WELLBEING FEATURE
WHAT IS
MS?
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease that affects nerves in the brain and spinal cord. MS affects the body in different ways and has many symptoms but people with MS won’t normally experience them all. Some of the most common symptoms include: feeling very tired during the day, bladder problems and problems with balance and coordination – for example when walking. At the moment there is no cure for MS but drugs can help reduce the effects. Around 85 per cent of people have ‘relapsing remitting’ MS where symptoms are mild for a while, or even disappear completely. Sources: NHS and Multiple Sclerosis Society
Some of the most common symptoms include: •
fatigue
•
vision problems
•
numbness and tingling
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muscle spasms, stiffness and weakness
•
mobility problems
•
pain
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problems with thinking, learning and planning
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depression and anxiety
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sexual problems
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bladder problems
•
bowel problems
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speech and swallowing difficulties.
Most people with MS only have a few of these symptoms.
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Christina Applegate as Jen Harding in Dead to Me. © Netflix 2020
Actress Christina Applegate opens up about her battle with the autoimmune disease Multiple Sclerosis and recalls the symptoms she overlooked before diagnosis.
Christina with the cast of Married with Children.
SEEING
THE SI C hristina Applegate became a household name as a teenager, playing Kelly Bundy in the long running sitcom Married with Children. But a lot’s happened since then. In truth she began acting as a child and has worked steadily ever since. Over the years she’s established an enviable career in film and television, including winning a Primetime Emmy for her work on Friends. She starred with Will Farrell in the Hollywood hit Anchorman and has earned both Tony and Golden Globe nominations. More recently you may have seen the 51 year old in the Netflix comedy drama ‘Dead to Me’. It was during the filming of this show, that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) an autoimmune disease which disrupts communication between the brain and the body.
Looking back she says that she missed the early signs of her illness and now wishes she had recognised them. In recent interviews she’s spoken quite candidly about how, over the space of a few years, she became aware of changes in her body.
She’d experienced tingling and numbness in her extremities and this became progressively worse. She’d seen that her tennis game was slipping and then – while shooting a dance sequence for the first season of “Dead to Me’ – she struggled with her balance. And whilst these things did give her cause for concern, she chalked them up to not working hard enough. But that wasn’t the case and in the summer of 2021, on set for the third and final season of “Dead to Me,” she received confirmation that she had MS.
