Managing Symptoms Of MS With Your Diet

American Academy of Neurology published and Neurology both published a study suggesting that eating a healthy diet of whole grains, vegetables, and fruit may be associated to having fewer symptoms and less disability for people with multiple sclerosis.

This study had 6989 people involved with all types of MS that were part of the North American Research Committee registry who filled out questionnaires about their diet. The participants were broken into 5 groups based on how their diet was. Researchers also looked at the participant’s lifestyle which was defined as eating a better than average diet and not smoking, having a healthy weight, and getting regular exercise. They were also questioned whether if in the past 6 months if they had gradual worsening or relapse of MS symptoms and recorded the level of disability and severity and symptoms in all areas.

Participants in the grouping with the best diet were likely to have 20% less severe physical disability when compared to participants with the worst diet. The same results were observed even when adjustments were factored in that could affect disability. Participants with the best diets were also around 20% less likely to have severe depression as compared to participants with the worst.
Participants having the healthiest diet consumed an average of 1.7 servings of whole grains daily compared to 0.3 for those with the worst. The healthiest diets consumed 3.3 servings of legumes, vegetables, and fruits per day while the least consumed 1.7 servings per day.
Participants having an overall healthy lifestyle were close to 50% less likely to have depression, 40% less likely to have pain, and 30% less likely to have severe fatigue than participants who didn’t have a healthy lifestyle.

Researchers also took into consideration whether participants followed a specific diet, but observed that present, past, or current use of such diets were only associated with modest decrease risk of increased disability.

Due to the design of the study it had limitations such as it can not be known if healthy diets predict changes to MS symptoms in the future. Another being that the participants were mostly older, majority being white having been diagnosed with MS on average for 20 years, so the findings may not be applicable to everyone with MS.