We have recently received e-mails from all over the world where people are trying to follow the diet from the information on the website alone. I imagine for some of these locations, like Iran, it may be difficult to get a book. Therefore, I am posting this article, which was published in the November 2008 issue of The Townsend Letter in hopes that it gives a more concise and full picture of the diet for those people.
A Patient’s Story
After years of my having strange symptoms that came and went quite mysteriously, my Multiple Sclerosis openly announced itself in the fall of 1996. By September 1997, one month after having learned my tormentor’s name, I was on full disability, barely functioning, and facing a bleak future. Determined to escape this ravaging disease, I researched everywhere and everything. Luckily I found the way to recovery through diet. It took be several years, but by the fall of 2000 I had joyfully reclaimed full health.
I found knowing that others still suffered from MS just because they didn’t have information about the recovery diet, prevented me from walking away from this disease. My tie to MS is no longer physical for I am free of the disease, but rather I feel compelled to spread the word that MS can be beaten. No one should suffer unnecessarily when there is such a simple, effective treatment so readily available. This is without negative side effects, extra costs or risks.
I have become a student of MS, with the advantage of knowing this disease not just intellectually, but right to the very core of my being. This is my letter to further the cause of the diet treatment by using science to validate my recovery experience.
Recent research on Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has served to raise more questions about this mysterious disease, rather than supply more answers. Even long held theories, which had become truisms, are shown to be inaccurate, which explains why drug therapies based on these concepts have not proven to be effective.(1) For one area, the dietary approach, this new research both supports and explains why so many people have been able to make remarkable recoveries just by changing what they eat. For over fifty years, the hard won wisdom of trial and error, by people who have reclaimed lost abilities, has been passed on to others who themselves follow in recovering from MS. This healing message has spread despite having no support from the formal institutions of health care.
Questions
MS has been characterized as an inflammatory disease, in which immune cells activated in the blood stream pass through the blood-brain barrier and attack the protective myelin sheaths surrounding the nerves of the central nervous system. This disease action leaves the hallmark lesions or sclerosis in the aftermath. Also characterized as an autoimmune event, the nerve conduction is disrupted and damaged, resulting in a wide array of symptoms. Recent discoveries show that this is only part of the disease process and not even the central action that leads to disability.(2) A second disease pathway, undetected under normal appearing white and gray matter, which leaves no clues and is ongoing from the outset, is the true cause of disability. This disease process is axonal apoptosis, in which the long fibers of the nerves (the axons) die off (apoptosis) with no known cause.(3)
The lesions have historically been the focus of study as the basic process of the disease and as the target of medical intervention through drugs. These are not the uniform phenomena they were thought to be but actually of four different types(4), characterized by the presence of different kinds of cells. Two of the four sclerosis types fit the old theory of an inflammatory event in which the activated immune cells attack the myelin. In the other two lesion types, the oligodendrocytes, the cells that make the myelin, are postulated to be either the target of immune cell attack or another case of cell apoptosis.
The one universal fact in MS is the breaching of the blood-brain barrier which renders the central nervous system no longer inviolate.
Multiples
Multiple is the operating word in this disease. In every aspect there are multiples: multiple causal factors, multiple disease processes and pathways, and multiple symptoms. In each case, the combination and relative loading of each factor appears to be unique. No one factor is necessary and/or sufficient to cause the disease to manifest.
It has been established that a genetic factor, an environmental factor, a geographic factor, a possible Vitamin D deficiency(5), an early infectious event(6), a varying period of dormancy which is broken by some event, all are causal factors in MS. In the case of the infectious event, over fifty years of research has yet to find a single culprit, leading to the conclusion that probably a multiple of infectious agents are capable of causing the immune system to reprogram to molecular mimicry, where the immune cells mistake myelin for invading cells.(7)
With so many factors, none of which qualifies as a smoking gun, finding a single all encompassing treatment is virtually impossible.
The Diet
The main principles of the diet approach are to stop the immune cells from being activated in the blood stream and to stop the breaching of the blood-brain barrier.(8) This serves to arrest the disease process that leads to the cascading events inside the central nervous system, resulting in symptoms. Once the disease process is stopped, the body can heal and repair and full functioning can be restored. This is accomplished by stopping the ingestion of the foods that fuel the disease process both by activating the immune cells and by causing the blood brain barrier to be breached, allowing these cells inside the central nervous system.
The foods that have been named as culprits are saturated fats, foods which contain lectins (wheat and gluten containing grains, dairy, eggs, legumes and yeast) and sugars. Here again are the multiples; each person afflicted by MS has a unique sensitivity profile. None of these foods have shown themselves to be either necessary and/or sufficient to fuel the disease process in all MS cases.
Dr. Roy Swank worked tirelessly from the early 1950s through the late 1990s to study and treat people with MS following his understanding of the role saturated fat played in the disease process.(9) He found that people with MS do not process saturated fat in the usual manner. Instead, in these individuals, it coagulates and forms microscopic emboli in the micro-circulatory system. The pressure of these emboli against the capillary walls causes breaches in the blood brain barrier, resulting in symptoms. As his understanding of fats increased, he modified his prescription from just limiting saturated fat to less than 15 grams a day by adding the recommendation that 4 to 10 teaspoons of the essential fatty acids, the healthy oils (Omega 3, 6 and 9) be ingested as well. In his published research papers, especially in his 40 year longitudinal study, he reported good results in generally slowing the disease progression. In some cases, especially if the dietary regimen was begun early after diagnosis, the disease was stopped and symptoms reversed.
As the diet evolved, the observation was made that the foods introduced into the human diet since the beginning of agriculture tended to be the most problematic to people with MS. This led to the concept that the Paleolithic diet(10), the foods eaten by man for millennia before about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, should be followed. These agriculturally-based foods are the gluten containing grains like wheat and barley, dairy, eggs, legumes and yeast. All contain lectins.
Research on lectins(11,12,13) now helps to explain why these foods fuel the MS disease process and symptom formation. Lectins, proteins that are often difficult for humans to digest and often to some degree toxic to man, embody a key that fits a certain type of lock which opens cell barriers. Possibly carrying other molecules, lectins unlock the endothelial cells that form the barrier of the digestive system, allowing them and their cargo into the blood stream where they activate the immune cells. More than that, they also unlock the blood-brain barrier, carrying their load and allowing the activated immune cells access to the central nervous system where they wreak their havoc known as MS.
From the accumulated experience of people with MS, it is also known that sugar fuels the disease process. Sugar’s role does not just rely on lectins, it has detrimental power of its own. The explanation and supporting evidence is more inferential from the research on diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Celiac disease. (14,15,16). In diabetes sugar burns through the blood vessels to cause blindness. A new study has found that there is a higher incidence of Alzheimer’s in diabetic patients, postulating that sugar is implicated in the nerve cell destruction and plaque formation in the central nervous system that characterizes Alzheimer’s. Food sensitivities are suspected in brain cell destruction in a study on Parkinson’s. For a person susceptible to MS, sugar would have similar effects as seen in these studies. In a related study of Celiac disease it is suggested that there is often cognitive damage due to a breach in the blood-brain barrier.
Consistent with MS’s modus operandi, each person’s trigger foods are unique and often go beyond the usual saturated fats, foods containing lectins, and sugars. Leaky gut, where partially digested food particles enter into the blood stream and are identified by the immune system as antigens, explains these idiopathic sensitivities. The diet method presents general guidelines, the ways to determine and discover each person’s unique food trigger profile. One person may find they need only to restrict saturated fat to recover, one may find only eggs and dairy fuel their symptoms, while another may find that they are sensitive to and need to stop eating a whole panoply of foods.
Balancing the food restrictions, the dietary treatment also recommends the inclusion of foods helpful to healing. These include the Essential Fatty Acids (aka PUFAs, polyunsaturated fatty acids), and foods rich in antioxidants.(17) Getting sufficient vitamin D, either by sunlight or supplement, is also important. (18) Raw foods to boost enzymes and cultured foods for healthy probiotics are also encouraged.
MS is a disease of constant fluctuations of symptoms and symptom intensity. Once a person begins to attend to these changes, however subtle, patterns emerge. They can then begin to discover cause and effect relating back to what they have eaten. As effective as the diet approach has proven to be, it takes dedication, work, and discipline to reap the rewards of a complete restoration of health. Given the alternative and the dearth of any other safe effective treatment, the diet is well worth doing.
Conclusion
Considering the number of causal factors, the different disease pathways and lesion profiles, the many and varied symptoms and their intensity levels, as well as the number of foods that trigger symptoms, a calculation of all the combinations and permutations of these factors is staggering. That is Multiple Sclerosis!
Adding another potential layer of complexity may lie in the research literature which is replete with seemingly random studies showing changes in body chemistry in people with MS. These include studies that show altered levels or composition of the following: saliva, dopamine, nitric oxide, aluminum, elevated iron, P wave in cardiac functioning, and gut metabolism abnormalities. Cervical lymph nodes have also been found to play a role in MS. At present there is no context in which to place these findings, but they do suggest that MS is truly a whole body disease.
MS taunts medical practice with their defined paradigm and gold standard single variable, double blind research method. This confounding disease is at the opposite end of the spectrum from small pox with its one infectious organism, one disease pathway, one set of identifiable symptoms and one curative medicine. Finding a research design that would cover the limitless possibilities of MS manifestations would truly challenge science. Theoretical and research investigations are needed, but so are empirical results for the people now suffering with this disease.
The good news is that the diet works to stop, control and reverse symptoms in MS, resulting in a full restoration of health, no matter how progressed the disease had become. There is no large extra cost, no deleterious side effects, and no risk to health or life. Despite being eschewed and disdained by the health care establishment over the last fifty plus years, the diet approach has continued to be developed and refined. As people recovered and reclaimed their lives, the legacy of spreading the word by any means has been carried on. The information about this effective treatment should be made available to everyone afflicted so that they can make a choice about whether they want to embrace this healing path. No one should suffer unnecessarily from MS.
Ann D. Sawyer along with Judith E. Bachrach are the authors of The MS Recovery Diet, Avery/Penguin Group USA, 2007. Visit their web site at www.msrecoverydiet.com.
Endnotes:
1. Convavreux, Christian. Vukusic, Sandra. “Accumulation of irreversible disability in multiple sclerosis: from epidemiology to treatment.” Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, 108(3):327-32, March 2006.
2. Compston, Alastair. “Making progress on the natural history of multiple sclerosis.” Brain, 129(3):561-563, 2006.
3. Filippi, Massimo. Rocca, Maria Assunta. “MRI evidence for multiple sclerosis as a diffuse disease of the central nervous system.” Journal of Neurology.” 252 Suppl 5:v16-24, 2005 November.
4. Kantarci, Orthun. Wingerchuk, Dean. “Epidemiology and natural history of multiple sclerosis: new