NIH 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!

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A Day in the Life at the NIH Trial

Nothing ever goes exactly as planned in the NIH. This is an observation, not a criticism. Sometimes, a change in plans works to my advantage. When my husband and I arrived promptly for my seven a.m. appointment, I was told my eight a.m. MRI would have to be rescheduled. There weren’t enough technicians. My husband and I are adept at such situations. My body’s fickle insurrections have given us plenty of exposure to the changing of plans.

My first appointment was to review the revised consent form with the magnetically charming nurse Naomi. Within five minutes chatting over the forms she’d told me enough about life in DC for me to recommend Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah. As it turned out, Naomi had read that book and loved it, loved it so much she’d read it non-stop through a red-eye flight to Dubai, forgoing in-flight movies, forgoing sleep.

It was Naomi’s job to inform me that I would not be getting better care at the NIH than I could get at my local neurologist. I adore and admire my local neurologist. But I ask any of you with MS: does your neurologist have time to assess your condition for four hours? The level of care just does not compare. And more importantly, my visit to my local neurologist is designed to help only me. An NIH visit is designed to help multitudes.

Naomi told me I might be eligible to be paid $200 for my spinal tap. (There is usually no payment involved in a clinical trial, just reimbursement for food and travel.) I was open to this change of plans.

After I saw Naomi, I saw Dr. W. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been displeased by how easily she could push against my leg. She’d uttered one syllable, “weak.” I’ve been working  on my leg strength ever since. This visit, I gave her sufficient resistance. But she simply gave me a new area to work on. “You have shitty balance. You can improve that. Practice!” I’d improved my strength. You can bet I’ll improve my balance

Dr. W proposed a change of plans even more extravagant than Naomi’s $200 compensation. She noticed I’d just had a spinal tap the year before. She consulted the timelines of the studies I’m in, and declared I wouldn’t have to have a spinal tap this year, after all. This piece of news was an order of magnitude more exciting than the prospect of a spinal headache, and two hundred bucks. “I am your advocate,” she declared. We fist bumped.

Next came  the auxiliary scales. I performed the same battery of tests I always do—I did worse on some, better on others—all in all, it seemed a wash. Dr. W will be calling me next week when the data is in.

Further updates on this visit will have to wait until tomorrow. I am tired, my legs are crawling with electric pain, and my husband and I are planning to get up early and take the Metro into DC tomorrow to visit a museum.

Thanks for reading!IMG_0049

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Flummoxed (Part 3 of ?)

I get a phone call from my youngest sister, PYT, a.k.a. Pretty Young Thing, just as I am flopping down in the driver’s seat after a lightweight workout with my toys at the gym.

PYT has three Young kids, four and under, who are competing with me for her attention. I win. Intermittently.

I tell her I’ve capitulated. I’m taking my new MS drug just as the doctor ordered, thirty minutes after an aspirin. “I splurged and got myself the kiddie kind.”

“The orange ones? The chewables? The ones that taste like mom loves you and everything is going to be OK?”

“Exactly.” Oh, it is great to talk to someone who knows precisely what the aspirin summons—not only the specific taste, but the specific aura our mother would convey while doling it out.

Now that I take Tecfidera after an aspirin, and a meal with a bit of fatty food—I love my avocado, I love my coconut milk—I don’t get a rash. Or an allergic reaction. Whichever. Dr. Z. had warned me it might take weeks for the rash to stop flaring up. The rash had stopped immediately.

And yet. I don’t trust the lack of rash. You know those times when your room is a mess and your mom has threatened to inspect and you shove all your miscellaneous underwear and books and socks and chewed pencils under your bed, and it’s still a mess but it’s a hidden mess? Well, PYT and I never did that. The hidden mess was our middle sister’s speciality.  (She’s the pragmatist of us three.)  Our  messes were always flagrant—out in the open. And no, we never got points for honesty. But we’d always thought we ought to. Go ahead, roll your eyes. This is not a sentiment I’m proud of.

Am I the same person now? Hell, no. I suspect I’m not the only person with MS passing (less and less often) in public as able-bodied while actively concealing I’m a total hidden mess.

PYT knows me, the past me, the one who’d railed against the hidden mess. She gets my reservation that maybe taking the aspirin is just the same as shoving a mess under the bed. Does the aspirin genuinely alleviate my body’s resistance to the drug, or does it just push the resistance under the surface, where it can’t be seen?

We ponder this distinction as my four year old nephew explores the new paint he’s created by reconstituting dried out markers and as his twin sister mixes that paint with an entirely unacceptable color and as their younger brother decides it’s time to pee.

We wonder if the new drug is even worth it, given the conclusion of the meta-analysis of over 28,000 MS patients from 38 clinical trials that most current DMTs (Disease Modifying Treatments) are fairly useless for the average patient by the time they reach my age. We ponder Dr. Z’s point that I might be an “outlier” — which sounds kind of cool — unless “outlier” means that without drugs I might be the one to get hit with an exacerbation that could permanently disable me further. His distress over this possibility is nothing to dismiss. I’ve looked around his waiting room. Not everyone with MS has the luxury of describing themselves as a hidden mess.

I share the latest conclusion about the three types of MS—which is that relapsing/remitting, secondary progressive, and primary progressive MS are not three different diseases, but rather, three phases of the same disease. The FDA approved DMTs may prevent relapses, but do nothing for other processes known as “compartmentalized inflammation,” which do not show up on MRI’s.  These are the messes under the bed, so to speak. Or more specifically, the messes inside the cells.

We speculate that maybe all those years I had credited Zinbryta for stopping my MS attacks, the change could have really been more of function of my slipping insidiously from relapsing remitting MS into a more progressive phase of a disease, where the breakdown can’t be detected by the MRI, but rather, by the lumbar puncture.

“It’s like a vicious dog that hasn’t bit anyone in twelve years on a muzzle, and I’ve credited the muzzle. But maybe the dog has just mellowed out with age.”

PYT chimes in, “And maybe the muzzle has been annoying for the poor dog.”

PYT and I are both dog lovers. We aren’t fond of muzzles.

I say, “Maybe we just have to be realistic about my MS. It’s a progressive disease. Slowly but steadily, I’ve been progressing. The drugs that work to stop relapsing remitting MS can’t do a thing about the kind of progression I’m experiencing inside my cells. Maybe it’s time to stop fooling ourselves by my taking a drug that only helps for an early stage of MS. I might be way past that phase.”

PYT says, “It sounds to me like you have taken your last Tecfidera.”

My flummoxed feeling is lifting. I starting to feel like myself again. (Talking with a sister will do that.) I share the last thing Dr. Z. said to me, “I will support you even if you don’t want to take any medication.”

His unconditional support means so much. PYT warns me that our mother and my husband will resist my urge to give up the medication. “As they should. They love you. They want to protect you.”

Protect…me? When we were growing up, I never cast myself as the damsel in distress. But that’s the role MS has forced me to play my entire adult life.