Past Episodes

Sometimes, you can just look at someone and know how they're feeling. Our ability to "read people" is called social cognition. And we're learning that people living with MS can lose their social cognition skills, making every face-to-face interaction more difficult. My guest is Dr. Helen Genova, the Assistant Director of the Kessler Foundation's Center for Neuropsychology and Neuroscience Research, the Director of the Social Cognition and Neuroscience Laboratory at the Kessler Foundation, and an...

Being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis means learning to live with a whole new set of challenges. Rising to meet those challenges and learning how to thrive in spite of those challenges is called resilience. But resilience isn't something that you're necessarily born with. Just like a muscle, resilience is something that you can choose to develop. My guest, Dr. Brandon Beaber, specializes in treating people living with MS and he's the author of Resilience in the Face of Multiple Sclerosis, a bo...

Welcome to a special episode of RealTalk MS coming to you from Day Three of ECTRIMS 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden. This final day at ECTRIMS has become my favorite day of the conference because it's the day that I get to sit down with Dr. Bruce Bebo, the Executive Vice President of Research at the National MS Society, and get his perspective on the highlights of the entire conference. We're talking about new Phase 3 clinical trial outcomes, research that shows that lifestyle choices can impact the ...

Welcome to a special episode of RealTalk MS coming to you from Day Two of ECTRIMS 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden. ECTRIMS is an acronym that stands for the European Conference for Treatment & Research in Multiple Sclerosis, and this annual scientific congress is the largest MS research conference in the world. There are over 9,000 attendees here from more than 100 different countries to share new information, hear research updates, and get face to face with the leading MS researchers in the world. W...

Welcome to a special episode of RealTalk MS coming to you from ECTRIMS 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden. ECTRIMS is an acronym that stands for the European Conference for Treatment & Research in Multiple Sclerosis, and this annual scientific congress is the largest MS research conference in the world. There are over 9,000 attendees here from more than 100 different countries to share new information, hear research updates, and get face to face with the leading MS researchers in the world. We're talkin...

This week, we're talking about palliative care for MS. It's a topic that a lot of people living with MS still don't know enough about, but palliative care can offer real benefits in attaining the best overall quality of life. Joining me in discussing palliative care is my guest, Cherie Binns. Cherie was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS in 1994. She's been a Registered Nurse for 45 years, and Cherie is also an Internationally Certified MS Nurse. Cherie serves as the co-chair of the iConquer...

Five years ago, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd decided to hold a barbecue event in his restaurant's parking lot, to raise money for the National MS Society. Today, the Southern Smoke Festival has grown into the largest 3rd party MS Society fundraising event in the United States, and with the 5th Annual Southern Smoke Festival just a few weeks away, we're talking with Chris about how this event got its start, and how it's grown to be one of the most noteworthy culinary events in th...

Fatigue isn't only a common symptom of MS; it's also one of the most disruptive symptoms of MS. It's hard to be out living life when you're trying to overcome that feeling of just not having any gas left in the tank. My guest is Dr. Ekaterina Dobryakova, a research scientist at the Kessler Foundation's Center for Traumatic Brain Injury Research, where she conducts research in cognitive dysfunction caused by traumatic brain injury and multiple sclerosis. Dr. Dobryakova's research has shown that t...

My guest is Kyra Millich, who, until October of 2013, was a consumer protection litigator in San Francisco, recently married, and already thinking about planning a family. And that's when she received her MS diagnosis. I don't know if Kyra would say that her diagnosis changed her life, or clarified it, but I found Kyra's MS journey to be interesting, inspirational, and instructional. And I think you will too. We're also talking about a breakthrough study in which a research team was able to rev...

My guest is Professor Helen Tremlett, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Neuroepidemiology and Multiple Sclerosis at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. Professor Tremlett has been involved in more than 200 published research studies, and we're going to talk about a few of them -- including the research that she's done on the correlation between MS disability progression and socioeconomic status. We're also talking about a study that indicates starting disease-modifyin...