Cool Fashion: MS and Heat

It is the dog days of summer.  No one knows this better than the MS crowd. The hotter it gets, the harder it gets on the MS population. There have been a lot of blogs that touched upon this subject lately, so here is my two cents. It’s all scientific. A study conducted by Uhthoff in 1890, showed that temperature change exacerbated vision changes with patients with optic neuritis. If a person with Multiple Sclerosis gets overheated due to weather, exercise or even a fever, then that MS patient can experience a pseudoexacerbation. This means that a person with MS will experience a temporary MS flare up due to an increase in body temperature.

Did you know that one way to combat pseudoexacerbations brought on by Uhthoff’s Sign is to eat an ice cube? It’s true. It will cool you to the core and give you temporary relief from the flare. The National MS Society offers other suggestions of how to manage heat intolerance. When I was working at the neuroscience clinic, I saw patients have all kinds of homemade remedies. One patient cut strategic holes in a windbreaker jacket and inserted those blue ice packs.

Now I’m not vain, but I’m probably not going to sport a homemade cooling vest. So that got me to thinking about a solution that would reduce my internal thermometer without making me a fashion outcast. That’s when I stumbled upon Coolture. When I found this site, I was impressed by the story of the founder. Van DiBernardo was a former shoe designer for DKNY when he was diagnosed with MS. He then dedicated his life to making products for MS patients. Now he’s made a cooling vest that even I could wear without drawing attention to myself.