For this reason it is important to understand stress and to monitor the life events to which one must adapt. Avoiding too much stress at one time will reduce one's overall burden of adaptation. One can make choices to not seek a new job, or to keep one's responsibilities at a lower level, or to avoid making certain changes. Doing so will reduce stress. Yet some stresses are unavoidable because they are required by life's circumstances.
Children grow up and leave, companies close, spouses get sick, parents die.
Ideally one will organize one's overall stress load to make the best use of one's adaptive resources. When successful, such management can only reduce ones vulnerability to the negative effects of stress. But even when high stress is unavoidable, many researchers and clinicians believe one can reduce the impact of stress. One can buffer oneself from stress by staying in the best possible health with a reasonable amount of exercise and good diet, by keeping one's baseline commitments at a reasonable level so there is room for unexpected change, by balancing responsibilities with rewards, and by maintaining a supportive group of family and friends who can be called upon for support. It cannot make one invulnerable to new diseases and it will not completely stop the progression of the particular form of MS one individual may have.