Owen, it's MD, not MS ;-)

Hi Owen!

You probably just made a typo, but a lot of people mistake MD for MS. You know this, but for the sake of others who might not know the difference:

MS stands for multiple sclerosis. It IS a progressive (meaning it gets progressively worse) and very serious neuromuscular disease, but it is an immune function disorder which causes the nerves to not be able to send signals to the muscles. If I thought "walk," my nerves might not send the right or enough signals to my leg muscles, and I might fall or do something else to make walking difficult. There are a lot of other problems associated with MS, and most people have heard of the good days and bad days, the cautions against getting too hot, etc. I apologize for making this very, very simplified. There are lots of different treatments, both pharma and natural, for MS, but there seems to be no one thing that helps with every case. People who have cured themselves of MS have done it with all sorts of things.

MD, on the other hand, stands for muscular dystrophy. There are nine different kinds of MD, and each one is very different from the other. What they all have in common is muscle degeneration, at different rates of muscle loss, and different places in the body that the dystrophy shows up (proximal or distal, cardiac, pulmonary, etc). MD is a genetic disease, usually (except in the one I have) passed down through family lines. I don't think the nerves are affected in any of the dystrophies, and I don't think any of them are immune system disorders. The only thing really being done for MD right now are steroids, and the people using them have to put up with a lot of other problems related to steroid use.

ALS, Lou Gerrhig's Disease, is more closely related to MS than MD, but it is one of the diseases covered by the MDA. So is MS to a lesser extent, plus a total of 43 different neurological diseases. Even poliomyelitis is under Jerry Lewis' umbrella.

People confuse the two diseases all the time. :-) I hope this helps to explain the difference between them.

Blessings,
-Donna