Question: What is Multiple Sclerosis?

Ella Mercer answered on 13 Jun 2018:

Hi Esther! A bit of a long answer, but before I explain what Multiple Sclerosis (I’ll call it MS) is I’ll tell you a little bit about the brain. Inside our brains we have billions of cells called neurons. The neurons are connected to each other and when they talk to each other it lets us do things, like walking or talking, or feel things, like happy or sad, depending on which ones are talking at that time! Imagine our neurons are like a wire … often wires have a plastic coating and this is the same as our brains! Our neurons are wrapped with something called myelin which basically helps the neurons talk to each other better. In MS, our immune system (the part of the body that fights coughs and colds) accidently attacks the myelin surrounding our neurons meaning they can’t talk to eachother properly! If the neurons can’t talk to eachother properly then sometimes it’s difficult to walk properly or feel happy. There isn’t a cure for MS at the moment. My research tries to understand what happens in these brains … when we understand what goes wrong, hopefully we can find a way to fix it!