I don’t know anything about this disease after 7 years other than this presents different in each person.
I am a vegetarian and eat mostly whole foods. I say that because it is my choice not because I am smug or anything.
I choose that for two reasons:
1. This disease SUCKS. I don’t want to sugarcoat. I hope you have a mild case. I have never had a relapse and I still wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I need to make sure I am controlling what I can control because I can’t control MS.
2. I don’t know what makes it better or worse. I don’t know if eating well and trying to move and sleep well and take meds and all that wholesome stuff actually works. But I don’t know any other way. I have no idea what the secret is to making this better but I will try anything.
That being said, this disease sucks. And life is hard. So find pleasure where you can. I won’t judge anyone for comfort and pleasure.
For me, I indulge in other ways but I love chocolate and I can justify eating it six ways to Sunday.
MS is hard. Do what makes your life easier. Just be patient with yourself and think about the overall situation and make good choices. Maybe the best choice one day is fast food but others days it is being healthy.
The mother in me wants to protect you. May your journey be easy and your symptoms mild. I deal with numbness in my legs, drop foot, balance issues and pain. My ms presents mainly as fatigue and leg issues.
While eating healthy is, of course, beneficial to people with MS, no one diet has proven to change MS outcomes. That means that there really aren't any foods that have been shown to aggravate MS. Make healthy choices, but it is safe to eat the foods you love.
Seconded. As long as you’re not eating 3 supersized Big Mac meals a day, every day, a fast food meal here and there is absolutely fine. MS takes away enough from us, and if indulging every so often gives you a little bit of joy back, I say fuckin’ go for it.
That being said, if you notice that you feel extra gross after you have fast food, then weigh the pros and cons on if you wanna do it again. (Is it worth feeling like poop the next day? Is it worth the GI discomfort? Is it worth the extra fatigue? Is it worth [insert negative symptom here], etc.)
Finally: Fast meals don’t have to be fast food either. If you can find a frozen meal that is yummy and is a “better” choice than fast food, keep that stuff stocked for days where cooking seems impossible.
There is a (weak, but still) connection between the diet part of the Healthy Heart Score (HHS) and an increase in T2-lesions - [here's the study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30758665/). I looked up what the diet part of the HHS is exactly and it's the usual: vegetables, fruit, fibre, nuts are considered positive, but sugar-sweetened beverages, and red and processed meats are considered negative.
Therefore I think we could say that those last foods have been shown to aggravate MS, but of course the study is small and the difference wasn't huge.
Interesting! I had not heard of this and will definitely investigate. I was basing my response on [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388136/) study, which found that diet did not influence outcomes.
Treat yourself! While diet itself does not cause MS, an overall healthy diet is good for everyone but the occasional fast food or ice cream isn't going to hurt you
I boulder three times a week and find it HARD to meet caloric demands unless I follow the above person's advice. 3000 perfect/clean calories is a time consuming pain in the butt. A juicy hamburger is an effective tool to feed exhausted muscles. Or a sedentary ass.
The key thing to ask yourself about any diet is: "Has it helped me feel better?" That will tell you whether it's worthwhile.
I've been on Ocrevus for ~2-1/2 years with no new lesions or symptoms. I am not on a strict diet and still eat fast food sometimes. The only thing I've given up is alcohol.
You don't have to follow a strict diet. You can live a healthier lifestyle and start the most effective DMT available to you.
Diet has had zero effect on my disease course and I’ve had MS since I was 13 and now 35. I’ve had two children and no other co-morbidities. The treatment has been the most effective thing for me. I’ve had no clinical relapse since I was 18 and no new lesions. I’ve also gone through my share of diets and exercises routines but I literally feel the same and my medical status is the same.
My 15 year old nephew might have it, he's doing a spinal MRI and lombar puncture today and I'm on autopilot trying to learn as much as possible about ms. I know it's not the same disease for everyone, but what advice would you give me as a relative to a kid that has it? What did you went through when you were a kid knowing you had it?
My doc told me that if I wasn’t going the medication route, a strict diet would be 100% important for me (no gluten, dairy, sugars, etc). She said that the diagnosis alone is a huge stressor, and since I’m doing Ocrevus that I can obviously eat better in general and that won’t hurt, but that trying to regulate my diet (and my normal) to that extent wouldn’t actually help as much as the stress would hurt me. So I make better choices overall but I love a coffee most of the time with dairy and definitely with sugar in the morning, and sometimes I like fast food! I’ve also added probiotics and green tea into my diet to help.
Treat things like ice cream and hamburgers and pizza like alcohol or other recreational drugs.
Sometimes and special occasions is totally fine and fun. It's very important to enjoy yourself.
3-7 days a week and you have a problem and you will pay for it in the long run.
Short term you'll be fine and feel better emotionally but the chronic inflammation from eating seed oils and the way eating lots of sugar will mess up your gut microbiome will do you a lot of harm long term.
Please stay strong and don't let this group tell you that eating terrible food is fine.
I went off a *very* strict diet after people in this group gaslit me into thinking eating garbage is fine and lo and behold I started getting symptoms again.
Some of the more vocal "I eat whatever I damn want" people in this group will aslo say that disability progression is inevitable, because they have experienced PIRA.
That, as well as the huge wealth of research done into diet and inflammation is enough of a correlation for me to stay away most of the time.
If you eat a low carb diet consistently, you'll find that your ability to taste becomes more sensitive and you can usually find a healthier alternative to most snacks.
This group disappoints me when they start in with the ‘eat whatever you want”. A healthy diet is crucial with any illness, why risk being able to walk?
Yeah I think it's profoundly selfish of the people who shoot down talk about healthy eating here.
Everyone is entiteld to do what they want with their bodies but misinforming other people to justify your own behaviour is wrong.
so many people talking about cutting out fast food and sugars, can someone tell me HOW i can do this successfully 😭 i am the primary cook in my household and many days i just don’t have energy. i’d like to be healthier but depression and fatigue have made it so hard
I'm a single household, so I only have to cook for myself, but I feel the struggle, because if I'm too tired or depressed there's also nobody else who can cook for me.
I think the best strategy is to prepare healthy meals when it's a better day, so when the worse days come you can just take something from the freezer and heat it up. It also helps if I don't even have anything sugary or highly processed at home, so it's not an "easy" choice. Sometimes my energy level is kind of on the border, so if there's an easy choice I'll take it. But if there's not I'll cook and realise it wasn't that bad in hindsight. (I probably have ADHD though, so everything seems a lot worse at first and too boring/energy consuming).
There are many people that have a huge stance on both sides. The answer is the middle ground in my opinion.
It's just like medicine what works for one doesn't for another.
I was basically vegetarian with small amounts of meat several times a week. ike meat on tacos. As a kid I didn't like meat.
I don't hardly ever eat noodles because I don't like spaghetti, lasagna etc and hardly ever eat things like Pizza. I have never been a fan.
However because of GI& swallowing issues I can no longer eat my favorite snacks (raw vegetables) and find toast and crackers are my go to because I can't hold anything down. Including water so I eat a few Oster crackers with my stomach meds in the morning.
I never drank soda as a kid until I was about 17 and would get myself a Dr pepper at school but I would say it's my hardest thing to stay away from.
I stopped drinking it for 6 months and I got worse not better. I actually find about a ounce or 2 in the morning settles my stomach better than prescription medication.
My husband is a trucker and I've been bed bound the last 2 years. I used to cook 5 nights a week with one night eating left overs and 1 night we got family pizza and I would eat salad or sandwiches or something.
I grew up with a garden and always grew veggies so it's my go to but ever since I was told not to eat them raw I've really struggled. I don't like many of them cooked. Well.i don't know if it's don't like but more gag on texture and don't hold them down. My esophagus is messed up.
Anyway, some days I don't eat at all and have to be reminded to eat. Some days I have to eat a frozen meal sometimes it's something like healthy choice some days it's a gross banquet meal. Depends on how long my husband is gone and what I have and think I can hold down.
We have fast food maybe 1 time every 2 weeks but sometimes it can happen a few days in a row because my husband has so much running to do when he is home to prep for his next trip out and to stalk all my supplies. He doesn't have time to cook and clean after all that when he is home for 34 hours.
So we eat fast food in moderation. Well I do on the road I know he sneaks it more.
With all that I say like everything moderation is best. If you eat something and it makes you feel terrible don't eat it again. But life is just as much about quality as it is quantity and we have to be okay with sometimes indulging. Everyone does it in one way or another. Maybe it's not food, but material things, gaming, working out, shopping, working, hobbies, sex, drugs etc..
Just like deciding to take a medication for 1 symptom but it has side effects it's up to each of us to decide what not just we are willing to do but what works for me not for you. Someone may hate fatigue so decide to take a stimulation medication but the side effects of headache or fast heart etc isn't something they are okay with while another will take the headache and fast heart rate over the fatigue.
So to everyone that is one sided on this it's because they decided for themselves what they were willing to accept and not accept.
I’ve not changed my diet until last year and that’s because I became lactose intolerant. But since 2017 I didn’t change anything and was on DMTs- no relapses no new lesions.
I believe everything is okay in moderation.
I've started cutting out any foods that make me feel sick. If fast food isn't making you sick then eat it in moderation. Honestly getting healthy is a good idea with MS. I used to weigh 230 pounds before diagnosis and brought myself down to 196. That is all because of the food I eat since I currently can't walk. Being lighter is beneficial, especially with MS. You do you though. Eat what you want. Whatever makes you feel good. If it doesn't then stop.
I would say that diet is very important in keeping the symptoms in check. I was given this advice by 2 different neurologists to avoid processed, unhealthy foods and stick to whole foods and fresh produce.
Generally, fast food/processed foods and foods high in sugars will increase inflammation. This is not something that is ideal for MS. It is not something that will change the diagnosis or anything but what I noticed for myself, my symptoms are more manageable when i eat healthy and i avoid these things. I also went gluten free and almost alcohol free which helped immensely with the fatigue. Having said that, indulging occasionally to these things will not trigger an episode or something like that.
TL/DR: Food will neither cause nor prevent brain lesions. It may affect how your symptoms present. MS affects everyone in different ways and what works for some won’t work for others. Pay attention to your body and your experiences and do what feels right for you. But take the DMT.
I will speak to my experience. I tried a strict, no sugar, whole food diet, sort of expecting a miracle zap of feeling better. It didn’t happen that way for me. As others have mentioned, there may be more reasons outside of MS to not indulge in foods that contribute to heart disease, but whether or not it will make your MS worse is most likely more individual. Even in this thread there are differing opinions, and that is due to the wide variance in the way this disease affects us.
What works for me is routine, taking all my meds, Lemtrada (no new activity going on 8 years-post now), and moderation leaning more towards the healthy side than the unhealthy one.
I have discovered that life is easier for me when I am not more than 10lbs overweight, and that it is in fact body weight that affects my pain and aches more than food, but of course, weight is often tied to food. I don’t always meet this criteria, but it is a fact about this body.
This disease is a shitshow, but it’s different for everyone, so you will have to discover what makes you feel better or worse. Inflammation is a big part of MS, and some foods do contribute to inflammation, and reducing them may make you feel better. And it may not.
Ultimately, what I have come to is this is a disease of choices. Do I want to risk this med for the possible reward of a symptom relief, knowing it may cause another symptom? Which symptom is worse? I choose the symptoms I can live with and treat the ones that make my life more difficult, because I’ve yet to find anything that makes all the symptoms disappear. If anyone has that magic dust, please share!
Do you want to risk feeling poorly for the joy of eating junk food? Sometimes it’s worth it. I know for a fact the meds I take are shortening my life, but they are giving me a quality now that is more important to me than longevity. Choices.
Also, while many people with MS have trouble in the heat, I have great difficulty in any environment lower than 75C. So, in winter, I feel much worse than I do in the summer. It is the thing that affects me the most—weather. So, if you are sensitive to heat, you may have a cycle where the summer problems are different/more severe than the winter ones. So you may perhaps be more strict when you’re feeling worse, and ease up when you are feeling good.
Lastly, how you feel about what you are doing will greatly affect its efficacy for you. So whatever choices you make, tell yourself they make you feel better, and they will be more likely to do so. Don’t underestimate the power of your brain to trick you into feeling good. But, be realistic when things begin to go south and try something else. Change is vital, because sometimes your body stops responding to a certain med or routine.
Be assured, that while some foods may not be good for you, and/or your body, nothing you eat will cause more lesions on your brain, and nothing you don’t eat will keep them from forming. So, how and what you eat is really only about what your symptoms are telling you in response to these foods. It doesn’t affect the progression of the disease, as far as research has so far shown.
I've quit sugars and fast food, you need to give yourself more time. 2 months is not enough to stop cravings. This is just your addiction brain trying to find reasons.
First off, congrats on your self awareness and being open to the idea you need to make a change.
Don’t forget, fast food and junk food is scientifically designed in a lab to taste great and get you to overindulge, setting up a person -no matter how much self control they have- to fail. This is true with or without MS.
I can’t remember the number, but it’s something like a month or two of not eating garbage is required until your tongue changes and gets you craving other foods.
For your health- MS or not- I would strongly advise finding out another activity that you enjoy and figure out what triggers you to want fast food and what feel good emotions eating this stuff brings you. This is a life lesson everyone in a country that prioritizes addictive consumption struggles to learn and execute consistently.
It’ll be a long road if you’re addicted and/or you are using the unhealthy junk food to cope with your negative feelings. Does your health insurance plan cover someone to help you with your eating habits and/or general therapy?
My ‘fast food’ treat is Panera. Their salads are so good and like 600 calories. I get a whole salad split into 2 boxes. It’s super yummy lunch and dinner.
When I need a treat I get one of their brownies. They are divine and since I’m only buying one it keeps me from going overboard lol!
I don't know if those foods will make MS worse, but they do make your health in general worse with all the forever chemicals and crap they put in it to make it hyper-palatable and addictive. I'm not saying never indulge, but make it more of a once in a while treat than a regular thing. I'm talking like once a month.
I almost never eat fast food anymore and haven't for years. When I do partake now, it is disappointing 100% of the time. It just doesn't hit like it used to, and as such, I don't crave that Big Mac and fries anymore. Your tastes do change when you start cooking all your meals and go without the fake food for long enough.
I say, eat something and see how you feel. Processed, high fat, high sugar foods, dairy and alcohol all make me feel bad. My symptoms are worse, I’m tired and can’t get things I like to do in my life done. So I avoid them or have them in very small amounts. See what happens in your body and eat what works for you. If you notice something doesn’t make you feel well then you have incentive to avoid it.
Hello! I would say even without MS, you will feel and function better with a good diet and exercise plan. What you personally need to get there is up to you to discover, but here are some tips from my own journey. If you have been really addicted to sugars and fast food, as mentioned in another comment, it does take a long while to end cravings - and having a little can easily slip into a lot again if you aren't super careful. For me, the key to getting to where I am now (healthy diet generally but able to have treats without slipping into overdoing it) was to 1) notice how awful I felt when I slipped. For example, red meat always made me ache all over the next day (inflammation). A little sugar was delightful, but a lot of sugar OR preservatives gave me a headache and upset stomach. Over time, when I'd have those sweet treats on occasion they started to taste TOO sweet and it was easier and easier to say no. Then 2) I needed to replace those habits with new options. When my husband wants fast food, I've usually been able to find a salad option or grilled chicken option that satisfies me. I used to eat some of his fries but now I don't even want those anymore. When there's a celebration that centers around cakes or cookies, I look for the option that I want the very most and have a little of it - and the longer I've been doing things this way, the more often I decide to just skip it. (I never say I'm avoiding sweets to other people - I just say no thanks, I'm really not in the mood for cake today. I'm really enjoying seeing everyone, though? What have you been doing lately?) 3) View a slip-up as in the past IMMEDIATELY rather than deciding the day/week is shot now so I can keep on eating the wrong things.
Fast food, processed foods, and a bunch of sugar is NOT good even if you don't have MS. With that said, I think it's okay to indulge once in a while just to keep your sanity. We all have our vices, but a healthy diet is extremely beneficial. Also talk with a doctor about getting on a DMT.
Trans fats are bad for MS. Some education is needed as I read the comments. They cause inflammation. Need to find what's more important. Eating what makes you happy with a heavy price or overcoming the addictions to these foods and start to feel better. I used to be the same until I had enough of the pain. After 2 years I don't want trash food. Comfort found in feeling good after eating healthy. Looking better too was a bonus
I don’t know anything about this disease after 7 years other than this presents different in each person. I am a vegetarian and eat mostly whole foods. I say that because it is my choice not because I am smug or anything. I choose that for two reasons: 1. This disease SUCKS. I don’t want to sugarcoat. I hope you have a mild case. I have never had a relapse and I still wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I need to make sure I am controlling what I can control because I can’t control MS. 2. I don’t know what makes it better or worse. I don’t know if eating well and trying to move and sleep well and take meds and all that wholesome stuff actually works. But I don’t know any other way. I have no idea what the secret is to making this better but I will try anything. That being said, this disease sucks. And life is hard. So find pleasure where you can. I won’t judge anyone for comfort and pleasure. For me, I indulge in other ways but I love chocolate and I can justify eating it six ways to Sunday. MS is hard. Do what makes your life easier. Just be patient with yourself and think about the overall situation and make good choices. Maybe the best choice one day is fast food but others days it is being healthy.
Hey, sorry to pry, but why does this disease suck so much? (Newly diagnosed)
The mother in me wants to protect you. May your journey be easy and your symptoms mild. I deal with numbness in my legs, drop foot, balance issues and pain. My ms presents mainly as fatigue and leg issues.
Chocolate 😋
While eating healthy is, of course, beneficial to people with MS, no one diet has proven to change MS outcomes. That means that there really aren't any foods that have been shown to aggravate MS. Make healthy choices, but it is safe to eat the foods you love.
Seconded. As long as you’re not eating 3 supersized Big Mac meals a day, every day, a fast food meal here and there is absolutely fine. MS takes away enough from us, and if indulging every so often gives you a little bit of joy back, I say fuckin’ go for it. That being said, if you notice that you feel extra gross after you have fast food, then weigh the pros and cons on if you wanna do it again. (Is it worth feeling like poop the next day? Is it worth the GI discomfort? Is it worth the extra fatigue? Is it worth [insert negative symptom here], etc.) Finally: Fast meals don’t have to be fast food either. If you can find a frozen meal that is yummy and is a “better” choice than fast food, keep that stuff stocked for days where cooking seems impossible.
There is a (weak, but still) connection between the diet part of the Healthy Heart Score (HHS) and an increase in T2-lesions - [here's the study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30758665/). I looked up what the diet part of the HHS is exactly and it's the usual: vegetables, fruit, fibre, nuts are considered positive, but sugar-sweetened beverages, and red and processed meats are considered negative. Therefore I think we could say that those last foods have been shown to aggravate MS, but of course the study is small and the difference wasn't huge.
Interesting! I had not heard of this and will definitely investigate. I was basing my response on [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388136/) study, which found that diet did not influence outcomes.
It's an every once in a while treat. I can't walk, so I have no way to burn off the extra calories. It's a struggle to not get fat.
Treat yourself! While diet itself does not cause MS, an overall healthy diet is good for everyone but the occasional fast food or ice cream isn't going to hurt you
I boulder three times a week and find it HARD to meet caloric demands unless I follow the above person's advice. 3000 perfect/clean calories is a time consuming pain in the butt. A juicy hamburger is an effective tool to feed exhausted muscles. Or a sedentary ass.
The key thing to ask yourself about any diet is: "Has it helped me feel better?" That will tell you whether it's worthwhile. I've been on Ocrevus for ~2-1/2 years with no new lesions or symptoms. I am not on a strict diet and still eat fast food sometimes. The only thing I've given up is alcohol. You don't have to follow a strict diet. You can live a healthier lifestyle and start the most effective DMT available to you.
Diet has had zero effect on my disease course and I’ve had MS since I was 13 and now 35. I’ve had two children and no other co-morbidities. The treatment has been the most effective thing for me. I’ve had no clinical relapse since I was 18 and no new lesions. I’ve also gone through my share of diets and exercises routines but I literally feel the same and my medical status is the same.
My 15 year old nephew might have it, he's doing a spinal MRI and lombar puncture today and I'm on autopilot trying to learn as much as possible about ms. I know it's not the same disease for everyone, but what advice would you give me as a relative to a kid that has it? What did you went through when you were a kid knowing you had it?
I do not really have access to fast food near me but summer months I enjoy grilling burgers on the weekends.
My doc told me that if I wasn’t going the medication route, a strict diet would be 100% important for me (no gluten, dairy, sugars, etc). She said that the diagnosis alone is a huge stressor, and since I’m doing Ocrevus that I can obviously eat better in general and that won’t hurt, but that trying to regulate my diet (and my normal) to that extent wouldn’t actually help as much as the stress would hurt me. So I make better choices overall but I love a coffee most of the time with dairy and definitely with sugar in the morning, and sometimes I like fast food! I’ve also added probiotics and green tea into my diet to help.
Treat things like ice cream and hamburgers and pizza like alcohol or other recreational drugs. Sometimes and special occasions is totally fine and fun. It's very important to enjoy yourself. 3-7 days a week and you have a problem and you will pay for it in the long run. Short term you'll be fine and feel better emotionally but the chronic inflammation from eating seed oils and the way eating lots of sugar will mess up your gut microbiome will do you a lot of harm long term. Please stay strong and don't let this group tell you that eating terrible food is fine. I went off a *very* strict diet after people in this group gaslit me into thinking eating garbage is fine and lo and behold I started getting symptoms again. Some of the more vocal "I eat whatever I damn want" people in this group will aslo say that disability progression is inevitable, because they have experienced PIRA. That, as well as the huge wealth of research done into diet and inflammation is enough of a correlation for me to stay away most of the time. If you eat a low carb diet consistently, you'll find that your ability to taste becomes more sensitive and you can usually find a healthier alternative to most snacks.
This group disappoints me when they start in with the ‘eat whatever you want”. A healthy diet is crucial with any illness, why risk being able to walk?
Yeah I think it's profoundly selfish of the people who shoot down talk about healthy eating here. Everyone is entiteld to do what they want with their bodies but misinforming other people to justify your own behaviour is wrong.
Completely agree
so many people talking about cutting out fast food and sugars, can someone tell me HOW i can do this successfully 😭 i am the primary cook in my household and many days i just don’t have energy. i’d like to be healthier but depression and fatigue have made it so hard
I'm a single household, so I only have to cook for myself, but I feel the struggle, because if I'm too tired or depressed there's also nobody else who can cook for me. I think the best strategy is to prepare healthy meals when it's a better day, so when the worse days come you can just take something from the freezer and heat it up. It also helps if I don't even have anything sugary or highly processed at home, so it's not an "easy" choice. Sometimes my energy level is kind of on the border, so if there's an easy choice I'll take it. But if there's not I'll cook and realise it wasn't that bad in hindsight. (I probably have ADHD though, so everything seems a lot worse at first and too boring/energy consuming).
There are many people that have a huge stance on both sides. The answer is the middle ground in my opinion. It's just like medicine what works for one doesn't for another. I was basically vegetarian with small amounts of meat several times a week. ike meat on tacos. As a kid I didn't like meat. I don't hardly ever eat noodles because I don't like spaghetti, lasagna etc and hardly ever eat things like Pizza. I have never been a fan. However because of GI& swallowing issues I can no longer eat my favorite snacks (raw vegetables) and find toast and crackers are my go to because I can't hold anything down. Including water so I eat a few Oster crackers with my stomach meds in the morning. I never drank soda as a kid until I was about 17 and would get myself a Dr pepper at school but I would say it's my hardest thing to stay away from. I stopped drinking it for 6 months and I got worse not better. I actually find about a ounce or 2 in the morning settles my stomach better than prescription medication. My husband is a trucker and I've been bed bound the last 2 years. I used to cook 5 nights a week with one night eating left overs and 1 night we got family pizza and I would eat salad or sandwiches or something. I grew up with a garden and always grew veggies so it's my go to but ever since I was told not to eat them raw I've really struggled. I don't like many of them cooked. Well.i don't know if it's don't like but more gag on texture and don't hold them down. My esophagus is messed up. Anyway, some days I don't eat at all and have to be reminded to eat. Some days I have to eat a frozen meal sometimes it's something like healthy choice some days it's a gross banquet meal. Depends on how long my husband is gone and what I have and think I can hold down. We have fast food maybe 1 time every 2 weeks but sometimes it can happen a few days in a row because my husband has so much running to do when he is home to prep for his next trip out and to stalk all my supplies. He doesn't have time to cook and clean after all that when he is home for 34 hours. So we eat fast food in moderation. Well I do on the road I know he sneaks it more. With all that I say like everything moderation is best. If you eat something and it makes you feel terrible don't eat it again. But life is just as much about quality as it is quantity and we have to be okay with sometimes indulging. Everyone does it in one way or another. Maybe it's not food, but material things, gaming, working out, shopping, working, hobbies, sex, drugs etc.. Just like deciding to take a medication for 1 symptom but it has side effects it's up to each of us to decide what not just we are willing to do but what works for me not for you. Someone may hate fatigue so decide to take a stimulation medication but the side effects of headache or fast heart etc isn't something they are okay with while another will take the headache and fast heart rate over the fatigue. So to everyone that is one sided on this it's because they decided for themselves what they were willing to accept and not accept.
I’ve not changed my diet until last year and that’s because I became lactose intolerant. But since 2017 I didn’t change anything and was on DMTs- no relapses no new lesions. I believe everything is okay in moderation.
I've started cutting out any foods that make me feel sick. If fast food isn't making you sick then eat it in moderation. Honestly getting healthy is a good idea with MS. I used to weigh 230 pounds before diagnosis and brought myself down to 196. That is all because of the food I eat since I currently can't walk. Being lighter is beneficial, especially with MS. You do you though. Eat what you want. Whatever makes you feel good. If it doesn't then stop.
Life is short. Life with MS is hard. Enjoy your favorites from time to time with no guilt
I would say that diet is very important in keeping the symptoms in check. I was given this advice by 2 different neurologists to avoid processed, unhealthy foods and stick to whole foods and fresh produce. Generally, fast food/processed foods and foods high in sugars will increase inflammation. This is not something that is ideal for MS. It is not something that will change the diagnosis or anything but what I noticed for myself, my symptoms are more manageable when i eat healthy and i avoid these things. I also went gluten free and almost alcohol free which helped immensely with the fatigue. Having said that, indulging occasionally to these things will not trigger an episode or something like that.
TL/DR: Food will neither cause nor prevent brain lesions. It may affect how your symptoms present. MS affects everyone in different ways and what works for some won’t work for others. Pay attention to your body and your experiences and do what feels right for you. But take the DMT. I will speak to my experience. I tried a strict, no sugar, whole food diet, sort of expecting a miracle zap of feeling better. It didn’t happen that way for me. As others have mentioned, there may be more reasons outside of MS to not indulge in foods that contribute to heart disease, but whether or not it will make your MS worse is most likely more individual. Even in this thread there are differing opinions, and that is due to the wide variance in the way this disease affects us. What works for me is routine, taking all my meds, Lemtrada (no new activity going on 8 years-post now), and moderation leaning more towards the healthy side than the unhealthy one. I have discovered that life is easier for me when I am not more than 10lbs overweight, and that it is in fact body weight that affects my pain and aches more than food, but of course, weight is often tied to food. I don’t always meet this criteria, but it is a fact about this body. This disease is a shitshow, but it’s different for everyone, so you will have to discover what makes you feel better or worse. Inflammation is a big part of MS, and some foods do contribute to inflammation, and reducing them may make you feel better. And it may not. Ultimately, what I have come to is this is a disease of choices. Do I want to risk this med for the possible reward of a symptom relief, knowing it may cause another symptom? Which symptom is worse? I choose the symptoms I can live with and treat the ones that make my life more difficult, because I’ve yet to find anything that makes all the symptoms disappear. If anyone has that magic dust, please share! Do you want to risk feeling poorly for the joy of eating junk food? Sometimes it’s worth it. I know for a fact the meds I take are shortening my life, but they are giving me a quality now that is more important to me than longevity. Choices. Also, while many people with MS have trouble in the heat, I have great difficulty in any environment lower than 75C. So, in winter, I feel much worse than I do in the summer. It is the thing that affects me the most—weather. So, if you are sensitive to heat, you may have a cycle where the summer problems are different/more severe than the winter ones. So you may perhaps be more strict when you’re feeling worse, and ease up when you are feeling good. Lastly, how you feel about what you are doing will greatly affect its efficacy for you. So whatever choices you make, tell yourself they make you feel better, and they will be more likely to do so. Don’t underestimate the power of your brain to trick you into feeling good. But, be realistic when things begin to go south and try something else. Change is vital, because sometimes your body stops responding to a certain med or routine. Be assured, that while some foods may not be good for you, and/or your body, nothing you eat will cause more lesions on your brain, and nothing you don’t eat will keep them from forming. So, how and what you eat is really only about what your symptoms are telling you in response to these foods. It doesn’t affect the progression of the disease, as far as research has so far shown.
I've quit sugars and fast food, you need to give yourself more time. 2 months is not enough to stop cravings. This is just your addiction brain trying to find reasons.
First off, congrats on your self awareness and being open to the idea you need to make a change. Don’t forget, fast food and junk food is scientifically designed in a lab to taste great and get you to overindulge, setting up a person -no matter how much self control they have- to fail. This is true with or without MS. I can’t remember the number, but it’s something like a month or two of not eating garbage is required until your tongue changes and gets you craving other foods. For your health- MS or not- I would strongly advise finding out another activity that you enjoy and figure out what triggers you to want fast food and what feel good emotions eating this stuff brings you. This is a life lesson everyone in a country that prioritizes addictive consumption struggles to learn and execute consistently. It’ll be a long road if you’re addicted and/or you are using the unhealthy junk food to cope with your negative feelings. Does your health insurance plan cover someone to help you with your eating habits and/or general therapy?
My ‘fast food’ treat is Panera. Their salads are so good and like 600 calories. I get a whole salad split into 2 boxes. It’s super yummy lunch and dinner. When I need a treat I get one of their brownies. They are divine and since I’m only buying one it keeps me from going overboard lol!
I don't know if those foods will make MS worse, but they do make your health in general worse with all the forever chemicals and crap they put in it to make it hyper-palatable and addictive. I'm not saying never indulge, but make it more of a once in a while treat than a regular thing. I'm talking like once a month. I almost never eat fast food anymore and haven't for years. When I do partake now, it is disappointing 100% of the time. It just doesn't hit like it used to, and as such, I don't crave that Big Mac and fries anymore. Your tastes do change when you start cooking all your meals and go without the fake food for long enough.
I say, eat something and see how you feel. Processed, high fat, high sugar foods, dairy and alcohol all make me feel bad. My symptoms are worse, I’m tired and can’t get things I like to do in my life done. So I avoid them or have them in very small amounts. See what happens in your body and eat what works for you. If you notice something doesn’t make you feel well then you have incentive to avoid it.
Hello! I would say even without MS, you will feel and function better with a good diet and exercise plan. What you personally need to get there is up to you to discover, but here are some tips from my own journey. If you have been really addicted to sugars and fast food, as mentioned in another comment, it does take a long while to end cravings - and having a little can easily slip into a lot again if you aren't super careful. For me, the key to getting to where I am now (healthy diet generally but able to have treats without slipping into overdoing it) was to 1) notice how awful I felt when I slipped. For example, red meat always made me ache all over the next day (inflammation). A little sugar was delightful, but a lot of sugar OR preservatives gave me a headache and upset stomach. Over time, when I'd have those sweet treats on occasion they started to taste TOO sweet and it was easier and easier to say no. Then 2) I needed to replace those habits with new options. When my husband wants fast food, I've usually been able to find a salad option or grilled chicken option that satisfies me. I used to eat some of his fries but now I don't even want those anymore. When there's a celebration that centers around cakes or cookies, I look for the option that I want the very most and have a little of it - and the longer I've been doing things this way, the more often I decide to just skip it. (I never say I'm avoiding sweets to other people - I just say no thanks, I'm really not in the mood for cake today. I'm really enjoying seeing everyone, though? What have you been doing lately?) 3) View a slip-up as in the past IMMEDIATELY rather than deciding the day/week is shot now so I can keep on eating the wrong things.
YES!
do whatever you want lol
Fast food, processed foods, and a bunch of sugar is NOT good even if you don't have MS. With that said, I think it's okay to indulge once in a while just to keep your sanity. We all have our vices, but a healthy diet is extremely beneficial. Also talk with a doctor about getting on a DMT.
Trans fats are bad for MS. Some education is needed as I read the comments. They cause inflammation. Need to find what's more important. Eating what makes you happy with a heavy price or overcoming the addictions to these foods and start to feel better. I used to be the same until I had enough of the pain. After 2 years I don't want trash food. Comfort found in feeling good after eating healthy. Looking better too was a bonus
People don't like honesty 🤣🤘💪