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05 Mar 2021

7 Lifestyle Changes to Help Slow MS Progression

MS is a lifelong disease. Your symptoms may gradually get worse as it progresses and parts of the brain and spinal cord get damaged. But a few simple lifestyle changes can help you stay mobile and have a good quality of life for a long time.

Stick With Your Treatment

There are more than a dozen medicines that doctors recommend to prevent relapses and slow MS. These treatments can help you feel better, but only if you take them.

Treatment Timeline

The goal with MS treatment is to prevent more trouble, says Randall Trudell, MD, an expert on this neurological disease. He says there are many effective medications from pills to infusions to help prevent relapses.

It can be hard to think about taking medications for many years to come. But the sooner you get on the right medicine routine and the longer you stick with it, the better you’ll control your disease.

Some people stop taking their medicine because they don’t think that it helps them or they have side effects. Talk to your doctor if that happens. They may be able to adjust your dose, switch you to a new drug, or help you manage any side effects you do have.

If you’ve stopped treatment because you can’t afford your medicine, check with the MS Society or the company that makes the drug. They may be able to help you cover the cost.

It’s also important to manage any other health problems you have. Heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, and depression can all make your MS progress more quickly. See your primary care doctor or a specialist to get diagnosed and treated.

Exercise

Years ago, doctors warned people with MS to avoid exercise because they thought it could make the disease worse. Today they know that the opposite is true.

Exercise strengthens the muscles that help you walk. It also eases fatigue, boosts mood, and improves quality of life in people with MS. There’s even some evidence that strength training might help slow MS damage in the brain.

An exercise program for MS includes 150 minutes of “aerobics” each week. These are activities that get your heart pumping, like walking or swimming. Work out at your own pace and level. Also stretch for at least 10 minutes each day to release tight muscles.

Use weights or resistance bands twice a week to strengthen your muscles. A physical therapist can show you how to do each exercise correctly to prevent injury.

Eat a Healthy Diet

A balanced diet is important for your health in general, but especially when you have a long-term disease like MS. Research shows that people with MS who eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains have less disability and fewer symptoms like depression and fatigue than those who eat less of these healthy foods.

Limit processed foods and animal fats like red meat and butter. Get your fats from healthier sources such as fish, nuts, avocados, and olive oil.

Vitamin D

People who have higher levels of vitamin D in their blood are at lower risk of getting MS. Research is underway to see if there’s a link between vitamin D levels and curbing your relapses. 

You can get your daily vitamin D from foods like fatty fish and fortified milk. Your body also makes its own stores of this vitamin when your skin is in sunlight. A blood test can show whether you’re low in vitamin D. If so, a supplement will help boost your levels to where they need to be.

Get Restful Sleep

A lack of sleep may not make your MS progress, but it can certainly make you feel worse. It’s hard to fall asleep and stay asleep all night when you’re in pain, you feel depressed, or you have to get up to use the bathroom many times. Steroids and other medicines you take to control MS can also keep you awake.

Ask your doctor whether any of your MS medicines could be affecting your sleep. Treat pain and other symptoms that are getting in the way of a restful night’s sleep. Try to relax and let go of stress before bed with a warm bath, calming music, or a good book.

Don’t Smoke

Yet another reason not to smoke is that it can make your MS get worse, more quickly. Smoking also raises your chances of getting heart and lung diseases, which speed up MS progression.

It’s not easy to quit, especially if you’ve smoked for many years. But when you do kick the habit, you’ll start to see health benefits right away. Make a plan to quit, get support from your doctor and friends, and have medicines and other tools on hand to lessen the urge to smoke when it hits.

Get Vaccinated

Infections like the flu can make your MS relapse and your symptoms flare up. Get your flu vaccine each fall to avoid getting sick. If you take a disease-modifying drug for MS, don’t get the FluMist nasal spray because it’s a live vaccine. Since your immune system — the body’s defense against germs — is weaker from MS, the flu shot, which contains a dead form of the virus, is safer for you.

Ask your doctor whether you’re up to date on all the other vaccines you need to stay healthy.

From: WebMD

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25 Aug 2017
3 Comments

Study Questions Influence of High-Salt Diet on MS

SUMMARY

  • Some recent studies have suggested that high intake of salt in the diet might influence MS disease activity and progression, but other studies have not confirmed that link.
  • In work partly funded by the National MS Society, researchers took advantage of data accumulated from a previous clinical trial involving 465 people with possible early signs of MS (CIS) whose salt levels in urine were measured over the course of 5 years.
  • They found no connection between salt intake and MS activity.
  • The study, “Sodium Intake and Multiple Sclerosis Activity and Progression in BENEFIT,” was published in the July 2017 issue of the Annals of Neurology (2017;82:20-29).
  • Although this study does not support a link between high-salt diets and MS disease activity, research suggests that most Americans eat more salt than is recommended by federal guidelines. Reducing dietary salt is considered by most to be beneficial to the heart and circulatory system.

DETAILS
Background: Several recent studies have suggested that dietary salt (sodium chloride) could potentially influence MS disease activity and progression. For example, one study of 70 people with relapsing-remitting MS, who were followed for two years, found that higher levels of salt measured in urine samples were associated with a higher rate of relapses and larger brain MRI lesions. In addition, mice fed a high-salt diet developed a more aggressive course of EAE, a laboratory model of MS. But two studies in pediatric MS did not find a relationship between self-reported salt intake and MS risk or relapse rates. Resolving this question is important because it offers the possibility that reducing salt intake might improve a person’s overall health and their course of MS.

This Study: In work partly funded by the National MS Society, researchers set out to determine if a high-salt diet is associated with faster conversion from a first neurologic episode (known as clinically isolated syndrome or CIS) to a diagnosis of definite multiple sclerosis, or with MS disease activity. Kathryn C. Fitzgerald, ScD (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), Alberto Ascherio, MD, DrPH (Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health) and colleagues took advantage of data accumulated from a previous clinical trial involving 465 participants who participated in a trial called BENEFIT (Betaferon/Betaseron in Newly Emerging Multiple Sclerosis for Initial Treatment) over 5 years. The trial compared benefits of giving interferon to individuals with CIS early versus later. Each person provided an average of 14 urine samples throughout the five-year follow-up. The researchers estimated average long-term sodium intake from the multiple urine samples, adjusting for age, sex, height, weight, where participants lived, and many other variables.

Results: Researchers found that neither average nor high urine sodium levels were associated with conversion to definite MS. They also weren’t associated with new MRI lesions at any point in the five years, relapse rates, or progression of disability. These results suggest that high sodium intake does not play a major role in influencing MS disease course or activity in people treated with interferon, at least in the early stages of the disease.

While the study has several strengths, including its length, large sample size, and systematic collection of data, it has limitations: BENEFIT participants were treated nearly uniformly with interferon, and the results may not apply to people on other therapies or no therapy. In addition, participants in the BENEFIT trial were primarily Caucasian and resided in Europe and Canada, and it isn’t known if similar results would apply to other populations and ethnicities. The results also don’t answer the question of whether salt intake affects the risk of developing MS in the first place.

The study, “Sodium Intake and Multiple Sclerosis Activity and Progression in BENEFIT,” was published in the July 2017 issue of the Annals of Neurology (2017;82:20-29).

Comment: Although this study does not support a link between high-salt intake and MS disease activity, research suggests that most Americans eat more salt than is recommended by federal guidelines. Even in the absence of direct evidence that MS immune activity is influenced by salt, reducing dietary salt is considered by most to be beneficial to the heart and circulatory system.

Read More: Diet, along with exercise, cognitive health, and other healthy behaviors can make a big difference to how you feel as you deal with MS. Learn more about living well with MS

Posted in multiple sclerosis, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
11 Feb 2017

Australian Team Finds Possible Molecular Pathway for MS Progression

Researchers from Australia report that the amount of molecules in a sequence of chemical reactions called the kynurenine pathway differs between people with MS and healthy controls, and between people with relapsing-remitting and progressive forms of MS. The kynurenine pathway is activated by chronic inflammation, and its activation may be involved in nerve damage and MS progression.  The kynurenine pathway has also been implicated in other neurological and psychiatric disorders. The MS-specific findings, and the potential use of the kynurenine pathway in a diagnostic test, will need to be explored in additional studies.

This work was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and Multiple Sclerosis Research Australia. The researchers used several repositories to complete these experiments – the Accelerated Cure Project for MS, The Human Brain and Spinal Fluid Resource Center (which is sponsored by the National MS Society, among others), and the Tasmanian MS Longitudinal Study.

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