Do most people with MS experience fatigue?
The majority of people with MS, regardless of their degree of disability, report that fatigue is huge symptom. And their fatigue is certainly not simple tiredness. It’s whole-body washout. People describe feeling completely wrung out like a rag. It can be a physical as well as a mental fatigue; people are just incapable of performing at the level that they’re used to. Lassitude is probably the closest word in the English language that comes close to MS fatigue. Is there a way that fatigue is measured in MS? Yes, when we try to objectively measure fatigue in clinical trials, we use several scales. They measure how much fatigue affects people’s activities of daily living, the typical duration of their fatigue, and if it impacts them psychologically, physically, cognitively. I think fatigue probably interferes more with daily living and one’s ability to have a job than physical disability does. A workplace can make accommodations for someone’s physical disability, but it’s very difficult
