So what is MS?

I have written about people with MS, what MS stands for, but have not said exactly what the illness is which I aim to do here.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition of the central nervous system. In MS, the coating around the nerve fibres, which is called myelin is damaged, which causes a range of symptoms.

What is Myelin?

Myelin is a fatty material that insulates the nerves, acting much like the covering of an electric wire. It allows a nerve to transmit its impulses rapidly, and is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system. 

In MS, your immune system, which normally helps to fight off infections, mistakes myelin for a foreign body and attacks it. This damages the myelin and strips it off the nerve fibres, either partially or completely, leaving scars known as lesions or plaques. In MS these scars appear at different times and in different areas of the brain and spinal cord. The term multiple sclerosis literally means, many scars.

This damage disrupts messages travelling along nerve fibres -they can slow down, become distorted, 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 increase in disability that can occur over time. 

The below image shows that happens when the myelin is damaged. This is called demyelination