Can Stress Cause MS?

Current Research has found a Link between Stress and Multiple Sclerosis

Many people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) feel that stress affects their symptoms. Many also suspect that stress might have caused their MS. Have you ever thought that there might be a link? Yet, most neurologists and even MS associations will continue to tell you the research on stress and MS is inconclusive. But that’s only because the data the medical world is using is outdated by more than a decade (more on this later!).  

So, can MS be brought on by stress?  The answer is yes. Stress has now been linked to MS onset, MS relapse and symptom exacerbation, and MS progression. This page will provide recent research supporting this statement. Here you’ll find the most up to date definition of stress; the latest research on stress and MS; and the positive outcomes of a decade of clinical experience treating the stress-MS connection.

This page’s intent is to leave you with no doubts about how stress causes MS and worsens symptoms. And understanding the link matters. Why? Because it can help us develop and provide targeted therapies that might not only slow down MS progression but also help restore function.

Research on Stress and MS

The last few years have produced breakthrough research linking stress and MS. This has gone hand in hand with advancements in how we understand stress itself. While this is excellent news, the information has not yet become widely known and used. And why is that?

New research usually takes about 17 years to make its way into clinical practice [1]. For many reasons, it can take even longer if the new research relates to mind-body medicine [2]. And some of these more effective mind-body treatments may never be used at all [3]. Thus, even though the research exists, it is not broadly known.

Before the breakthroughs of this past decade, most research studied stress by counting the number or types of high stress events a person experienced, like physical abuse, divorce, or job loss for example. These types of studies gave conflicting results about whether stress was related to MS [4,5]. This caused associations and neurologists to state that "the research on the link between stress and MS is inconclusive."

The problem with this type of research is that it ignores many realities. For one, people can have different responses to the same situation. So, while one person might experience divorce as a highly stressful loss, another might experience it as profound relief. And another problem is that we can have intense responses to situations that finally never happen. Like worrying about losing your job for months, but never losing it, wouldn’t be considered an ‘event’ in these standardized questionnaires because you never lost your job! (But boy were you stressed!)

Fortunately, some of the more recent research on how stress affects MS has become more nuanced. These have measured stress by looking at the emotional responses rather than just types of events. This more sensitive approach to stress research has shown a direct correlation between stress and MS onset and exacerbation [4]

What is Stress? An Updated Definition

In this last decade, science has taken a big step forward in our understanding of stress. This has led to a clearer linkage of how stress causes disease. Let’s take a look at the evolution of our understanding of stress:

When medicine and science first talked about ‘stress,’ we thought that stress was an automatic response to a stressful event[6]. Twenty years later, we realized that it wasn’t the event that caused stress, but rather our interpretation of the event [7]. Another twenty years later we expanded and added even more factors that influence the development of stress [8]. These can include psychological, social, economic, and biological factors to name a few.

The study of stress and disease really began to take off only 15 years ago. That’s when a research group showed how our childhood experiences create lifelong influences on our body’s stress responses [9]. This same group also showed that negative experiences in childhood lead to more stress experiences later in life. What they left out, however, out was the discussion or interpretation of how the negative experiences caused those effects.

In 2024, the authors of this webpage, Eva M. Clark and Michelle Fauver, along with Carolyn Schwartz published a paper proposing a new model of stress and disease [10]. It uses developmental psychology to explain how challenging though often mundane childhood experiences lead to an increased experience of stress.

So how do these less than eventful childhood experiences affect how we stress and ultimately contribute to MS? By the core beliefs about ourselves and the world around us that are formed by these experiences. These core beliefs influence how we interpret events and also how we respond to those events. (For example: acquiring the belief - It's not ok to make mistakes.)

We further explained how these core beliefs become so deeply embedded in our personality that we don’t even see them (That’s just who I am!”)[11]. And while many beliefs that we held in childhood  change as we grow [12], limiting beliefs are unconscious and far more persistent [11,12]. 

These lifelong beliefs influence how we identify, interpret, and cope with stressful events throughout life (“I’ve always avoided conflict.”) [13]. These lifelong beliefs also determine just how much stress certain types of situations cause us. Unfortunately, however, this link of beliefs to level of stress is unconscious. Because of that, they are hard to detect and very difficult to change with mere will power, positive affirmations or talk therapy ¹⁹.

So how are your beliefs created through childhood experienced related to your MS?

Because stress isn’t just psychological! It’s not all in your head. Medical science recognized decades ago that every thought and emotion we experience affects our physical body [14,15]! Psychological stress can dysregulate the body as much if not more than physical stressors. Read on to learn how. 

How does Stress Cause MS?

Most people know that stress can cause things like sweaty palms or tightness in the chest. When stress becomes chronic, the body tries to adapt to these short-term changes by making longer-term adjustments. These adjustments change the function of all the major systems of the body, including the nervous system, immune system, and circulatory system [16]. Chronic stress even changes how DNA gets expressed [17,18].

Chronic stress has long been recognized as a factor in the development of heart disease and high blood pressure. More recently it has been found to contribute to many other diseases as well [19]. The authors of this webpage claim to fame is in relating stress to the development and progression of MS.

Can MS be brought on by stress?

Let’s dig further -Medicine has many ways of measuring stress-related changes in the body. When we combine these measures, we can get a good indication of how hard the body is working to overcome stress. People with MS commonly show very high levels of these stress-related markers [20].

In a nutshell, the physical body gets physical symptoms in response to emotional stress. Stress = MS. Understanding how stress affects the body, and how stress causes the symptoms of MS, can help us identify better and more effective treatments for MS. And that is what we are about at healingms.com.

A New Model of Stress and Its Link to MS

The Developmental Model of Stress we developed was recently published in a medical journal [10]. It shows with rigorous research exactly how stress can lead to disease development and progression. It also shows how that model can be applied to multiple sclerosis specifically.

The paper includes three categories of stress factors that contribute to multiple sclerosis:

• predisposing factors, the limiting beliefs learned in early childhood that lead to ongoing and increasing stress levels
• triggering factors, a combination of a long-term stressor of feeling stuck along with a relationship discord up to six months before disease onset
• reinforcing factors, the ongoing stresses associated with managing a limiting serious disease

And all these categories of stress are addressed with the same original limiting beliefs and coping behaviors causing a feedback loop.

What’s most interesting, is that we did what’s called a narrative qualitative analysis in the paper. It showed how these beliefs and behaviors were common in people with MS and yet, not as common in people diagnosed with other chronic diseases (you can learn about these common traits here).

Managing Stress in Multiple Sclerosis

Current stress management therapies focus mostly on helping those diagnosed with MS manage living with the disease. But as you can see from our new stress-MS model, that leaves a lot of stressors unaddressed. For one, the limiting beliefs and coping strategies created in childhood that determine how much different kinds of situations stress us!

With this updated and more detailed understanding of the relationship of stress and MS, we can finally treat a significant key ‘environmental factor’ of MS. In a nutshell, we can heal MS by addressing the factors detailed above that cause the elevated levels of stress in the body.

A Novel Stress Management Program for MS

Our own pilot study demonstrates that targeting these three factors causing stress in people diagnosed with MS can significantly reduce both physical as well as mental symptoms of MS.

At healingms.com, we share tools using hypnosis, NLP, parts work and more that we used in the pilot. We want to help you not only understand MS, link it to your life experiences, but also create sustainable change. Because while stress might have brought on the symptoms of MS, changing how you stress can create significant improvements as was demonstrated in the study.