There is some concern about exercise worsening one’s multiple sclerosis symptoms. The real concern should be, is exercise making your multiple sclerosis worse? The answer is a qualified, no! The qualification to this is that studies usually start with the negative. At this point, the scientific jury is still out on the benefits physical exercise may have on our disease. However, to date, no findings show MS gets worse due to exertion. Now, about those symptoms… We have in the past, spoken about heat and our symptoms. Remember, even in the winter we can overheat our body. It’s important when exercising to keep cool. It is likely that the symptoms of which Melanie comments about is getting worse after the stair stepper because of the increased body heat. I was once in a study about body cooling and weight training. For 30 minutes, my body was cooled in a suit designed by NASA. Then, I was put through a prescribed bit of weight training. My body (I later found out) was cooled, but I was in a group called the “Sham” group. Half of the subjects were cooled by about 5 degrees while my group was only cooled by 2 degrees. Anyway, both groups showed increased ability to do the workouts without added symptoms. The group whose body was cooled further, however, benefited from the training far greater than my group. This can be an issue; as everyone knows that we usually want to “warm-up” before we strain ourselves, not cool down. Cooling vests or neck bands work wonders while exercising. Even a cool, wet cloth hung around the neck helps. Cooling off in a shower or cool tub right after exercise brings the body temp down, thus reducing the post-workout flares. These flares are known in the ‘biz’ as “pseudo-exacerbations.” That doesn’t mean that the symptoms are not real, just that they are not true disease progression. I know from experience that MS and exercise are not easy to reconcile. You may or may not remember last summer when I wrote of my weight issues. I succeeded at achieving a healthy lifestyle and lost about 50 pounds with diet and exercise (then, unfortunately, added a couple back over the holidays). But I’m back on that healthy train again. Dr. Z ended his blog of December 14, 2006 with these words: The only diet that can work over a long time is to eat a little bit less and to exercise a little bit more. A few hundred less calories in and a few hundred extra calories burned off, and you’ve changed your basic metabolic equation. That could be as easy as one less soda and walking a few extra blocks (the effect may not be extreme, but neither were the changes)… We’ll talk more to the issue of diet on Wednesday. But for today, remember this; exercise will not make your multiple sclerosis worse. And given care to help your body with body cooling, it doesn’t even have to make your symptoms unbearably worse. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
