This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

if you can get all the labs on that list, it'll be a fantastic baseline. personally i've never been able to get *all* the bs. going by past reading alone, i think those initial tests will be useful wrt the scoliosis too.

just remember, although RBC tests are considered higher quality, there is often less info in research for the sake of comparison. that is the only reason i would suggest sticking to serum testing for things like magnesium. plus your iron test will be serum ferritin i would imagine. if you can get a full iron panel that could be useful too.

glad you have most of what you need. because my connection is sooooo dodgy here!

_________________
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

Perhaps the muscles in your back aren't getting the right signals from your central nervous system and are pulling your back out of alignment? Physical therapy and/or massage work (to get the muscles to relax) might be helpful.

NHE

..

the doc won't have time for a huge stack of anything.. if you can get the meat of the info formatted as a referenced one-pager and have the stack just be printed research abstracts backing up that one-pager, that would probably be best. nutrition as a main treatment is not to my knowledge something that usually involves much testing. the docs don't know what to test and once they see a 'normal' result it's over. for them. so do always make sure you back up your request for a test and insist on your own copy of the results. then bring them here.
re the tests being useful for scoliosis too, just say that the same nutrients that affect the systems affected in ms, also affect systems involved in scoliosis. ie muscle nutritients like magnesium. bone nutrients like zinc/magnesium/vitamind3. the greatest thing about nutrition is that the same few tests are applicable across a broad spectrum of diseases.

_________________
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

12 mins intense exercise once per week improved glucose metabolism 23% over just 4 weeks.
a pretty good show. plus i like the bits and pieces of massive attack in there
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cywtq

_________________
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

well i started a blog. not re ms - just nutrition in general. should be interesting.

_________________
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

omg i actually heard a complete and accurate nutritional discussion during a radio spot yesterday. unbelievable!

_________________
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

from introductions-f20/topic21748.html#p205383


hi vesta, i used to see that recommendation as well. not sure if it reflects overall distribution in foods or something else. sometimes you do see 1:1 cal mag or even 1:2 cal mag supplements, but they are certainly less common.

imho magnesium should be dosed and combined with calcium according to individual needs.

dietary intakes of magnesium should be maximized. food takes care of the cal mag balance for you, to some extent. some foods have just one, some just the other, some both. where foods contain both, i don't see consistency re one being higher than the other. haven't done an exhaustive analysis though.

as for supplements. the inorganic less soluble forms of mag supplemet can be useful as laxatives, but you don't absorb or retain much from those. hence their efficacy as laxatives. magnesium citrate is an organic form, moderately absorbable, and a useful one for night time as it's calming and soothing. magnesium glycinate is a good organic form, well absorbed. i use that one during the day.

as for combinations, in my experience the more d3 you take (the zinc-d3 connection is another story altogether), the more magnesium you need. you have to take some magnesium with d3, and some at another time - otherwise you can get into trouble with magnesium depletion. i did. NOT FUN.

i also haven't had much fun blending magnesium with calcium. to date, to my recollection, i have not yet seen research indicating calcium is a particular problem for ms patients. i understand the recommendations for ms patients purely as an adjunct to therapeutic intakes of vit d3 and magnesium. so that means it really depends on the individual.

personally, i used to try to supplement calcium to match my supplemental magnesium, but i can't handle it. adding calcium makes my muscles feel spastic, which i interpret as a cal mag imbalance. sometimes calcium supplements even make my back (kidneys?) ache.

over the years, my daily requirement for supplemental magnesium has dropped, while my serum levels have risen to a healthy level compared to initial tests. i interpret this a reflection of efforts to increase dietary intakes, balance against d3 intakes properly, and to find the most absorbable forms of supplement, all of which seems (finally!) to have replenished previously depleted tissue stores. i actually reached a point over the last few months where i tried to increase daily intake of mag, and felt weakness in my legs as a result. the weakness resolved when i went back to my usual daily magnesium regimen.

my conclusion is that my diet provides sufficient calcium but not quite enough magnesium to stay in balance. i have taken too much calcium before, and same thing with magnesium, so i know what both feel like. and i feel good when i only take magnesium and leave calcium to diet.

overall it's a pain in the butt but i have concluded that dosing and combinations are a pretty personalized thing.

long answer to a short question but i hope that helps

_________________
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

just doin ma job, and am struck once more by the parallels between environmental science and human health care

"Community-based monitoring is a relatively new scientific field. Obviously, in a broader sense, humans always have been “monitoring” their environment. But as an organized activity, monitoring by local residents has only recently begun playing a role in research. In the past few decades, local and indigenous observations of the natural and physical environment have made substantial progress. At first, they were referenced as anecdotal evidence, then they became case studies, and finally, methods are being developed to utilize these observations in independent data sets."

_________________
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

just an odd little note.
had my feet in ski boots most days of the winter so far, since the end of december. blamed my boots for the malodorous condition of my socks on a daily basis.
just finished a two week washout with next to no supplements - purely laziness. (still did my high test d drops on the sundays).
recent realization: socks and boots no longer stanky. coincidence? i doubt it :S
once, earlier in the season, i made the mistake of using my eco soap for the load with the socks in it, and had to put them through again using something with a little more punch.
then just the other day (realizing they weren't offending me from the usual distance) i bravely sniffed my socks after a day on the slopes only to smell... laundry soap.
weird!

_________________
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

LOL! Will you reintroduce your supplements one at a time to identify the stinker?

maybe i will! (my vote is for selenium )

_________________
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

Heya Jimmy,

I just finished reading your thread from start to finish. I haven't done so since 2010...lots of new info!

The thing that began to stick out to me, which likely will be no surprise, is your heavy vitamin D dosing and low blood pressure/dehydration at times. This strikes me because clonidine has recently caused my blood pressure to go too low. I'm now cutting too much aldosterone, even with a .05mg/day dose. I'm taking a break to see what happens. Could you be fighting RAAS/aldosterone too much with the vitamin D?

Have you considered trying a phosphatidylserine supplement to take down your cortisol to see if you can "naturally" address the cortisol too? http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 23?LI=true I don't know of any other almost natural ways proven to suppress it but you might end up needing less supplementation in the end if your hpa-axis corrects as I suspect mine has. (You'd need to cut back on vitamin D because the phosphatidylserine will reduce aldosterone too)

Phosphatidylserine may be helpful for MS alone...link is to a blog but links to supporting abstracts included.
http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blog ... nd-ms.html I might give it a go if I feel the need to inhibit again.

Ya know...you haven't guinea-pigged yourself in a while...lol (the stinky feet experiment doesn't count!)

Edit: I bet you are getting at the cortisol with the zinc. No need for phososohjpaohdfoorine. Still, if you regularly experience low bp, you might want to experiment with backing down just a little on the vitamin D. Has it become worse over time?? What happens when you take a break from everything?? Curious-er and curious-er it gets. Do you still experience ms'y things? If you are getting the cortisol with the zinc, why hasn't your demand for vit d gone down/hpa axis corrected (because we're all different!! I hate that answer...makes everything so complicated)? Or has it?? I'm trying to develop my post-clonidine plan so I have many questions.

hi anon, yes originally this thread was called something like 'vitamin d3 megadose therapy' or similar. then for a while it was called 'orthomolecular biochemistry'... bbl

_________________
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

had to scoot for a bit. yeah i can be naughty when it comes to hydration. i've been really bad about drinking water or anything at all for the last oh, maybe 8 weeks. terrible. i know i'm low right now b/c i have been 'seeing stars' pretty easily. and my eyes are SO DRY it's nasty. but, i only have one more week on snow with munchkins and then back to *relative* normalcy.

i haven't had cortisol tested but if subjective feeling of stress is any indicator, it would have been sky high before dx and just SO MUCH lower after all this nutritional therapy. i finally know what it means to be relaxed. i mean, i am stressed right this second b/c i suck at FINISHING THIS STUPID PAPER!!! (and lo, here i am procrastinating) but it's NOTHING compared to how i used to be all the time.

anyway, no i have not considered phosphatidylserine - never even heard of it before. re zinc and cortisol, i definitely have always tried to identify the nutritional approach for dealing with how organs and tissues express things like cortisol. re need for d3 supplementation, it HAS gone down. since zinc repletion, my dose-response to d3 intake is triple, that means i get the same serum levels taking 1/3 the amount of d3. i bet my supplemental intake is lower than many on this forum at this stage. i'm at roughly 10,000IU per week right now. all in one go on sundays. i have a lab requisition that i might use soon, to see how it has all worked out over the winter months.

as for being off supplements. i guess the legs may have been a bit jumpy here and there, but they aren't this evening, for whatever reason. i figure my magnesium went down a bit. i feel it very mildly in my arms. and i had some cramping pain when my cycle started last week. one magnesium glycinate pill sorted it out. probably time i get back on the multi, at a minimum. maybe when i'm all done with the snow school stuff.

anyway. i am certain that the blood pressure and the hydration go hand in hand. last time i made a real effort to drink lots of water, next time i went for blood pressure it was perfect.
as for questions, fire away. i'll be sure to check in again next time i get annoyed with my homework :S

_________________
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