Hi l was recently diagnosed with PPMS. l read about the Swank diet how something like 95% of people on it stopped or slowed down their progression, but that seems hard to believe to me. COuld it really be that successful. The diet involved pity much giving up all red meat, processed foods , dairy and almost no saturated fats and eating mostly fish , fruits , grains and vegetables
The work of Swank is quite old now, but has been built on by professor Jelinek, which is worth checking out. My view is that a diet of fresh food is good for general health, so no harm in trying to see if it helps.
Overcoming MS Diet - Diet For Living Well With Multiple Sclerosis
A healthy diet is certainly gonna help, the problem I’ve always had with these miracle diet things firstly is that MS doesn’t have a predictable course, so I don’t really see how you can say that something is changing the course of the condition, and secondly that ms can still be smouldering along in the background burning up the myelin but not having any physical or measurable impact on you. The way that I explain it to myself is that the body preserves the nerves that are the most necessary for the longest time, so all of the billions of neurons in one’s brain that don’t get used for very much are getting destroyed and it’s only once they’re all gone the body has to do things like sacrificing the non-dominant arm, and the legs etc
Until there’s actual medical trials do the whole double blind thing when it comes to certain types of diet I am dubious. But there’s definitely benefits to eating a healthy diet not least of all in the gut biome. Many foods have anti-inflammatory properties and it makes sense to me to pile them high. When I was first diagnosed 20 odd years ago the two things that people were evangelical about where the wahls protocol and LDN, I assumed the reason you hear less about them now is because there are some pretty good disease modifying treatments that didn’t exist back then.
The MS Society does actually have an article about Swank and Wahls:
1 Like
I thoroughly recommend looking at the OMS website for information on diet , exercise, stress plus lots more ( various webinars, excercise routines, summaries and webinars on the latest research )
1 Like
I think I am more receptive to the recommendations on MS and diet. The Overcoming MS guidance / recommendations are not suggested as a miracle cure but are part of a suite of recommendations on diet, exercise, stress and more. OMS website etc was started by and still involves an Australian Professor of Medicine who has MS himself .
I definitely try to follow OMS guidelines on diet along with the general mantra ‘what’s good for the heart is good for the brain ‘ I.e diet including reducing saturated fats etc and increasing unsaturated, exercise, meditation/mindfullness for stress and generally calming mind and body
1 Like
I first read the OMS site years ago and thought well, I am already doing most of that stuff anyway. My view is anything that improves general health must help how we cope with MS too, so totally agree with your point.
l think alot of the people that say diet cured their MS just had the relapsing type of MS and they just went into remission naturally and it probably had nothing to do with their diet
1 Like