When I see a frayed wire at home, I grab my electrical tape to fix it. I’ve used it on everything from car door sensors to children’s toys.
If only we could do the same with our damaged myelin.
Imagine your nerve fibres are a web of electrical wires. Myelin is the insulation that keeps signals travelling quickly and efficiently.
In MS, our immune system attacks and damages this vital insulation. This slows down or even blocks the messages from the brain. This leads to familiar symptoms like vision problems, loss of balance, pain, and a staccato rhythm to one’s walk.
The good news is, your brain has its own repair system that’s a lot like my trusty electrical tape. It’s an internal crew of specialised stem cells called oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). When myelin gets inflamed, it sends out an alert. The OPC team swoops in and helps re-insulate damaged nerves.
Even better, we can supercharge them with exercise.
Movement to Supercharge OPCs
Researchers are actively working on ways to enhance this natural repair process, with many studies focused on finding treatments that can supercharge OPCs to promote more effective remyelination.
This is why the concept of exercise as a way to boost OPC activity is so exciting—it’s a way to harness and support our body’s own repair system.
Studies in animals have shown that exercise can increase the number of these myelin-producing cells and improve the rate of myelin repair. The MS Trust (a charity in England and Wales) has more information about why exercise is good for your brain.
Surges in Brain-Protecting Molecules
Exercise increases the levels of vital proteins in your brain, known as neurotrophic factors. One of the most important is Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). There is well-established evidence supporting this.
BDNF is like a super-fertiliser for your brain cells. It supports the survival and growth of neurons and directly encourages the formation of new myelin.
Other neurotrophins like Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and Neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) also increase with exercise and are important for nerve regeneration and myelin repair.
Create an Anti-inflammatory Brain Environment
Remember, MS is an inflammatory disease. Reducing inflammation in our brain and body is the name of the game. That’s why the whole world is talking about anti-inflammation diets. About 50 percent of all deaths worldwide can be attributed to diseases that have a chronic inflammatory component.
Exercise has powerful anti-inflammatory effects, reducing harmful inflammatory chemicals and increasing those that help repair damage. It also helps reduce oxidative stress, which can lead to free radicals causing harm to myelin-producing cells.
The gut microbiome study of identical twins (one with MS and one without) showed that ‘intestinal permeability’ or ‘leaky gut’ is a factor in MS. Exercise strengthens the barrier.
Improving Brain Metabolism and Blood Flow
Your brain needs a lot of energy to repair itself. Exercise improves blood flow to the brain, ensuring a steady supply of oxygen and nutrients essential for making myelin.
Energy—the more use, the more you get.
How should we exercise?
There’s no right or wrong way. It depends on your limits and what you enjoy (or don’t enjoy).
When we hit our 40s and older, we need a combination of aerobic, strength, balance/coordination exercises.
My routine – a combination of walking, weights, and yoga
A couple of years ago, I sold my car. Fortunately, I’m one of those lucky people who can walk almost everywhere — to school, shops, and the train.
My exercise routine is largely just ‘getting around’. I walk the kids to school most days. And I walk to collect them. School is 600 metres away. That means 2.4 kilometres without doing anything else.
I work when they’re at school, about 6 hours. Through radical multitasking, I also manage the laundry, clean up, make food, and housekeeping.
To keep warm, particularly in winter, I do exercises to produce body heat. Reluctant to pull myself from the computer screen, I do whatever is most efficient at that. Pushups, lunge-walking, karate kicks. Sometimes I pull a few weeds from the garden if the sunshine looks inviting.
Sometimes I do yoga. Often I do planking. There’s a nifty 10-minute routine I’ve been doing that uses only your body as the weight.
I also have a stray 5-kilogram dumbbell below the desk.
Before I know it, it’s 2.50 pm and pick-up time. Usually, I stay till the last minute, trying to solve a niggling problem.
As soon as I’ve walked a hundred metres, the solution comes to me. It’s like the answer was staring me in the face. I just needed to move my body to clear the driftwood so I could see it.
Accelerated MS recovery
From my experience recovering from so many MS attacks over the years, I felt that exercise sped up my recovery. In times of stressful and heavy workloads, I’ve used exercise to manage. It’s like my shield.
Bad workplace vibes just bounce right off.
A review was published in 2025 by none other than The Lancet Neurology about research done by Queensland University. It found neuroprotective benefits of exercise and mentioned improved blood flow and reduced inflammation.
Final thoughts
Everything works together. Nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Without all three sides, the triangle will collapse.
Sleep is essential to support our body achieve peak wellness. Sleep cleans toxins from your brain and is the ‘healing space’ where our brains do most repair.
The best things in life are simple. Healthy whole food, plenty of sleep, and moving your body, you’ll be creating the best life for your MS body.
If anything else goes wrong, there’s electrical tape for that. 😄
Question: What exercise do you love doing? What physical activity would you recommend to people with MS or those supporting them?
