MS diet
changes make a big difference, if done consistently over time, in
reducing the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, as well as helping to
reduce the effects of MS.
Multiple Sclerosis is known for weakening the immune system and
setting up the body for ending up with many different kinds of infections that
appear more often and tend to become more severe.
MS also makes it more difficult for the body to be
able to fight off the infections, once they take hold within the body.
Infections
thrive in an acidic environment in the body, causing the problems with
infections for people with Multiple Sclerosis to become even worse.
All
too often, it is not mentioned that what you choose to eat does make a
difference in strengthening your immune system to fight off infections,
when Multiple Sclerosis, but it does make a big difference.
You
can't eat the same thing most of the time, since that does not allow
you to be able to get the vitamins and other nutrients from the foods
that you eat to maintain a stronger immune system to help ward off
infections, but reducing how often the acidic foods are eaten does help
more in strengthening your immune system.
Eating foods that alkalize the body is a MS
diet change, which can help reduce the severity and the frequency of
infections for people, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.
Alkalizing the body is much easier, if you
understand more about what this means for you.
Alkaline and Acid refers to which side of the pH
scale that the body is registering at a given time.
pH is a scale from 0 to 14, which describes how
the body reacts to chemicals, nutrients and other substances that enter the
body.
For the body to be in balance, the pH of the body
is normally between 6.5 and 7.5 or neutral.
When the pH of the body is out of balance, closer
to the lower end of the pH scale (or acidic) or the body becomes more extremely
alkaline or much closer to the upper limit of the pH scale, then the body
becomes sick in one way or the other.
Infections tend to like when the body
becomes too acidic, but the majority of infections do not like a more alkaline
environment.
Over processed foods and eating mostly cooked
foods tend to push the body to become too acidic, setting up the body for an
environment that the infections tend to jump for joy in.
Eating more raw vegetables and fruit, as well as
more leafy green vegetables helps to encourage a more alkaline pH in the body,
which the majority of infections do not like.
Eating a MS
diet of 70% to 80% of alkalizing foods encourages an environment in
the body, which prevents the growth of the majority of infections.
This results in less infections being able to take
hold in the body, which greatly reduces the frequency and the severity of
infections that people with Multiple Sclerosis end up with.
Infections love an acidic environment.
If we can keep our bodies more neutral to alkaline for its overall
pH, the majority of infections can’t survive.
How do we go about alkalizing our bodies when Multiple
Sclerosis is present?
There are a few different ways for us to do this.
* Adding much more leafy green vegetables
* Eating more uncooked or lightly steamed vegetables and fruit
When you eat more raw vegetables and fruits, this maintains the
natural enzymes in the food that you eat that help to break down the foods that
you eat and help to keep the produce from becoming more acidic as it is cooked.
An example of a food that is alkaline when raw, but is acid when
cooked is the tomato.
When a tomato is cooked the pH of the tomato sauce or cooked
tomatoes is about 3, but when it is raw, tomatoes have a pH of 8.
The higher the number for the pH, the better the food can help
alkalize the body and prevent the majority of infections.
No one food can control the body’s pH – it is a combined effort
from the sum total of all the foods that are eaten for each day that make the
difference.
* Cut down the
quantity of RED Meats that are eaten
If your
symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis are more severe, it is better to cut out eating
all red meat for at least 2 to 3 years to help speed up the body’s ability to
heal from the effects of the body being too acidic.
All meat
acidifies the body, but read meat is much worse.
* Cut down the
total of all meats that are eaten daily
All meats are acid forming in our bodies, which if eaten in larger
quantities, meat can actually make our bodies more acidic.
Becoming vegetarian, for at least a period of time, can help in a
big way in helping the body to recover more quickly, but this is not a quick
fix, since changing the diet for a longer period of time is needed to get a
longer lasting effect on the body, since your body didn’t develop the
environment, which set up the body for Multiple Sclerosis over night.
It appears that the conditions that set up the body for conditions
that allow the effects of Multiple Sclerosis to take effect on the body takes
time to develop, since often the initial symptoms of MS are mild and tend to
develop over at least 2 to 4 years before Multiple Sclerosis is suspected and
diagnosed.
For me, I found that cutting down or even cutting out meat and
becoming vegetarian was very difficult for me, since I have been a meat eater
most of my life, but it is not impossible to do, since it is worth it in the
long run to help your body to recover from the often devastating effects of
Multiple Sclerosis.
Adding a higher percentage of raw vegetables to the diet can be
tough at first, but below are a few tips:
* Grind Greens to make a "Green
Shake"
Kale is the better choice out of the
greens for this, because it is “nutrient dense", which means that it is
the highest in nutrients like calcium, magnesium, iron, B vitamins and others
than other greens. Spinach is also very good, but it doesn't contain the same
vitamins as the kale.
It is recommended that you use organically grown
Kale or spinach, if it is available near where you live and if you can afford
to purchase it, because grinding the greens in larger quantities concentrates
the pesticides and other chemicals that were used while growing the plants for
the vegetables and fruits that we use for food.
* Add
Antioxidants to
Shake
Blueberries are the fruit with the
highest amount of antioxidants and can be added to the "Green Shake",
to yogurt or put on any type of cereal grain.
Another antioxidant is Raw Cacao Nibs,
which are basically raw and minimally processed cocoa beans that are just crushed,
but not roasted.
The Raw Cacao Nibs taste like the cocoa
powder, but they still have the enzymes in tack that help the body to absorb
the nutrients from the raw beans.
The cacao beans can be ground using a
coffee bean grinder. This can be added to the "Green Shake", to
yogurt or oatmeal for you to be able to absorb the nutrients from the cacao
beans that help to boost the immune system, provide you with energy and can
help calm down the over reactive nervous system.
If you can afford it or have access to
it, use these organically grown. (Amazon.com sells the organically grown raw
cacao nibs on-line, if you can't find any other way of purchasing them.)
Note:
If you have more problems with your liver or your kidney cut down or
maybe even cut out all caffeine to help your liver and/or your kidneys to
recover and heal more quickly.
Your liver and your kidneys are your
main detoxifying organs and if these do not work well, then it will be very
difficult for your body to remove toxins and help your body to cleanse and recover
more quickly from the effects on the nervous system that Multiple Sclerosis
tends to cause.
* Juicing
Vegetables and Fruits
This is another way to alkalize your
body as well as help to increase how much of the vitamins, minerals and other
nutrients that you are putting into your body to help replenish depleted levels
of vitamins in your body that can lead to vitamin deficiencies.
If you decide to use vegetables and
fruit for juicing, you will need larger quantities of these if you decide to
juice, since it takes more of the fruits and vegetables to make the juice,
since you do lose the part of the vegetables and fruit that contains most of
the fiber in juicing, where as in grinding the vegetables and fruit you use
most of the plant (leaf and stems too) and you lose much less of the vegetables
and fruits in the process.
Since this method concentrates the
pesticides and other chemicals, it is strongly recommended that you use
organically grown vegetables and fruits for juicing.
If it appears to be too expensive or
too difficult for you to be able to find larger quantities of the vegetables
and fruits, I would suggest grinding the vegetables and fruits instead.
Increasing nutrition uptake through
drinking more nutrient rich drinks and shakes with active live ingredients can
help to improve how quickly you can boost the levels of nutrients in your
system to help to reverse the damage that MS causes to the
body.
These and more can be included in examining diet and ms progression to find
ways to reduce symptoms of Multiple
Sclerosis.
There are a few diets that are recommended for use
with Multiple Sclerosis.
There are 3 main MS diet changes, which are recommended for Multiple Sclerosis, include:
* MS
Swank diet
Dr. Swank used a diet for his MS patients with very low levels
of saturated fats.
Dr. Swank followed the group of MS patients that were in a
study, where they meticulously kept track of what each patient ate over a
period of 34 years.
The conclusion of Swank diet for MS was that
cutting down the saturated fats to a very low level for a longer period of time
greatly slowed the progression of the MS disease and at the same time it
gradually reversed how severe the disability was for those who entered the
study at the beginning that we initially very disabled.
The
initial Dr. Swank diet for MS did not differentiate very well between
what were considered saturated fats and what were considered
unsaturated fats, but the revised Dr. Swank diet for Multiple Sclerosis
addressed the differences in fats to help make it easier for MS
patients to be able to stick more closely to the Dr. Swank diet, to
help increase how well the diet could help reduce the effects of MS on
the patients that used the diet.
* Best Bet Diet for MS
This diet reduces
foods that can stimulate the production of certain proteins in the body that
appear to be present in larger quantities as the degree of disability goes up
in Multiple Sclerosis.
Some
dietary supplements are also discussed with this diet, which have been
found to have a protective quality to people with Multiple Sclerosis
or help to reduce the effects of MS on the body.
Red meats are
reduced or even eliminated initially in this diet, to help reduce the
burden on the digestive tract to help speed healing.
Vitamin D
is suggested to be taken, since it was found that the majority of MS
patients had greatly reduced levels of vitamin D, which may be
suggesting that the severely reduced levels of vitamin D may set up an
environment causing the develop of Multiple Sclerosis to develop more
easily.
* The MS Recovery Diet
This
diet was developed by 2 women, who had battled with Multiple Sclerosis
and found that changing the diet in certain ways, greatly reduced the
effects of MS on their bodies and mostly "cured" them of the effects of
Multiple Sclerosis on their body through only dietary changes.
Cutting
out foods, which often cause allergic effects for people with Multiple
Sclerosis, can help tremendously with helping to speed healing with
Multiple Sclerosis.
The 5 main foods are gluten-containing grains, eggs, yeast, sugar and legumes.
It
has been found that many people with MS can not cut out meat totally,
since some protein in the diet has been found to help the brain and
other body functions to work much better, since cutting out too many
sources of protein at the same time is not to the person's benefit
overall.
Additional MS Dietary changes
Additional
changes to the diet for people with Multiple Sclerosis can include
changes in the diet that target helping to reduce specific symptoms of
MS or they can include helping a particular body part or organ to
function better, like the liver or kidneys or for reducing spasticity,
as an example.
These changes can be recommended by your doctor
or nutritionist to help improve how well your body deals with the
particular effects that Multiple Sclerosis has caused in your
particular case of MS or the diet changes may help in reducing the
degree of disability, that you have been experiencing, in some cases.
It is suggested that those with MS cut
out saturated fats, including cutting out hydrogenated and partially
hydrogenated fats, butter, cream and all dairy (at least during the first few
years during the healing phase) and instead add in more Omega 3 fats (flaxseed,
fish oils), in addition to supplementing or adding Evening Oil Primrose black
current oil and extra virgin coconut oil.
MS diet changes are emerging as one good way to reduce
the effects and symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis overall.
Significant
changes are being seen when
certain dietary changes are strictly adhered to for a longer period of
time, when it comes to helping the body to recover from the effects of
Multiple Sclerosis and to help increase the uptake of nutrients to the
body to reduce vitamin deficiencies.
