Lifestyle change helps keep MS at bay

Craig Wheeler with his wife Janine. Craig's battle with multiple sclerosis has been made eaiser since attending a Gawler foundation retreat. Photo: Angela Wylie

ABOUT five years ago, Craig Wheeler was heading for a nursing home. Multiple sclerosis had paralysed his legs and was stealing his sight in cruel five-minute bursts.

A range of drugs were not helping him and some had significant side effects, so he decided to go to a retreat run by the Gawler Foundation, which encourages people to overhaul their lifestyle.

During the five-day-program, Mr Wheeler, now 42, was advised to eat a vegan diet (no animal products) with seafood and very low-saturated fats. He was also told to take vitamin D and omega 3 supplements, to reduce stress with exercise and meditation, and to have counselling.

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Since then, he has stuck to the regime with medical treatment from his doctors and has had one relapse of his illness in five years. He has also regained movement in his legs and can run six laps of an oval.

"Before I started the program my symptoms got worse and worse, and although some medication helped, I was relapsing every three months and doctors just kept prescribing more drugs, giving me no hope that I could recover," he said.

While Mr Wheeler doubted the program at first, he's now one of a growing number of people who believe it has saved him from deteriorating and needing residential care.

"My wife Janine and I go back to the foundation all the time now because it makes me feel so good," he said.

Professor George Jelinek, an emergency medicine physician at St Vincent's Hospital who has developed the Gawler program for people with MS through extensive research on lifestyle modification, said although there was no gold-standard evidence to prove the interventions were working, a recent survey of 165 participants by the Gawler Foundation and St Vincent's found that on average, they felt 20 per cent better five years after going to the retreat.

Originally posted here:
Lifestyle change helps keep MS at bay