Hi, I read the book by Terry Wahls before Christmas so decided, seeing as it’s New Year, to eat more green veg. Well, this had a couple of knock-on effects. Firstly, they made my bladder sore and I had to keep going for a wee, and secondly the fatigue I had about 2 hours after eating them was like nothing I’ve ever experienced! I have a dodgie bladder anyway - it’s aggregated by certain foods and I can get quite bad cystitis, but I’ve been left feeling quite disillusioned. Everything I read about diet and then try to incorporate always hits the bladder hurdle. I now have to cut out greens for a few days to “reset the system” before I try again. Anyone else have these problems? Heather
Hi Heather,
Thats disappointing - you try to do something to help yourself then it causes another problem. Somone on here - a few months ago - recommended Spirulina. l have been trying it as it seems to be full of lots of ‘goodies’ - and does mean l can cut down on lots of seperate vitamins/mineral that l usually take. Spirulina is a freshwater microscopic algae [lovely] that contains more essential nutrients then almost any food available. lt is an excellent source of protein, containing high concentrations of all eight essentail amino acids.lt also contains significantly more vitamin A then carrots and up to 50 times more iron then spinach.
lt has lnositol/magnesium/zinc/calcium B C D K vits - and is ‘supposed’ to help provide more energy. l still take vitd3/vitb12.
And l still try to keep to the ‘Barry Groves’- eating regime - which l learnt about on here. He recommends the hunter gatherer type of diet. Which is similar to Terry Wahls - but he has been advocating it for many years. And thats lots of fat/protein/ green veg and very little carbs - no bread or cereal. The Spirulina is also supposed to be a ‘fat-burner’. l did not believe this - but have got to say l was wrong as over xmas l have lost 7lb in weight without trying. Not so much of a struggle doing up my jeans now. l do drink a fair amount of water and redbush tea - which helps.
We all feel - in the New Year - encouraged to ‘do something’ to make us look and feel slimmer and more energised. l think the answer is not to do anything too drastic. Gradually add your ‘greens’ [lnbetween finishing off the tin of Roses]
F.
Greetings
This alarming and shouldn’t have happened. Maybe you have some other underluing problem too? I have never come accross anybody having a reaction to greens. I think it might be a chemical reaction and you are probably one of those people who is allergic to any insecticide or whatever used. If I were you I would either see a dietician who would test you for food substance allergies or consider trying again with organic vegetables.
Mark
Sorry, thick question here. We don’t use the term greens at all here in Australia (apart from the political party which is why I opened this thread ) and I know it describes a vegetable but given there are so many green vegies out there could someone enlighten me and explain WHICH vegetable greens is referring to? This has bugged me for years and years now
And it always reminds me of an old joke too…
Mother at the dining room table says to Little Johnny, “Come along and eat your greens up. They will put colour in your cheeks…”
Little Johnny pushes his plate away and says, “But I don’t want green cheeks!”
B
How true this is I don’t know, but someone I know told me that someone with ms shouldn’t eat dark green veg!!! Why I don’t know that either, maybe someone on here knows the answer!
Not a lot of help I know, sorry.
Janet
x
Hi Janet,
I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Dark green veg is very rich in iron, and as such, should be good for almost anyone, I would have thought!
Without wishing to get bogged down in controversy, unless the friend was a disciple of the “iron deposits in the brain” theory of MS? (Not supported by medical science) I suppose if you think MS is caused by iron in the brain, then you might advise people with it to avoid iron-rich foods.
For Belinda: I think “greens” is a generic term, for any green leafy vegetable, but could also specifically refer to “Spring greens”, which I don’t seem to see on sale much these days, or perhaps I just haven’t looked. They are similar to cabbage in flavour and texture, but consist of looser leaves, not forming a dense head. You shred them up, and serve them similar to cabbage.
Tina
Thanks Tina… so it would include everything then, brussell sprouts, broccoli, spinach etc?
I have never heard of dark gren veg being bad for MS either but I do have to make sure I don’t eat too much of the leafy greens such as spinach and salad greens as they are very high in Vit K and that isn’t good if you are on Warfarin. Too much Vit K thickens your blood up so counteracts the effects of the Warfarin so maybe if some one believes the as yet unproven theories about CCSVI and blocked blood flows, they might have hooked onto this and be saying that due the high Vit K content your blood will be thicker and therefore likely to be reduced to the brain in MS.
I’d say boll ocks to that as in a normal person with normally functioning clotting factors decreasing your Vit K content is only going to make you deficient in Vit K and cutting out your green veggies is going to make you deficient in lots of things whilst adding no proven benefit to the MS.
Eat your greens and enjoy the extra colour in your cheeks
B
B,
I’m not sure there’s an exact definition, so I think it could very loosely apply to anything, although I tend to think of it being the leafier kinds, like the aforementioned Spring greens, cabbage, and another one called brussel tops, which are the dark, leafy tops of the brussel plant, in contrast to the little, rose-like sprouts. It’s another one I’m not sure is in fashion much any more, but I know all these, because my mum used to do them. Personally, I do like them, but I suppose all the shredding up makes them a bit of a pain to prepare. Not like cauliflower or broccoli, where you just snap off enough florets.
T.
Thanks for the education Tina…
The closest we would have is spinach obviously and cabbage and then we would really be looking at all the Asian greens such as bok choy, sum choy, wok choy etc but somehow I don’t think that is what was being referred to in the 1950’s books when kids were being exhorted to “eat their greens”!!!
B
Anna, l get my Rainforest Organic Spirulina 300x500mg from amazon - £11-99. p&p free.
Since l have been taking it - l have lost weight - and l think it is because l do not seem to crave eating a lot of fattening foods/treats.
l must google Spirulina again and see if does help with weight loss. lt might be one of these ‘fat burners’.
F.
Thanks Tina I had no idea whether it was true or not but what you have said makes a lot of sense.
Janet
x
Dark green veg is very rich in iron, and as such, should be good for almost anyone, I would have thought!
I think it depends on how much iron you’ve absorbed or lost over the years. It tends to accumulate as you age particularly so when women stop having periods. I think everyone would be well advised to become blood donors and reduce excess iron whenever they are permitted. Too much iron is linked to dementia, cancer, diabetes so isn’t a good thing. You should only use iron supplements if your doctor has tested your iron levels in blood and told you that you need more. Once of the effects of too much iron is that it promotes the growth of pathogenic gut flora. We may be seeing this here in that the extra iron in the greens (together with more vitamin C that increases the absorption of iron, is aggravating the bladder by increasing e coli proliferation.
Without wishing to get bogged down in controversy, unless the friend was a disciple of the “iron deposits in the brain” theory of MS? (Not supported by medical science) I suppose if you think MS is caused by iron in the brain, then you might advise people with it to avoid iron-rich foods
Perhaps it’s not totally unsupported Iron content of the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus is increased in adolescent multiple sclerosis - PubMed
“Iron content of the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus is increased in adolescent multiple sclerosis”
Anyone who repeatedly gets urinary tract infections would be well advised to read this paper
Vitamin D induction of the human antimicrobial Peptide cathelicidin in the urinary bladder.
and increase 25(OH)D so they always have a reserve supply of vitamin D available to fight infection. We only build Vitamin D stores (as distinct from the circulating form Calcidiol) when our 25(OH)D levels are above 100nmol/l and only by 125nmol/l are these stores significant. That is why we should regards 125~150nmol/l as optimal vitamin D levels as only at that level can your body properly respond to inflammation or infections.
People with MS aren’t allowed to donate blood
One glaring piece of misinformation in the very first paragraph tends to make my bull dust radar start blinking and so I read on…
Ted, I am not going to indulge in the time honoured tactics of people pushing their own agenda which you do so well such as obscuring an argument with copious amounts of ‘factual’ information and blinding people with jargon.
But I will simply ask this… Have you heard of homeostasis?
It means
(1)The tendency of an organism or a cell to regulate its internal conditions, usually by a system of feedback controls, so as to stabilize health and functioning, regardless of the outside changingconditions
(2) The ability of the body or a cell to seek and maintain a condition of equilibrium or stability within its internal environment when dealing with external changes
The body simply does not build up massive deposits of iron just through diet to the point of damaging other organs unless there is an underlying condition such as hemochromatosis. This is actually pretty rare and is either a genetic condition and present from birth or sometimes it is caused by alcoholism or thalassemia or certain anemias or by too many blood transfusions. But not from eating too many greens!!!
According to you and the theories you put forward and have done on other occasions here and on other Forums, the human species would have been extinct, oh, I don’t know, about 30,000 years ago. In fact it amazes me that according to your world view we managed to climb down out of the trees in the first place!
The human body is exraordinarily good at regulating the finest checks and balances to maintain health. Obviously things go wrong or we would never get sick but the dietary theories you put forward demonstrate that you have fallen victim to that most dangerous of diseases, hubris, and armed with a little bit of knowledge you are indeed speading dangerous fallacies.
All the jargon that you throw around does not alter the fact that your actual knowledge of human bio-chemistry is very poor and cherry picking links to support a fundamentally flawed paradigm isn’t going to make your original premise any more accurate.
B
Wow Brog! That told him!
When I see posts like this and replies that go into jargon and medi info, I tend to stop reading them, as my little brain cant/wont try to absorb the stuff.
Glad your brain power hasnt been too badly affected with all the things you have suffered from.
Good for you.
luv Pollx
Sorry to hear that you’ve had such a bad time of it lately
My understanding of the term ‘greens’ is that it means dark green broad-leaved vegetables which, in Britain at any rate, would be broadly: spring greens, green cabbage, brussel tops, kale and, slightly on the edge of the pack, spinach, pak choy and green chard. (We all know, I hope, that the myth about spinach’s iron content arose from a scientist’s typo.)
Years and years and years ago, a friend gave me a book called “Diets to help Multiple Sclerosis” by Rita Greer. It raised some interesting points, one of which was that anyone with MS should eat their greens every day. I’d started swanking by then and greens fitted in to my regime nicely to replace chocolate lol.
It was some months later that I noticed that, if I ate greens consecutively for a couple of weeks and then missed a day, my MS symptoms would get better while I was eating the greens and then immediately slip back when I missed a day, and then gradually improve again.
And so began several years of eating steamed greens absolutely every day without fail, even if it meant microwaving some at midnight and eating them in bed. Yes, I did burst into tears in my local supermarket one night when they’d run out of greens and my poor, long-suffering housemate had to drive round looking for a supply.
Fresh spring greens were defo the best, and I’d consume two large leaves daily, ripped & never cut, with the stalks removed cos there’s a chemical in the stalks that can make you sleepy - as anyone who’s given a lettuce stalk to a crying baby will know, zzzzzzzzzz.
OK, OK, totally nuts - but it worked for me and I’d urge anyone to give it a try.
Oh, I found Ted Hutchinson’s reply interesting - which isn’t to say that I took every word as gospel truth… I’ll get my coat!
Lolli xx