Diet Study

Big News

I just got a call from Dr. A, the neurologist who follows me when I participate in clinical trials at the NIH. She is always a delightful conversationalist. This time, topics ranged from the music of poet Joy Harjo to the mindfulness meditation of Dan Harris to the benefits of exercise. She asked about my Covid-19 quarantine routine, which includes yoga, pilates, qigong, breath work, short walks—and cold showers. Dr. A is one of the toughest ladies I know. But even she didn’t warm to the notion of a cold shower. Instead, she deftly switched topics to the motive for her call — would I be interested in participating in a new NIH study on the effects of diet on MS?


Would I? Of course I would.


As long term readers of this blog already know, this diet study would not be my first rodeo. I had participated in a trial conducted by Dr. Wahls which compares the efficacy of her eponymous diet to that of The Swank Diet. If you have a grain of common sense, you will not be shocked to learn that I found her study to be biased. I joined it in good faith, expressed a willingness to be assigned to either diet, and pressed on when I was assigned the less desirable Swank Diet. I kept scrupulous record of every food I ate, down to the last teaspoon. The low fat Swank Diet may have helped many people with MS, but it didn’t help me. On the last day of the study, I broke my fast with an avocado. Yum! Fat! I’ve been back to eating fats—healthy fats—ever since.


As soon I had control of my own diet back, I switched to the Wahls Diet I’d been waiting for—and I found the recipes lacking. This was a few years ago; I know Dr. Wahls has been tinkering with her diet every day since then. At the time I felt like her focus was entirely on feeding the brain, and not on delighting the palate. I despaired of convincing my family to adopt the diet along with me. While gripped with anxiety about facing a lifetime of stoic meals, I stumbled on this happy website, which is run by two unpretentious women with five autoimmune diseases between them. They call their diet the AutoImmune Protocol (AIP), and that’s the diet my husband and I have merrily adopted. I asked Dr. A if I could remain on AIP throughout the study. She asked a few questions about it to determine if it could fit within the framework of the diet the NIH would want me to adopt. At this point, she thinks it could work. I’m certainly not willing to go back to a SAD Diet (Standard American Diet) to provide a before and after. I have learned my lesson and will never again martyr my diet for science. I will, however, happily chart my progress teaspoon by the teaspoon, if it will help others make well informed decisions about changes they can implement to optimize their immune system.


Diet should never be about cults of personality. An impartial government study of diet and immunity will be beneficial to all of us with multiple sclerosis, whether our current diet is Swank, Wahls, or the sweet, generic-brand AIP. A diet study came out earlier this month which shows AIP can change gene expression. That’s big news—proof that diagnosis isn’t destiny.

This new NIH diet study is not yet official; it is still just a twinkle in a researcher’s eye. It won’t happen if our researchers can’t find NIH study participants willing to document our food intake (tedious) and swab at least one poop sample (odious). But if I know my NIH researchers, and my fellow lab rats, we will be up for the challenge.


In my experience so far, diet adjustments can be arduous and imprecise and emotional and sadly not entirely curative. I see them as necessary, but not sufficient. A new diet study, if done well, can help all of us struggling through autoimmune disease to direct our efforts toward our best possible outcome, whatever that might be.

Gentle Reader, may you be happy. Stay well!

Home

Breakfast Break: MS Style (part 4 of Ms. Lab Rat’s Latest NIH Adventure)

When we last left off, I, Ms. Lab Rat, was sniffing the sickly scent of powdered sugar as I passed the by-now stale gingerbread houses on display in the secular cathedral that is the NIH (National Institutes of Health.) I had time to kill before my Phlebotomy appointment, so I took the elevator to the second floor cafeteria, which has an excellent salad bar. And discovered I was too early for salad.

Here’s the deal with my new Wahls-inspired MS diet: the foods I used to associate with breakfast are off the menu. No processed foods, no gluten, no grains, no milk (bye bye breakfast cereals,) no eggs, no cheese (bye bye omelets.)

Here is a picture of what breakfast looked like for me today: IMG_9271

You’re looking at bok choy and garlic escargot simmered in homemade chicken broth, topped with kimchi and dulce. The Wahls Diet calls for the consumption of four servings of leafy green veggies a day, at least four servings of colorful fruits and veggies, a meat, a touch of seaweed, a bit of something pickled. The Wahls Diet is also very very big on homemade bone broth. So this breakfast covers pretty much all the bases. (If I were a true purest, there would have been a little knob of organ meat floating around in the bowl, too. But that’s the thing about the Wahls diet. Or maybe any diet? You can always feel you’re not quite up to par.) This breakfast was yummy, by the way. But this kind of breakfast is not easily obtained on the road. Not even in a hospital. (By the way, what’s up with hospital food? Why are there so many unhealthy choices? Topic for another blog.)

Here’s a fuller, indeed cluttered picture of what breakfast looked like for me today, when I tell the whole complicated story of my MS maintenance:

IMG_9272

You are still looking at my pretty bowl of healthier-than-thou breakfast food. You are also looking at the supplements required for the clinical trial of the Wahls Diet:

5,000 IU Vitamin D3, 1 t cod liver oil, 5000 liquid vitamin B12, 1 mg folate, multi-vitamin.

Then there’s all the stuff I have to take for my funny bladder:

AZO, macrobid, and some other antibiotic I’ll be finished with at dinner.

Then all the stuff I choose to take for my self-designed Ms Lab Rat trial:

3x 100 mg Biotin (which I am hoping will eventually fix my bladder problems and get rid of three of the items above), 500 mg Hemp oil, local hemp oil, glorious hemp oil (which has helped me sleep and dream after many sleepscarce, dreamless years), 5 mg Lithium (which I thought was doing a fine job as a mood stabilizer, though I just learned that what I take isn’t anything like a mood stabilizing dose. So let’s call it my placebo.)

This is a lot to keep track of. When I graduated from the Swank Vs. Wahls clinical trial, I got a certificate (no joke) and a private viewing of a 20 minute video of Dr. Wahls that just served to delay the seven hour drive ahead of me. No t-shirt. The only remotely useful thing I left with was a booklet to help me keep up with all the details of living in a Wahls Diet world. (I had rallied hard for an app, but there isn’t one. Yet.)  For a few weeks afterward, I kept filling in little circles every time I popped another supplement, or finished another serving of leafy greens. But eventually I ditched the booklet. I want to feel a little less obsessive, a little less persnickety. Either that, or I’d already assimilated all the expectations. My brain had become the diet app I’d been asking for.

The morning of my TRAP trial, I realized I was not going to get a Wahls breakfast, or Wahls-ish breakfast before my blood draw. I guzzled a “green” drink I purchased from a vending machine and took the elevator down to Phlebotomy. A lovely woman handed me a white stub with a number. As I glanced down to read 32, she called, “Thirty two.” It was the Christmas holiday. I was the only patient in the waiting room. I filed past untouched trays of cookies and two pots of coffee and entered the orderly hive of numbered white cubicles, wondering if I’d recognize my phlebotomist. I had been there many times before.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Full Speed Ahead on MS Diet

After twelve weeks of anticipation, I finally learned which MS Diet I would be assigned for the duration of the study.

And the winner is…

confidential, at least until I complete the remaining six months of the trial.

I agreed to this stipulation, just as I agreed to injesting certain supplements, to saying yes to certain foods, to saying no to others. A clinical study is a group endeavor. Like any group endeavor, it comes with the perk of getting group support. Observe the above photo, in which I effortlessly glide above the lush tree canopy of the Arenal Volcano. Am I alone in this picture? Only because of how it is framed. A tico named Aaron suited me up, belted me in, and sent me on my way. A tico named Pépé was waiting for me on the other side. And a whole bunch of brave souls I never did meet set this whole contraption up in the first place with some fishing line and moxie.

My husband went ahead of me on the zip line. Unbeknownst to him,  I took some comfort in lighly touching the vibrating line as I watched him glide to the other side. I take no small comfort in having my husband accompany me on this MS adventure. I am grateful, too, for the many friends who have shown support and interest, and to my family of origin, who are all set to eat according to the diet when I fly in to visit them on Sunday. I do not take this challenge on alone.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

About to Launch

I am about to complete the Phase One, the Usual Diet phase, of the MS Diet study, which compares the efficacy of the Swank Diet with the Wahls Protocol in improving fatigue for people with multiple sclerosis (MS).

My husband and I concluded the Usual Diet Phase by going somewhere unusual. We’d never been to Costa Rica before. We wanted to eat our way through a new country without making any gringo requests for “gluten-free” anything. As it turned out, we ate very healthily there, and could have followed either diet without causing a stir. At one of the bed and breakfasts where we stayed, breakfast consisted of a neighbor’s eggs, seasoned with herbs growing in the kitchen garden, accompanied by juice squeezed fresh from oranges I’d picked myself in the backyard. And the coffee was picked right there in town. Food can’t get more local than that.  Yum! Costa Rica is a much healthier nation than the USA. (More on that in a later post.)

Tomorrow morning, my husband and I will take the seven hour road trip to Iowa City, IA, the site of the Diet Study.  This town has some sentimental value to us; it was here that I went to grad school, here where our only child was born. The hospital hold memories, too. It was here where I worked for the Telemedicine Resource Center, here where I had my first MRI, first lumar puncture, first spinal headache (when the puncture went wrong.) Here was where I got the diagnosis, twenty two years ago, that made me think I’d have less than ten years left outside a wheelchair. I’m still walking. But more slowly than I’d like.

On Wednesday, after my fasting blood is drawn, my food records are handed over, and my motor assessments are taken, my husband and I will meet with the study nutritionist, who will announce which diet we will be expected to adhere to for the next twenty four months. My hope, of course, is that whichever diet we get will reverse my disease course, that this will not be a mere twenty four month change, but the beginning of a lifetime shift. Are my hopes too high? My husband thinks so. He thinks we eat pretty darn healthy already. But he’s open to giving either diet a chance. I am so grateful for that.

The Swank Diet is a low saturated fat diet that eliminates red meat and high fat foods and includes whole grains and fat free dairy products. The Wahls Elimination Diet eliminates all grains, dairy, legumes, eggs, and nightshade vegetables/spices. Both diets include fruits and vegetables and dietary supplements.

Wish us luck!

The Skinny on the WAhls VErses Swank Diet (WAVES Study)

Last week, I drove 475 miles to The Preventative Intervention Center at the University of Iowa to participate in Phase 1 of the WAVES (WAhls VErses Swank) MS diet study. My participation will last 36 weeks, assuming I make it through Phase 1, the Usual Diet Phase. If I do, I will be expected to visit the clinic every 12 weeks through the conclusion.

The WAVES study is open to people with relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) who experience MS related fatigue. The purpose of the study is to compare two dietary approaches to see which diet is more successful at reducing fatigue. The hypothesis is that consuming one of the study diets will reduce MS related fatigue, improve energy and improve quality of life.

The bias of the experimenters for the Wahls diet remains unexpressed in the literature they hand out to us lab rats. (Well, the nitpicky can find bias revealed in the name WAhls contributing the first two letters to the WAVES acronym, whist the name Swank is contributes only one. I am not that nitpicky.)

On my next visit, I will be randomly assigned one of the two diets, and must then commit to following that diet exclusively. The twist: my super indulgent husband will also have to commit to following whichever diet, at least for every meal he has at home. Because this is a blind randomized study, I can’t let the administrators know which diet I’ve been assigned. This means, gentle reader, I can’t let you know either, on the very off chance that the study administrators don’t have anything better to do than check an amateur blog. (This is where I lose you, dear reader, and you suddenly remember you had meant to be curing cancer at the moment. Godspeed!)

While I can’t help but assume that the WAVES study is biased toward the Wahls Protocol, since Wahls herself designed it, I myself do not share this bias. Well…maybe a teensy bit. A very healthy, very active, once diseased Dr. Wahls does make a fine case for her diet in her TED Talk, which I watched to its completion many years ago. I am sure there is an equally compelling case for the Swank diet in the book I couldn’t bear to finish, which currently collects dust on my bedside table. (The issue of my reluctance to fully research either study will make another blog post eventually. Or a podcast.)

If I do get assigned the Wahls Protocol, I will be happy, because it is so intimidating and involved, I feel I will need the challenge of doing my due diligence as a Lab Rat to actually see it through. (In addition, I can lean on the professional assistance of the study nutritionist, who will assign me the diet and will keep this random assignment to herself.)

If I get assigned the Swank Diet, my husband, for one, will be happier, since he’s concluded (from his 14 second scan of the description) that this diet is more in line with the one we already follow. I am going to need his support, so I would be grateful for an option he finds palatable

Here are the diet descriptions, straight from the 22 page consent form:

“One diet is a low saturated fat diet that eliminates beef and pork and includes whole grains, fat free dairy, vegetables and fruits (Swank) and the other is a modified paleo diet (Wahls Elimination) that eliminates all grains, legumes (e.g., beans), eggs, dairy, and nightshade vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers) and stresses more vegetables and meat in the diet.”

If you were assigned one of these two diets, which would you be more willing to follow for 24 weeks?

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

The MS Diet Study: A Radical Idea

I value this study of the effect of diet on MS, not the least because it is radical. It isn’t often a rigorous clinical trial is run in which the end goal is not a marketable commodity in the form of a drug.

The end goal of this trial is patient health. It’s not about profits. There’s no cookbook cabal conspiring to profit from the chronically ill. Sure, a few thousand farmers markets may see a rise in sales of organic produce. No harm there. The fish oil industry may get a bump. But overall, no single party involved in the outcome stands to gain as much as wealth as Big Pharma does every time they release a new medication they can sell to captive consumers for as much as $7000 per month.

And yet: if you are to follow this link to the logical, researched TED Talk by the inventor of the Wahls diet, you will encounter a red warning label superimposed over the opening frame:

“Note from TED: This talk, which features health advice based on a personal narrative, has been flagged as potentially outside TED’s curatorial guidelines. Viewer discretion advised.”

And if you follow this link to learn more about the Swank Diet, Wikipedia will inform you, “The widespread claims made for the diet have not been substantiated by independent medical research.”

The good news: this MS Society sponsored clinical trial is being administered by the University of Iowa, and should finally provide the objective substantiation all people with MS deserve.

And while Big Pharma might not have much to gain financially from the results of this study, that doesn’t mean this study, if successful, won’t have a mighty economic impact. If we trial participants regain our health by merely adjusting our diets; if we leave our walkers and our reclining wheelchairs and our social security checks and go back to full time work, to do whatever it was we were schooled in, and trained for, if we can once again have the freedom to follow our dreams—we will be more effective than any worker who has had the luxury of taking health for granted. And if those $7,000/mo drugs are no longer needed, that will go a long way to correcting our nation’s disgracefully costly health care system.

Follow this link to Dr. Wahl’s rebuttal of the TED Talk warning.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Wahls Elimination Diet vs Swank Diet: Which Is the More Effective Treatment for MS Related Fatigue? Ms. Lab Rat jumps into the maze.

Some Background (faithful readers can skip to paragraph 5):

As my faithful readers know, I am a machine with faulty wiring. Multiple Sclerosis has somehow managed to convince my T-cells to attack the insulation that surrounds the nerves conducting all the information my body needs to function optimally. This insulation is called myelin, and my myelin is ratty with scars. (Multiple sclerosis=many scars.)

When I got the diagnosis, I refused to accept my fate. I tried the first medication I was offered. And when that didn’t work, I tried a second. And when that didn’t work, I entered a clinical study of a new medication, one, I was told, that really made a difference. But as will happen 50% of the time with clinical studies, it turned out I was assigned to the control group. I didn’t get the new medication. I got a placebo. And I got more scars.

I not only tried new medications, I tried new doctors. (I moved around a lot, at first, so that part could not be helped.) When my fourth neurologist gave me the dour news that I was doing very badly, and could expect to do worse, and then much worse until I died, well, I switched to a cheerier doctor. Who gave me the same dire news, but with a big smile. I dumped her, too. Instead I found a brilliant researcher, Bibiana Bielekova. Researchers are always looking for better ways to do things. So am I.

Long story short, I talked Dr. Bielekova into letting me try an off-label drug that worked with the immune system, rather than fight it. Daclizumab works by boosting the population of Natural Killer Cells, which function like the good cops in the Wild West of my immune system; the Natural Killer Cells keep the rouge T-Cells, or bad cops, at bay. Daclizumab worked. The T-Cells stopped attacking my myelin. Eventually, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a study of Daclizumab. I was lucky enough to join the safety arm of the study, so I was assured a constant supply of Daclizumab. In the last ten years, this medication has been so effective, the T-cells have only once managed to create a new scar. Earlier this year, the FDA apporved Daclizumab under the name Zinbryta. On the day I injected my last dose of free study medication, I was accepted into a new clinical trial.

Faithful readers, jump in here:

Finding a drug that stabilized my MS only solved half of my problem. While my T-cells have stopped chewing on the fatty myelin that insulates my nerves, the many scars created by years of insatiable gobbling still interrupt the signals of my central nervous system. I have to cope with fatigue, pain, lack of coordination and balance, and a digestive system that’s out to lunch. Oh yes, and a brain that continues to shrink. You would think, then, that a person as proactive as I am would have immediately acted when I saw a very convincing TED Talk by a smart researcher who overcame an even worse case of MS than mine. Like me, Dr. Terry Wahls took the latest greatest MS medication. And like me, her MS only got worse. Dr. Wahls soon found herself confined to a tilt-recline wheelchair. Unlike me, Dr. Wahls is a physician. She read the latest medical research about diseases in which brains shrink. She read studies in which animal brains had been protected from shrinkage using fish oil, creatine, and co-enzyme Q-10. She started taking human proportioned dosages of these substances, and started getting better. This was her first round of self-experimentation. Slowly but surely, she tweaked her diet to include and exclude certain nutrients and ultimately found herself out of the wheelchair, biking to a full day of work as a doctor, and, of course, promoting the diet that saved her. She managed to get the Multiple Sclerosis Society to chip in 1 million dollars to fund a scientific study to compare her diet with the Swank Diet, one that has been  found to help people with MS for decades. I, who was somehow too intimidated years ago to follow the Wahls Protocol, have now agreed to be part of this study, which is going to be a much more onerous and complicated option than simply buying her book and following along. How much more onerous and complicated? I’ll share the details in my next post. But strange as it is, a Lab Rat is a Lab Rat. I would rather experiment on my diet in a study as a contribution to the greater public knowledge than to simply tinker with the diet on my own.

How about you? Have you ever participated in a clincial trial? Would you?