“How Can I Better Recover From MS Flare Ups?”

Multiple Sclerosis Is A Terrible Disease That Will, Even In The Best Scenarios Flare Up At Times.

First, I really want to congratulate you just for looking for answers and not giving up.

MS is such a terrible disease, so many people just feel completely helpless.

There are things you can do but it’s complicated and it does vary by the person. If you’re not working with a great practitioner that understands neurological autoimmunity, I would really recommend doing so.

There are just so many unique variables from person to person even with the same disease.

Having said all that, I’m going to give some general recommendations, but like I said specifically what needs to be done will be unique to you.

Going back one step before talking about recovering, it’s critically important to remove the autoimmune triggers.

This is another area where it gets tricky due to individual specificity.

However, if you’re continually exposed to triggers, the disease will continue to destroy neurological tissue at a faster rate meaning more flare ups and ever-increasing disability.

Triggers will be things that drive an autoimmune reaction in you.

These will vary by the person, even those with the same autoimmune disease. Almost universally there will be dietary proteins that drive your immune system. At the top of the list are gluten and dairy, but there will be others for almost everyone.

For example a 2015, paper in Autoimmune Disease looked at antibodies against human and plant aquaporins in patients with Multiple Sclerosis and found a high correlation particularly with soy, corn, tomato, and spinach. This is just one example where these foods in many MS patients will drive their autoimmunity.

Other triggers could be chemicals.

This is another tricky area. It could be detergents, gas fumes, cleaning supplies, air fresheners, perfume, and more. If these are triggers for you, you need to avoid them or the disease will progress.

Chronic low grade infections can be triggers.

These must be taken care of if they are present.

Oxygen levels matter, a lot!

Hypoxia, breathing problems, anemias, sleep apnea, and things that effect oxygen levels must be addressed.

If you smoke, it’s critical to stop. It is causing you a lot of further damage that you do not want.

The breakdown of various body barriers will be a problem.

A loss of barrier integrity in your gut, at the blood-brain barrier, lung barrier, etc will all lead to progression of the disease.

Often these can be improved, but it will be specific to you individually.

Many other lifestyle factors will trigger the disease, a flare up.

These include stress, not exercising, and even just catching a cold.

Even though I mention so many things, this is not a comprehensive list.

This is why it’s so hard to improve autoimmunity and reduce flare ups whether it’s MS or some other autoimmune disease.

Unfortunately, it’s common to have more than one autoimmune disease because your body will attack other tissues over time at variable rates.

So other tissues can be being destroyed but not to the point where there are any symptoms.

This is another great reason to reduce your triggers as much as possible.

How to recover faster after a flare up?

It involves doing the things mentioned above.

Here are some other general ideas. These aren’t specific health advice for anyone.

Working with a functional neurology practitioner can help to rehab the problem areas and help them to function better. Dr. Hagebusch has done an extensive amount post-doctorate work in functional neurology and is a board eligible chiropractic neurologist.

Even though this is only mentioned briefly here, the impact of this could be life changing for you.

Diet matters, a lot.

Eliminate the common dietary protein triggers.

Generally, an autoimmune paleo diet as far as food choices would eliminate the most common problematic proteins for autoimmunity. Not everyone needs to go that far.

Generally though for everyone with autoimmunity, grains and dairy are 100% out and often that is not enough.

You must avoid blood sugar and insulin fluctuations.

A ketogenic diet will be the best way for most to reduce autoimmune inflammation and specifically neurological inflammation.

The diet that I would have the greatest concern about would be a vegan diet followed closely by a vegetarian diet.

These tend to be high carbohydrate, low fat, and low protein. This will tend to cause chronic blood sugar fluctuations and chronically high insulin levels driving inflammation.

These diets will be deficient in many essential nutrients that can be supplemented but it gets tricky. It’s also exceptionally difficult to remove the most common immune reactive proteins on these diets and doing so will drop protein levels too low.

Get enough sleep.

You need more than the average person.

Exercise.

Exercise daily at an intensity and length that does not wipe you out but leaves you able to exercise the following day. This is very, very important.

Work on stress management.

This is another very underappreciated area.

This could be meditation, prayer, playing your your kids/grandkids, or so many other things.

Try to do things that you love doing.

Avoiding high stress environments is also critical.

Supplements.

Supplements can really help but again will vary depending upon the person.

In general, cod liver oil or fish oil, ensuring optimal vitamin D levels, various anti-oxidants, types of glutathione, short chain fatty acids, and anti-inflammatory supplements (tumeric, resveratrol, …), ensuring optimal Magnesium levels, ginkgo, vinpocetine, and others. These recommendations vary by the person.

Supplements do not replace all the other lifestyle factors, they can be helpful in addition to other things.

Summarizing For MS and Autoimmunity.

The best thing you can do is to remove the triggers that are specific to you, work on ALL the lifestyle factors mentioned, and keep a positive attitude even though you’re going through a very tough time.

I highly recommend seeing a practitioner that understands neurological autoimmunity. We’ve just scratched the surface of this huge issue in this blog post.

If you want to see Dr. Hagebusch DC in our Texarkana clinic, contact us. We’re here to help!