Guest Blog by Amanda’s Husband Tim
MS Warriors: Call to Action MS Warriors and healthy lifestyle advocates can all too easily get discouraged when visiting their neurologists. Fancy and high-gloss MS center brochures boldly promise “all around wellness centers” with a “holistic” approach to combat your MS from all possible angles. Fantastic. Right up your ally as a proactive MS warrior, right? Well, like in most other areas of life, reality usually can’t quite keep up with the glossy brochure world. Most Annual Appointments And so, a few minutes into your annual visit, way too many of you brave guys will notice that the astonishing impact and power of an MS optimized nutrition, takes on a merely marginal role; if addressed at all. 90% of the time you spend in appointments seems to center around prescribing an ever growing and insurmountable mountain of prescriptions. There is your actual MS medication to prevent relapses, the medication to counter balance your medications side effects, the medication to counter balance the side effects of the side effects, the muscle relaxants and pain medication, the sleep aides, and so on. And I get it. Medication is important with a serious chronic disease like MS. The latest drugs seem to offer up to 70% success rate in preventing relapses. That is indeed outstandingly great news, and we can all be grateful to our dedicated physicians and researchers for making this possible. But this laser-focusing in on the chances that the prescription drugs offer can sometimes narrow down the view of your medical providers. Narrowing down your view usually means you are losing sight of the big picture. Every entrepreneur will know what I mean here. And so, the impact of a healthy MS diet runs the risk of falling between the cracks or taking up the last 30 seconds of your appointment as you are putting your coat back on. Your Impact on Your Physicians But it doesn’t have to be this way. Your physicians want the best for you and should and will be open to your specific wishes. So you can help them to brush-up on their food-knowledge and get them on-board with your healthy lifestyle that has so much potential for keeping the mountain of medication to a minimum height. Ask them if they are aware of the decades of research of their now deceased colleague Dr. Swank? Or the impressive new and always updated resources of Dr. Jelinek and Dr. Wahls? (There should be no person with MS who is not familiar with Dr. Jelinek’s resources – this man is a true life changer.) If you are lucky to have a truly holistic Neurologist, maybe you can encourage them to launch a healthy diet research trial. I know I am rather optimistic here, but creating awareness can already ignite the wind of change. And I mean, a food trial probably couldn’t hurt in addition to the multitude of drug-focused trials. Let’s be clear, I am no medical expert, neither am I a scientist like Amanda, but I feel nevertheless confident to say that no MS patient has ever died or will ever die because of a healthy MS diet. But, your physicians answer when faced with the same question about MS drugs will have to be different. I am not telling you guys anything new here that MS patients have died and can die from a form of brain infection called PML when on drugs that weaken your immune systems. Physicians rightly stress that those cases are rare, but who of you wants the be that “rare case.” Amanda certainly doesn’t want to be it. Takeaway We all have one common goal and that is to combat MS with all available tools. A special focus on your diet is the adverse risk free part that you can actively influence. And with your help and demand, your physicians will come more and more onboard. MS Warriors: It’s time to encourage and empower your physicians!
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AuthorAmanda Windhof, PhD is an MS lifestyle advocate who wants to ensure a healthy diet is accessible to everyone. Archives
August 2021
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