food

[Guest guest]

Hi

I'm just back from a week's holiday and thought I would tell you about

something that happened that I thought was interesting. Long term

members of this list will know that it's not me that has MS but my

partner, Ajay. She has been lucky to have taken an alternative approach

to her health since she was diagnosed and it has had a really good

effect. When she was first diagnosed her symptoms were mostly sensory

and cognitive - she would get up in the morning and by the time she had

dressed and got downstairs she then only had the energy to spend the day

on the sofa. She was unable to concentrate on TV - no chance of reading

- and struggled to have a coherent conversation. She was in significant

pain (and used to get horrendous head aches) and had to crawl up the

stairs. Every so often she would have an episode that felt a bit like I

imagine a stroke feels - massive pressure on one side of her head and

the other side of her body not really working at all. Not good really.

We then found a doctor who takes an alternative approach - and has good

results. The first thing he did was to moderate her diet and to give

her massive quantities of vitamins and minerals - in a drip straight

into her arm. She gave up alcohol, caffeine, sugar, dairy and all

things processed and junky. Within a couple of months she played hockey

again. It was a struggle and wiped her out for a couple of days - but

she ran around a hockey pitch for 70 minutes which was an enormous

achievement.

Since then she's done all sorts of other things which have helped her

health; food allergy tests probably being the most significant.

5 1/2 years later you wouldn't know she was ill. She's much fitter than

me (not difficult really!) - plays hockey (and is also the oldest in her

team), walks the dogs, works hard and lives a pretty full and active

life. She's slipped off the wagon a bit but essentially we have a

pretty good diet.

Now to the holiday bit:- while on holiday Ajay likes to have the

occasional treat - and it's hard to argue, much as I would like to! The

extent of the treat was to have a decaffeinated coffee every morning

with breakfast. No big deal you might think - except that the process

of decaffeinating stuff is hideous and decaffeinated coffee is

absolutely to be avoided. On our second night she was really ill -

stroke symptoms as detailed above. Pretty scary given that she hasn't

had anything like that for a long time and that Morocco probably isn't

the best place to be seriously ill! She was ok the rest of the week but

very tired and achy - and her ankle started being extremely painful and

stopped working properly. We put it down to the excessive amount she

had been working before we came away - until our last day when something

a waiter said at breakfast made us realise that she hadn't been having

decaffeinated coffee at all. She had been having a double expresso

every morning. As soon as she stopped her symptoms magically

disappeared.

Contrary to how it might appear - we had a great holiday and now we're

back, she's fine! I thought this might be a useful illustration of the

importance of getting diet right. Not everyone is the same but I am

convinced that sorting out diet is at the route of getting on top of ill

health - not just MS but all ill health. It's not always easy to work

out what the right diet is for you but cutting out the obvious stuff (as

above), in my opinion, has to be the starting point.

O

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