We all know some of the obvious benefits of exercise - lowering blood pressure, cardiovascular health, losing weight, and improving your mood - but now studies are showing that exercise can do even more. It’s been recently found that exercise can slow down the progression of multiple sclerosis.
The degenerative disease damages the brain and spinal cord, causing effects including: loss of muscle control, vision, balance, sensations, and cognitive abilities.
It’s unknown what causes MS, but genetics is one common factor. MS is an autoimmune disease, which means that the nerves of the brain and spinal cord are damaged by a person’s own immune system.
The two most common forms of the disease, according to WebMD, are:
- Relapsing-remitting MS: characterized by unpredictable acute attacks, called ‘exacerbations,’ with worsening symptoms, followed by full, partial, or no recovery of some function. These attacks can evolve over several days to weeks. Recovery from an attack can take weeks and sometimes months. In most people, this pattern usually occurs early in the course of MS.
- Primary-progressive MS: characterized by a gradual but steady progression of disability, without any obvious relapses and remissions. This form of disease occurs in just 15% of all people with MS, but it is the most common type of MS in people who develop the disease after the age of 40.
To understand exactly how exercise helps slow down the progression of MS, first you have to understand a little bit more about how the disease works.
MS gets its name from the buildup of scar tissue (sclerosis) in the brain and/or spinal cord. The scar tissue forms when the protective and insulating myelin (a fatty substance) covering the nerves is destroyed by a process called demyelination. Without the myelin, electrical signals transmitted throughout the brain and spinal cord are disrupted or halted. The brain then becomes unable to send and to receive messages. It’s this breakdown of communication that causes the symptoms of MS.
Among the most recent studies showing the improvement of MS symptoms through exercise was one conducted through the collaborative efforts of Ohio State University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Massachusetts.
“We found that aerobic fitness had a protective effect in the parts of the brain that are more affected by MS. Physically fit MS patients had fewer lesions compared to those who weren’t as fit, and the lesions they did have tended to be smaller,” said Ruchika Shauyra Prakash, lead author of the study and psychology professor at Ohio State.
“This is significant and can help explain why higher-fit patients did better on tests of brain functioning,” she added. Lesions are a characteristic feature of MS. Lesions are areas of inflammation in the central nervous system, where neurons have been stripped of myelin.
Stock graphic.
The study also found that the fitness of MS patients was also associated with increased volume of gray matter, which are the cell bodies in the brain tissue. Gray matter is linked to brain processing skills.
“For some of the highest fit MS patients, we found that their gray matter volume was nearly equivalent to that of healthy controls. Our hypothesis is that aerobic exercise enhances these nerve growth factors in MS patients, which increases the volume of the gray matter and increases the integrity of the white matter (the fibers that connect the various gray matter areas). As a result, there is an improvement in cognitive function,” said Ms. Prakash.
She said this is a big turnaround because “for a long time, MS patients were told not to exercise because there was fear it could exacerbate their symptoms.” This long held attitude was also evident in a separate review analysis by the University of Illinois, covering 13 studies, encompassing 2369 individuals with MS.
Robert Motl, a researcher with the University of Illinois, said the research indicated that “exercise intervention can have an overriding positive effect on walking ability, including an outcome comparable to drug intervention. While certain drugs can be effective in treating various symptoms, there’s no cure for the disease.
“As it progresses, so does the afflicted person’s overarching fear of not walking. This is about focusing on rehabilitation as opposed to medication. This represents a significant paradigm shift since most past research has been all about finding drugs that stop or slow the disease.”
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