I often struggle with myself and my determination to see if I can use foods to help heal Sarah instead of the drugs that her neurologists have asked us to consider placing her on. The majority of the time I feel so alone in this battle, and the pressure and enormity of the decisions I am trying to make weigh so heavily on my heart. It doesn't help at all that there are so many mixed messages out there that trying to decipher between the truth and the crap requires a knowledge base that I clearly do not have...yet.
Just when I seem to be at my lowest points, I will find something that sends my heart and soul into a dance of jubilation because there is proof out there that my gut is right. I just have to dig for it. Sometimes, when I am really lucky, the proof just falls into my lap.
I had recently read online and then again in a magazine published by the National MS Society called Momentum that there are some intriguing studies being done on the relevance of our gut and disease. The gut is made up of both the small and large intestine. In both of these organs are microorganisms that reside in them. These living organisms help aid in the digestion of food, and also keep the harmful bacteria (found in some of the foods we eat and drink) from getting us sick. One of the most important things, in terms of Sarah anyway, is that in our guts reside a whole lot of immune cells. The microorganisms found in our guts "talk" to these immune cells. The way I understand it, if our gut is sick and does not have healthy microorganisms then it affects the way that our immune cells respond in our bodies. There is some thought that this conversation between the microorganisms and immune cells can go wrong causing the immune cells to go haywire. I find it to be amazing that our guts are what process the food we eat and the things we drink. So, in my brain, I would think that if there is something wrong with what is happening in our small and large intestines I would think that it would be related to what is being put into those organs. Which would then lead me to believe that if the right things are put back into it (let's say whole foods) then the organs should be able to right themselves and begin functioning properly, no? Which then leads me to believe that if our guts (which by the way - house more immune cells than any other organ) are making us sick then our guts should be able to make us well again. Now, I am sure that I will be thought of as crazy for having these thoughts. Diet alone helping illness? Without medication? Unheard of!
I will continue to research the gut and try and find as many studies as I can. I am also looking into something right now called a 'Leaky Gut'.From what I understand - and some of you may know about this a lot more than I do - a leaky gut is caused by the tearing down of our intestinal walls by the food we eat. Eventually, some of those particles of food get into our bloodstream. It is thought that when this happens some of these particles can mimic cells in our bodies. In the case of MS, when the body begins to fight these intruder particles found in our bloodstream it has a hard time telling them apart from normal cells because the particles have mimicked some of the normal cells. This causes our antibodies to attack real cells and the intruder cells. Which, for someone with MS, is a big problem.
I don't know about you, but I am noticing a common theme among our bodies and why they sometimes fail. It seems that the food we eat - whole food - is a lot more important than any big corporation with an interest in keeping us sick would like us to believe.
Obviously, I am no scientist or doctor. I am a mom who has a vested interest in making the best decisions that I can to help my daughter fight an autoimmune disease. There are several reasons floating around as to what causes MS, but no certain factors are known. Some of these reasons are things such as stress, a vitamin D deficiency, hereditary genes, a virus, and to those of us not in the mainstream of thought, food. My own personal theory is that Multiple Sclerosis is caused by a combination of several of these factors. I think for Sarah, her MS came about as a result of stress (in hindsight I can see now that some of her symptoms started to appear when Bob left for Chicago on his 7 month temporary job assignment), genes (my mom has MS), a vitamin D deficiency (we live in a cloudy part of the country), and finally food. This cocktail of things mixed at just the right speed, is what I believe, brought about Sarah's MS.
I feel that food plays a big part in not only what brought about the onset of Sarah's MS, but also an even bigger part in helping to keep her symptoms at bay. I work so hard at finding the best way for our family to eat because there is some information out there that will show that diet can halt the progression of MS (read T. Colin Campbell, John A. McDougall, Roy L. Swank, Ivy & Andrew Larson). There is no downside of trying to eat healthier, and that is one of the many things that I like about trying to alter our diet. There are many downsides to putting Sarah on a treatment plan for MS that includes injecting her with drugs. The only thing that all of these drugs can offer at best is that they may slow down the progression of the disease. Because MS is such an individual disease there is no guarantee that any of these drugs will actually work. There is no 'best' treatment out there either. All of these drugs have serious potential risks in taking them, and most of them guarantee having some less serious side effects such as flu like symptoms every week when you inject them into your body. (Most, but not all, of the 10 drugs approved by the FDA are to be injected into the body.) With the pharmaceutical industry being so powerful, I often question the reliability of the medicine they are trying to sell to me. Especially drugs that come with the warning labels of adverse reactions like those found in the drugs to (potentially) slow down the progression of MS.
I often feel that the benefits of food in treating illness are downplayed or are not even looked into at all because it would affect so greatly the bottom line of the pharmaceutical and food industry. Those two industries are big enough, and have enough sway power, to dictate what information is released and in what fashion, to the general public. That is why I respect people who are willing to put themselves out on the line and go against mainstream thinking. Some of the doctors listed above have been cast aside as wacko for thinking that diet can change so much of our ailments, but really, what could it hurt (besides the bottom line of the big pharmaceutical and agricultural companies) if we all just tried to educate ourselves and feed ourselves better?
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