The MS Recovery Diet by Ann Sawyer and Judi Bachrach

I would like to share a little of Jeff's experience with the MS REcovery Diet, for which I have his permission. He contaced us by e-mail over a year ago with questions about the diet. We next heard from him just lately. His concern was that he had gotten too thin and wanted to know how he could gain weight.
I discovered that like many people on the diet, Jeff had done well and experienced a good recovery from his symptoms. He stuck to the conservative version of the diet religiously, afraid to vary for fear he would lose his progress. Now this is good to an extent, but he was limited in foods, perhaps more than he need to be. He needed to test foods to see if he could expand his diet to include some more calorie rich foods. He is a very tall man, 6'5", so he needs to eat a lot to maintain a good weight. The diet challenges him more than others in this respect.
I suggested that he experiment to see if he could expand his repetoire of foods. He did, eating steak one night and eggs the next. Some symptoms returned and he panicked. I reassured him that if he went back on the diet, these too would subside. After five days, he had returned to his previous level of health. It was an important lesson to him that he can go off the diet and experiement to see exactly which foods are his triggers and perhaps be able to expand his diet.
So, again, I am suggesting that after you have shown improvement and know your body, try foods out. Legumes are not as often triggers, so try those as they are calorie and protein rich. Don't be afraid, by experimenting and testing foods, you can most likely expand your diet and you will learn more about your body and how MS works in you.

I have written this before, but it bears repeating to help those just starting out on their recovery. The keys to recovery seem to be:
1. The diet is not a rigid set of rules, rather a set of guidelines to work with until you determine the specifics of what foods cause you problems and what foods seem to help you. Each person is unique in the trigger foods that cause symptoms in this highly idopathic disease. In a culture where medicine prescribes one specific medicine to each person with a certain disease with an expectation that all will be cured, this concept of a unique solution, within certain parameters, demands that we look at our bodies in a different light.
2. To find your specific dietary program, it is necessary to listen to you body, get to know its unique reactions and to get to know your MS. Do not be afraid to experiment with different foods so you can expand your diet as much as possible. You may get a flare in symptoms, but if you have already experienced so recovery, you will know these are short lived. From reports, the people who seem to do the best in recovery are the ones who tune into their bodies and are not afraid to test out foods.
3. Recovery is not just a matter of diet; fatigue and stress are also critical components of the disease. It is not a matter of just changing how you eat, it is also important to consider how you live. Does it work for you? Do you have time to rest and relax, reflect on your life? If not, you may need to make some changes there as well. Notice that in each recovery story a spiritual aspect is mentioned in a positive way.
4. Get outside and exercise, but not to the point of over taxing yourself. Vitiamin D is best gotten via sunlight. Use your body, it makes the nerves work, but again there is a balance. If your body is over taxed, it hasn't the energy to repair and restore functioning.
5. Give yourself time to heal. Improvements can be measured in millimeters oftentimes, but they add up to big changes over time.
6. Pay attention to your digestion. Digestive health is crucial to healing as we write about in the book.
7. I don't know how exactly to put this, but I realized how much easier it was for me when I stopped being afraid of the disease. My fear fed my stress which fed the disease and I obsessed about the disease; it was on my mind all the time. That is counter productive. Now in my mind, the ferocious lion of the disease MS, is like a house cat, which follows me around, but I don't have to pay too much attention to it. So, if you can think of other matters, imagine, create, it will take some of the power away from the disease.
I hope this helps, again, we are very gratified by all the healing stories we hear.

The issue of CCSVI keeps coming up in the e-mails we receive. Now I am not an expert on the subject, but I can contribute some observations and resources.
I talked to a man who had 5 stents placed in his circulatory system last August after an evaluation that he did indeed have CCSVI. This was done at Stamford University where I believe they have stopped all such procedures because one person died and another had a stroke as a result. My informant shared that he has not improved at all in his physical symptoms, if anything he is worse. He feels, however, that the operation was more than his body could handle. He did share that his mind is more alert and he is better cognitively and a slight bit better in handling heat. He said that the operation was the most painful event he had ever encountered in his life. He does not regret doing it at all as he is more alert. He added that sometimes people improve after even more time elapses.
Ashton Embry of the Direct-MS.org is a prime mover in finding a treatment/cure for MS. He has on his website much of the research about this procedure which I suggest anyone read. It is not conclusive as a causative factor for MS in most people, but it does seem to impact some. At first he totally advocated for it, now he has modified his recommendation somewhat. Ashton is a scientist and has the integrity to present the facts as they are, he has no bias and no vested interest beyond the truth and finding an effective treatment/s, so I would follow as he presents the unfolding data on his website. If there is some data about who is helped by this procedure and who is not, it will be posted on this site. The website is www.Direct-MS.org.
One thing I have observed over my years of being intimately connected with this disease—there is often a strong placebo effect with any treatment. There has been a lot of hype, first about the ABC drugs, later CRAB drugs, they about Tysabri, and now about the stents for CCSVI. Multiple Sclerosis has befuddled them all, so be cautious with your body.

After getting up early and being in Worcester before 7, I found out that I have been wrong about the time of the radio show. It will be on the air at 7 o'clock this evening to 9 o'clock. I am sorry for any inconvenience to any of you and for my mistake. Again it will be on WCRN in Worcester, MA 830 on the AM dial. I hope that all of you who planned to listen will be able to tune in then.

CCSVI (chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency) is a congenital condition found in a significant percentage of the population in which the veins which drain the blood from the brain are malformed. Because of this malformation which exists at birth, the blood backs up in the brain, a condition called hypofusion. Hypofusion can cause the death of olidendrocytes (cells that make the myelin) and the breakdown of myelin, both of which are part of the disease process of MS. As I had written before, as Dr. Roy Swank always maintained, MS is also a vascular disease as well as an autoimmune disease, a degenerative disease, an inflammatory disease.
Now it has been found that 55% of MS people and 25% of healthy people have CCSVI, so in itself CCSVI is not the cause of MS. But, as we have said repeatedly, there is no smoking gun for MS, it is multi-causal. This fact would suggest that in itself CCSVI is not a big deal, though it should be researched if CCSVI has a higher incidence in other neurological diseases. However, it may be a contribution factor in MS for a significant percent of the MS population. There is some evidence that the co-occurrence does hasten disability and contribute to MS.
What does this mean for the diet approach to MS? If you go back to DR. Swank’s work where he postulated that one of the main factors in the breakdown of the Blood Brain Barrier is saturated fat, then the diet’s recommendation for a very reduced saturated fat intake is right on. So is the suggestion that ingestion of the Essential Fatty Acids, the healthy oils, be increased supported. Eating a lot of anti-oxidant rich foods, like the darkly colored fruits and vegetables, will help prevent the destruction of the vein walls. A good intake of minerals, supplied by fruits, vegetables and safe grains and reduced consumption of sugars is also good for general health. The MS Recovery Diet is very good for cardiovascular health, as you all know as your cholesterol numbers have decreased on the diet, which by extension would mean it is good for anyone with CCSVI as co-occuring with your MS.
MS continues to confound science and medicine. No theory has proven to stand up to scrutiny as yet. Fortunately, the diet is not based on theory but on empirical results achieved by many people. I have stated that we have found the diet does not work as well for everyone, one person whose recovery was not complete found that they have mercury poisoning, so there may be other diseases that also co-occur with MS. There is so much that needs to be researched with an open mind that is not overly attached to any one theory.