CHAPTER NINE

WHAT ABOUT STRESS?

In the last chapter, I mentioned how much of a part I think stress might play in the disease. The environment the MS patient fins himself in: i.e., home, job and family, are pointed to here for a very important reason. It is my firm belief that my, or my MS’ers mental outlooks and the pressures that are, or are not, put upon us, are as much a key to our disease state or lack of disease state as the diet or the supplement program that I use.

Patients, like me, how really want to get better, who are willing to work for it and who along with their whole immediate families, have a positive attitude toward the limitations of the life with MS, respond quicker and better than those who do not bring such positive thoughts to the battle.

There is one woman MS patient I remember quite well. She came down with the disease after her husband, an Air Force pilot, had been killed in the Viet Nam War. When I first met her in the early 1970s she was in a wheelchair whenever she went out of the house, as well as, most of the time at home. She lived in St. Petersburg with her parents and her two children. She was a fighter and after a couple of years following the Swank diet and using the same dietary food supplements I use, she was able to walk several blocks from her house to the hair dresser on her own for the first time in years.

After progressing so well, things began to go wrong in her life over which she had no control. Things, which caused her very great new emotional stress. First, her father died. Then her children, by then teenagers, began getting into serious trouble. They dropped out of school, wrecked cars, got caught stealing and finally, her son ended up in prison.

This woman, who had started out so well on the program, did a complete turn around. She was back, confined to her wheelchair and had several new attacks, which caused her to lose her speech patterns and to tremble uncontrollably. Though she still halfway tries to follow the program, the fight has gone out of her and she has ever been able to reverse the MS again.

On the other side of that coin is Janet. It must be 12 years ago that Janet came to the store with her husband. She had a severe limp and wore a brace on one leg. Her speech was terrible, garbled and slurred and her husband confided that her vision was really becoming affected.

With a loving, understanding husband and a very supportive father and mother, she started following the program. Seven years ago she had improved enough to go back into the work force as a legal secretary. Just a couple of months ago she came to see me. Like me, she is now seriously questioning the diagnosis of MS; she simply has no symptoms!

My advice to her was simple. Believe whatever you wish, just stay on the diet! After 12 years it must be second nature anyway.

Here is my admittedly non-scientific explanation of what I think might be happening.

The human body is a wonderful machine, capable of repairing itself under the right circumstances. We even have a well-accepted medical term for natural self-healing. Homeostatic Healing. However, if our body is going to be able to repair itself, the source of more damage must be removed while the repair is being made—the diet. The body must have the necessary materials with which to do the repair job—the food supplements. And the patients, mentally and emotionally, must be able to will his or her body to overcome the disease and make those repairs.

When I was a kid, I used to think that “mind over matter” was a bunch of bunk. But after so many years of being associated with MS patients, I now know that it is not. It is a serious part of life.

This last part is tied directly, I believe, to our internal stress, which reacts to the emotional environment around us. The problems of MS are a constant emotional, as well as physical, stress on our systems. Perhaps the human body is only capable of responding, totally and adequately to one major emotional stress at a time. If a more acute stress comes along – pain, shame, fright, mental anguish or whatever – then perhaps the body must respond to that new and more acute stress at the expense of the more chronic stress.

We MS patients usually have new attacks after we have had a fight (a very sharp argument) with a loved one, or when we are extremely fatigued, or after an emotional shock, or even after the flu, or some other new and acute stress.

Yes, a new physical stress can trigger an attack, too. That is one reason why I have mentioned allergies several times. If you continue to have attacks after following the diet for a period of 6 months and you can rule out mental or emotional stress and your doctor rules out any infections, even a low grade one, have yourself checked out for allergies. And while you are checking, don’t overlook the possibility of yeast infections, candidiasis.

Instead of the old fashioned scratch tests for food allergies, try the new, more sensitive cytotoxic tests. You may surprise yourself with what you find out. Use the information; don’t ignore it. It could be a key to no more MS attacks.

So even after we stop the general progress of the disease with the diet and after we have started the necessary repairs with the food supplements, we still need to try to keep our stress level very low and generally stay on an emotional even keel. If not, we are likely to slip back two steps in our trip up the icy slope out of MS.

I honestly believe that a good emotional stress testing program for MS patients might allow doctors to be able to predict how quickly and how disabled many patients were going to become. Someday it might even lead to an ability to modify the course of the disease in some patients through counseling and stress control.

But in the meantime, we can’t go it alone in dealing with emotional stress. Not only do we need to have hour hiding place to get away so that we can be alone at times, but we also need people with whom to talk. People who can understand our problems and us. Hopefully, that is our family, but in case they can’t or won’t understand, find a friend, a real friend to whom you can open up.

From my own personal perspective, I don’t suggest you get too overly involved with the local chapters of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. It has been my experience that many of the patients you meet there will depress you more than they will uplift you. Some of them have tried one or more diets, without success. But generally, without success because they wouldn’t stick to the diet programs, not necessarily because the diet therapy they tried was not good.