We are working on a paid partnership with Celgene, but this blog post is not a paid post.
We literally and figuratively think about our Multiple Sclerosis differently than we have in the past two decades.
This indirectly is related to People magazine highlighting us in its feature story that posted online for World MS Day on May 30.
The article – Multiple Sclerosis Brought This Couple Together — Now They Help Others with the Disease Find ‘Hope’ – offers insights into how we met, the MS challenges we face, what keeps us going and (as the title so accurately describes) our continued efforts to help people stay hopeful in spite of this disease.
What an amazing opportunity to have author Julie Mazziotta interview us and share our story with the millions of People readers!
This experience was made possible through the new endeavor launched by Celgene and the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America (MSAA) that directly affected how we see our collective chronic disease of the central nervous system.
MS MindShift is a national initiative that aims to educate about the critical role the brain plays in the disease and what people living with MS can do to keep their brain as healthy as possible, for as long as possible.
Sure, we knew the brain was involved in this whole MS thing. After all, that is what doctors focus on with our MRIs to determine where and how many lesions we have and how active they are. This also is why we take disease-modifying therapies to slow the progression of MS, most often seen in our spinal cords and brain.
The beauty of MS MindShift is it focuses on actions we all can take to improve the health of our brains, such as getting more sleep, following a healthy diet and increasing your physical activity. According to the website, these can help you, “… maximize neurological reserve, slow down decreases in brain matter (also known as brain volume loss), reduce lesion damage, and relieve MS symptoms.”
This truly just scratches the surface of what this valuable initiative is all about. We are proud to join Celgene and MSAA in this effort, and we encourage you to visit MSMindShift.com to learn more. There also are educational events in various cities planned that feature the MS MindShift “Brain Bulb” hot air balloon as a way to literally elevate the importance of having a “brain first” perspective in MS.