Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis, otherwise known as MS, is a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord. In MS, your immune system attacks the protective sheath that covers your nerves called myelin. The damage to the myelin sheaths causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body. When the nerves are damaged, they can no longer send clear signals to your brain, and if this carries on for prolonged periods of time, it can cause permanent damage and deterioration of the nerves. 

Symptoms:

Symptoms of MS may differ greatly between people and over the course of the disease depending on the location of the affected nerve fibres. Symptoms affecting movement include:

• Numbness or Weakness in one or more limbs which usually occurs on one side of the body at a time.
• Electric shock sensations with certain neck movements.
• Tremor or unsteady gait.

Symptoms affecting vision include:

• Partial or complete loss of vision. This also happens one side at a time. There may also be pain during eye movement.
• Prolonged double vision or blurry vision.

Other symptoms include:

• Slurred speech
• Fatigue
• Dizziness
• Problems with sexual, bowel and bladder function.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for the disease but there are treatments that can help speed recovery from attacks and manage your symptoms.

How can a Biokineticist help?

As a biokineticist, our job is to treat chronic diseases through exercise. Patients with MS often avoid exercise thinking it will make their symptoms worse, but it actually works the complete opposite way around.

Regular, moderate exercise is good for the body and the mind ad patients with MS that exercise regularly will see improvements in their fitness, endurance and overall strength. Exercise can also improve bowel and bladder control, decrease fatigue and improve your mood.

Aerobic exercise is important to maintain overall cardiovascular fitness, so any exercise that raises your heart rate like walking, jogging or swimming is recommended to be done for around 150 minutes per week.

Stretching is good to maintain a full range of motion and decrease symptoms of spasticity (Muscle stiffness or tightness) and this is recommended to be done for at least 10 minutes a day.

Strength training helps maintain and improve muscle strength and should be done at least twice per week. This can be done by using machines, weights or even resistance bands but it is important to exercise every muscle group.

Exercising means we are using our bodies to do specific movements. In order for us to do these movements, our nerves send signals to our brain to let it know what the muscles need to do. Patients with MS that exercise regularly maintain the function of their nerves which will help decrease the disruption caused by the deterioration of the myelin sheaths.