When it comes to MS bladder
control issues, a few
different kinds of problems can result.
Multiple Sclerosis is known for attacking and damaging the nervous
system, especially with damaging the myelin sheath along the spinal
cord and with attacking and causing scarring through out the brain.
The brain is the master controller for the body, which normally sends
instructions through nerve signals through out the body, to tell the
different parts of the body, how to function.
The effects of Multiple Sclerosis on the nervous system often results
in the nerve signals becoming scrambled, blocked or
over reactive in one way or another, so that the nerve signals do not
reach the part of the body that was the original intended destination .
Many different parts of the body can function less or develop many
different kinds of symptoms, depending on where the Multiple Sclerosis
attacks the nervous system in the body.
MS bladder function problems can be one of the many problems
that can result in the body.
MS bladder
control problems can include:
* Bladder Not
Draining
This often results in you having to catheterize to drain the bladder,
which can contribute to more frequent bladder infections.
* Bladder Leaking
Wetting yourself frequently, from just coughing, sneezing laughing or
for no apparent reason at all.
Wetting yourself is often a result of the nerve signals being confused,
which control when the bladder should drain and not drain
* Night time
Incontinence
This is where the bladder relaxes more than it should, when you lie
down to go to sleep at night.
Often the night time incontinence can be more severe than the
incontinence can be during the day time.
When the night time incontinence is more severe, this can result in
waking you up at night so that you feel the need to change your clothes
or it can result in having to wear pads and disposable underwear at
night, as well as use absorbent pads on the bed to keep you from
wetting the bed at night.
* Stress Urgency
This is where the incontinence or episodes of wetting yourself become
worse during times of stress.
* Increased Frequency of
Bladder Infections
Even if you don't need to catheterize, Multiple Sclerosis can set up
your body for having more frequent bladder infections.
Catheterizing just adds to how frequent and how severe the bladder
infections can become.
Because Multiple Sclerosis is known for weakening the immune system in
the majority of the cases of MS, this adds to the frequency and
severity of bladder infections too.
Multiple
Sclerosis Bladder Infections
When the MS bladder infections do occur, often there is pain associated
with the infections, which include painful urination, more frequent
urgency or bladder pain in general.
Multiple Sclerosis typically causes numbness, sensations of pins and
needles or nerve pain in different parts of the body.
When numbness is present, this can create more problems, when a MS
bladder infection is present, since this
prevents the typical pain from occurring, which often accompanies the
majority of
bladder infections, that signals that a bladder infection is present.
This means that a person with Multiple Sclerosis can have a
bladder infection for 1 or 2 months before they find out that
they even have it,
which can allow the bladder infections to become so out of control that
even with taking antibiotics at higher doses and for longer
periods of time, it can be very difficult
to get the bladder infections under control.
Problems often result from the effect of Multiple Sclerosis on
weakening the immune system, making it difficult for our bodies to
fight off infections of all kinds.
More often than not, the bacteria responsible for the majority of MS
bladder infections is e-coli.
Frequent bladder infections often means taking larger amounts of
antibiotics for a more extended period of time.
The problem that results from taking antibiotics for prolonged periods
of time is that the antibiotics kill both the culprit for causing the
bladder infection along with wiping out the "good" flora and fauna,
which help the body to fight off infections in the first place.
If
the use of antibiotics occurs too many times within a shorter period of
time, this often just weakens your immune system even further.
This
makes it so much easier for you to start a vicious
cycle of you ending up with one infection after the other,
which can extend the period of time that you have bladder infections to
1
to 6 months at a time.
Any type of infection can influence
how out of control the rest of our MS
symptoms can
become, although not all infections can aggravate the rest of your
Multiple Sclerosis symptoms.
MS bladder
control problems are a direct result of the MS attacks on the body,
which can
contribute to nerve function problems and increase the number of
bladder infections, which can result.
Bladder infections also tend
to set up the body for more MS relapses, than most
other types of
infections.
MS bladder infections can aggravate
cognitive brain function problems, cause more confusion and scrambling
of words, when talking or writing, increase memory problems or
aggravate many of the other MS symptoms that you often struggle with.
Bladder infections can also contribute
to triggering more MS relapses and exacerbations, although not all
bladder infections can lead to MS relapses.
MS
symptoms that
can be affected by bladder infections can include:
*
Fatigue -- can become
overwhelming.
*
Cognitive problems
-- can become worse - thinking things through logically, or figuring
things out
and solving problems can become almost impossible at times until the
infection
is dealt with.
*
Word
Scramble
-- dyslexia is the term that is often used for the brain confusing or
scrambling words, numbers or concepts, making it more difficult to
talk, write or read.
Stuttering or long pauses when
speaking can also result, since the brain is not interpreting things as
it normally would.
* Memory
-- can become much worse temporarily, until the bladder infection is
gotten rid of.
*
Incontinence -- loss of
bladder control can become so bad that you starting wetting yourself
frequently
without having enough warning that you can even attempt to make it to
the
restroom to empty the bladder.
A severe bladder infection can also
cause you to
have to
empty the bladder much more often.
*
Vision or Eye problems
-- are increased; vision
can become blurry, out of focus, become dimmer and make it much more
difficult
to read or even to see.
*
Bladder Pain -
bladder infections are typically
very painful and the pain can be so much worse for those with MS,
because just about any type of pain can cause the nervous system to
become over
stimulated and add to how intense the nerve pain can become.
*
Bladder
Numbness or
Numbness of
urethral canal or urethral
opening-
if you have
numbness instead of bladder pain, the numbness can actually
increase when a
severe
bladder infection is present, which increases your chances of ending up
with a much more severe bladder infections, the pain often signals that
you have the beginning of a bladder infection.
* Memory
Memory can become much worse
during bladder infections, although sometimes it is worse than
others.
Bladder
infections and/or bladder infections
are frequent problems for many who have been diagnosed
with Multiple Sclerosis.
Boosting the immune system can go a
long way in helping your body to fight off the MS bladder infections
more quickly.
This can be accomplished by
getting more rest, eating better, by adding more green leafy
vegetables, raw carrots, beets and blueberries to the diet.
Several herbs and
other supplements
can help with boosting the immune system and fighting off ms bladder
infections.
Herbs
and other supplements, that an help with combating MS bladder infections, can
include:
* Vitamin
D can help to boost the Multiple
Sclerosis immune system and
help reduce bladder infections and other infections, along with helping
to
reduce the frequency and severity of most infections.
* Uva
Ursi - an herb that helps to naturally fight off the
organism
called E-coli, which is one of the main causes of bladder infections.
* D-Mannose
- this is the active ingredient in cranberry juice that helps to fight
off bladder infections by making the bladder wall slippery to the
bacteria, preventing it from taking hold in the bladder and becoming a
full blown infection.
This can be purchased as a powdered
form in
most vitamin stores.
If taken as soon as the initial
symptoms
of
a bladder infection is noticed, this prevents the infection from taking
hold and becoming a very severe bladder infection.
This
supplement can be taken as a preventative measure too, to avoid bladder
infections more often, if taken on a more regular basis.
D-Mannose powder can be mixed with
water or juice of any
kind. Apple juice or cranberry juices or any other type of juice will
work.
* Vitamin
C - can help to fight off infections by boosting the
immune
system and helping the body's own natural defense mechanisms to fight
off the infection much sooner.
Vitamin C also helps the body
to
fight off most types of infections too, by helping to boost the immune
system.
Vitamin C can be
purchased as a crystalline, powder, capsule or tablet form.
Often is is much easier to
absorb the larger quantities of vitamin C if you take
the ascorbic acid crystalline form and mix it with water or juice to
take it.
If vitamin C tends to bother your
stomach, you can take a buffered form of vitamin C that is often called
Ester-C or some other type of calcium-vitamin C combination.
To determine how much vitamin C your
body needs to help to boost the immune system to fight
off infections, gradually
increase how much you take until you get close to bowel tolerance
(loose
stools, but not diarrhea) and then decrease the amount you are
taking
by a little bit to prevent diarrhea.
Vitamin C absorbs better if taken in
divided doses throughout the day.
I usually take 5,000 to
7,000 mg 2 to 3 times per day to start with, when I have an infection,
but you need to determine what your body can tolerate, when you have an
infection.
The presence of an infection can
increase the amount of
vitamin C you body needs, as well as increase the amount of vitamin C
that your body can tolerate taking each day.
* Horsetail
- another helpful herb for helping the body to fight off bladder
infections.
*
Frequency
generator
- there a few different type of devices fall under this category, with
some differences in functionality and use. The devices that
fall
under this category are FDA approved medical
devices, that
have many other names and different forms of the device that
helps to
reduce how severe the bladder infections can become.
Often some of these devices are called
a "Rife machine" in honor of the doctor, who figured out that the
signature frequencies of each organism could be altered in a way to
actually kill the organism.
This type of device actually works for
helping to kill many types of infections, but at times it doesn't work
for some infections, since you need the appropriate frequencies, which
are more specifically for the organism that is causing the infection.
There
are times, where most of the natural ways do not seem to help with
fighting off MS bladder infections and antibiotics are not needed to
rid the body of the infection, but the antibiotics do work better if
you are not taking them frequently or for longer periods of time.
Because
of Multiple Sclerosis greatly reduces my immunity at times, MS bladder
infections can
be a very big problem for me.
I can have such a big problem
with
bladder infections weakening my immune system that I can get one
infection after the other for 4 to 6 months at a time, before my immune
system bounces back some and then I don't have a bladder infection
again for at least 3 to 6 months.
Boosting
immunity can also be accomplished by taking the herbs Echinacea
and
Astragalus.,
but it is best to find a doctor to work with you, to determine if
taking more herbs is safe and effective for you to take.
The one thing you need to keep in mind
with taking echinacea is it can only be taken for 2 weeks straight
before you
will need to take a 2 week break from taking tech echinacea
so that this can
actually help to keep from overstimulating the immune system too much
all at one.
There
are other alternative and natural ways that can help to either boost
your ms immune system to help fight off infections or
to
actually help to kill the organism that is the culprit for causing the
bladder infection in the first place, but these are the natural ways
that I try to use at first when I have a bladder infection,
before
I resort to the possibility of taking antibiotics again.
Often
taking antibiotics for a prolonged period of time actually weakens
the immune system
, since antibiotics tends to kill the good bacteria, which
help your body to fight infections.
To replenish the good flora and fauna
and help your immune system to function better, you should take
probiotics or acidophilus.
During the time
that
antibiotics are taken (and probably for 2 to 4 weeks after stopping
taking the antibiotics), the probiotics or acidophilus supplements
should be taken to help rebuild and strengthen the immune system again.
