The Swank and Ambrey diets promote low fat consumption to delay or halt the progression of MS. It seems therefore somewhat paradoxical to the call for more fat consumption (and less sugar) as suggested in the above posting. I have had questions to this end on a Dutch MS web forum. My reply may be of interest to you as well.
When my neck veins were narrowed (left IJV 85%, right IJV> 90%, Azygos 50%) I definitely benefitted from a low fat diet. To keep the blood thin and running. I have been on a low-fat diet for years and it certainly helped me while the progression stopped or slowed down.
Now that my neck veins are open (ccsvi liberation by repeated angioplasty) the noise in the head has disappeared. The headaches are gone, so are the night spasms. If I take more saturated fat, nothing will happen in my head, it just keeps quiet. That is very different from before when the noise increased substantially after I took a heavy meal with lots of fat. Indeed, I think that I even go better the next day after the intake of fats, e.g. mayonnaise and sausages, but that may of course be placebo.
I think the story of sugar vs. fat is no myth but in fact a very serious matter. Quote from the New York Times:
Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, may be the most visible proponent of testing this heretic hypothesis. Willett is the de facto spokesman of the longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health studies ever performed, which have already cost upward of $100 million and include data on nearly 300,000 individuals. Those data, says Willett, clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message ''and the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.''
These researchers point out that there are plenty of reasons to suggest that the low-fat-is-good-health hypothesis has now effectively failed the test of time. In particular, that we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic that started around the early 1980's, and that this was coincident with the rise of the low-fat dogma. (Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, also rose significantly through this period.) [Leonard adds: and possibly MS too] They say that low-fat weight-loss diets have proved in clinical trials and real life to be dismal failures, and that on top of it all, the percentage of fat in the American diet has been decreasing for two decades. Our cholesterol levels have been declining, and we have been smoking less, and yet the incidence of heart disease has not declined as would be expected. ''That is very disconcerting,'' Willett says. ''It suggests that something else bad is happening.'' unquote
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As a scientist I have great faith in all that comes from Harvard. As regards the statement ".. that something else bad is happening." I think this thread unveils a possible mechanism: it has everything to do with cholesterol, the production by the body of (the active form of) vitamin D that depends on a sufficient level of cholesterol and in turn the improved micro-cellular nutrition that follows on an increased level of Vitamin D. Good for your heart and brains …
