but if you can find a way to get them, they may help. If you don’t have insurance, I think you may be able to get meds for free or at a really reduced rate.
I’m sorry to hear you are struggling. I hope you are able to get your MS under control.
Never get deHydrated, Always drink lots of water, it will make all the difference in the world!
i know that a lot of ms patients smoke a joint every now and then. the grass helps them relax, and it takes away the pain. in some countries you can get it on prescription
What is MS?
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a condition of the central nervous system. It is the most common disabling neurological disease among young adults and affects around 85,000 people in the UK. MS is most often diagnosed in people between the ages of 20 and 40, and women are almost twice as likely to develop it as men.
Once diagnosed, MS stays with you for life, but treatments and specialists can help you to manage many symptoms well. Although its cause is not known and a cure has yet to be identified, research continues into all aspects of the condition.
The central nervous system
To understand what happens in MS, you need to understand how the central nervous system works. Your central nervous system is made up of your brain and spinal cord. Your brain controls bodily activities, such as movement and thought, and your spinal cord is the central message pathway. Messages are sent from your brain to all parts of your body, controlling both conscious and unconscious actions.
Surrounding and protecting the nerve fibres of the central nervous system is an important substance called myelin, which helps messages travel quickly and smoothly between the brain and the rest of the body.
What happens in MS?
MS is an autoimmune condition. This means that your immune system, which normally helps to fight off infections, mistakes your body’s own tissue for a foreign body, such as infectious bacteria, and attacks it. In MS, the immune system attacks myelin. This damages the myelin and strips it off the nerve fibres, either partially or completely, leaving scars known as lesions or plaques. This myelin damage disrupts messages travelling along nerve fibres – they can slow down, become distorted, pass from one nerve fibre to another (short circuiting), or not get through at all.
As well as myelin loss, there can also sometimes be damage to the actual nerve fibres. It is this nerve damage that causes the accumulation of disability that can occur over time.
As the central nervous system links all bodily activities, many different types of symptoms can appear in MS. The specific symptoms that appear depend upon which part of your central nervous system is affected and the job of the damaged nerve.
Making it easier to understand
The simplest way to understand what happens in MS is to think of your nervous system as an electrical circuit, with your brain and spinal cord acting as the power source and the rest of your body being the lights, computers, TVs, etc. Your nerves are like the electrical cables linking all of the appliances together and the myelin is the plastic insulation surrounding these cables. If the insulation gets damaged, the electrical current to appliances can become faulty or temperamental and there may be a short circuit, preventing the appliances from working properly.
Why is it called ‘Multiple Sclerosis’?
The word sclerosis comes from the Greek ‘skleros’ meaning hard. In MS, hard areas called plaques, lesions or scars develop around the nerves. ‘Multiple’ refers to the many different areas of the central nervous system that may have damaged myelin.