Are Your Daily Habits Helping or Hurting MS Management?
Multiple Sclerosis

How MS-Friendly Is Your Lifestyle?

Eating a nutritious diet, exercising, and engaging in other healthy habits can help improve MS symptoms and may prevent the condition from getting worse. Answer these questions to find out how well your routine is working — and where you may want to make tweaks to boost MS management.
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Updated on October 13, 2025
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If you have relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), you may be wondering if you’re doing everything you can to support yourself with this unpredictable disease. In addition to medication, a healthy diet, exercise, good sleep habits, and stress management can help ease symptoms and may also help delay or reduce the risk of progression to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS).

“Little daily interventions are extremely powerful,” says Leigh Charvet, PhD, a professor of neurology at New York University Grossman School of Medicine and the director of MS research at the Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center in New York City. “Small, doable things can have the biggest payoffs down the line.”

Those small habits can look different from person to person. What’s important is creating a routine you can maintain. “MS is a condition that requires self-management,” says Kevin Alschuler, PhD, rehabilitation psychology medical director at the University of Washington Medical Center — Northwest and codirector of the UW Multiple Sclerosis Rehabilitation & Wellness Research Center in Seattle. So while your healthcare team can help you manage a single problem, such as fatigue, he explains, they want you to develop strategies to support yourself in your day-to-day. “I say to patients, ‘I really like you. I’d be happy to keep meeting with you, but my goal is to not see you. I want to help you so that you don’t need me or you need me less frequently,’” says Dr. Alschuler.

Are your daily habits and routines helping or hurting MS management? Take this quiz to find out just how MS-friendly your lifestyle is and identify areas where you can make changes to help improve MS control.

This assessment is part of a series aimed at helping you check in on MS before your next checkup with your neurologist. Take more assessments.

Question 1

How often do you experience sleep problems, such as insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness?

  • A. Never
  • B. Rarely
  • C. Sometimes
  • D. Frequently
  • E. All the time
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Jessica Baity, MD

Medical Reviewer
Castle Connolly Top Doctor

Jessica Baity, MD, is a board-certified neurologist practicing in southern Louisiana. She cares for a variety of patients in all fields of neurology, including epilepsy, headache, dementia, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, and stroke.

She received a bachelor's degree in international studies and history from the University of Miami and a master's in international relations from American University. She graduated from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, where she also did her internship in internal medicine and her residency in neurology.

Prior to practicing medicine, she worked in international relations and owned a foreign language instruction and translation company. 

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Katherine Lee

Author

Katherine Lee is a writer and editor who specializes in health, science, and parenting content. She has written for Verywell, where she covered school-age parenting, and worked as an editor at Parenting and Working Mother magazines. She has written and edited numerous articles and essays on science, parenting, and children's health and development for What to Expect, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and Newsweek, among others

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