5 Easy Actions to Reverse MS

Last Updated on November 18, 2023 by Cathy

About one million people in the U.S. are living with multiple sclerosis (MS). That’s up from 400 thousand from the last estimate. It’s not just MS cases increasing, but all autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and lupus.

Conventional medicine’s approach is to use steroids and strong immunosuppressant medications. However, this is a band-aid approach, it does not treat the root cause. I like Dr. Mark Hyman’s comment comparing conventional medicine to functional medicine.

“If you are standing on a tack, it takes a lot of aspirin to make you feel better. The treatment for standing on a tack is removing the tack…Hence getting to the root of the problem.” – Mark Hyman

According to PubMed “MS is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system.” To get MS into remission and reduce your symptoms you need to get to the root cause.

Here are 5 helpful tips to reduce inflammation to naturally manage MS.

Step 1: Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

The key to eating healthy is to eat an anti-inflammatory diet such as the paleo or AIP diet. This diet helps slow the autoimmune process to allow your body to heal. 

Remove inflammatory foods such as refined sugar, inflammatory oils, gluten, and dairy. If you are currently eating the standard American diet (SAD) this will be a huge change. You need to focus on eating mostly vegetables, up to 10 cups each day. Dr. Terry Wahls recommends eating 3 cups of each:

• Leafy greens
• Colorful all the way through such as beets and carrots
• Sulfur such as asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, and onions

Lower the number of carbohydrates you eat each day. Infections such as SIBO and yeast overgrowth (candida) feed on sugar. It will also help stabilize your blood sugar. 

When making a recipe double it and save half for a later time. This comes in handy when you are too busy to cook or you don’t feel like cooking. Remember, this is a diet to help your body heal, it is not a starvation diet. 

If you are feeling hungry, eat something. 

Always keep healthy food available to eat. If you don’t have something to eat it will be too tempting to reach for something you’ll regret eating later. This includes when you leave the house. Keep healthy snacks in your office desk drawer, purse, backpack, or car glove compartment. 

Healthy snacks:

• Almond butter, Justin’s has different flavors such as classic, honey, or vanilla
• Cassava Strips
• Dark chocolate, make sure it’s 70% or higher (the higher the percentage the more bitter it taste)
• Fruit
• Larabars, flavors like apple pie, blueberry muffin, or cashew cookie
• Nuts and seeds
• Paleonola Grain-Free Granola
• Paleovalley grass-fed beef sticks
• Primal Kitchen Collagen Bar
• RXBars, flavors such as blueberry, chocolate sea salt, or banana, chocolate, walnut
• Seasnax seaweed snacks
• Siete Grain-Free Chips, flavors such as lime, nacho (contains nightshades), and sea salt
• Vegetable chips
  

If the snack is higher in carbs, only eat a moderate amount. Always read the ingredients before buying. 

Step 2: Remove chronic infections

It is important to find any chronic infection, there may even be more than one infection. This can get tricky and you may need help. I visited a functional medicine provider who helped me. I had two different infections, both were due to fungi.

Common chronic infections:

• Bacteria such as too much bad gut bacteria or SIBO
• Lyme disease
• Mycotoxins
• Parasites
• Viruses such as Epstein Barr (EBV)
• Yeast overgrowth (candida)

People don’t realize it but it’s very common for people with MS to have these types of infections. It is vital to address each infection to stop the progression of MS. Because infections stress the immune system slowing its ability to work properly.

Step 3: Food Sensitivities

Unfortunately, having an autoimmune disease can cause food sensitivities. I was sensitive to eggs my entire life, they always gave me gut pains. But I continued to eat them not realizing the damage it was causing to my gut.

It wasn’t until I started paying attention to how food affected me that I stopped eating them. For other foods such as peppers and tomatoes, I didn’t realize my body reacted until I tried a food elimination diet.

You can also get lab testing. This is what I ended up doing because I couldn’t figure out what else was causing my symptoms. It turns out I had a long list of foods my body was sensitive to including:

• Arugula 
• Aspartame 
• Avocado
• BHT (preservative)
• Cocoa Bean (chocolate)
• Coconut 
• Egg White
• Egg Yolk
• Grape (cabernet sauvignon) 
• Grapefruit
• Green #3 
• Pear
• Pepper (Green/Red/Yellow)
• Red Dye #40
• Sulfur Dioxide (preservative)
• Sumac (spice)
• Tomato
• Tuna
• Watermelon
• Woodruff (herb)

If you do decide to get a lab test make sure it is for the IgG antibody. Food allergies differ from food sensitivities and are caused by IgE antibodies. Unlike food sensitivities, a food allergy can be life-threatening.

Step 4: Fix Your Leaky Gut

Researchers now know your immune system is part of your gut. That’s why when you feel stress out your stomach gets upset. As the inflammation in your body rises, your immune system will get activated. This is why it starts reacting to foods, bacteria, and toxins in your gut and your bloodstream.

This unbalance can lead to a leaky gut. This allows these pathogens to pass through the gut lining and into the bloodstream. Researchers discovered people with MS have more bad gut bacteria than healthy people. 

The best way to heal your gut is to eat an anti-inflammatory diet with lots of vegetables and healing foods. Foods such as bone broth, fatty fish, fermented foods, olive oil, and resistant starch. 

Step 5: Live a Healthy Lifestyle

Stopping the progression of MS is more than food, it’s how you live your life. It can sometimes be difficult. But prioritizing your health will help improve the quality of your life.

Steps to a healthy lifestyle:

• Connect with others
• Exercise regularly
• Get good quality sleep
• Practice relaxation
• Spend time outdoors
• Supplement wisely
• Think positive

5 Easy Actions to Reverse MS

The steps to stop the progression of MS are all about taking small steps. This isn’t an overnight process, it does take time.

Don’t get discouraged. My heat intolerance disappeared in three months. And that was after suffering from it for about 20 years! It depends on how long you have had MS and the severity of your symptoms.

If you struggle, find help. Here’s a link to help you find a functional medicine provider. You don’t necessarily need to find one in your area. Many doctors are now seeing patients through video communications such as Zoom.

Follow these few basic steps to successfully stop MS once and for all!

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Photos by Viktor from Picjumbo, Jessica Lynn Lewis from Pexels, and Free-Photos from Pixabay.

Resources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5830904/

5 Easy Actions to Reverse MS