This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Hi there.
I have been recently diagnsed with MS and I'm looking for a good book to help me out with information. Anything that can tell me what to expect and what I should do in both the long and short term.
Scared and confused. Help please. Thanks.
-a

You found the right place for support, questions about any topic re:ms health etc. Thisisms has been the best thing for me...almost like group therapy too.

I have a good book called Healing MS diet,detox,nutrional makeover for total recovery by ann boroch

twodoggarage wrote:Hi there.
I have been recently diagnsed with MS and I'm looking for a good book to help me out with information. Anything that can tell me what to expect and what I should do in both the long and short term.
Scared and confused. Help please. Thanks.
-a

Here are some books I would recommend as reading for someone newly diagnosed.

Books on MS:

• Curing MS by Howard Wiener. This book covers his 30 year long career studying MS from his first experiments with EAE to his position on an FDA approval committee for a new disease modifying drug.
  link to review
  
  
• Taking Control of Multiple Sclerosis by George Jelinek. Dr. Jelinek is a doctor who was diagnosed with MS. This book represents a summary of the results of his research into possible treatments. Note that he tends to emphasize diet modifications but there's no reason that they couldn't be done in combination with a pharmaceutical treatment as well.
  link to author's website

Books on healing the brain:

• The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. This book is a must read for anyone with a neurodegenerative disease such as MS. It discusses neuroplasticity. In effect, this is how the brain can change either adapting to new demands placed on it and creating new neuronal connections, or by adapting to repetition and stasis and pruning off unused connections.
  link to review

Books on the pharmaceutical industry:

While many good things have come out of the pharmaceutical industry, I feel that it's important to view it through the eye of a skeptic. These books will help to illustrate why.

• Selling Sickness by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels.
  link to review
  
  
• Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by Dr. John Abramson.
  link to author's website
  
  
• The truth about the drug companies by Marcia Angell. Dr. Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. In this book she gives an inside look into the pharmaceutical business.
  link to review

Last but not least, you may want to also read...

Multiple Sclerosis: The History of a Disease by T. Jock Murray.
Note though that this book appears to be written for other medical professionals. Even with a Masters in Cell Biology I still needed to frequently consult my medical dictionary. It's an interesting book and I enjoyed reading it in that it provides a nice historical perspective on MS and how doctors attempted to treat it (it made me grateful for what we have available to us today and that doctors are no longer treating MS patients with things like mercury and silver salts for example). I would not recommend it as reading for someone newly diagnosed as it might be a bit much. However, after you've been around a little while and gotten through some of the other books, definitely give this one a read.
link to review

NHE