This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Wonderfulworld --You seem to have discovered some challenges, but I believe you will find some solutions with extra thought and suggestions from friends, as you have here.

I think use of your slow cooker will help greatly in preparing meals and avoiding fatigue. It may become your new best friend!

Concerning a safe temperature for your baby's food... I watch the cooking shows on TV ALL the time. The cooks there are always using an instant-read thermometer, especially to determine meat doneness. Could the same be used for your baby's food? Or would a baby store have a similar item specifically for baby food?

There are thermometers for freezers, ovens, meat, candymaking -- everything, it seems. If there is not such an instant-read thermometer for testing a baby's food, I see a perfect market and product development for it in your future. Are you an inventor, Wonderfulworld? You could become RICH!

My husband has MS, and we've been on the Best Bet diet for a couple of years now.

We initially wrote of the diet stuff as quackery, but we ended up trying it out of desperation. We're total believers now. My husband is doing better, and we can actually tell when a specific food is bothering him now (that skill took about a year to develop).

I've learned to cook foods we actually like, and the diet is no longer a sacrifice for us. The food we eat now is actually tastier than most of what we were eating before. And we've worked out most of the kinks with the simple logistics. We will, for example, cook a very large portion of fish for dinner, so then we can eat leftovers on a salad for the next day or two at lunch. This way I never have to actually cook just for our lunches.

If you're interested in giving the diet a try, you can check out my personal blog. I just recently started it, and I have been posting our recipes and tips. http://multiplesclerosisrecipes.blogspot.com/

Good luck with the diet. It has been a very positive experience for us.
--Mamacita

My husband is the one who has MS, not me, and shopping/cooking for the BBD can still be exhausting. I don't know if this will help, but here are some things I do...

1. I always shop at a store that is good at keeping things in stock, so I can shop from a list. There's another store closer, but trips there end up being a waste of my time. I also drive a little further to get to a store where I can buy almost everything I need, so I don't have to go to multiple stores. It required a few small sacrifices, but it was worth it. And I buy a few extra things off the internet, which are delivered right to my door.

2. I always shop from a list, and I organize the list into three colums, so I can put the foods down in an order that approximates my path through the grocery store. The first column is for fresh produce. The top half of the second column is for fish and stuff from the deli/seafood counter. The second half of the middle column is for stuff from the center aisles of the grocery store: oils, salad dressings, vitamins, whatever. The top of the last column is for meats. The middle of the last column is for dairy stuff (which my son and I use on occasion, even though my husband doesn't), and the bottom of the last column is for frozen foods. I keep my list on the kitchen counter, and I can add stuff to it through the week.

3. I make a menu for the week, and this helps me know what to put on the shopping list. It also keeps me from randomly poking around in the fridge trying to figure out what to make for dinner. I try to shop only once per week (which goes against my foodie tendencies, but it can work). At first it was more difficult for me, but I can choose a weekly menu in about 10 minutes now. I start with fish for the first two days after shopping (the day of and the day after), so I can buy fresh, wild-caught fish. The middle couple of days are bison, turkey, or chicken. The last couple of days I make something from pork tenderloin, frozen chicken thighs, or frozen shrimp.

4. I cook my meats in very large portions. I cook for dinner only, not breakfast, not lunch. I cook enough meat at dinner so that my husband and I can both put leftovers onto a salad for at least one day, often two days. This also means that if there's a night I just can't cook...we have leftovers in the fridge that are ready for my husband to eat.

5. We eat salad for lunch every day. Every day. I've worked at getting variety into the salads, but I stick with salads. After you eat salad for lunch every day for a while, it seems totally normal. I buy big tubs of pre-washed spinach and salad greens, and then I spend one day chopping stuff to go on top of it: scallions, bell peppers, red onion, button mushrooms. I store these in bags in the fridge, and then I just pull out handfuls of one thing or another to toss onto the salads. On each individual day, I may add other stuff to the salad: sliced avocado, chopped up clementines, sliced strawberries, a handful of whole grape tomatoes.

6. Everybody fends for themselves for breakfast. We bought a "Magic Bullet" for my husband to make smoothies in. It's easier to clean than a blender because the cups can just go right into the dishwasher. He uses a banana, a handful of frozen fruit, some rice milk, and a tablespoon of canola oil. Sometimes he'll reheat a bowl of leftover brown rice with a little rice milk and small amount of maple syrup. He doesn't vary this too much, either. As with the salads at lunch, eventually you get used to the same thing, and it seems fine. We leave variety to dinner time.

Good luck back on the diet.
-Mamacita
My personal diet blog: http://multiplesclerosisrecipes.blogspot.com/

*****MODERATOR INSERT*****

Recommendations

The following recommendations for nutritional changes are based on the robust and diverse scientific data which link various nutritional factors to MS onset and progression. It is important to completely avoid some foods, significantly reduce the consumption of others and to greatly increase the intake of others.

detailed recommendations...
http://www.direct-ms.org/recommendations.html

*****END MODERATOR INSERT*****

I'm newly diagnosed in June and I immediately started trying to adapt to the Swank Diet. Since then, I've been considering the Best Bet Diet and trying to ease into it. My question is, what do those of you who follow this diet find are your food staples? I mean, what do you find yourself eating a lot of since the diet is so restricting? I've always been a carb lover so now I find myself eating rice bread, rice cakes, rice crackers, rice cereal, rice milk, that's a lot of rice! I know your not supposed to eat a ton of rice but what are the other options out there? It's hard to find gluten-free foods to replace the ones you used to love. And if your not supposed to eat soy from what I've read, rice milk is the only other option I think. I'm looking for new ideas for things to eat to keep my diet balanced, get all the vitamins I need and add some flare to this diet so I don't get sick of it already! Any suggestions?

I'm newly diagnosed in June and I immediately started trying to adapt to the Swank Diet. Since then, I've been considering the Best Bet Diet and trying to ease into it. My question is, what do those of you who follow this diet find are your food staples? I mean, what do you find yourself eating a lot of since the diet is so restricting? I've always been a carb lover so now I find myself eating rice bread, rice cakes, rice crackers, rice cereal, rice milk, that's a lot of rice! I know your not supposed to eat a ton of rice but what are the other options out there? It's hard to find gluten-free foods to replace the ones you used to love. And if your not supposed to eat soy from what I've read, rice milk is the only other option I think. I'm looking for new ideas for things to eat to keep my diet balanced, get all the vitamins I need and add some flare to this diet so I don't get sick of it already! Any suggestions?

Oh and are potatoes okay on this diet? What about plain popcorn?

Hi hlm
I did BBD for 3 years and felt amazingly well but I gave up after I had my son because it took way more planning than I could devote to it. Maybe in the future............!

Potatoes ok.
Popcorn ok.

Bananas great for keeping you going!
Lots of seed bars are now available in shops that are ok - sesame snaps are ok as far as I remember.

Find a good gluten-free supplier and buy there. If you're in the UK/Ireland I can send you good links. There are lots of really lovely pastas available that are gluten free. Giusto do an excellent range. Organ are another range that are fairly international.

There are other milks that you can make but it means blending up nuts in a food processor. I think I got recipes online. You can also use coconut milk, watered down, but it tends to be very high in saturated fat so I avoided that.

I used to make my own cakes. I used a cookbook online: http://www.msrc.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseact ... &pageid=45

HTH

_________________
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Concussus Resurgo
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RR-MS dx 1998 and Coeliac dx 2003
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Copaxone, Cymbalta. EPO, Fish Oils, Vitamin D3 2000 IU daily, Cal/Mag/Zinc, Multivitamin/mineral, Co-Enzyme Q10, Probiotics, Milk Thistle.

Thanks for your response. I'm in Canada but there is a organic/health food section at our local grocery store so I'll look into that further. I never thought of sesame snaps, I've always loved those but haven't had them in forever, thanks for the tip! Have you noticed any deterioration in your health since going off the diet out of curiosity?

Yes, you do get a lot of rice, but potatoes are okay too. I guess we just alternate between the 2 and sometimes quinoa, and then have chicken or fish and veg and fruit. You have to concentrate on what you can have as opposed to the off limits stuff. I still eat like I used to some of the time, because I am not the one with MS, but I have to say, I wish I could stick to that diet as I am over weight now!!
My husband notices if he tries to eat something banned, ie dairy or legumes...wheat doesn't seem to affect him as much, but he doesn't have it anyhow.
I use flour from the UK...Dove's farm gluten free to make my husband the occasional cakes, pancakes, or say dumplings...when I run out of that I make my own mix of flours, mostly rice and arrowroot. When I was in the USA last summer, I tried Trader Joe's gluten free mixes...they were awful and I wrote them to say. Nothing beats the Dove Farm stuff, but I don't live in the UK now, so I have to ration it.
I think you can buy almond milk.

hlm--Although many people with MS follow the Swank diet or the Best Bet Diet, I find a low-carb diet, such as the Atkins diet, to be more in keeping with my suspicion of excess insulin being fundamental to MS.

You wrote:

Those carbohydrates trigger the secretion of too much insulin, in my opinion. I think it is wiser to feature protein in a meal and work around that.

hey there hlm,

because i got diagnosed after years of heavy dietary limitations (rather extremist vegan), i was wary of eliminating foods to treat neuropathy.

i was interested in knowing why i might be sensitive to certain foods, and fixing that - rather than protecting a weak system from trouble items.

i learned that leaky gut = leaky intestinal membrane, and that is helped by taking zinc (zinc is needed for 'tight junctions" between cells)

i learned that vegans don't tend to get enough zinc. i learned that societally, diets have trended away from red meats and upped the carb intake, resulting in a reduction in serum zinc in the general population.

in 2006, i had started eating a wider variety of foods. i used to feel bad after eating bread. very bloated and very uncomfortable. then i got my zinc tested, and found a pretty major deficiency. then i fixed my zinc level. now i can eat bread. i don't hog out on it or anything, but it doesn't make me feel bad.

ms-ers tend to be low in zinc. this is linked to the liver and is also connected to their typically low uric acid status.

gluten takes a lot of zinc to digest, and ms-ers haven't got it to spare.

optimal zinc in healthy controls is remarkably consistent across a number of studies: aim for 18.2 umol/L but try not to get up over 20!

so, not really help with BBD, but potential help with cheating i guess lol!

that's what i try to do too, lc.
pick the protein, and add the veggies, including complex carbs. i use wraps instead of dense sandwich breads at lunch. don't have pasta too often, but when i do it's a multigrain version.
hmm something tells me it's suppertime!

I read Terry Wahls is journey through recovering from MS. Her main theory is healing the mitochondra and giving your body the tools to heal, she also thinks like you LC and JL that excess insulin is a part of the MS process. She recommends trying to eat little grains and to try and eat 9 cups of greens a day plus lots of root vegetables to get energy and protein of course (fish, chicken).

I've been a follower of the BBD for about 2 years now (somewhat modified, I occasionally eat grass-fed meat, especially buffalo) but I'm now wheat and dairy free.

Finding things to snack on was probably the hardest adjustment. I snack on almonds, sunflower seeds, and brazil nuts during the day, in addition to fruits, especially apples, oranges, and bananas.

Also, I recently discovered coconut milk as a substitute for cow's milk. I buy it in half-gallon milk-like containers from the local health food stores. I much prefer it to the coconut milk that is sold in cans that usually comes with a layer a solids at the top of the can.

Get yourself a good gluten-free baking book, here's a link to my favorite:

Gluten-Free Baking Classics

You can make pretty much everything in the book by substituting coconut milk for cow's milk, and olive oil for butter.

The book even contains some pretty decent gluten-free bread recipes, if you miss bread. The book contains some recommended wheat flour replacement mixes that are good for converting other recipes to gluten-free.

--Tracy

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CCSVI Procedure 9/16/2009 at Stanford
Stent in left and right IJVs
SPMS
Copaxone and Ampyra user

I have not heard of coconut milk as a substitue for milk. Typically coconut milk is high in Sat fats so watch out for that. I drink Rice milk. (it is about 11% rice and the rest water!) tastes good though

Aside from the coconut milk suggestion (the coconut milk I use contains a little less fat than whole milk, LR1234, I find it to be superior to rice and almond milk, probably because of the higher fat content, especially in cooking), also consider trying almond milk. And, start exploring other grains, like quinoa, millet, buckwheat, corn/polenta, and various types of rices, like japonica, basmati, short and long grain brown rices, etc.

Also, if you've dropped dairy, you'd be well advised to start taking probiotic/acidophilus supplements with each meal. I neglected doing this for the first year and developed a nasty yeast infection that took a few months to clear-up (and I'm a male).

I've been finishing off a nice loaf of gluten-free pumpkin bread today, and have bananas ripening for a batch of banana bread. Gluten-free/dairy-free cooking isn't bad once you learn the tricks.

--Tracy

_________________
CCSVI Procedure 9/16/2009 at Stanford
Stent in left and right IJVs
SPMS
Copaxone and Ampyra user