Emma Gillespie

Good morning and welcome to The Daily Oz.

I'm Emma Gillespie.

I'm Billie Fitzsimons.

Today we're talking about a disease that nearly 38,000 Australians are living with right now.

It's one that many of us don't really understand and one that, according to a new national survey, most Australians haven't even heard of.

Multiple sclerosis or MS.

There's also a significant gap between our attitudes and what life actually looks like for people living with MS.

So where did this gap come from and why hasn't it caught up with us yet?

We'll talk you through the findings from this research in today's deep dive.

But before we get into it, I did want to let you know that this episode is proudly supported by Novartis with expert input from MS Australia.

As always, TDA has independently written and produced all editorial content for this podcast without commercial influence.

Yeah.

What is MS?

So MS is a disease of the central nervous system.

Basically, it interrupts the signal between your brain and your body.

Now, according to MS Australia, it's most commonly diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40, and 75% of Australians living with MS are women.

So it's quite interesting to be talking about a disease of this nature that really does affect young people and women so significantly.

The most common form of MS is something called relapsing remitting MS or RRMS.

This accounts for the majority of diagnoses, about 85%.

Yes.