By Ed Lash
A short time ago I read an article about two major medical associations encouraging doctors to prescribe normal medication for a disease, plus the medicine that aids more ills than any other: exercise.
In my book Multiple Sclerosis…A Patient’s View, I said pretty much the same about multiple sclerosis (MS): “I do feel, as most professionals do, that a healthy lifestyle is a significant factor in order to manage any chronic disease, whether a person is on medication or not.” As I also mentioned in my book, a healthy lifestyle includes good nutrition, proper rest, and regular moderate exercise.
Which reminds me of a person with MS I once read about. It seems that he was in a two-year research study on a new MS medication that came out a number of years ago. He was on a placebo and did not know it until the research test was over. He was then given the successful medication for MS and he went back to previous bad habits of little exercise, poor nutrition, and regularly staying up late watching television. Several months later, in spite of being on that MS medication, he had a bad MS exacerbation, which taught him and his friends a good lesson.
Lifestyle does affect health, and making suitable changes can very often improve the odds in managing any disease, especially a disease like MS which has no cure. I know this to be true from personal experience. In 1969 at age 42, I had an opportunity to get a part-time job together with my full-time job. Having both jobs for three months, living on five or six hours of sleep each night, and feeling great, I woke up one morning with the left side of my body completely immobile from the neck down, and the right side without any feeling at all, also from the neck down. I was then diagnosed with MS by a neurosurgeon who gave me some good advice:
“Find out what good nutrition is and follow it; get regular, moderate exercise, but avoid exhaustion; and get regular eight hours sleep.”
I quit my part-time job.
Those suggestions, which I did follow, really helped me a lot. In those days, very few MS doctors recommended exercise. As a matter of fact, my first cousin was diagnosed with MS about 15 years before me.
Her doctor told her, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can give you to help, but I suggest you get plenty of rest.” Her husband took over the house chores, shopping, cooking and other things so that she needed to do next to nothing. She then deteriorated into a wheelchair in about a year, became bed-ridden a few years later, then passed away not too long after that. Her experience in not getting involved with physical activity encouraged me to follow my doctor’s advice to get regular exercise and do the other things he suggested 39 years ago.
Today I’m 80 years old and am still playing golf occasionally. On days when I don’t play golf, I take a daily walk for about 20 minutes or more.
What kind of exercise is good exercise? It really doesn’t matter. According to the experts, it should be something that you can enjoy doing, is not part of your job or daily chores, and can fit into your daily schedule so you will do them on a regular basis. To quote Dale Carnegie, “Even more important than the rules, is the attitude with which you go into it.”
And I don’t mean to imply that good health and fitness comes about through exercise alone. With a chronic disease such as MS, a well-balanced lifestyle is always important for successful management. Overactivity on good days may cause increased fatigue. Exercising good parts of the body is just as important as exercising weak parts. The purpose is to keep the body fit enough to be able to manage the disease.
(EXERCISE AND MS – PART TWO will appear in the next issue of Action and will include other people’s experiences with exercise.)
Note: Self-help is not intended to replace medical treatment. It should be used together with the help of appropriate professionals in a team effort.
Ed Lash is a United Spinal member who lives in Trumbull, Connecticut. He can be contacted by e-mail at edlash.ms.selfhelp@juno.com, or by phone at 203-445-0118.
