Because Encouragement Heals...
- Jenessa Gayheart
- May 21, 2016
- 4 min read
Thanks to my cousin, I have learned of a condition called Myasthenia Gravis, which affects roughly 20 out of 100,000 people. I had never heard of it before, just like many people I know, and if you could spare only three minutes, I'd like to explain in easy-to-chew pieces what I've learned. I think that simply being aware of this challenge will help you, the reader, become aware of where some people come from in their path through life.
While this article is adequate, it doesn't include the interview I was able to acquire for its publication on The Odyssey Online, as well as revisions that make it a more refined read. The complete article can be found here. Please enjoy it to its fullest.
Myasthenia Gravis (My-as-theen-ee-a Gra-vis) is a chronic disorder of the autoimmune neuromuscular disorder (which means the natural sickness-fighting system of the body having to do with nerves and muscles isn’t working right, and it can last for a long time). It affects the muscles that people are usually able to use only when they decide to: some of these types are muscles on the skeleton, like facial muscles used to smile or make faces.
Whether a man or woman, young or old, Asian, African, or Scandinavian, any person can find themselves facing this physical challenge. Encountering such a change in one’s ability to control muscles, this physical challenge can become a mental and emotional one as well.
The physical explanation of how Myasthenia Gravis challenges the body includes the process of communication between the brain and muscle. Whenever you want to smile at someone, your brain thinks, “I want to make my face muscles smile,” and that message, an impulse, travels through a nerve fiber to the spot where the smile muscles are. The end of that nerve doesn’t touch the muscle fibers, and normally when the impulse gets to the end of the nerve, it releases something called acetylcholine which works like passing a note from the end of the nerve to the muscle fiber. This message isn’t written or spoken, of course, but is a chemical that has been aimed toward the muscle fiber. The muscle has many little message-takers, or receptors, that read the chemical message, and once enough of the receptors read what the impulse wants, the muscle moves to make a smile.
Myasthenia Gravis occurs when too many of those muscle receptors do not get the message, and the muscle that is supposed to move simply can’t. In this case, the reason the muscle receptors didn’t get the message is because the body’s natural defense system, made of antibodies that typically attack viruses and bacteria, for some reason attacks the muscle receptors instead and renders them incapable of reading chemical messages. No one knows why this happens, so it is difficult to cure. However, there are treatments that include medicines which cause the message chemical to hang-out longer between the nerve and muscle so that more receptors are activated. There is a medicine that suppresses the immune system’s unusual treatment of the muscle receptors, and sometimes the thymus gland is removed, which affects the immune system and so its absence would keep antibodies from attacking the muscle receptors.
While there are treatments, and in some cases Myasthenia Gravis can go into remission, the awareness of this challenge can enrich your experience of strength and endurance in people around you. If your face muscles work perfectly, it’s a gift often taken for granted, just like the joy of not being constantly in pain all of the time (Fibromyalgia), or not constantly being tired (Lupus), among so many others. Not being affected personally by MG is a blessing, but you don’t have to have it in order to offer an encouraging energy to the awareness of this condition.
Displaying your awareness of Myasthenia Gravis will offer a boost of perseverance, like applause, to those affected. If you’ve ever done something for which applause was awarded, you know the uplifting feeling of validation and recognition that comes with it, and this is what people need, who are looking for the strength to conquer this challenge. Since, virtually, clapping can’t be heard, instead a Twibbon for June Myasthenia Gravis is being offered with which to decorate your profile picture in social media. It is the applause you can offer toward MG so that those who see it can feel encouraged. You can find the Twibbon here.
Reading this article took only a few minutes, enough for a break from whatever you were overdosed on doing or for stimulation from not doing anything. Thank you for taking the few minutes to read this. It’s always a good idea to put some effort into making your mind a little wider and more knowledgeable. I hope that those who are climbing the challenge of Myasthenia Gravis will feel our applause and find strength from it for those days when it’s difficult to smile.
The information used in this article comes from this site:
Image created by myself, modeled from image on:
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