MS and exercise

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!

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Flummoxed (Part 4 of 4)

My friend Monica also has MS. She does not medicate. Which is not to say she does not treat her MS. Monica chooses her activities carefully. She exercises every day. She chooses her food carefully, following a Wahls-like diet, or what some of us call an auto-immune protocol. (AIP) Monica is also an exceptionally kind and gentle—non-inflammatory—person. (Am I implying MS is an expression of a personality defect? I hope not. I’m just observing that it’s hard to create a spark without any friction. Every life has friction. Monica seems to have a talent for not creating any friction, herself.) Monica never tries to talk me into living medication-free. I never try to talk her into taking medication. (I might have made a recommendation to take Singular, an allergy drug that has been shown in the lab to transform the brains of old rats into brains that function like young rats. But that’s for another post.)

When Monica texted to ask what our neurologist had to say about my rash, I wrote, “Z says he will support my decision even if I stop taking FDA approved drugs. But it’s such a tough call. If I’m wrong, and I get an exacerbation, I’ll blame myself. If overheating on this drug gives me an exacerbation, I will also blame myself.” I was perhaps exaggerating  (or as we as say in my family of origin, ‘over-exaggerating’) when I texted about the perils of overheating. Overheating merely creates pseudo-exacerbations, or transient worsening that last until the MS host cools off. Pseudo-exacerbations sure feel like the real thing, but they don’t bring on permanent damage (as far as we know.)  You see how Monica and I are opposites? Even after years of daily work to mellow out, I still have a tremendous talent for creating friction out of thin air.

Monica texted, “Yes, it’s a tough decision. Think we should decide not to blame ourselves either way. I will always support you, wwld* :)”

*wwld is of course short-hand for what would Lisa do? Feel free to sprinkle this liberally all over the internet, like lesions on an MS MRI.

Note that when I texted that I’d decided to drop the Tecfidera, Monica didn’t text back, “told ‘ya so,” or “welcome to revolution against rapacious Big Pharma” or anything. The Lisa she knows is a much better person than Ms. Lab Rat.

Her sweet response was not at all surprising. I didn’t expect to get any guff from Monica. The guff, when I got it, came from an entirely unexpected quarter.

 

 

 

MS Blog with Boob Pic

Ms. Lab Rat is supposed to be a blog about an intrepid gal who joins clinical trial after clinical trial, surfing on the cutting edge of multiple sclerosis research.
Ms. Lab Rat is not supposed to be a blog about an anxious gal whose left breast is on the cutting edge of a surgical scalpel. But that’s where this MS blogger will be, while The Art Academy is closed for Spring Break.
Sorry.
(I know, I know, I shouldn’t be the one saying sorry. But have you have ever met a person who did not apologize for a physical misfortune beyond their control, be it mild hearing loss, Sorry, could you repeat that?—to terminal cancer, I’m so sorry I won’t live to see my baby graduate high school. You want to say: I’m the one who’s sorry.)
In this case, Gentle Reader, you needn’t be sorry for Ms. Lab Rat—yet. I have health insurance. (Thanks, husband.) I have a support system in place. (Thanks husband/family/friends.) And I don’t have cancer. (As far as the pathologists can tell.)
What I do have are a few cells that kind of look like they could turn into cancer…or look like the type of cells that tend to hang out with cancer cells. The pathologists couldn’t really agree on what to make of these suspicious cells. Which was why it took them a week, and not the promised one to three days, to call me.
As it happened, I got this call just two hours after I’d learned I have severe osteoporosis, and just a half an hour before I was scheduled to teach Artist as Reader. I was in the middle of an enormous copy job, which involved making 17 two-sided copies of the 92 page screenplay of Get Out. The call made me laugh. Two bad health updates in two hours? Who gets that? It seemed too bad to be true. My biggest fear remained the complicated copy job. I really really hate copier jams, especially so close to class time. Trivial frustrations like that are somehow harder for me to take then even super grim news. The printer didn’t jam. I was genuinely relieved, and genuinely curious to see what my students would think of the manuscript. I couldn’t be bothered to update my blog post about my osteoporosis diagnosis with a dramatic PS. I had a class to teach. Besides, my mom reads my blog. (Hi, Mom!) I didn’t want to worry her.
I am now scheduled for a third biopsy, a surgical excision that will scoop out the entire perplexing nodule and resolve any unanswered question. I’ll be glad to be rid of the uncertainty. I’m not yet skilled at living with anxiety. Last night, I had a hard time getting back to sleep after my 4th or 5th fourth trip to the bathroom (thank you, MS bladder.) I tried meditation after meditation, but stayed awake from 2am to almost 4. (I fell asleep just fine after trips seven and six.) OK, maybe it’s time to botox the old bladder again. Do you see how living with MS is in itself a full time job?
I was grateful to have yoga today, to help me unwind and expand, physically and mentally. As I had hoped, I was not the only student at this week’s class for yoga with MS and Parkinson’s. I met two intelligent, ambitious women there, an accomplished artist and an accomplished writer, and best of all, I got to catch up with my buddy Monica. We lingered over our Wahls-compliant lunches to chat about breast biopsies, and so much more. In a few short weeks, we’ll have matching scars.
It seems no MS story is as simple as just one diagnosis. At least, not for those of us lucky enough to be living decades with MS—long enough to encounter the usual trials of mere aging. Maybe Ms. Lab Rat is a typical MS blog, after all.

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What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Bad Decision

Yesterday my friend Monica and I went kayaking on the Miami River. When you read, “kayaking,” you might get the impression we were paddling madly. We were not. We were just two women of a certain age, bobbing along on a still lake, dipping our paddles occasionally as we chatted.

Monica and I met at a yoga class for people with MS. We’ve both had MS symptoms for decades. We share the same neurologist, Dr. Z. MS gives us a lot to talk about. I told Monica how much I admired her decision to stay away from MS medications, despite Dr. Z’s recommendation to start one. I think she’s been managing her disease really well. Monica runs her own business. She can hike for miles. She can drive without hand controls. She can put on a sneaker while standing on one foot. If I could do those things, I’d consider myself pretty well cured.

Monica told me she admires me for being brave enough to try experimental medications. I assured her I haven’t been brave, only desperate.

I would be oversimplifying to present us as taking opposite tacks. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of our approaches to MS, you’d find a pretty big overlap in the center. We both do yoga. We both experiment with controlling MS through diet; me in a clinical trial, and Monica in the privacy of her own kitchen. We are both total strivers, still hoping to get healthier, not sicker, as though we weren’t aware we have a degenerative disease. What’s our secret? Delusion, we agreed, laughing. Every day, we push forward, not necessarily ignoring the bad stuff, but not letting that stuff define us either.

When I observed that we’d been under the sun for a while, we paddled over to a shady spot, being the proactive types who wouldn’t ignore the sun and overheat, thereby triggering our MS symptoms.

Monica took a picture of me in my rented kayak, wisely sheltering beneath an overhanging tree. I’d made a good decision, right? Nope. I’d made a bad decision. This morning I’d woken up itching.  Turns out, I’d been nestled in poison oak. I’m not saying I would have been better off heating up in the middle of the lake. But maybe I should have chosen to not shelter quite so deeply in the shade.

Here’s the thing about living with MS in these times: there are many treatment options to choose from, including the option to not medicate. Smart, conscientious people can labor over these options for days, or even years, yet make a choice with grim consequences. When I was a little kid, I used to think I’d eventually recognize the bad option when I saw one. Boy, did I underestimate the complications of this world.

 

The Answer

In the past few months, I’ve made the same complaint to every health care professional I meet. I report that my range of abilities is shrinking. That I don’t feel as fantastic as I used to back when I first went on daclizumab to treat the multiple sclerosis.
Year One on daclizumab, I was inspired to stretch myself to my physical limits. I was suddenly able to swim three hours a day. I could hike for an hour at a time. Every other day, I’d be off to the gym. Once a week, I’d attend an hour and half yoga class. Year One, I discovered I could stretch pretty far.
I am now in Year Four on daclizumab. I still stretch myself to my physical limits. But I tell you, those limits are not what they once were. Hike for an hour? I’m lucky to walk a few blocks. The funny thing is, I do feel lucky. But isn’t that also perverse? Shouldn’t I feel…outraged?
These days, if I decide to go to an hour and a half yoga class, that means I am implicitly deciding to write off any further physical activity for the remainder of my day. Which would be fine if I didn’t have a family. But I do have a family. My day is also my husband’s day, is also my son’s day, is also my dog’s day. My cat could care less if I walk or not, as long as I am still able pour his food. But the rest of my family is aversely affected if I overextend. They would probably prefer it if I would under-extend.
I wouldn’t want that. I’m not dead yet.
Every day becomes an experiment. I check in with my body more or less continually. If I don’t, my body checks in with me. More and more often, my body is saying, “Enough.” More and more often, I listen. I stop what I am doing. And I agree it is enough.
Is this acceptance? Or is it complacency?
I think there’s a difference. Acceptance is wonderful. But complacency is dangerous, particularly when you have a debilitating disease. You can mistake a medication for a cure. You can think you are doing enough, and by the time you find out you’re not, it’s too late.
Lately I’ve been wondering if daclizumab is doing enough.
I will whine to the nurses, or to the neurologists, “I feel like my physical range is shrinking.” I will speculate, “Maybe I don’t have Relapsing/Remitting MS anymore. Maybe I’m slipping into Secondary Progressive.”
No one can tell me. There’s no clear line to cross. What they can tell me is this: every MRI of my brain comes back showing no new lesions. How have I responded? I’ve asked to have an MRI taken of my spine. I want the whole story, even if it doesn’t have a happy ending. I don’t want to be living a lie. I want a clear answer to the question: why I do I feel I am in a long slow decline?
A very clear answer occurred to me just this afternoon. I was downtown, picking up a new pair of glasses, which happens to be my very first pair of bifocals. These glasses are totally and completely nerdy looking. It turns out my distance vision is -11.75. And all these years I thought the vision span only went to -10. It looks like the parameters for bad vision can stretch like the debt ceiling. Maybe the parameters for physical (dis)ability will stretch that way, too. And stretch. And stretch.
In the optician’s office, I thought of an explanation for this insidious phenomenon I’ve been experiencing. I am aging. That first year on daclizumab, I was still in my thirties. I’m not in my thirties any longer. Maybe the answer could be as simple as that.

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