Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Nutrition and Multiple Sclerosis

A number of people who come to my connective tissue disorder site also have symptoms of multiple sclerosis. A few years ago one of my neighbors was telling me about her MS symptoms, and there seemed to be a lot of overlap with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

So I did some research on Pubmed and found many nutritional deficiencies linked to MS, and interestingly many of the symptoms of MS are also linked to nutritional deficiencies. It's unfortunate that these studies are not made widely available to the general public. Researchers seem to want to focus on a single cause for MS like there is for chicken pox, but the evidence indicates that MS isn't caused by a virus at all. Malabsorption, low body weight and nutritional deficiencies are a common and pervasive theme in much of the MS research.

Magnesium deficiency seems to be common in MS as well as many symptoms of EDS, so that might explain some of the overlaps.

One really interesting point about MS is that is seems to be mutually exclusive with gout. Since we know the diet people need to have to avoid gout (one low in uric acid forming foods) then it would be logical to consider that a diet high in uric acid forming foods would be good for MS.