What is MS?

What is MS?

This may be a hard one to follow... I'm having difficulty trying to explain my thoughts on this one... 

I was thinking about this today. Before I was diagnosed with MS, did I have MS? My friends don't have MS but, then again, neither did I until I lost feeling in my body and had an MRI to show that I had more than one lesion on my brain which literally translates to "Multiple Sclerosis."

Is the disease "MS" simply characterized as the visible evidence of my Immune System fighting my Nervous System? The name would imply yes, that in order to have MS, you have to show that evidence. What if there were a way to see that someones immune system were tuned to attack the myelin coating of their nerves before it ever caused the scarring and damage associated with MS? Would that person still be diagnosed with the disease or, as the name "Multiple Sclerosis" indicates, do we need to wait until the damage is done before a diagnosis can be placed?

The name of the disease is simply the aftermath of its destruction and has nothing to do with the problem. It would be like, instead of calling a war a war, we called it "Fallen Buildings" because that is what we see after it's run its course.

I'm sure my immune system was messed up long before I had any evidence of demyelination in my brain or spine. Did I have MS then even though I didn't physically have Multiple Sclerosis that a doctor could see? Right now, my systems are not attacking each other. This goes on for months - even years. It was probably in remission before it ever got active. There would be no evidence of it on any diagnostic imaging, but it was there: the defect in my body which gives my immune cells the wrong information.

So what is MS?

Is it someone's body's tendency to attack their own nervous system? Or is it the actual damage that has been caused by this tendency?

I hope this argument is being made by people much smarter than me.

NickWithMS