This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

I've been looking into some of the different MS diets (Swank, Jelinek, Terry Wahls, and others) and I don't know what to do. I have severely restricted my diet the past few weeks and added a lot of supplements, but I don't know if it makes any real difference.

I'm feeling desperate and despondent, and I need all the help I can get.

If you have tried any of these diets, could you please tell me how they worked for you? I would really appreciate knowing about your experience with them. Thank you.

I know it can be hard to decide what to do, so first I would say take your time there is no rush to make up your mind. Also, if you select a diet and it does not seem to be working for you, no big deal you can change it.

I have been on the best bet diet for five years now. Although at first it seems restrictive you are really just getting a lot of things you really should never have been eating out of your diet. I found over the long run it has proven to be a very healthy way to eat.

Just as a warning as such, once I had been on the diet for maybe two months I just felt really bad. I guess it is your body wanting all that bad stuff you use to eat back, but after a little more time I started to feel really good. Remember these diets are for the long run, out really short term fixes.

I'm 6.5 years into my MS journey (still RRMS)... After my second acute attack, that left me with disability in my hands and sensory issues from the neck down, I restricted my diet considerably. In a sense, I unknowingly began following a modified Wahl diet (I limited grains/dairy rather than eliminate them). The combination of this diet and weightlifting/cardio 5 days a week (during my lunch hour) has helped me drop 35 pounds (and gotten my body fat to around 10%).

At my worst during this attack my EDSS was 2.5 - 3.0 (according to my neuro). Currently she says I'm a 0, but I say .5 because I still feel a difference.

I've cut the dairy/grains even more since learning about the Wahl protocol, and upped my veggies considerably... I supplement vit D, fish oil, b-complex, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and curcumin. I also drink tons of green tea.

Diet is important, but I feel that excercise is even more essential.

Kate,

I've been following the Wahls diet for a little over three months.

The foods I'm eating now are quite different than before the diet. I eat kale everyday (5 to 6 cups), organic fruits and vegetables, salmon, chicken, etc.

Wahl's book "Minding my Mitochondia" has a lot of recipes. We basically have variations of her meals.

In order to stay on it, I do go off of it every week or so for a day. I have stayed glutten and dairy free. I usually have a smoothie everyday for lunch (filled with kale and fruit).

Walking is my only symptom and I haven't really seen any improvement yet. Since there isn't anything else out there I'll be sticking with it for awhile.

Her research makes a lot of sense and it certainly can't hurt.

M

My advice would be do not waste time on diets and supplements(unless your doctor feels you need them) and just try to eat as healthy as you can and stay as active as possible!

The diet thing can be confusing - the Swank diet is the least restrictive, the Best Bet and MS Recovery Diet are a little more so. Most likely, different people react differently to certain foods. However, lowering saturated fats and eating more veggies is a no brainer. Dairy and gluten have been suspect for years, so eliminating them or at least cutting back, is probably a good idea. See the direct-ms and MS Recovery Diet websites for tons of info.

Thanks for all the replies.

It was my understanding that the diet is kind of an "all or nothing" situation, that you have to make a commitment to follow it absolutely, otherwise you're negating the effect by occasionally eating the forbidden foods.

I gave up sugar and grains over a year ago, but I'm struggling with the idea of giving up all dairy.

I'm trying to eat kale and more vegetables.

One problem I'm finding is that one diet will say to eat mushrooms every day and another diet will say that you should never eat mushrooms because they're a fungus. One diet says to eat tomatoes, and another one says to avoid tomatoes.

It's helpful to know what has or has not worked for others. I'm impressed by Terry Wahls' remarkable recovery, but I wonder if it has worked for anyone else.

for me it's not the diet per se, it's understanding which nutrients my body needs, via research and lab work, and figuring out a plan of diet and supplementation that works for me as an individual. i don't buy the all or nothing approach. i like the idea of balancing pro and anti inflammatory foods. my background is strict vegan and that landed me with permanent spinal cord damage so i'm personally over the strict no-dairy thing. been there, done that, still have an ms dx! also i know my diet led to zinc deficiency, supported by lab work, and that was when i was at my most cognitively impaired. fixed the zinc deficiency, and my brain started working again. figured out later (without lab results to support, just hypothesis based on research) that i probably had ammonia toxicity secondary to zinc deficiency. diet is a big factor for ms patients, but everyone is an individual. sweeping diet recommendations are a bit sketch IMHO
jimmylegs

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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 had some stress lately, plus waayyy more bread than usual due to free stuff kicking around at work, then sunshine exposure (and also i threw in my weekly vit d3 megadose), all of which would have made demands on my zinc stores, but i did not increase my zinc intake, and now here i am with a stupid cold. ugh!

_________________
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

Jimmylegs, I've read a lot of your posts and am glad to have your input as well. Terry Wahls seems to advise strict adherence, which makes sense to me, because if something is bad for you, even a little would be bad. But on the other hand, maybe increasing the good things can help to balance out the not-so-good things. It's hard to know what will work, and it probably takes a long time to see how well it's working.

I'm wondering if there's really any evidence that dairy is bad for ms. I don't drink milk anyway, but I like other dairy products.

How does one develop ammonia toxicity?

hi kate no probs.

dairy is mildly inflammatory and some of the things you see in ms patients such as o-bands in the CSF, are indicative of chronic inflammation.

so to me that means it would make sense to dial down the pro-inflammatories, and boost the anti-inflammatories. i had latched onto the number 50 from past reading, however:

"A typical target for a single day is a combined IF Rating™ of 50 or higher. Those with inflammatory conditions or at increased risk for diseases linked with inflammation may try to reach a combined total of 200 or higher."

without having read dr wahls' protocol in detail, i can see the point of advocating food purism to be on the safe side - if you are not eating enough anti-inflammatory foods in the first place, then having small amounts of pro-inflammatory food could take you down below the 200 target.

BUT, with the right combo you can get your daily balance up into the high hundreds even with some pro-inflammatory intake - i would have to go back over my regimens thread to see the most recent calcs i've done on my own food intake.

re ammonia. "Protein metabolism presents some serious waste management challenges for the body. When protein is broken down, one of the by-products is ammonia. Ammonia is toxic, so our bodies have elaborate systems for getting rid of it. Most of the detoxifying work falls to our liver."

if your zinc stores are deficient, the urea cycle gets broken. the liver cannot then convert ammonia byproducts of protein catabolism, to urea and then to uric acid in order to detoxify and excrete it. so ammonia keeps building up in the body with the potential to reach dangerously toxic levels.

hth!

_________________
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

I too am interested in this Kate... there seems to be a lot of information about each, but not a lot about how individual people with different symptoms and relapse periods did after following the diets.

If anybody can recommend a vitamin & mineral-rich diet that doesn't require me to get rid of all red meat for the first year, that would be great. I'm anemic and I need all the iron I can get, plus I love a good steak

Hi - I do pretty well on the Paleolithic Diet. There's loads of free recipes available on the internet and you get to eat meat.
I don't eat dairy or gluten and feel pretty good.
I did get very tired of being ill in 06 and went on a rawfood diet for 6 months and it seemed to reset the MS. All my fatigue disappeared, but the diet was difficult to do and expensive - it involves pretty pricey kit, a blender, dehydrator, Champion juicer...
Paleo was a good way to go after the rawfood diet.
To be honest, (touch wood) I think that this gave me back a better quality of life - I wasn't as badly affected as Terry Wahls, but I was effectively housebound.
I've just 'unretired' myself and have gone back to 2 hours of operatic singing a day and aerobics with weights 3 times a week. I feel great and full of endorphins.
I do take D3 and have B12 injections every 2 weeks. It helps.
However - my MS is active and I take Rebif and LDN, plus a ton of hypertension medicines (MS did that) and thyroxine and I won't risk life without Rebif again. My MS isn't progressive, so cutting the relapse rate has been paramount in keeping my body mobile and active.
If you would like the link to free Paleo recipes, I'll post it.
best wishes,
jg

hi toni you can eat a serving of beef tenderloin a week and it will provide you with needed iron (and zinc)

_________________
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

There is very little evidence showing that there is any type of diet that provides a therapeutic benefit against MS. I found this article on the MS Society website.