Causes of Multiple Sclerosis
Multiple Sclerosis 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 Multiple Sclerosis, the immune system attacks myelin (an important substance surrounding and protecting the nerve fibres of the central nervous system {rain & spinal cord}) is 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 tissue itself causing the disability that can be accumulate over time.
Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis
As the central nervous system links all bodily activities, many different types of symptoms can appear in Multiple Sclerosis. The specific symptoms that appear depend upon which part of your central nervous system is affected and the role that the damaged nerves play in the body.
Visual problems are often associated with Multiple Sclerosis, and for many people it is the first symptom they experience. The kinds of eye problems that can occur include optic neuritis - inflammation of the optic nerve; diplopia - double vision; and nystagmus - involuntary eye movements.
For most people, fatigue means being tired but for people with Multiple Sclerosis it can mean much more.
Pain is a very common symptom of Multiple Sclerosis.
Like other Multiple Sclerosis symptoms, tremor can affect people in different ways.
Not everyone with Multiple Sclerosis will experience problems with memory and thinking, but mild difficulties are common.
Depression and emotional symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis often go undiagnosed.