I was just wondering, as my MS is flying out of control even with medications flowing through my body, is there any specific diets that are easy to follow and you have found helpful. I really want to get on with my life and not allow this disease to destroy it and I am almost overwhelmed by the many different diets that can be followed. I bumped into the Wahls diet but this seems quite difficult and medical professionals all seem to be very critical of it. What do I do? What do I eat?!
I think all the specific MS diets are pretty tough, and tend to involve things like cutting out gluten/dairy/meat. The thing that puts me off trying one is that lots of people have found they haven’t made any difference, so I doubt whether it’s worth the effort & expense.
What you could do that’s a bit easier is to keep a food diary, and see how each thing affects you. So I’ve found that fatty red meats make me feel rubbish, as does anything with white flour. I’ve stopped drinking alcohol too. And I make sure I eat plenty of veg & fruit, and fish.
We are Omnivores,and as such, unless there has been an evolutionary change recently that means a bit of everything. Bit is the key word,but plenty of fruit and veg for bulk with traces of choc choc sweeties and cake for good behaviour seems reasonable.
I went gluten free and it did make a HUGE difference. I lost over a stone lol, and my burning in my right leg just went. The fatigue got under control better too.
IF I eat stuff with gluten i get sluggish and the pain is worse. Gluten makes inflammatory illnesses worse its a fact lol.
YOUR diet though Dan sounds fine but i just wanted to say i do know others who are gluten and dairy free and it has made a difference.
Google Gluten and people with MS…a lot of people with MS are actually intolerant to gluten without even realising it.
Hi hun, i simply follow a gluten free diet, and it works for me, and others too. If you google Gluten intolerance and MS you will find a lot of people with MS have an intolerance to it. I was tested and I am intolerant to it and also Wheat.
I know if i eat stuff with gluten in it makes my fatigue worse and the burning too.
The Wahl diet, Swank etc are hard work lol.
I agree with the other posters.
Eat sensibly, lots of fresh veggies, fruit, no diet drinks, cut out caffeine as it irritates bladder, eat fish twice a week (salmon or tuna), chicken, rice, more rice, and less stodgy carbs lol.
I bought myself a morphy richard soup maker. OMG it is so easy to put up a soup which is cooked in 21 minutes and tastes lush. I can eat all the veggies i like and its all low fat too. I have maintained my weight constantly at below 11stone 5, and I am 5ft 8inchs…
I even have a magnum icecream every day as my treat lol.
I just think cut out high sugar, and processed food and follow the colour foods (happy veggies i call them lol), and you should be fine.
Hi Goldengirl - you say cut out diet drinks - I have heard this before but can’t remember the issues with artificial sweetners etc - is this specific to MS??
first - to answer redman’s question - aspartame is bad for everyone but i can’t remember why. it was pretty convincing though so i have bought regular coke for the family since.
now to answer zak’s question -
i tried the best bet diet - very restrictive with no dairy, no gluten, no pulses and loads of other no’s.
i found that i was hardly eating anything, my weight plummeted and i was really weak.
so i ditched the diet and now eat a bit of everything.
i eat a lot of vegetarian meals and these i really like.
It doesn’t routinely say everything is false, by the way. If they couldn’t verify it either way, it says so. Also if it’s true but out-of-date, or not globally relevant (e.g. warnings of a frightening new type of crime - which turns out to have happened just ONCE…ten years ago, in America!)
No its not specific to MS, just that diet drinks are still as bad for you as normal fizzy drinks. They lull you into a false sense of security, i know quite a few people addicted to diet drinks lol.
A bit of boring science.
The fake sugar in diet sodas teases your body by pretending to give it real food. But when your body doesn’t get the things it expects to get, it becomes confused on how to respond. While the studies reviewed only looked at diet soft drinks, the researchers suggest that this could apply to other products that contain artificial sweeteners as well.
“You’ve messed up the whole system, so when you consume real sugar, your body doesn’t know if it should try to process it because it’s been tricked by the fake sugar so many times,” this came from a long time research of the effects of diet sodas.
On a physiological level, this means when diet soda drinkers consume real sugar, the body doesn’t release the hormone that regulates blood sugar and blood pressure.
So drinking diet soda is not as healthy as people think…so I would avoid all diet sodas and normal sodas too we dont need all that sugar…anyway. Nothing to do with Aspartame etc…not for me anyway lol.
Sorry to hear that your MS is all over the place at the moment. This could be because of this time of the year as pre Spring seems to see us at our worst. For myself (re diets) I follow the diet advocated by Professor George Jelinek, which is a lot like the Swank diet. You can find out more about it on (link removed by admin- it’s not functioning) Best of luck and I hope that your condition will calm down.