Introducing "Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis" - the evidence-based recovery programme

The day I was discharged from hospital after my first MS episode in 2006, I started reading everything I could find on how to heal myself. I wasn't going to be oppressed by my neurologist's "doom and gloom", or by thoughts of my mother's fateful battle with MS. I chose not to see myself as having the same condition as the woman dying in a nursing home - I couldn't afford to think that way. So I started looking for advice that went beyond "you'd better make the most of it while you're not too disabled, because it's going to get a whole lot worse".

At first, I didn't find much.

No-one seemed to have any information about what I could do for myself on a daily basis to improve my odds. 

Then I was lucky to come across Ashton Embry's "Best Bet Diet", and a few years later, the "Wahls Protocol" by Dr Terry Wahls. Both of these dietary approaches referred to the published research at the time and aimed to slow the progression of MS, with some success. Both were devised by people with scientific or medical expertise beyond anything I could hope to achieve in this lifetime. Both helped me, just as they help thousands of others with MS, to limit the progression of symptoms - to a greater or lesser extent.

Then in 2014 I discovered Prof. George Jelinek's book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis. Jelinek is a highly esteemed medical doctor and editor of a major international medical journal. Since his own MS diagnosis he has applied his medical expertise to the business of analysing the published research in all areas of MS, and creating a unique "recovery programme" that includes diet, lifestyle, vitamin D supplementation, exercise, stress management and even emotional healing. He doesn't rule out disease-modifying drugs (DMDs) either, he just tells the truth about their limits. For Jelinek, dogma is nothing and results are everything, and he knows to overcome a systemic and drastic disease you may need to make systemic and drastic changes to the things that caused it in the first place. You need to do "whatever it takes", he says.
Reading the book for the first time, back in June 2014, I knew I had in my hands something with the potential not only to control but actually to reverse my symptoms. I was filled with confidence by Jelinek's thorough, evidence-based approach, and by the fact that it was a whole-life programme - more than just a diet. It sought to address all the factors that seem to create and sustain this illness and wasn't afraid even to talk about the mind-body connection that doesn't tend to show up too much in your average neurological consultation.

Prof George Jelinek: MD and MS Pioneer

It helped that, reading his words, I liked the guy too. Here is someone who grew up watching his mother succumb to this vicious condition that ultimately claimed her life prematurely. I could relate to that. And then when he suddenly, in the prime of his life, gets the same diagnosis, he doesn't collapse in self-pity - he rolls up his sleeves and says:
"OK, this sucks but I'm going to whatever it takes to beat it. I'm going to use all my skills to do what mainstream medicine hasn't done yet: bring together ALL the existing knowledge about MS and work out how to recover from this thing before it progresses any further."

As he applied everything he learned to himself, his condition stabilised and then fully reversed. In 2010 he published his discoveries in book form, so that thousands of others could take control of their MS in the same way.
Over fifteen years after diagnosis, he is vibrant, healthy, symptom-free, and a walking, running example of what can be achieved with dedication and the right information.
I am so grateful that I found the book when I did, and grateful that after less than a year of attempting to implement all its recommendations, I am now one of those thousands of healthy people.

If you or someone you love has MS, or indeed any similar auto-immune condition, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. A word of warning though: the programme is not for the faint-hearted. It demands radical change in many areas of your life. At least that's how it's been for me. But I've had such amazing results that I have to say it's been totally worth it. As an added bonus, it's led to my husband improving his health too. 
I've also met many other people who have reversed their symptoms, even people with primary progressive MS. So at the very least, it's worth a try, isn't it?

Research News: Good news about MS & Depression

So there I was last week complaining that the boffins weren't connecting the dots - between MS and depression - and all the while there was the latest paper from the HOLISM Study sitting in my inbox, and it's looking into exactly that! 
It's a very useful paper, especially for those of us living with MS, and as you might imagine, it contains both good news and bad news.

The bad news is that people with MS are considerably more likely than the general population to experience depression. We also have higher risk than people with other chronic conditions. But if you have MS, you probably knew that already... 

The good news is that there are things we can do - or "modifiable lifestyle factors" as the study calls them - that can make a significant difference! OK, you probably guessed that too, but doesn't it seem more solid now we know there is peer-reviewed scientific evidence to prove it?

Don't Do This

The study found that certain lifestyle factors are associated with increased risk of depression in people with MS. These are:

• Poor diet
• Little exercise
• Obesity
• Smoking
• Social isolation
• Taking interferon

I imagine these would increase anyone's risk of depression, come to think of it! 

I must admit to cringing a little as I read this, as I know that I get nothing like as much exercise as I could! 

Do This

The study's recommendations make much cheerier reading. The researchers point out that making the following changes will reduce our risk of depression:

• Healthy diet including some fish
• Supplementing with daily Omega 3 oil
• Supplementing with vitamin D3
• Regular exercise
• Regular meditation
• Social support 
• Stopping smoking

Of all these factors, it was perhaps meditation that showed the greatest risk reduction for depression. The study found that people with MS who meditated at least once a week halved their odds of getting depression. That's pretty encouraging stuff in my book!

Anyone following the OMS Recovery Programme will already be doing most if not all of these, and of course there is detailed discussion of some of the evidence supporting these measures in Prof Jelinek's book. In the coming weeks I'll be posting more information about each one in turn, so watch this space!

To read the full paper - free of charge - go to the BMC here.

How are you?

The trouble with any kind of autobiographical writing is that the story isn't finished yet. As philosopher Joseph Campbell and many psychologists would tell you, we humans generally use narrative structures, or stories, to understand and explain our experience of life. But a narrative requires a shape, ideally a pleasing arc, with a dramatic beginning, a problematic middle, and a satisfying end. Life, unfortunately for the would-be writer, is not very obliging in this respect.

Both the conditions that I live with are notoriously unpredictable. I'm not even able to answer the simple question "How are you?" with any accuracy. I always feel a need to clarify: "Do you mean how am I today, this week, this month, or this very moment?" Because, you see, it really is that changeable. 

This moment, as I sit here writing, I feel physically well, and mentally/emotionally a little fragile but more or less functional. However, whenever it is that you open this page, dear reader, I may be suffering a burning neuropathic pain, or straining against a bone-deep fatigue, or training for a 10k run, or floundering in a suicidal mire. Five minutes from now, a difficult phone call, stray Facebook comment, or other apparently innocent interaction may trigger in me a dangerous rage or a soul-sucking depression that drives me back to the brink. Or a minor trip, bump, or upset may set off a full-blown MS relapse.

We wait for the neurologists and the psychiatrists to realise that a human being is a single entity that cannot be so neatly compartmentalised, and figure out what is really going on within the Bermuda triangle of MS,  depression, and emotional volatility. Meanwhile, those of us who are not content to wait for yet another liver-toxic drug - which would only treat the symptoms anyway - must find our own way to surf the stormy seas of our inexplicable lives. And find mine I will, even if it takes a lifetime.

So it would seem that I have no nuggets of wisdom to offer today. Today, I cannot write my life - blogger, columnist and almost-author though I may be - because the truth is I haven't finished living it yet.

Life begins at 39 and 11 months

You may have read astounding, inspiring life stories of people who have miraculously healed from terrifying illnesses, diseases that we think of as incurable and fatal, diseases that we fear so much that we use euphemisms to avoid saying their names. I certainly have, and I love these memoirs - they inspire me and I often turn to them when I need to remember that life is infinitely more unpredictable and mysterious than we tend to believe.

This is not one of those stories. I am not dying. The problem is, I'm not living either. Can you relate? I'm nearly 40, and I'm afraid of everything, except perhaps death itself. No, death is a rather friendly thought in my imagination, it represents the end of my grey existence. A final letting off the hook of the life I'm too scared to live. I do fear my deathbed though. I have no doubt that if I were dying today, the regret would be total, it would be suffocating.

And today - as I recover from my 5th attack of Multiple Sclerosis and as the steroids and midsummer Sun burn the faintest break in the thick cold cloud of the depression that has been my prison for over 2 decades - today, I begin to create a new me. A new everything. Because I don't want to be too afraid to live any more. I am making a promise to myself, a solemn vow right here on this Tuesday afternoon pavement table, surrounded by rucksacked tourists, street traders and baby buggies, to do whatever it takes to finally inhabit my own life. There are no sacred cows here. There is nothing I will not do, try or sacrifice if I believe it is required.

Those stories, the ones that end with the once terminally ill person dancing off into the sunset - happy, healthy, healed - they always seem to start from a life-and-death moment, don't they? They're in the hospice, with days to live. The tumours have spread to every organ system. The doctors are about to switch off the machines.

If I carry on for the next 20 years as I have for the last 20 - flash forward to 60 years old - that could be me. And maybe I too would have a miraculous recovery, write a book, and dance off into the sunset. I believe it's possible: I know that the body has an astounding ability to heal itself, given a chance. So why wait to get that sick? 

When would now be a good time to start?

For once, I'm making a proactive choice. I'm not going to wait till I'm dying to start living.