Today I'm going to be talking about hormones. I got information on the MS Society's website that I'm going to read to you, and I'll also tell you some personal information. Hormones may affect your body's chemical messengers. They travel in your bloodstream to tissues or organs. They work slowly over time and affect many different processes, including growth and development, metabolism, how your body gets energy from the foods that you eat, sexual function, reproduction, and mood. Before I really get into it, I would just like to say men, this might be kind of hard for you to listen to. I know that my brother, Anthony, and several other guys that I know have a really hard time listening to girls talk about these things, but I think it can only benefit you if you know the accurate information about why women are the way they are, and how hormones play a role in their lives. So I think this information can be really helpful for you, so stay tuned if you want. Men with MS, it definitely affects you, too, because I'll get into it, but hormones play a big factor in Multiple Sclerosis.Now as an adolescent girl, you get your period, and my friends and I had been dreading it in middle school. We all talked about it and every day we would say "Oh please not today, I don't want to start today, I don't want to get my period, I don't want it, I don't want it!"
Eventually we all got our periods and we thought to ourselves "Why do we
have to go through this? We didn't do anything wrong, why don't boys have
to go through this? Because this is not fair." When you get your period,
you're tired, you're sore in different parts of your body, and you're
really irritated at almost everything. It's out of our control. We have no
control over how these hormones affect how we feel during our periods. Most
importantly, we get incredibly emotional. And you all probably know that.
Getting your period is part of the reproductive process, and it allows you
to have babies, which is the most beautiful thing in the whole world. Once
we realized that, as adolescent girls, it was easier for us to accept
getting our periods every month.
As an 18 year old girl, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I thought
to myself "Why do I have to go through this? What did I do wrong?" I didn't
cause myself to get MS. I have fatigue, my legs get really sore, and I get
incredibly irritated that I have limitations in life. I can't do the things
that normal 25 year old girls can do, and that can be really frustrating
and hurtful at times, but as you all know, I try to stay really positive
about it. But that's just the reality of having a disease. Most
importantly, I get incredibly emotional, and that's not fun. It's really
frustrating. I don't know where my MS came from, I don't know how it
happened, but I do know that hormones play a big role in having Multiple
Sclerosis. It makes things incredibly difficult for anyone to have MS, but
especially for women, it makes it a little bit harder, in my opinion. Being
a woman, I think so. Everyone is different so I'm not downplaying how it
affects men too because trust me, I know, it affects us all differently,
but as a woman you have a double whammy. You're emotional because you have
the disease, but you're also emotional because you get your period, or you
go through menopause, or after menopause you're emotional, so sometimes I
think it's just not fair.
Before, in my video I made about having a lot of emotions, I talked aboutthe lability affect, or the pseudobulbar affect, and I'll repeat it again. It says that it's where you suddenly laugh or you suddenly cry for no apparent reason, or you suddenly burst into tears and it's the result of having Multiple Sclerosis. Again, that is out of our control when you have MS. You don't mean to cry sometimes, it just happens, and it's totally out of your control. On the MS Society's website, it says "There is a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that hormones, including sex hormones, may affect and be affected by the immune system. For example, both estrogen and progesterone, two important female sex hormones, may also act as an immune response suppressor." That's scientific evidence. But the truth is, as a woman with MS, your emotions are affected from the disease itself, and also by your hormones, just because you're a woman. Just so you know, everybody listening, it's totally out of our control. It's out of our control as patients with MS, and it's totally out
of control for women with MS, or women in general, to be emotional. That's what hormones do.This, I think, is the most important thing to talk about. I've talked to
several other women about how our symptoms increase when it comes time to getting our period during the month. I've talked about this before but I keep a daily journal and I write how my symptoms are that day and every month, sure enough when it comes closer to getting my period, every day that gets closer, my symptoms get worse and worse and worse.
For me personally, I get more emotional, which most women do anyway, whether you have MS or not, but my symptoms, like my tremors increase. My eyes, my optic neuritis, they go kind of crazy. It's just obvious that hormones play a huge role in having MS, and they play a huge role in the lives of women.
