Lynn Capehart Wellness Project

STOPPING MS BEFORE IT DISABLES IS EASY, BUT THE LONGER YOU WAIT THE HARDER IT BECOMES

CATEGORY: 5: Auto Immune https://lynncapehartwellness.com/2013/09/01/blog-30-essay-2-the-seven-categories-of-illness/

RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENT: Monavie Active

When I finished graduate school and fled Ann Arbor’s fierce weather, I promised myself I would never set eyes on another snow flake. I headed for the warmest spot I could afford, southern California, where for months I squandered most of my waking hours in cutoffs and a red bikini top, on the sands of Pacific Beach and La Jolla. My classmates were dutifully cramming for the licensing exam, but I feared that hearing even one more citation, anybody vs. anybody, would cause my head to detonate.

THE CASE OF HAROLD F.

I clocked in at the beach like I worked there, and started noticing the same people. Harold was out of place so he interested me right away. He was the only man on the beach everyday sporting a shirt and tie. Small, 45, with an icy sense of humor, he walked with two canes, and swore in Yiddish when he was tickled, tricked, or ticked. He wouldn’t discuss what he’d said later, just dust you off with, “Agh, you wouldn’t understand.” Locals hung around him like he was Fonzie. They weren’t real friends, just oiled beach bums trolling for free food and drinks. Harold always paid for the party.

Harold had MS but pretended he didn’t, and like true comrades under the sun, so did all us hangers on. He could walk only a few yards, even with the canes, before he had to stop and rest, exertion glistening his face, and sprouting wet half moons under his arms, while he acted like nothing was wrong. He would pretend he had stopped to appreciate something unique about the environment, the weather, architecture, or a person who just passed by. We would play along, talk about it until he caught his breath, regained his gait. When he crept forward so did we, looking like an ambitious amoeba, as if this pace were the most natural thing in the world.

I admired Harold’s courageous aspect on his disease, pretending his MS didn’t exist, when all his family wanted was him safe at home in a wheelchair. I witnessed an episode when his son, Steve, a newly minted lawyer, came to Rick’s American Café in PB to convince him to stop hanging out at the beach with a bunch of losers. And saying it right in front of said losers too. Harold reverted to Yiddish after that, so I don’t know what he told his son. But the lawyer blinked three times, stood up, and walked away without saying another word. I assumed Harold told him something like, he wasn’t going quietly into the darkness that awaited him.

Harold was diagnosed with MS at 31, and had continual flare-ups since then. In the beginning, after each episode, he got better as if nothing were wrong, until one day the disease progressed without abating. He had trouble understanding how MS could rob him of fine motor control for days, weeks, or months, only to wake up one morning feeling fine again. The explanation is that it takes repeated inflammation flare ups before the scarring is bad enough to cut off communication between the nerves. Meaning that you can feel perfectly normal in the beginning between flare ups.

MS can strike at any age, but is usually diagnosed between 20 and 40. It is a disease of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord; sometimes the optic nerve is affected too), and affects more women than men. It is an auto immune disorder because it’s the body’s own immune system that triggers the episodes of inflammation. The triggered inflammation leads to scarring of the myelin sheath, cuts off nerve communication, and causes MS and its symptoms.

MOVEMENT AND MS

When you decide to walk across the room to play a DVD, the nerve cells in your brain and spinal cord have to do a lot of communicating to get the job done. A limited sample: You have to (1) lift your body up from the sofa, which involves feet, legs, arms, neck, and back muscles, (2) coordinate your arms and legs to get across the room, while keeping your head steady on your neck, and not losing your balance and toppling over, (3) remain standing upright while you brain goes through a complex series of actions to decide which movie to choose, (4) coordinate your shoulders, arms, and fingers to remove the DVD from the case and insert it into the player, (5) use almost all of your muscles to turn your body, return to the sofa, and enjoy the movie.

MS affects the ability of the nerve cells in your brain and spinal cord to communicate with each other the way they had to in order to get that movie playing. When a message (electrical impulse) gets to one nerve’s myelin wrapped end, it has to jump a gap between itself and the next nerve fiber so the message can continue along the axons. Remember the way Sandra Bullock’s character propelled the bus over the gap in the highway in the movie Speed? That’s what the signals in your brain and spinal cord have to do to complete their communication. They have to jump gaps in the line, like the bus did.

When your immune system attacks nerve cells in the central nervous system, it triggers inflammation on the myelin insulation. Once that particular flare up of inflammation has healed, and the process repeats itself over and over, the myelin wrapped nerve ending develops sclerosis/scarring, and can no longer transmit to or receive messages from other axons. When enough nerve endings have shut down from scarring, you won’t be able to get off that sofa, or on to it for that matter, without assistance.

DIFFERENT FORMS OF MS

There are different forms of MS: The first is relapse form, like Harold had in the beginning, where the symptoms come and go, and you appear to get better after each attack; and progressive form, where the disease hits you and gets worse without ever seeming to go away, which Harold had in the end. Both forms cause permanent neurological problems as the disease advances, even if they are not noticeable for a long time. That’s why it’s important to stop MS in its early stages before too much scarring has occurred, which may be irreversible.

To treat MS we have to get to the core problem, which is calming down the immune system so that it stops attacking the body it is supposed to protect. For that reason I recommend Monavie Active to stop and control MS. It is a combination juice drink with Acai Berry as its main component. Currently, a month’s supply costs approximately $150; that’s one bottle per week. Nothing works better on immune disorders than Monavie Active. Nothing. And it will control your MS. The first chart below tells you how to take it and gives you a link to Monavie to order it.

The second chart tells you how to use less expensive supplement therapy to control MS if you cannot afford Monavie Active.

If you can’t afford Monavie Active, you can control your MS with supplement therapy. They will work, but it’s not as easy as just sipping a great tasting juice twice daily.

Bee Pollen is the main supplement to balance and calm down your immune system. (If the above dosage does not control your MS, add a third dose of Bee Pollen and Vitamin C Complex at lunch time. Bee Pollen will not harm you so feel free to take as much as you need to control your MS.) Vitamin C Complex assists Bee Pollen in its calming function. Beta Carotene stops the inflammation response to the auto immune trigger. Vitamin D3 helps Beta Carotene in its inflammation fighting function.

NOTES

► Remember, these are not pills you’re taking, but concentrated food supplements. This isn’t medicine. It’s nutrition.

► If you take Beta Carotene without also taking Vitamin D, you will deplete your stores of Vitamin D and develop a Vitamin D deficiency. It usually manifests as sores on the inside of the mouth. Always take Vitamin D when you take Beta Carotene.

► Vitamin D3 is recommended because it more closely replicates the Vitamin D made naturally on your skin from contact with the sun. But if you can’t find D3, take straight Vitamin D.

Please be nice to each other, and look for my next post: Blog 10: Halitosis/Chronic Bad Breath, where I tell you how to eliminate this problem and be assured that your breath is always fresh!

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