Being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis can bring its own emotional trauma to any patient. However, 60 percent of those diagnosed with MS will experience additional emotional distress, and it can be even more severe in women.
The most common emotional changes in multiple sclerosis patients are grief and sadness (in relation to the diagnosis), worry, fear, moodiness, irritability, and anxiety due to being faced with difficult challenges.
While estrogen plays a huge role in multiple sclerosis in women, it also plays a huge role in regulating menstrual cycles along with progesterone. PMS symptoms such as worsening fatigue, irritability, mood shifts, pain, poor concentration, and loss of interest in sex are all also stand-alone symptoms of MS so it can be hard to differentiate between the disease and your impending period.
Getting your period while having MS may mean getting a later or earlier cycle, heavier or lighter flow days, and worsening MS symptoms. One reason for the change is that your body temperature rises slightly with your period and even the lowest temperature increase can flare up MS symptoms.
Also known as “MS fatigue,” there are two common types of fatigue. Primary fatigue is caused by the extra energy used when sending and delivering messages between the brain and spinal cord. There are many areas of damage that those messages must navigate, and so it can cause extreme fatigue.
Secondary MS fatigue can be caused by the day to day effect of living with MS. This is caused by other symptoms of the disease such as depression, sleep interruptions, trying to stay in control of clumsy movements, and/or spasms. Both kinds of fatigue are described as a feeling of being weighted down and every movement becomes clumsy.
This female-specific symptom of MS is also known as extreme vertigo. Vertigo is the false sensation of whirling or spinning of yourself or the world around you. This of course can make you feel lightheaded or off-balance. If symptoms persist for long, vertigo can interfere with daily tasks, increase the risk of falls, and can even become disabling if it goes on long enough.
Vertigo in MS is caused by the lesions or scars/scar tissue that make it difficult for the brain to send signals to the rest of the body. A lesion in or around the brain stem (the area of the brain that controls balance) can also cause vertigo symptoms.
Some good news: Having multiple sclerosis will not affect your chances or ability to get pregnant. Also, during pregnancy, women may experience a relief in MS symptoms, especially in the third trimester due to hormonal changes in the body.
There are some slight complications attributed to MS during pregnancy. Sometimes, a baby can be smaller than it’s supposed to be at the time of birth. There may be trouble during pushing as well since MS can affect your muscles and nerves in that part of the body. This may lead to a greater risk of having a c-section surgery to give birth.
