Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Graham (1987), stated that if we know what exactly is going on in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), it will be easier to understand why the self help program is reliant. The trouble is that what exactly is going on in MS is still not completely understood, so it is described as "baroque in its complexity". The more that is discovered, the more questions are raised. It is not even quite clear how to classify MS. It has always been called a neurological disease, as the symptoms are mostly neurological, so neurologist have made MS their specialty, but perhaps MS is neurological only in its manifestations, as it now seems that MS is also a vascular disease, where vessel walls in the tiny blood vessels of micro-circulations are weakened and branched. MS is also a disease of the immune system, an "auto-immune" disease where various components of the body's defense system behave in a hostile way to the very tissues they should be defending. MS seems also to be a metabolic disorder where there is an inborn inability to handle fat properly. This would also make MS a genetic disorder. Hormones, particularly the so-called "stress" hormones may also be involved somewhere, thus bringing in the field of endocrinology. Surely MS is an example of how inter-related all the bodily systems are and how unproductive, it is to make the disease the province of any one specialty.