Why do many people with MS experience bladder control problems?
Many people with MS are going to have trouble with their bladder. We think that that’s because of the involvement of the spinal cord in multiple sclerosis. You very, very, badly need to have the connections between your brain and the bottom end of the spinal cord, to work your bladder. So if the disease is affecting your mobility, affecting the use of your legs, it’s a sign that it is affecting the spinal cord. And whatever that trouble is it is going to interrupt those connections between those two critical sites. So the bottom line really is that you need your spinal cord to be working perfectly to work your bladder perfectly. If it doesn’t work the consequences are that your bladder function is going to be disrupted. Now the bladder really does two things, it only does two things. It stores up urine and then at a well chosen moment you empty your bladder out. And to be able to do that you need to make those connections, and if something goes wrong you can neither store properly, nor
