Update on MS Disease

It's been a while since I have posted, and I wanted to give a quick update on how my wife is doing. We have been in Kansas for almost a year, running a Children's Home that is both high stress and little rest. Over the last year she has struggled with minor Multiple Sclerosis symptoms, but has controlled any bigger issues with diet, rest and natural therapies like chiropractic. She isn't having to work full time, but works many hours per week for our Home, along with home schooling our daughter and taking care of our personal home. She is an amazing wife and mom, and this past year has been a year of learning and growing towards more understanding of how diet etc. affects her health. Over the past 4 months she has lost 28 pounds, and is continuing to lose weight utilizing Weight Watchers. She is combining years of information and studying MS diets with counting points in the WW system. This has worked wonderfully for her, and given her a goal to pursue. She participates in cycling class at least once a week right now, and has been working out as her body will allow. She has become much better at listening to her body over the last few years, and is very aware of when and how far she can push her body. She has done fantastic with her desire to become healthier and lose weight, and I couldn't be more proud of her progress. Our summer is going to be crazy with all of the activities and events we are participating in for the Home, and we will have to be careful to make sure my wife's MS doesn't rear it's ugly head while we are enjoying our trips. She will need to get plenty of rest, drink lot's of water, make sure her body is eliminating properly, eat healthy, and make sure she doesn't push her body beyond it's limits. For all of those individuals out there that have been recently diagnosed with MS and wonder if you can have a normal life with MS, my wife is a great example of someone that has not allowed her MS to define her life. You can find healing and with some adjustments in your life, you can thrive. Don't ever give up on learning and finding treatments that work for you, and please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you through your journey.

Multiple Sclerosis Life Expectancy

Tonight my daughter asked me a really off the wall question. She had driven with me to pickup a donation for the children's home and we were heading back home when she asked, "dad, is mom going to die soon?" Now, my daughter is 14 years old and my wife was diagnosed years before she was even born, so she hasn't ever known a time before my wife had ms. She totally took me off guard when she asked because we weren't even talking about my wife or anything to do with MS.

This is a question I had asked Dr. Swank when we used to visit him yearly. When we visited with him, I would bombard him with questions because I wanted to know as much as possible about Multiple Sclerosis. When I asked Dr. Swank about life expectancy he quickly told me that most MS patients lived a long life. He even said that in his research, 85% of his patients that were following the MS diet lived a full life with limited MS issues. What I've personally seen is MS doesn't lessen the amount of years you live, but it can lessen your ability to live those years.

I quickly answered my daughter and let her know that her mom wasn't going to die soon from her MS, and that is not the way Multiple Sclerosis affected the body. Then she asked me what we would do if my wife went completely numb, and I assured her that we would do everything possible for my wife to live a long, healthy life. It reminded me today that we need to be discussing MS with my daughter as she gets older so she understands it and doesn't fear it. It is so important to discuss MS with your family and especially with your children, and to understand the effects of MS well enough to discuss it. If you have any questions I can answer please let me know.

Stomach Pain with Multiple Sclerosis

Well, we had a rough few weeks after our juice cleanse. My wife became sick with bronchitis and struggled getting over it for weeks so we weren't as constant with the juice as we would have liked after the initial 6 days. Now we are trying to juice once or twice each day and then eat healthy meals. There are days like today that we just couldn't make that happen, but for many days we have been able to juice and eat well.

One thing we did notice when we started juicing is that my wife's stomach issues went away. She didn't have a single upset stomach or any issues at all when we were juicing, or even after we were juicing until yesterday. Last night we went out to eat and we are not exactly sure what caused it, but she was sick for about an hour after we came home. She was extremely frustrated because it had been weeks since she had dealt with any kind of stomach issues, and it had been a nice break from the nausea and pain.

We know the juicing was good for both of us, but we didn't expect the stomach issues to end while we were doing it. I know we both felt better, had more energy, and were able to sleep better at night when we were juicing everyday, all day. So, this is one more opportunity for us to learn and grow in our knowledge of how our bodies work. My wife is trying to incorporate more juice into her diet to see if that will keep the stomach issues from ruining more meals. It can be so frustrating to eat a great meal and within minutes or hours, she will get sick and have to run to the bathroom multiple times before her stomach will finally feel better. This was just another reminder of how important it is to eat healthy and put nutritious food into our bodies. This is something we can control that directly affects daily living with MS.

Day 6 Juice Cleanse with Multiple Sclerosis

Overall, Day 5 was really rough for my wife. Day 6 started out much better and my wife had a much better night of sleep. Today my wife decided to add a little more solid food into her diet. She ate some celery and peanut butter, and then had a small salad in the evening. She felt a lot better today, and everything was good other than not being able to go to sleep tonight. She was up till 3 in the morning, and I'm pretty sure it was the salad that energized her a little too much. :) I also had a small evening meal, but only juice the rest of the day. I am feeling very energetic and it is getting easier to pass up foods that normally I would be craving all day long.

Today we mixed it up with a few different juices, and have found a Pear juice mixture that is one of our favorites. We have also added other items to the juice like sweet potato's, strawberries, and blueberries. Both of us are feeling much better today with less cravings, more energy and we are both getting a lot done. This whole experience has had it's ups and downs, but we are both very happy we started on this path to better health. Over the next weeks we are going to juice until dinner, and then eat a healthy meal. Up till today, I have lost almost 10 lbs, and my wife has lost 6 lbs. For more information on what we did and the recipes we used, you can follow my wife on her blog at http://myhusbandswifehasms.blogspot.com/. She started the blog recently to show her perspective, and it has been fun to see how we see some things differently and some the same. Check it out and make sure and comment on her posts.

Day 5 Juice Cleanse with Multiple Sclerosis

Day 5 started pretty rough for my wife. This seems to be the day that my wife's body has gone into major detox. She felt fatigued, light headed, and had flu like symptoms. I had felt this way the first few days but she hadn't really had the yucky feeling until today. For me, I felt pretty good all day. I am noticing more energy, and more desire to get things done than I have in a while. I still have times through the day that I get pretty drained, but I'm noticing I just need to drink juice more often to keep my energy up and stomach full. So, for me this has been an eye opening experience with how much my life revolves around food and how I overeat regularly.

Luckily, my wife juiced like crazy yesterday and we had juice to last most of the day today. I made it the whole day with just juice, but my wife ate a few celery sticks with organic peanut butter in the evening to add some protein and fiber because she knew she needed to do something different to rid her body of the toxins. I think she realized today that she needed to get her bowels moving or have bigger issues. So, as much as she didn't want to, she used an enema to move things along and felt much better afterwards. She rested a lot today, and was better by nighttime, but we are worried about getting her body detoxed so we setup a massage to help and are trying a few other things.

Day 4 Juice Cleanse with Multiple Sclerosis

My wife woke up this morning without any leg pain, so that is a blessing. She is feeling pretty good today, and is sticking with the juice extremely well. She hasn't had a single piece of solid food since beginning on day one, and has been very good about being consistent with drinking juice every few hours. So far, she has done much better than me, and doesn't seem to be struggling much with just drinking juice. I can't personally say that since I had another breakfast meeting this morning. I ate the healthiest thing on the menu, but paid for it all morning. I was bloated and felt awful all morning, and was very surprised how overly full I felt because I didn't even eat all the food. This was a great learning lesson for me to see how big of portions I normally ate, and how that affected me.

Things got a little tricky for the evening because our daughter had an out of town basketball game. We took a large cup of juice with us but knew we wouldn't be back home till after 8 or so. The popcorn, hotdogs and other snacks looked really good at the game, but we both held strong and made it home without eating any solid food. We drank our evening tea and almond milk and were fine for the evening. My wife did struggle to get to sleep tonight, which she hasn't had an issue with through the other days. She normally has issues with her sleeping pattern but has fell asleep easily the other nights of the cleanse. She wasn't able to fall asleep until 1 or so in the morning so we will see how she pays for the lack of sleep tomorrow.

Day 3 Juice Cleanse with Multiple Sclerosis

Day 3 saw both of us back to our normal routines. The challenge for me was a business lunch that I had to attend, but luckily I was at a restaurant with a salad bar and was able to eat all fresh veggies. Eating a salad after two days of just juice was quite interesting on my body. Lots of gurgling and noise from my stomach as I dealt with digesting solid food, and I felt really full after not having that much solid food in my stomach for the last two days. My wife on the other hand was full of energy and had a very productive day.

One thing that we have been drinking every night is Yogi Detox tea. The tea is supposed to help move the toxins out of our bodies, and one of the issues of doing a juice cleanse is bowel movements can stop and the toxins can be re-absorbed. The tea doesn't taste too bad, and has seemed to help, but I am a little worried about getting the toxins out of our bodies. One of the reasons this is a concern is my wife started having major leg/knee pain tonight. It became severe enough that she had to take some pain meds to help, and ended up going to bed early. This is the first odd thing that has happened since we started the cleanse.