by Kraig Cuico // Staff Writer
The month of March is MS or multiple sclerosis awareness month. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system).
in MS, the immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers nerve fibers and causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body. Eventually, the disease can cause permanent damage or deterioration of the nerves.
A symptom that follows is numbness or weakness in one or more limbs that typically occurs on one side of your body at a time, or the legs and trunk. Other symptoms are slurred speech, fatigue, dizziness, tingling or pain in parts of the body, and problems with sexual, bowel, and bladder function, vision problems including partial or complete loss of vision usually on one eye but painful when eye movement occurs.
We spoke with the Carson High School Nurse Mrs Hishinuma, she stated that, “The disease has different trigger points and different places that it will affect the body, so it will manifest itself with different types of symptoms.”
Are there any treatments to cure the disease? Yes, which include medications like chemotherapy, anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressive drugs, and steroids. Physical therapy and exercise help as well.
Mrs. Hishinuma stated that, “They have brand new drugs out that are being very successful in treating multiple sclerosis and right now they have these biologics that are brand new that they are getting really good success with treating it. There’s different kinds, like relapsing, which have different terms for different kinds of it.”