Speaking of MS – Tue, 12 Mar 2013 PST

MIKE BONNICKSEN photo

Deanna Kirkpatrick shares a laugh with a guest while recording apodcast. (Full-size photo)(All photos)

To treat multiple sclerosis, try acupuncture or herbs. Or place your hope in a new oral drug called BG-12. Or one of the other drugs whose ads appear on your browser when you look up MS on WebMD. Or consider restoring your mobility with nutrition. Or snakevenom.

While theres no cure for multiple sclerosis, theres no shortage of information and advice online about the disease good, bad and ugly, said Deanna Kirkpatrick, 45, an East Wenatchee woman who helps create three podcasts aboutMS.

Shes trying to be the good. She uses the podcasts to pursue answers to her own questions and to those of the thousands of people whove tuned in online since she helped launch Multiple Sclerosis Unplugged just over a year ago. The shows have been heard nearly 30,000 times by people around theworld.

The Internet has changed the way people get information about their health and influenced their medical decisions, especially for people with chronic conditions such asMS.

Among many studies on the subject, a report released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2007 said 86 percent of Internet users with disabilities and chronic conditions had searched for health information online. Of people whod looked online for health information, 75 percent with chronic conditions said information theyd found in their most recent search affected a decision about theirtreatment.

Theres room for wariness, said Dr. Roger Cooke, a neurologist at the Providence Multiple Sclerosis Center in Spokane. Some sites are sponsored by drug companies. And patients should keep in mind that MS affects individuals very differently, as do treatments, hesaid.

Ive seen patients over the years do strange things, Cooke said. Years ago I had a woman (whose) church raised money so she could go get snake venom treatments for MS. Well, it made her very sick, and it didnt help herMS.

Dr. Ben Thrower answered questions about treatments in an Unplugged show that aired in October. Now medical director of the MS Institute at Shepherd Center, a hospital in Atlanta that specializes in spinal cord and brain injuries, Thrower previously served as medical director of Spokanes Holy Family Multiple Sclerosis Institute, now the Providencecenter.

Originally posted here:
Speaking of MS - Tue, 12 Mar 2013 PST