After a week and a half of taking care of a fellow MS friend, I cannot help but wonder if MS attacks are caused by different foods. BY NO MEANS, AM I A DOCTOR!! AND THIS IS NOT A CURE FOR MS AND ALWAYS CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY, but it seems to be a pattern that food can play key roles in how we feel everyday. After having our 2nd group meeting and speaking with the people who showed up, they displayed the same opinions as I do. Everyone has “DIFFERENT” opinions and feelings about food.

With Lesa, we noticed that she had more problems with certain foods such as any type of dairy product, pork, yeast, and possibly eggs and gluten. This is extremely interesting and an interesting observation to me, since most of the healthy eating books about MS explain that these food allergies wreak the body’s abilities to walk and function normally.

Myra indicated in the meeting that her issues were related to anything that has sugar in it. Fruit is a natural sugar her doctor and she feels that some fruits are OK, but not to overdo it. Myra follows a very strict diet, she eat only organic fruits, vegetables, poultry, eggs, and nuts. She showed surprise when the book “The MS Recovery Diet” suggested that eggs might cause attacks because she eats eggs 3 times a week, this is written on the Direct-MS website

www.direct-ms.org/recommendations.html 

This website explains this same theory that these types of foods dairy, eggs, animal fats, sugars, gluten are suggested that have the potential to cause autoimmune reactions. MS is an autoimmune disease, and these foods may cause problems with certain people.  This does not mean Myra cannot eat eggs, it just means it is something she should keep track of and see if there is a problem. Every person has different attacks with different foods. Some suffer the same signs and with some there are no food allergies at all. 

 I noticed with my body, I cannot eat beef, peanuts, and some pork products, I become extremely tired and cannot function the next couple of days, I am very listless and feel like CRAP! Dairy (I mean just organic milk), eggs do not seem to bother me, although that is the number 1 problem with most people. I do not eat a lot of sugar anyway because I have Type II Diabetes – which was caused from years of Predisone and Soluable Medisol and of course the number one problem being overweight. Losing weight for me is a work in progress. Sometimes I think that losing weight is such a joke for me because it is so hard for me to exercise. My legs become numb and all tingling like they are going to fall asleep making it so painful to exercise.

I shared some great insights from information that I have collected from various book sources and from the health food stores. I had a friend who is a health food nut and she gave me one of her little brochures that she gets from her health food store and I found a very interesting article about the herb Cilantro. Cilantro to me tastes like soap. It is a very strong-tasting herb and it is used in mostly some Asian soups and Mexican dishes like salsa. Ok, there is a big theory floating out there about mercury and silver fillings that we have in our mouths for cavities. The silver that is used to fill cavaties causes our bodies to have dangerous toxins that cause MS an exacerbation. AGAIN, I AM NOT A DOCTOR BY ANY MEANS THESE ARE JUST OBSERVATIONS I HAVE LEARNED FROM OTHER PEOPLE.  By removing these silver fillings and replacing them with porcelain products the MS attacks were less to almost non-existent to some. Lesa has about 7 or 8 fillings in her mouth and one broke six months ago, and she told me her MS attacks started around that time frame. Vicky said that her mother who has MS had the same problem until her fillings were removed and there was a huge difference in the way her mom felt. SO….. interesting little tidbit of information. Anyway, the herb Cilantro helps remove toxins caused from aluminum, lead, mercury, silver etc., from the body. There is a Cilantro pesto sauce recipe on my PK Cakes website if you are interested in this sort of theory.

Learning about how food affects the body is extremely interesting to me. I enjoy learning about all kinds of food and how they affect the way we feel everyday. Very motivated  now to keep on eating healthy and promoting healthier eating habits.  It is better to be safe than to keep our eating style that can affect our recovery. I have to learn to accept that I have many limitations to eating and doing normal activities everyday and those things are very hard for me to do. It is hard to slow down when I know there is so much I  want and need to do. I have to stop and listen to what is going on in my body because I suffer when I am Not resting, Eating a well-balanced diet, Exercising (when I can), Getting enough sunshine for vitamin D (one of the causes of MS, the lack of), and Respecting my body. These are the 5 things I have to implement in my life. I do believe that if I follow those things, I will have better control of my MS situations that pop up everyday.

I often wonder if diet is a huge key into preventing MS attacks. The more research that I do about MS and diet, I am beginning to think that food allergies have a lot to do with how the body performs. One of the things I have been doing heavy research on is gluten free foods. I am almost convinced that gluten is one of the many problems that causes MS to react so badily in our bodies. I have eaten less gluten foods for a couple of weeks now and have noticed a huge improvement in the tingling of my legs and feet. Today I went off the diet a little bit and had coffee with cream and ate a piece of cake, the tingling in my hands, feet and legs is running 100 miles an hour. The way I am feeling right now has me convinced that I need to quit drinking coffee and eating food with gluten and sugar in them.

When I drank rice milk or almond milk I did not feel exhausted as I do today. I had cream in my coffee, I am becoming a little depressed because I do love milk, cream and cheese, these are a few of my favorite things. I am thinking I need to give these things up to feel so much better. I would rather feel great than eat these things I am thinking.

I am not a fruit person. I will eat bananas and apples if I must, but I would rather eat vegetables. I love vegetables. I can eat any vegetable except brussel sprouts sauted in onions, garlic and olive oil. I am thinking I should try and experiment and see if eating vegetables and grains that do not contain gluten such as Quiona will change the way I feel in the next few weeks.

I think it is so important to keep a food and mood journal because I know I cannot remember every single detail of my life everyday. I forget things all the time. Keeping a food journal will help decide if certain foods cause flareups with the MS and you will know in time what foods you can and cannot eat.

My goal is to eliminate gluten – cold turkey – pretend that I have a gluten allergy and must stop eating all forms of gluten and then work my way to dairy and sugar products. I think at this point of time in my life I am 44 years old and it is time I started working hard to take care of myself. It is crucial.

My motto right now is “it is my life, and it is in my hands. I must make the changes to control and improve my situation right now”.