To be fair, as soon as I had an inkling that I might have multiple sclerosis, I knew I had to do something about it. I'm not the sort of person who hangs around and lets things happen to them. Therefore, I had a scout about to see what my options were. As it turns out, one of my sisters was going to a school reunion to the Isle of Wight. One of her school friends had had multiple sclerosis for a couple of decades and was presently swearing by a book by Dr Jelinek called "Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis". OMS.
And, due to some kindly people in the UK, the book is available for free for MS sufferers. I ordered it and devoured it, partly due to the fact that I'm so interested in science and evidence-based policy-making. What this means is that the book isn't full of "woo". It is full of claims that are backed up by lots of scientific evidence. The author is a doctor who had contracted multiple sclerosis himself and thought to do a really good job at assimilating all the evidence around the world that would seek to improve his condition.
The seven things that I took on from the book were:
1) A vegan diet
2) increased vitamin D - lack of sunlight appears to be a large trigger for MS
3) cutting back my saturated fats (and replacing them with omega three heavy olive oils and flaxseeds and fish).
4) improved exercise in trying to combat my sedentary lifestyle
5) combating my excessive stress through work and cutting back on all the other things that I do in my life: for example, managing a's football team, coaching rugby team and so on.
6) helping make sure that my children take similar precautions
7) Medication - but not for me - PPMS...
This last one was less important to me because of my PPMS and is the fact that I had not and would not be prescribed any meaningful medication. But the rest of the advice seemed to be soundly backed up by science and common sense. As a result, I took this on straight away.
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