Montel Williams on How He Has Learned to Live with MS

“They used to send me into a depression
that would last for days,” Montel tells us about his “MS hugs.”

Montel Williams’
Emotional Journey

Although he retired from TV nine months ago, Montel Williams continues to be an inspiration to millions. His most recent cause? Helping people with chronic pain better manage their afflictions, both physically and emotionally. It’s a topic Montel knows firsthand, having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999 – which eventually forced him give up the phenomenally successful Montel Williams Show after 17 years.

Since then he has written a series of self-help books, his newest titled Living Well Emotionally: Break Through to a Life of Happiness. Here he recounts to host Inez Bracy how he developed the mental tools to prevent MS from thrusting him into depression:

“One of the symptoms of MS . . . is that about 30 to 40 percent of us feel something called an ‘MS hug.’ That’s when the signal from the brain to the muscles in the extremities can be impaired and impeded. Sometimes, if the signal does not get through to you, your diaphragm does not open and close when you try to breathe. That can be one of the most excruciatingly painful things in the world. And . . . when the temperature goes above 85 degrees – it’s like when a computer overheats – so does by brain and I start to shut down. It happened to me in Vegas for an event. The temperature outside was like 107 degrees and I got out of a car and almost thought I was going to die by the time I hit the door. I thought I was having a heart attack."