MS is not the only inflammatory disease that has been shown to be exacerbated by stress. Stress is not just a psychological phenomenon, it can be measured biologically.
I was one of the people who always said I thrived on stress. When stressed I also used to remain very calm and believed that how I reacted to stress could influence things - I was wrong. In hindsight growing up around trauma had led me to become addicted to stress. Without realising it I always had a level of it in my life so my body thought that was what normal felt like and I chased further stress in a stressful job because I'd become addicted. Each time I needed to go further just to feel the effects of stress. I believe Gabor Mate has wrote a lot about this. Anyhow for me, resolving stress meant going back as far as childhood and dealing with things. I had a lot of Chronic pain too and I found Curable amazing. In fact I'd recommend Curable to anyone with MS. My local pain clinic also runs loads of pain courses that I actually found equally as effective in dealing with my MS and would love to see more MS clinics offer the same. It was only on developing MS and chronic pain I could tell when my body was stressed as symptoms and pain would flare despite me feeling calm. Which made me realise we can think we're coping and the body can have another idea altogether. Anyhow managing my stress and going for phychotherapy has changed my life. Health is best it's been since I was diagnosed. I highly recommend Breathwork too - found this amazing in dealing with stuck emotions. Body has a strange and amazing way of coping with life, and chronic stress may not actually feel like stress for many people because it's become normal to them despite the damage it does under the surface.
As I came out of a sedative I was informed 'it's cancer', that was over 2 weeks ago and I haven't heard from anyone, I don't know type/stage/treatment/surgery/prognosis, nothing at all. I am concentrating on one day at a time and trying to keep calm in the unknowing but I think that in itself causes some anxiety. I can feel some ms symptoms flaring but that usually happens during stressful times especially since I am the one my family look to for support when things go wrong. I have to be self sufficient with my problems and I use strategies that go back to childhood traumas, and new ones learned over the years such as mindfulness, meditation, aromatherapy. I have been listening to audio books while carrying out boring tasks so my mind doesn't wander into the loop of no return. I get on with it because I have to. I find it helpful to remember that there are people going through worse, I can't imagine how traumatising it must be to have your entire family in immediate danger and your home and way of living destroyed in the way the Ukrainians are enduring, and many of those families with members fighting in the armed forces too. I am stressed but so grateful that I live in the UK, I hope their nightmare ends very soon.
Fingers crossed for your prognosis Julie and sending you a big hug and strength. You are so right, feeling grateful, pragmatism and finding perspective is such a powerful tool. ❤️
I completely agree with Rosie. I was that person until I burned out and a Psychologist recommended Dr. Gabor Mate's book 'When the Body Says No - The Hidden Cost of Stress'. I have suffered a lot of narcissistic abuse during my life that primed me to think that was normal and ended up affecting all parts of my life. Feeling stressed/put upon was my norm and took a big toll on my health - including an MS diagnosis. It is a really interesting read as Dr. Mate refers to his time working in Palliative Care when he started noticing consistencies between chronic stress and disease. His patients had experienced trauma during childhood - usually due to neglect or abuse from parents, which could be emotional or psychological as well as the other types of childhood abuse. This had left them unable to lead mentally health lives and eventually their physical health brokedown or they acquired disease.
Always had problems managing stress, like my father, we both as a result also had problems with IBS and nearly had an ulcer by the age of 18 when studying to pass my baccalauréat in France. But I have found the thing that really helps me in London. Yin yoga with a bit of meditation :) bliss and really really works for me.
I have 2 comments to add that might be relevant. As background I am aged 67 and have advanced ME but do not suffer from any sort of a relapse, the MS just makes my health worse but it is slow degradation. I think MS started in 1972, diagnosed with RRMS in 1995, SPMS in 2000 and medically retired in 2012.
1. Excessive noise makes me stressed, I become short tempered, tired and a bit ideational. Is the stress caused by age or MS?
2 A UTI makes my MS worse and I also get stressed, but not too sure if the UTI makes my MS get so I get stressed or vice versa worse.
Personally I think more research needs to be done into the effects of a UTI upon a person with an LTC. The effects do seem to vary from person to person and in me from UTI to UTI
Excessive noise also drives me nuts, I’ve always been sensitive to volume and chaotic/competing noise, things like improv jazz make me feel absolutely furious (!!!), what I realise now is that I likely have auditory processing differences and now that I have cognitive differences from MS It makes that sensory processing clash with the thought processing even harder!! I wonder if Ms causes sensory processing differences @ Prof G?
Re UTI’s, The adrenals sit just above the kidneys - I wonder if there is any interaction here with stress hormones and kidney function?
I can sympathise very much with the noise sensitivity problem. This is one of the ways in which MS most affects me. Just the noise of someone coming down the stairs heavily is enough to set me on edge. I never had this problem before I was diagnosed with MS. FWIW, there may not be evidence to prove it but I do think stress is bad for MS, though a high efficacy DMT lessens its ill effects. I think it might just be bad for health in general though, worsening existing conditions. Just based on what I've seen over the years.
Excessive or irritating noise stresses me out as well. Like the rattling fan or something in a door pocket in the car rattling.. dumb stuff, but I have always been hypersensitive to noise and i get stressed out like that. I have numerous UTI's and I get stressed out when I have them.. This triggers all sorts of other things. Stress is a horrible thing. It triggers my pain, it often triggers a herpes outbreak around my mouth.. I call them stress blisters. I only see them when I am under stress. IDK what the connection is with the UTI, other than the fact it's so annoying and causes stress but that alone is enough I would think
Thank you Prof G, as always, a very interesting topic, war stress really stays deep in you all your life, especially when you hear the bombing as it is now in Ukraine, you remember the terrible aggression you witnessed as a child.
I know exactly what fear and stress Ukrainians face in these moments because as a child I lived in fear, bombs, sirens and constant attacks for 4 years during the Homeland War in Croatia and I sincerely want this madness in Ukraine to end as soon as possible and Ukraine to be free country. 🇺🇦🇺🇦
Thoughts and prayers with Ukraine, wanting their nightmare to end soon. 🇺🇦❤
Ah, stress- “the can of worms”. What is it and how can I deal with it? I am in favor of a thorough deep understanding of one’s self. Knowing how the car works does help you drive it. That said, being human is all about difficult situations constantly being encountered and overcome. If one of these humans gets MS, like me, is it because of the nasty situations I have been forced to endure? (And I do believe my life is full of them.) What about when my job got terrible one week with unending sleepless nights, and I had a relapse the next week?
One of the ways stress becomes debilitating is by not taking action. While not "acting" after careful consideration sometimes may be the way to go, not taking action also comes about via many other factors. One of those is avoidance. “If I don’t think about it, I won’t get stressed”. Do you let the car’s squeaky wheels, keep squeaking? What if you do need to act? Can you think it through?
I am not here with a plan to stress people, but Putin’s language is very troubling, if you haven’t heard. I think that current situation could make for a study on stress and MS, or any number of things (fill in the blank- Stress & ______). The situation is definitely causing me worry and I hear and read I am not the only one. If there is a relationship and the factors can be measured, because of the large numbers of people this involves, something ought to be seen if investigators are looking and the right variables are being documented.
Do you have a plan if things get worse? I made mine yesterday. It took me a few hours of research. Not the plan I’d prefer at all, but I feel much better today nevertheless- I feel more in control. I know what I'd do. Just some thoughts.
When I was first diagnosed I had a very demanding job which was stressful and I went to a very dark place, responding to emails in the middle of the night having uncontrollable sobbing episodes etc. My GP suggested I saw a psychotherapist in the surgery. While this was private and I was lucky I could just about afford it at the time it was a life saver. After one session she suggested clinical hypnosis. I was very dubious as my understanding of hypnosis was the tv entertainment kind but it really has nothing to do with this and was hugely helpful . I really would recommend this
Hi gavin your right on saying stress does cause relapse.. I remember my foot going numb. And arms..
Its, even harder when one has on going issues, such court hearing, legal responsibility and loss of an partner or kids, financial, abuse etc. Medical services and support not available.
Boilogically it will effect us all more so with other factors causing it.
Yes, every relapse I´ve had was due to stress. Went from Nov. 2016 to Dec. 2021 sans relapse while on Ocrevus. Encountered a horrible neighbor situation and voilá, relapse. With the everyday stresses, affirmations, breathing exercises, guided meditations and time outdoors is quite helpful. That said, when an aggressive belligerent person threatens your sense of safety and your´re waiting for the police to intervene, no amount of meditation is going to keep the stress at bay.
Thank you Prof, this is such an interesting subject and really pertinent at the moment. My question is to ask about physical stress, for example childbirth and the ensuing years of chronic sleep disturbance. I personally had 4 years of interrupted catnapping, without sleeping through the night and waking maybe a dozen times every night. It felt like this took it’s toll and maybe directly or indirectly effected the relapses I experienced at that time. Reading other womens experiences it appears there may be an intensity of MS activity in those same years post birth - is it the hormonal shifts or the several years of endurance required post birth?!! I was also wondering about those that have shift work, or anyone that repeatedly puts their bodies through physical endurance like this.
My personal anxiety coping strategy is to make, paint, print, knit, sculpt, anything that absorbs and provides a calm solitary space where you feel in control.
I have wondered about this! I have always heard that stress can cause relapses or at least general worse-feeling with MS, but have not experienced it. The past few years have included both constant, slow burn, months-long stress as well as pants-on-fire, 3 day duration stress, and it has made me tired or burned out, but I haven't felt like it had much of an effect on my MS. I suspect, at least in my case, there may be some truth to the DMT intervention lessening this phenomenon.
I was one of the people who always said I thrived on stress. When stressed I also used to remain very calm and believed that how I reacted to stress could influence things - I was wrong. In hindsight growing up around trauma had led me to become addicted to stress. Without realising it I always had a level of it in my life so my body thought that was what normal felt like and I chased further stress in a stressful job because I'd become addicted. Each time I needed to go further just to feel the effects of stress. I believe Gabor Mate has wrote a lot about this. Anyhow for me, resolving stress meant going back as far as childhood and dealing with things. I had a lot of Chronic pain too and I found Curable amazing. In fact I'd recommend Curable to anyone with MS. My local pain clinic also runs loads of pain courses that I actually found equally as effective in dealing with my MS and would love to see more MS clinics offer the same. It was only on developing MS and chronic pain I could tell when my body was stressed as symptoms and pain would flare despite me feeling calm. Which made me realise we can think we're coping and the body can have another idea altogether. Anyhow managing my stress and going for phychotherapy has changed my life. Health is best it's been since I was diagnosed. I highly recommend Breathwork too - found this amazing in dealing with stuck emotions. Body has a strange and amazing way of coping with life, and chronic stress may not actually feel like stress for many people because it's become normal to them despite the damage it does under the surface.
As I came out of a sedative I was informed 'it's cancer', that was over 2 weeks ago and I haven't heard from anyone, I don't know type/stage/treatment/surgery/prognosis, nothing at all. I am concentrating on one day at a time and trying to keep calm in the unknowing but I think that in itself causes some anxiety. I can feel some ms symptoms flaring but that usually happens during stressful times especially since I am the one my family look to for support when things go wrong. I have to be self sufficient with my problems and I use strategies that go back to childhood traumas, and new ones learned over the years such as mindfulness, meditation, aromatherapy. I have been listening to audio books while carrying out boring tasks so my mind doesn't wander into the loop of no return. I get on with it because I have to. I find it helpful to remember that there are people going through worse, I can't imagine how traumatising it must be to have your entire family in immediate danger and your home and way of living destroyed in the way the Ukrainians are enduring, and many of those families with members fighting in the armed forces too. I am stressed but so grateful that I live in the UK, I hope their nightmare ends very soon.
Fingers crossed for your prognosis Julie and sending you a big hug and strength. You are so right, feeling grateful, pragmatism and finding perspective is such a powerful tool. ❤️
I completely agree with Rosie. I was that person until I burned out and a Psychologist recommended Dr. Gabor Mate's book 'When the Body Says No - The Hidden Cost of Stress'. I have suffered a lot of narcissistic abuse during my life that primed me to think that was normal and ended up affecting all parts of my life. Feeling stressed/put upon was my norm and took a big toll on my health - including an MS diagnosis. It is a really interesting read as Dr. Mate refers to his time working in Palliative Care when he started noticing consistencies between chronic stress and disease. His patients had experienced trauma during childhood - usually due to neglect or abuse from parents, which could be emotional or psychological as well as the other types of childhood abuse. This had left them unable to lead mentally health lives and eventually their physical health brokedown or they acquired disease.
Always had problems managing stress, like my father, we both as a result also had problems with IBS and nearly had an ulcer by the age of 18 when studying to pass my baccalauréat in France. But I have found the thing that really helps me in London. Yin yoga with a bit of meditation :) bliss and really really works for me.
I have 2 comments to add that might be relevant. As background I am aged 67 and have advanced ME but do not suffer from any sort of a relapse, the MS just makes my health worse but it is slow degradation. I think MS started in 1972, diagnosed with RRMS in 1995, SPMS in 2000 and medically retired in 2012.
1. Excessive noise makes me stressed, I become short tempered, tired and a bit ideational. Is the stress caused by age or MS?
2 A UTI makes my MS worse and I also get stressed, but not too sure if the UTI makes my MS get so I get stressed or vice versa worse.
Personally I think more research needs to be done into the effects of a UTI upon a person with an LTC. The effects do seem to vary from person to person and in me from UTI to UTI
Excessive noise also drives me nuts, I’ve always been sensitive to volume and chaotic/competing noise, things like improv jazz make me feel absolutely furious (!!!), what I realise now is that I likely have auditory processing differences and now that I have cognitive differences from MS It makes that sensory processing clash with the thought processing even harder!! I wonder if Ms causes sensory processing differences @ Prof G?
Re UTI’s, The adrenals sit just above the kidneys - I wonder if there is any interaction here with stress hormones and kidney function?
I can sympathise very much with the noise sensitivity problem. This is one of the ways in which MS most affects me. Just the noise of someone coming down the stairs heavily is enough to set me on edge. I never had this problem before I was diagnosed with MS. FWIW, there may not be evidence to prove it but I do think stress is bad for MS, though a high efficacy DMT lessens its ill effects. I think it might just be bad for health in general though, worsening existing conditions. Just based on what I've seen over the years.
Excessive or irritating noise stresses me out as well. Like the rattling fan or something in a door pocket in the car rattling.. dumb stuff, but I have always been hypersensitive to noise and i get stressed out like that. I have numerous UTI's and I get stressed out when I have them.. This triggers all sorts of other things. Stress is a horrible thing. It triggers my pain, it often triggers a herpes outbreak around my mouth.. I call them stress blisters. I only see them when I am under stress. IDK what the connection is with the UTI, other than the fact it's so annoying and causes stress but that alone is enough I would think
Thank you Prof G, as always, a very interesting topic, war stress really stays deep in you all your life, especially when you hear the bombing as it is now in Ukraine, you remember the terrible aggression you witnessed as a child.
I know exactly what fear and stress Ukrainians face in these moments because as a child I lived in fear, bombs, sirens and constant attacks for 4 years during the Homeland War in Croatia and I sincerely want this madness in Ukraine to end as soon as possible and Ukraine to be free country. 🇺🇦🇺🇦
Thoughts and prayers with Ukraine, wanting their nightmare to end soon. 🇺🇦❤
Ah, stress- “the can of worms”. What is it and how can I deal with it? I am in favor of a thorough deep understanding of one’s self. Knowing how the car works does help you drive it. That said, being human is all about difficult situations constantly being encountered and overcome. If one of these humans gets MS, like me, is it because of the nasty situations I have been forced to endure? (And I do believe my life is full of them.) What about when my job got terrible one week with unending sleepless nights, and I had a relapse the next week?
One of the ways stress becomes debilitating is by not taking action. While not "acting" after careful consideration sometimes may be the way to go, not taking action also comes about via many other factors. One of those is avoidance. “If I don’t think about it, I won’t get stressed”. Do you let the car’s squeaky wheels, keep squeaking? What if you do need to act? Can you think it through?
I am not here with a plan to stress people, but Putin’s language is very troubling, if you haven’t heard. I think that current situation could make for a study on stress and MS, or any number of things (fill in the blank- Stress & ______). The situation is definitely causing me worry and I hear and read I am not the only one. If there is a relationship and the factors can be measured, because of the large numbers of people this involves, something ought to be seen if investigators are looking and the right variables are being documented.
Do you have a plan if things get worse? I made mine yesterday. It took me a few hours of research. Not the plan I’d prefer at all, but I feel much better today nevertheless- I feel more in control. I know what I'd do. Just some thoughts.
When I was first diagnosed I had a very demanding job which was stressful and I went to a very dark place, responding to emails in the middle of the night having uncontrollable sobbing episodes etc. My GP suggested I saw a psychotherapist in the surgery. While this was private and I was lucky I could just about afford it at the time it was a life saver. After one session she suggested clinical hypnosis. I was very dubious as my understanding of hypnosis was the tv entertainment kind but it really has nothing to do with this and was hugely helpful . I really would recommend this
Hi gavin your right on saying stress does cause relapse.. I remember my foot going numb. And arms..
Its, even harder when one has on going issues, such court hearing, legal responsibility and loss of an partner or kids, financial, abuse etc. Medical services and support not available.
Boilogically it will effect us all more so with other factors causing it.
Yes, every relapse I´ve had was due to stress. Went from Nov. 2016 to Dec. 2021 sans relapse while on Ocrevus. Encountered a horrible neighbor situation and voilá, relapse. With the everyday stresses, affirmations, breathing exercises, guided meditations and time outdoors is quite helpful. That said, when an aggressive belligerent person threatens your sense of safety and your´re waiting for the police to intervene, no amount of meditation is going to keep the stress at bay.
Thank you Prof, this is such an interesting subject and really pertinent at the moment. My question is to ask about physical stress, for example childbirth and the ensuing years of chronic sleep disturbance. I personally had 4 years of interrupted catnapping, without sleeping through the night and waking maybe a dozen times every night. It felt like this took it’s toll and maybe directly or indirectly effected the relapses I experienced at that time. Reading other womens experiences it appears there may be an intensity of MS activity in those same years post birth - is it the hormonal shifts or the several years of endurance required post birth?!! I was also wondering about those that have shift work, or anyone that repeatedly puts their bodies through physical endurance like this.
My personal anxiety coping strategy is to make, paint, print, knit, sculpt, anything that absorbs and provides a calm solitary space where you feel in control.
I have wondered about this! I have always heard that stress can cause relapses or at least general worse-feeling with MS, but have not experienced it. The past few years have included both constant, slow burn, months-long stress as well as pants-on-fire, 3 day duration stress, and it has made me tired or burned out, but I haven't felt like it had much of an effect on my MS. I suspect, at least in my case, there may be some truth to the DMT intervention lessening this phenomenon.