This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

A few months ago, I had done some research on the Paleo Diet and my husband and I started following that diet for a while. I was doing fairly well, but we had a family crisis and we 'fell off the diet wagon', so to speak. It seems as though the Best Bet Diet is very close to the Paleo diet and is just slightly less restrictive in that some select grains can be eaten on the Best Bet Diet. Then, there is the MS Recovery Diet which indicates that it is also very similar to the Paleo Diet.

I am planning on starting one of these diets on Monday, can someone direct me toward a 'Best Bet Diet book'...or, is the MS Recovery Book the exact same diet as the Best Bet Diet? ????

Let me share one (or two) specific observation that is causing me confusion. Based on everything that I have read online about the MS Recovery Diet, eggs and yeast products are off limits. Based on everything that i have read online about the BBD, eggs / yeast are acceptable as long as you do not have an allergy to either.

There also seems to be a lack of information available around acceptable sweeteners. I tend to be all -natural and stick with Honey, Maple Syrup, and possibly Agave, and I stay clear of processed sugars, and ESPECIALLY artificially derived sweeteners.

When I did the Paleo Diet, my salad dressing consisted of olive oil and/or canola oil, combined with citrus juices (usually lemon) and a bit of fresh herbs from the garden. I stayed clear of all vinegars as I was not sure if they were acceptable on any of the diets.

Lastly, the latest findings with the Paleo Diet is that MS patients should stay away from potatoes and tomatoes due to the antigen receptors that are produced once digested. This information was still being investigated and was still in the initial stages.

Again, looking for information relative to the BBD ?

Ok, so the fact that I have had 70+ views on this post with no replies tells me one of two things:

A - I'm asking a stupid question.

OR

B - It is a valid question, but no one has the answer.

Or....
C - I'm just hanging around waiting to see the answer myself!

I know that you can go to the Direct MS website & get the BBDiet in some downloadable form along with some recipes. I have been considering to start the diet myself but, I honestly don't know where to start & have no idea what I'd eat because I obviously eat all the wrong things. It is going to take some very big imagination - a real learning curve for me. I've also just peeked into the Diets forum here & see all the positive feedback from those who follow the BBD.

So, I'll just hang around until you get some helpful comments! LOL

-- Thanks for your response.

I did view the information on Direct MS regarding the BBD, but I found some conflicting information. Example: One section indicated NO eggs, the other indicated eggs if you are not allergic.

My advice: If you're just starting out, then eliminate eggs. I don't think I'm particularly sensitive to them but I eliminate them from my diet because of what I read about on the 'concepts' section of the DIRECT MS site (it can be found in the science section of the site). Check that part out and you might come to a similar conclusion.
I could be wrong!

Ok, so maybe the diet should have a list of things that we CAN eat. Geez.

This reminds me of the elimination diet that I had to do when my daughter was born. I ate turkey sausage (homemade) and fruit in the morning. Salad with grilled chicken or salmon at lunch. Grilled fish and grilled veggies, with plain brown rice at dinner. That was the basic 'diet' with slight variations to keep me from going crazy.

At least on this diet it seems that I could have puffed rice cereal from whole foods (no sweeteners, etc) and plain rice milk. Or, am I mistaken?

Does anyone know if vinegars are acceptable? On the Paleo Diet, I was limited to a homemade lemon dressing which consisted of fresh lemon juice, herbs, and olive oil.

the vinegars that are okay:
distilled white vinegar

balsamic vinegar is made with flavoring from grapes - it does not contain gluten but some people have a sensitivity to sulfites which would be in balsamic vinegar

cider vinegar is made with apple juice

not okay:
malt vinegar - not distilled and therefore not gluten-free

I eat Puffins rice cereal and rice milk for breakfast a lot because it's so easy. It's also a good thing to have around in case you get hungry and are tempted to grab whatever everybody else eats that's lying around your house.

I'm starting to look at the different diets myself. I met with a nutritionist yesterday and talked with her about different diets. I'd caution you to stay clear of any diets that offer to "cure" your disease.

I just ordered a new book from amazon.com yesterday that had 75 recipes for MS patients - it was on clearance for $7. When I get it, I'll go through it and give it a review. I also have the Swank diet on reserve at the library and I am waiting for it to be delivered to my local branch.

One thing I talked about with my nutritionist yesterday is that taste plays a big component in any diet. You can find the "best diet in the world" but if you don't like the taste of it, you're less likely to stick with it.

We also talked about supplements and how they are secondary to having a balanced overall diet. One conclusion that we came to was that I should change the timing of my vitamin D3 supplement. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are "fat soluble" vitamins, so you need to eat them at a time when there is some fat being ingested or already in your system. I've been on 20,000IU a day and my low vitamin D 25,OH level hasn't budged a bit (it actually went down a point, but that could be due to machine calibration). Therefore, I am changing it from taking it in the morning (where I eat a very low fat breakfast) to dinner time, when my meal contains more fat.

On sort of the same idea, it's important to document what you've eaten and how you have felt afterward. My therapist introduced me to a great journal (as it's really important to journal how you feel every day - especially when it comes to applying for any type of disability insurance later on) called "memory minder", or now I think it is called "health minder". It has an outline of a body for you to shade in any areas that are bothering you that day, a place for the day's weather, your diet for that day, and a listing of different body systems so you can write any symptoms you are experiencing. I just ordered two of them from amazon yesterday, too, as they are on sale right now for $14 and change. (Each book is good for three months' of journaling.)

So to sum it up, (and admitting that all of this is relatively new to me and I don't claim to be an expert in any way), I think you need to find what works for you - and it may not be one particular set diet but rather "a little from this one, and some more from that one". By journaling, you'll be able to see if there's a trend of you feeling worse after consuming certain foods, and then you can eliminate your "trigger" foods from your diet.

I hope that helps! Best of luck to you!

) jenn

i did not answer because i don't really buy the diet restriction thing. i'm not saying go out there and super size it, i mean healthy nutritious food but be rational about what you choose and why.

in my case, i got diagnosed *because* of a highly restricted diet so it really went against the grain to use an elimination plan. especially when some of these diets seemed to me to recommend blanket removals of things you 'might' have an allergic response to.

personally i'd rather figure out why i might be sensitive to certain foods and work to correct that, than just let it slide so as not to aggravate a problem state.

for example while zinc deficient i had a huge problem with bread. then i decided to test zinc, found the problem, and corrected it. now i am zinc replete and can even enjoy the occasional pizza.

for another example, early on i read about the klenner protocol for ms. among other things it recommends a high protein diet *with 2 to 3 eggs for breakfast*. as an ex-vegan the idea that i might not quite be up to the mark re protein made perfect sense.

in the long term i'd say more like a couple eggs a week would be okay. but i did that klenner protocol for three days and recovered the use of my hands in the afternoon of day 3. there's more to it than protein, but it worked. i wasn't heavy into testing blood levels of things before and after back then, so i can't say exactly which element of the plan changed what, but just going by my functionality, major improvement.

if you balance your anti-inflammatory food intake with your inflammatory food intake that's another approach i like to use. www.nutritiondata.com has an inflammation index so you can put in the foods you typically consume in a day to see if you're on track. this is going to look complicated but in the end it's actually simple.

here's nutritiondata's list of the highest anti-inflammatory foods:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-0009 ... 000-1.html?
this list defaults to serving size 1 cup so take the hot peppers at the top of the list with a grain of salt and scroll down to things you would actually consider eating by the cup! you can change the serving size once you have a specific food open and see how the anti-inflammatory rating gets affected.

so let's see... in descending order: onions, parsley, chard, kale, spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens, (i'm sensing a theme here...) romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, beet greens, collards, basil, cabbage.. oh and now we're getting into fish.. mackerel... on to endive, dandelion greens, and then we get to carrots, and more types of fish.. salmon...

for comparison from the top of the list to things further down, carrots are considered mildly anti-inflammatory with an IF rating of only 16. raw parsley is strongly anti-inflammatory with an IF rating of 301! hope you like tabbouleh LOL

i just did the same exercise for the other end of the scale.. WOW it took much longer to find things i would consider eating by the 1 cup serving.
http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-0009 ... 000-1.html?

you can see at the top which categories are the worst offenders... cereals grains and pastas, breakfast cereals and baked goods, and sweets

so scrolling the list for things i'd consider eating by the cup... okay here's something, halfway down page 2. low sodium corn flakes. moderately inflammatory at an IF rating of -124... continuing on.. more sweets. maltomeal puffed rice is mildly inflammatory at IF = -72... man this list is FULL of stuff i would never consume by the cup or at all. crazy. so far the message seems to be no processed baked goods.

okay here's something. this rating is for one brown rice cake (not a cup). mildly inflammatory at -35. roasted turkey, moderately inflammatory at
-229 but that's if you eat 1c. or 8 oz at a time. 1 oz. would be mildly inflammatory at -46.

if you just put in normal foods that you might actually consider eating, such as a fried egg, you can see that it's mildly inflammatory, -43. now some multigrain toast, mildly inflammatory, -32. now if you mix that egg up with some spinach and red pepper, you're probably anti-inflammatory overall.

that's how i go about it, but i don't look up everything all the time. i just know dark leafy greens and red peppers balance out eggs and cheese, tabbouleh covereth a multitude of sins, and you have to be careful with fruit. it's like food karma. and speaking of food.. breakfast time!

ciao for now
jimmylegs

_________________
my approach: no meds so far - just balanced whole foods (partial 'paleo', much less outright elimination), science, supplements, & bloodwork
my regimen - www.thisisms.com/ftopict-2489.html
www.whfoods.com, www.nutritiondata.com

jenn in NY maybe ask about getting your zinc level tested. if it's below 18.2 umol/L that's probably a more foundational reason why you are not getting improvements in your D3 level, compared to timing.

timing is valid when you're fine tuning, but it's not likely the root of the problem when 20,000 IU per day isn't making a dent.

i'm not a pro but i can tell you that i absorb d3 twice as effectively now that my zinc deficiency has been corrected. and don't let them tell you 'normal'.

you may also be interested in getting uric acid tested. it's fun to watch your 'ms average' uric acid level normalize once the 'ms average' zinc is fixed.

i agree that good diet is the foundation and supplements can't be a replacement for healthy eating. however, i don't think a good diet can suddenly make up for deficiencies or imbalances accumulated over years of less appropriate eating. that's where supplements come in, in my view. you can do the higher 'therapeutic' doses in the short term, to get you to a 'healthy controls' level, and then you can back off to a lower maintenance level.

that's just my approach.

_________________
my approach: no meds so far - just balanced whole foods (partial 'paleo', much less outright elimination), science, supplements, & bloodwork
my regimen - www.thisisms.com/ftopict-2489.html
www.whfoods.com, www.nutritiondata.com

ps vinegars like cider, distilled, and red wine are mildly anti-inflammatory with an inflammation factor of 1. raw lemon juice is better at 32. bottled is only 15. but still anti-inflammatory at least.

_________________
my approach: no meds so far - just balanced whole foods (partial 'paleo', much less outright elimination), science, supplements, & bloodwork
my regimen - www.thisisms.com/ftopict-2489.html
www.whfoods.com, www.nutritiondata.com

Thank you for your response Jimmylegs.... I am going to research the inflammation diet as well. As for which 'diet' I am going to start with. I see that there are essentially foods that are just BAD on both of the diets. I"m going to start by cutting out that list of foods, and introduce the shared good foods.

I will still reasearching what diet makes more sense. The Best Bet Diet (very Paleo-like) seems to have quiet a bit of science behind it that is specific to MS and the reduction of new lesions, while the inflammation diet seems to be a good overall diet to reduce all inflammation aligned to multiple diseases.

In case you or anyone else is interested, there is a seven part series on YouTube that reviews the science behind the Paleo Diet. It is very interesting if you have the time to view. I will say, that there are certain foods that are specifically tied to the science/rationale outlined in this series. While, other foods, the doctor just seems to say that the paleo cavemen did not eat them so neither should we -- that I don't buy in to as easily as those foods that have the science backing up the rationale.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhkmDHLCUEs

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkrcnzye1oo

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7iN9YyYrhI

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QQLKRzlM4c

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPqjKAnue0

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcV26pyJcA

Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzyreAZzif0

thanks for the links p good luck with your research.

_________________
my approach: no meds so far - just balanced whole foods (partial 'paleo', much less outright elimination), science, supplements, & bloodwork
my regimen - www.thisisms.com/ftopict-2489.html
www.whfoods.com, www.nutritiondata.com