If you are like most, getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) was like being thrown under a bus.  It was scary, and you were given few if any, resources, information, or guidelines on how to help your body recover.

There’s nothing you can do about it.  You’ll have to learn to live with it. – most common phrase heard the day of diagnoses

Let’s change that.

In the following presentation on the Wheel of Health in Multiple Sclerosis, Eva M Clark, facilitator of the MS Self-Help Group of Santa Cruz, California, will walk us through what you can do to regain control of your health.

The Wheel of Health in Multiple Sclerosis

Biological Factors

1. Nutrition In

The first area most people diagnosed with MS will work on is their diet.  The standard American diet (SAD) does not contribute to health and, when your health is already compromised, continuing to eat food low in nutrients is like rubbing sand on a cut – it will not help your body heal.

2. Toxins Out

When the body is already compromised, lowering the levels of toxicity accumulated in the body helps relieve the body’s burden. Toxins include chemicals in our foods, heavy metals, parasites, and low-grade infection. They can be found in your food, cleaning products, and your environment.

“There is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and our increasing environmental exposure to toxins and chemicals is fueling the risk. The research is sound. The conclusions, unassailable.    — Douglas Kerr, M.D., Ph.D. Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

3. Gut Health

Eighty percent of your immune system resides in the gut.  Therefore, working on establishing a healthy gut can contribute to a healthy immune system. The goal for an optimum gut is to increase the healthy microbiome and remove unhealthy bugs and parasites.  Decreasing inflammation by eliminating foods that might create an allergic react or are naturally inflammatory will also help your gut.

“Stopping the progression and reversing symptoms of autoimmune diseases depends on addressing and healing leaky gut.”   — Jacqui Pariset, M.D.  Ancestral Nutrition, Functional Medicine

4. Sleep Quality and Rest

The body repairs, restores and replaces old and damaged cells when you are resting.  This state is called parasympathetic.  On the contrary, when you are continuously on the go, ticking off to do lists, and going nonstop, your bodies are in chronic sympathetic mode, and can’t heal.  Rest does not only mean vegetate or sleep, though at first, that might be the only thing you can do.  It also includes doing small things that you enjoy – such as reading, listening to music or a guided imagery tape, going outside and being in nature or taking a restorative yoga class.

“Patients with non-apnea sleep disorders are associated with a higher risk for developing autoimmune diseases.”   — Sleep Disorders and Increased Risk of Autoimmune Diseases in Individuals without Sleep Apnea, Sleep, Vol. 38, April 2015

These are the physical things that will help your body recover, but there’s more!  Watch the second part of this episode and learn about the psychosocial factors.

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Are You Trying to Manage Your MS? Then best to stop now if you ever want to recover from multiple sclerosis.

In the book, “The Healing Code”, Dermott O’Connor tells the story of his client that was going to his clinic for treatment after an MS attack.  O’Connor asked his client which side of his body was his “bad side”.  His client confidently pointed out that he didn’t have a ‘bad side,’ he had “good side” and a “recovering side”.  Why is that change in wording so essential to recovery from multiple sclerosis?  Because of the action or inaction, it creates.  Let me give you a few more examples:

Living with MS

Telling yourself and others that you are “Living with MS” can be detrimental.  Why? Say those words to yourself right now and answer the following:  Is there a sense of empowerment?  A sense of hope of improvement? Drive for change? Direction?  Motivation? Probably not. There is acceptance but no direction for recovery.

Managing Your MS Symptoms

What about when you are managing your MS symptoms?  What are you telling yourself “neuro-linguistically” (to your mind with your words)? And how does that influence outcome and expectation?

To give you an example that might be easier to understand, imagine if we were trying to lose weight. Does practicing “weight management” let us know we will be successful and never have to look back at those old ways of being with and relating to food?  How about managing overeating or living with weight issues? Dreadful aren’t they?

Broken Immune System

What if we were to justify to ourselves and others that we have weight issues because “we have a bad metabolism”.  Brilliant solution to our weight problem.  Or is it? Blaming something you have no control over is not empowering nor does it give you the motivation to make the necessary changes.  Would you agree that isn’t helpful?  Would you also agree that saying you have a “weak side”, a “broken immune system”, are “unlucky or its Karma”, or that this just r”uns in your family”, does nothing to help us find the means necessary to improve health and kick MS to the curb?

So now what?

Changing How We See MS

The frist step to become empowered and recover from MS will be to stop the blame game.

Returning to our example:  Would we blame our weight issues on food? The food did it!  Some people will but it’s not accurate. Andrew Austin, who does neurolinguistic programming (NLP) trainings for weight loss, would have the front desk in is classes covered in sweet pies, cakes, and donuts on the first day of his weight loss training.  Everyone would come into the class and be appalled! Why do you think he did that? He did that because the food is not to blame.  The problem is the relationship to it, the behaviors around it, and the emotional issues that food masks.  Work on those issues, put the responsibility back us, and not the food, metabolism, genes, etc and we have a chance of creating the necessary changes to keep ourselves slim and healthy no matter how many donuts are in the room.

So what if we did the same with MS?  What if we stopped blaming the immune system and its reaction to our nervous system? What if we took full responsibility for finding solutions to everything that is causing our bodies to express disease?  That is what the Creating Health series wants – to give us as many effective solutions to reversing multiple sclerosis from the inside out.  Recovery from multiple sclerosis is about being proactive. By addressing all aspects that could be causing our bodies to MS, we have the greatest chance, no matter how wonky our immune system is, of becoming healthy and resilient.

Can You Recover from MS?

Your job is to use all the information on the different techniques and modalities out there that have helped others heal their MS, and find your ideal combination.  My job, Eva M Clark, in this post and this month’s Creating Health Series, is to help you change your mindset concerning MS so that you feel motivated and believe that recovery from multiple sclerosis is possible.

“If you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, you are probably right.” – Henry Ford

Currently, even though you might be interested in healing and have tried a few modalities, you probably don’t believe you can recover. That is why so many give up so easily.  So the first step in recovering from multiple sclerosis is believing it can be possible.

The Recovery from Multiple Sclerosis Mindset

NLP is the study of successful mindset structures. An NLP practitioner helps the client discover HOW they are doing the problem and then helps them discover HOW to to succeed instead.  Sounds strange doesn’t it? At the moment our problem is we’ve bought into the belief mindset that MS is an “incurable disease that will only get worse”.  And that mindset helps to keep the disease in place!  We want to change that mindset to one of recovery. This new mindset will open up possibilities and give us the motivation to go beyond managing and into actively creating health.

This is one of the processes used in the Healing Multiple Sclerosis Program.  This process was adapted from Connierae Andreas “Engage Your Bodies Natural Ability to Heal”.  You can find the entire process in detail and demonstrations of its use in “Heart of Mind.”