MS, meat, dairy and restrictive diets. What’s your 10p? I’ve been thinking about how many of us get diagnosed with MS and suddenly food starts disappearing from the menu. Meat goes. Dairy goes. Gluten gets escorted from the building. 😂 There is some interesting MS data around this. One Australian study of 1,490 people with MS found 7.9% ate no meat, 8.1% consumed no dairy and 4% consumed neither. A larger North American survey found 45% had followed some form of specific diet at some point, although that included lots of different diets. Now before somebody launches a courgette at me... It is absolutely not for me to decide whether vegan, vegetarian, omnivore or any other diet is “right” for someone with MS. FFS, I work in IT and I’ve got MS. Give me a break. 😂 I’m not a dietitian and I'm certainly not pretending to be one. What interests me is unnecessary restriction. A properly planned vegan or vegetarian diet can absolutely be healthy and support athletic performance. But the words properly planned matter. I look at rugby, MMA and elite sport because those people are operating at the extreme end of strength, recovery and physical performance. Completely plant-based elite athletes exist, although they aren't especially common in those sports. Research overall doesn't show that a properly constructed plant-based diet automatically wrecks strength or athletic performance. But professional athletes can also have nutritionists, coaches, supplementation and carefully planned protein and calories. The average newly diagnosed MSer probably doesn't have an entire performance team standing behind the fridge. So my question is simply: Are we sometimes so desperate to control MS that we start removing perfectly nutritious foods without strong evidence that we personally needed to remove them? If you've researched veganism and that's how you want to eat, brilliant. If you're vegetarian, brilliant. If you eat meat and dairy, brilliant. I'm far more interested in whether we're properly fed than which dietary flag we're waving. Anyway, I've kicked the fucking beehive. 🐝😂 What's your 10p? Did MS make you change your diet? Did you remove meat, dairy or something else? Did you genuinely notice a difference? Or did you eventually put things back in? Genuinely interested in all sides.