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Tag: multiple sclerosis and heat

A Fight MS with Food Case Study: Marion P.

Marion P. is a 65-year old active married woman. She experienced MS symptoms since the age of 24 but was not diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis until she was 63. A busy, successful business owner with a quick brain, Marion and her husband divide their time between their winter and summer homes.

In March of 2010, Marion noticed that she was experiencing constant MS symptoms of light-headedness, balance and coordination issues, and her gait was off. She felt very fatigued all the time, run down, and depressed.

In July of 2010, Marion joined the Fight MS with Food project and took the MRT blood test to identify her unique food sensitivities. With the results of her personal reactivity to 150 foods and chemicals in hand, we designed a customized meal plan for her to follow out of what we now knew to be her least-reactive foods. She began eating a personalized anti-inflammatory diet that was custom-designed to account for her unique oral tolerance thresholds.

Additionally, Marion collected her urine for 24-hours and submitted it for laboratory analysis. This urinalysis showed Marion had incomplete digestion. She began a customized supplement regimen based on the laboratory results and aimed at helping her to fully digest her foods and assimilate nutrients.

Within three weeks, Marion noticed that the dizziness and wobbliness had abated. Within five weeks she reported that her gait had returned to normal and she no longer had to worry about setting her feet down carefully when she walked. She felt completely clear of MS symptoms.

She reported an incident that happened when she was traveling for business and ate a dinner of food that was off of her diet. Within an hour she had a headache bad enough to send her to bed. By morning, her MS symptoms had reappeared, and she felt dizzy and unstable. She remained faithful to the diet and by the following day she felt fully recovered. That incident convinced her that the this approach was working.

In March of 2011, she reported feeling as if there was a hot, burning spot on the top of her head, an MS symptom. After some probing, she revealed that she had been taking large quantities of aloe vera juice after a conversation with a doctor who believed it could cure MS. When she was reminded that aloe vera is in the same family as onions, to which the MRT showed she was reactive, she ceased taking the aloe vera juice and the hot spots disappeared.

As of June of 2012, two years after changing her diet and changing her life, Marion is continuing to lead an active and busy life while feeling free from MS symptoms.

Learn more about the Fight MS with Food project and how undiagnosed food sensitivities affect MS. Please feel free to contact me to set up a free consultation to see if you would be a good candidate for this protocol.

Keeping Cool in the Heat: Sun Tea and other solutions

Now that the temperature has started to seriously climb — summer seems to be coming a bit late this year — I look for ways to stay cool in the heat. Those of us with MS know that raising our core body temperature can not only slow us down, it can exacerbate existing MS symptoms.

MS patients try everything from cold showers to wearing cold-packed life vests to keep cool. Here are a few of my favorite ways to keep cool that are a little more enjoyable than a bracing shower:

1. Run cold water over your wrists. The inside of the wrists are like the body’s thermostat and the most sensitive place for temperature changes. That’s why we test for fevers with the inner wrist across the forehead, or judge the temperature of the baby’s bottle by splashing a few drops on the wrist. I find that cooling off the inside of my wrists can bring my entire body’s temp down pretty quickly and make me much more comfortable.

2. Frozen washcloths. Every summer my jazzercise instructor freezes wet washcloths in a zip-top baggie. She pulls out the baggie at the start of class and by the time we’re ready for the anarobic floor work segment at the end, they’ve thawed just enough to separate. You haven’t known paradise until you mop a sweaty brow with a frozen towel! I usually try to drape the rapidly-thawing towel across the back of my neck (tucking the corners into my jog-bra to hold it in place) as I do the weight-training routines.

3. Drink sun tea. I love making sun tea in the summer, and it’s a great way to stay hydrated without Brewing sun teapumping your body full of extra calories or artificial ingredients. In my 20s I always kept a pitcher of Crystal Lite in the fridge, but now I wonder if all that aspartame might have contributed to my body breaking down with MS. Aspartame poisoning can mimic some MS symptoms, even though we’ve been sold it as a “safe” sugar substitute.

To make sun tea, fill a large glass (not plastic!) jar with cold, filtered water. Drop in a couple of tea bags (I’ve used 3 “family-size” tea bags here). Close the lid loosely as you want the air to be able to circulate as the water heats. Set it in direct sun for a few hours and voila! Remove the tea bags and store the jar in the fridge.

I always make my sun tea decaffeinated so that I can drink it with impunity andBrewed Sun Tea not suffer the effects of caffeine. Personally, I like to use black tea, even Liptons, but feel free to use your favorite herbal teas as well. The photo on the right shows the jar at the end of the day with fully-brewed tea. Garnished with fresh mint from the garden, sun tea is one of my favorite summertime treats!

Look for sun tea jars at Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, or even your local supermarket. I like the ones that have a pour-spout at the base so that I can dispense tea without removing the jar from the refrigerator shelf.