Overcoming MS vs The Wahls Protocol Diet
Which one? I've trying to following both of these diet plans and they both have good points but they seem to fly in the face of each other which has left me confused about which one to adopt.
Overcoming ms by Professor George Jelinek (based on Dr Roy Swank's work) advocates a low saturated fat diet and no meats, whereas the Wahls Protocol, based on Dr Terry Wahls work (Dr Wahls reversed her own secondary progressive ms) says fats and meat are ok, including organ meats. Both advise lots of vegetables, with the Wahls Protocol advising at least 9 cups worth of greens a day.
I've tried both and I find them both difficult to do as they have associated costs and a cooking learning curve, plus organisation and time management to make sure you manage everything. Does anyone else here follow either one? How do you get on with it and how did you decide what to follow?
So I can give you are reasoning. My wife was diagnosed late last year and I reviewed everything I could find. My guess reading your "about me" is that I approach things in a similar way to you since we have some similar background. I am sharing my thinking and if I felt the evidence pointed to something different, our family would switch in a heartbeat, but we are making a probabilty calculation as best as we can. In a nutshell there were different aspects I looked at (but cost was not one of those). Reading both books, I felt the OMS had a much more solid evidence based approach. Terry Wahls has a few good testimonials but doesnt have the breadth of data OMS did. Its also unclear to me if Terry used other methods outside of what she said in the book, there have been some rumors, but again its hard to know what to trust. From an approach perspective OMS is freely available (all the info is generally on the site). If you want a book you can get it (and many are donated for free). There is something valuable to me about a site that takes no advertising and is run only on donations vs Walhs thats more of a sales pitch type of approach. When you look at the quotes/testimonials its interesting to see who is recommending them. Terry's has a lot of people that are from paleo etc. OMS has a recommendation from Professor Giovanni (who chairs barts) and is one of the worlds leading MS drs in my opinion. In practical sense both are a bit difficult to follow, but I really felt like OMS was going to be more sustainable and easier to stay with for a lifetime. So I felt the Walhs approach was more of a gamble. Our family's hope is to slow down progression as much as possible and so we are using Tecfidera + OMS. In addition we are cutting way back on sugar and salt (somewhat just happens when you cut out the processed food in both diets). We have a few supplements like turmeric that we are adding. The OMS approach seems very consistent with things that are working for other autoimmune dieases like diabetes and RA. thats my two cents for now, but like you, we are always rethinking and evaluating if we are doing all we can, but at the moment we are happy with the choice.
Iv just been bought OMS book, the ingredients are a little pricey but I'm sure it is worth the while I'm building a stockpile before I start it properly only thing I have to say is there are no pictures in the book (that rings alarm bells and makes me bum squeak a little) with me it's gonna be like eating rabbit food but I'm gonna grin and bear it and give it a go. I'm gonna miss me bacon sandwiches I'm making up for it now he he