I am ‘involved’ with a fellow MS patient. She, on the advice of a ‘helbalist’, has given up Avonex as she has made significant diet changes avoiding gluten, sugar, caffine and processed food. She is virtually symptom free.
Now my ‘charlatan radar’ was bleeping!!
I think I have more aggressive ms as her. I am on tysabri etc.
Despite that I gave it a punt for 2-3 weeks. Saw the herbalist. Took supplements. Lost weight, felt crap, missed coffee and toast!
Now should have researched this more perhaps but what are peoples thoughts?
Over the 15 odd years that I have had MS I’ve seen many “cures” come and go. Many of them thrust upon me as web links or newspaper cuttings from well meaning friends and relatives.
My BS radar is very high when it comes to these things but who knows - one day maybe it will be as simple as changing what we eat but somehow I doubt it.
Don’t let your ‘herbalist’ distort your BS radar, and I’m sure you’ll be fine! Mind you, you could always switch to a normal healthy, balanced diet and save yourself a few bob by stopping lining his pockets. I almost typed ‘her’ there, which would have been an awful case of gender stereotyping wouldn’t it?
Eating a good diet is important and can in some cases halt relapses for some people, for me however it did not and I am glad to be allowed Betaferon. I still stick to a low fat diet with lots of fruit and veg, take suppliments and don’t drink coffee, tea and very little bread, eat fish and cut out most meat. I am hoping that this is helping but what I do know is since being on Betaferon my relapses are few and very mild.
I had candida overgrowth and it’s gone now. I heard The Food Programme on Radio 4 on fermented vegetables and did some research.
I made a mix of cauliflower and carrot and cabbage which I oversalted, so it took a while to ‘cook’, but now it’s in the fridge and I eat 3 tablespoons per day. All the overgrowth is gone and it’s dead cheap to do. No pills from the US or anywhere else. Just google ‘fermented vegetables’.
I’m just making ‘live’ sauerkraut which will be ready in 3 days and it’s delicious. It tastes like pickles but isn’t vinegary, just zingy on the tongue.
However, there’s no way that I’m going to stop Rebif. My last relapse was in 09, when I was on LDN alone and it was a really bad one. I was lucky in that my new neuro got me back on Rebif again (I’d moved to Spain and had run out of it).
Relapses are really bad news. You are ill for weeks or months and sometimes/often the damage is permanent.
I don’t eat gluten or pulses and my nerve pain gets really bad if I eat bread. I don’t miss it and there’s plenty of substitutes. I have a huge risk of Type 2 diabetes and eat a very low carb diet on doctors orders. The upside is that I get to eat strawberries and cream or greek yoghourt every day. I can eat dairy though - I know many can’t.
I also know that what works for me is just for me. We all deal with MS in our own ways.
@shebrew - Yeah Lorenzos Oil is an excellent film!
The main benefit in that though was the Oleic Acid (oil) rather than the actual foods though wasn’t it? It prevents the ‘wrong’ fats from getting too many and causing the demyelination that causes ALD. I had a look into it too, but the page about the medicine says it apparently isnt effective for other demyelinating diseases… and its more for presymptomatic patients and still doesnt ALWAYS work.
That said, i do believe the right diet can help… especially when you consider most of us try to stock up on one vitamin or another (or a cocktail of…) However as the sole method of treatment, it doesnt strike mepersonally as something wholly effective!
If there was a cure, the drug companies would make it and sell it to the health care of countries for a significant profit.
Since no multi billion dollar drug company is doing that, it’s safe to assume your local herbalist doesn’t have it.
In fact, this may upset some folks here but i don’t believe they will find a cure for us within the next decade, they may find a way to prevent future cases reliably but until medical science figures out a way to grow nerves I doubt a drug will give us back what we have lost no matter how much we hope for it. The two primary issues MS sufferers have are nervous system and brain stem…which happen to be the two least understood parts of the human anatomy.
I know you posted over a year ago but I hope this reply gets to anyone who is interested in good science.
It is probably a good guess that your friend, and fellow MS sufferer, is either not suffering from MS or has/had a very benign course. Seeing a ‘herbalist’ is akin to getting your arteries unclogged by a plumber–it’s a nice try but not even close to treating a neurodegerative disorder well, or correctly. Presuming that the herbs are not dicey ones like foxglove, ephedra, asarum, juniper seeds, horsetail, phen-fen, etc… then they are mildly bioactive at best and not really effective for treating MS itself. Although they may lessen the severity of relapse symptoms (not the dicey herbs though). Eating a better diet with a variety of foods, cutting out processed foods, sugar and things which are hard on the body and metabolism, will help you feel better but as of yet haven’t been proven to change the course of MS or modify the disease, unfortunately. Being skeptical is a good thing… it helps a person move out of his or her comfort zone and ask more pointed questions which need to be asked. And definitely need to be answered in a concise and uncomplicated fashion. It is every person’s right to have a medical issue explained to him or her in a way that he or she fully understands, without reprisal, consternation, sarcasm or arrogant dismissiveness. That behavior is unacceptable and reprehensible. Complimentary medicine has a place, but not at the forefront. Regular medical practice, also called ‘allopathic’ medicine, has been an ongoing evolution of practices through tested methods based on empirical research for over 700 years–since the time of Galen. There really isn’t any ‘ancient wisdom’ that trumps it. There may be some small pockets of knowledge that have been marginalized because they come from outliers who don’t have much contact with the rest of the world. But it mostly amounts to stomach acid stabilizers and plants with high alkaloid content which cause euphoria and hallucinations. Sorry but no cancer cures or enzymes which correct genetic malformations–just doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean we all can’t keep trying, or stop being hopeful. Not at all. We keep plodding ahead, best foot forward and doing the best we can with what we have and giving support when others need it, as well as accepting support when we need it. We, each of us, developed a really unfair disorder that we didn’t ask for. As of right this moment there is no cure and the people who have been supposedly ‘cured’ are either mistaken or trying to sell you something; it’s the oldest story there is about us humans. I personally know how desperate it can get at times and it’s horrid and scary and depressing. I wish I could honestly tell you how to cure this nasty thing, but I can’t. I can tell you how to beat it though… never give up.