hi mrs g no worries
IMHO it's a good idea to back up any dietary changes and supplementing with bloodwork, including long-term monitoring a couple of times per year.
okay if you don't want to go overboard right away, ignore the klenner protocol ;D
a healthy diet and lifestyle supported with a good quality multivitamin/multimineral is a great place to start.
here are some very basic targets for bloodwork and preliminary suggestions for supplementing:
vitamin d3 - get it up over 100 nmol/L.
you can do this in the long term by taking 4000IU per day. balance carefully with calcium (1200mg), magnesium(1200mg), and zinc(normally up to 50mg).
vitamin b12 - minimum 500 serum value.
you can take 1000mcg per day sublingually.
important: take in conjunction with b50- or b100-complex. the b group vitamins occur together in food because they work together.
magnesium - just keep it in the centre of the normal range if possible.
600mg-1200mg per day. you could even start as low as 250mg morning and night. zinc and b-complex are useful aids to magnesium utilization. it's also best taken on an empty stomach, and at least half of your daily intake at bedtime. get a soluble form, or stay near the toilet. the insoluble forms are great for constipation :S
zinc - keep it well inside the normal range.
to get it where you want it, take 100mg per day - 50mg morning and 50mg night - with testing after a couple of weeks or a month. then continue at the recommended daily level thereafter.
also daily
acidophilus and
essential fatty acids, from fish and flax or supplements, are beneficial. as mentioned previously,
inosine is a uric acid precursor. so are purine-rich foods and you can look those up on wikipedia under 'uric acid'. antioxidant foods and things like
A, C, E, and selenium won't hurt either (within reason!).
i am going to restate that nutrition has been very important and successful for me because i personally had a very restricted diet for 15 years prior to dx. i have had to totally change what i eat. the things that i was missing from my intake screwed up my absorption from the things that i did eat, and i've been deficient in b12, iron, and zinc, and low in d3 (lab supported), also low in uric acid, magnesium and b-complex (anecdotal).
nothing that i've done so far has restored me to 100% symptom free condition, but there have been improvements from the outright amazing to the merely interesting.
so far, magnesium seems to be the clear winner in helping the most people with the biggest array of symptoms. it can be useful in cases of:
muscular stiffness/spasticity (myself, cheer's hubby, lori),
twitching (facial - my brother, or otherwise - myself),
weakness (myself - breathing),
loss of functionality (myself - dysphagia/swallowing),
loss of sleep (my mother, artifishual, nenu, myself),
constipation (anyone!),
menstrual cramping (myself),
bursitis (family friend, reported after the fact),
heart palpitations (my brother, who also had facial twitching), and
muscle pain (my stepdad - it had been waking him up at night for years).
hopefully that wasn't too much at once