My problems with temperatures have a lot to do with what my disease does to me. MS makes my immune system attack the lining around my nerves (think of this lining as insulation). This insulation is called myelin and it gets damaged or destroyed because my immune system thinks it’s an intruder. The same way it would try to fight a virus, it fights our nervous system (ugh, the nerve! How rude! 😋 Sorry, I had to).
My favorite way of looking at this is comparing it to a frayed wire on phone charger. If the wire is frayed, your phone and the charging cord will often need to be in a particular position for your phone to charge. That’s how my body has become with MS. The longer I’ve had MS and the more active it is, the more frayed sections I have. Now, when it starts to get warm, no matter what position my “wires” are in, I begin to have problems. That’s because those damaged wires (my nerves) have trouble conducting those electrical signals when the temperature goes up. If it gets too warm, and my nerves lack that insulation (the myelin), the signals will be even slower than normal or may not make it where they are going at all.
For example, my brain could send a signal to lift my foot, but it doesn’t get there in time (or at all), but the rest of the signals my brain sent out to make me walk do make it, so then I end up falling. That communication between my brain and the rest of my body along those electrical wire-like nerves is what’s messed up.
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