Diet is important for everyone but especially for patients with multiple sclerosis. I am always asked about diet by my patients.
The best study recently is reported in Neurology this year. Diet quality is associated with disability and symptom severity in multiple sclerosis. Kathryn Fitzgerald, ScD is first author.
They used the North American Research Committee (NARCOMS) registry to have large data base of patients. Almost 7000 patients were analyzed. Patients filled out patient derived disease steps and symptom severity adjusting for age, sex, income, body mass index, smoking status and disease duration.
Dietary questionnaire estimated intake of fruits, vegetables and legumes, whole grains, added sugar and red/processed meats. It was used to develop an age/sex adjusted quintile score. Patients reported if they currently or previously followed any of 19 MS specific diets. The study looked at whether a composite healthy lifestyle measure, healthier diet, healthy weight, routine physical activity and abstinence from smoking was associated with symptom severity .
Patients with diet quality scores in highest quintile had lower levels of disability, and lower depression scores. Patients with composite healthy lifestyle had lower levels of fatigue, depression, pain or cognitive impairment.
Use of any of the MS diets, whals, swank, gluten-free, Mediterranean , paleo, low sugar /carb was not more beneficial than an overall healthy diet with fruits, vegetables, fish while continuing to abstain from smoking and keeping up physical activity.
by
Nancy Nealon