How diet influences Multiple Sclerosis
In this episode, Palmer Kippola begins our journey with foods for MS. Through her research to reverse her multiple sclerosis and, afterward to help others, Palmer Kippola developed six main categories to address when diagnosed with MS. She details them in her book, “Beat Autoimmune.” The key areas that she will discuss in the Creating Health series and her book are:
- Food
- Infections
- Gut health
- Hormone balance
- Toxins
- Stress
In today’s episode, Palmer Kippola will focus on the importance of food.
Foods for MS
Multiple autoimmune experts have stated that 6–100% of symptoms may be resolved by removing autoimmune trigger foods. So it doesn’t serve us to ignore the importance of the impact on food and symptoms. When healing your MS with food, the “gold standard” is to:
- Lower inflammation
- Boost energy
- Identify food sensitivities
- Find foods that resonate
- Unburden your immune system
- Relieve unwanted symptoms
To begin to lower the inflammation, you must first find the foods for MS that trigger your system the most. Palmer and functional medicine practitioners recommend doing what Palmer calls a food vacation – spending 30 days without eating any of the main trigger foods and then incorporating them back into your diet one by one to discover which ones trigger inflammation (each of us is different so its important to learn which foods work with your body). Doing a 30 days food vacation gives the body sufficient time to repair and for you to determine if diet will help your symptoms of MS.
This list of foods for MS is largely influenced by Dr. Terry Wahls, MD, who was propelled to fame with her inspirational TEDx talk. She later wrote a book to share how a Paleo lifestyle and specific nutritional protocol fueled her astonishing journey from being bound to a tilt-recline wheelchair to enjoying the freedom of riding miles on her bicycle “The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles”
Palmer prioritizes the elimination of gluten for anyone with multiple sclerosis. It was the main factor in her MS. She immediately noticed improvements by eliminating this food. This might not be the main trigger of your MS, but, according to David Perlmutter, MD in “Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers” to control our health outcomes through diet, and especially if we have a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s or MS, we need to consider the effects of grains in the brain. In his book, he dispels the popular myths that a low-fat, high-carb diet is good and cholesterol is bad, and offers a simple path to prevention and even disease reversal.
Listen below as she answers the questions the group had the month after this food for MS presentation:
