If you consult the Internet, you almost get the impression that it must be so. Here, miraculous cures for chronic diseases are sometimes presented and hopes are nurtured. Various providers advertise with special – mostly self-invented – diet plans that are supposed to free sufferers from various chronic ailments – and all without additional medication intake.
When you delve deeper into the subject, it is not easy to find your way between Paleo, Ketogenic, Lactose-free, Gluten-free, Allergen-free, Calcium-free, Fat-free, Carbohydrate-free and whatever else is free diet. You will find that no matter what you do, you are always breaking some rule of supposedly “healing” nutrition. And often this leads to feelings of guilt on the part of those affected – as if it were the patient’s own fault that they are sick because they are “just too stupid to eat healthily”.
Admittedly, many of the diet concepts mentioned above are based on interesting and serious scientific observations and experiments – i.e. many statements made in connection with diets are indeed true. The problem, however, is that many of these truths refer to experiments in cell cultures or animal experiments. Very few dietary concepts have actually been tested on humans with sufficient quality – and when this has been the case, the results have usually been little euphoric. This does not mean that a dietary concept for MS may not be identified as useful in the future, but solid scientific evidence requires time and care.
Such careful procedure is alien to many providers of nutrition guides, dietary supplements, cookbooks and diet plans – often a suitable scientific observation (keywords: autophagy, mitochondrial uncoupling, regulatory inflammatory cells) is simply picked out and used to advertise a concept, even if data for the human situation are completely lacking – and things are much more complicated in the human organism. The approach is problematic because premature euphoria “burns” useful concepts and plays with patients’ hopes.
On 1 July 2007, the Health Claims Regulation came into force in all Member States of the European Union. The purpose of this regulation is to protect health, and advertising with health-related claims is only permitted if the claims have been scientifically recognised, i.e. food companies in the EU are no longer allowed to advertise their products as promoting health or healing if there is no scientific evidence for this. However, the ban only applies to manufacturers. Guidebooks, health portals and blogs can continue to tout the medical effectiveness of diets and foods – whether proven or not. For the reasons mentioned above, I would like to see stricter regulation in this area.
Despite all the criticism – I personally am absolutely convinced that individually adapted nutrition can support the well-being of MS patients in addition to medical therapy. Therefore, I try to advise and support as best I can in this area. And it should also be mentioned here, there are very good and serious nutritional guides, the reading of which can be absolutely helpful and informative. From my point of view, the main point is not primarily the type of dietary change, but to engage with the topic at all and to reflect on one’s habits. This kind of “empowerment” leads to more well-being from my point of view.
It is also important to maintain a certain degree of serenity. I believe, based on everything we know, that it is not possible to eat against a disease or starve out the disease. And therefore it is questionable whether, in view of the weak evidence of most dietary concepts, life, which is often difficult enough due to MS, should be made even more difficult by restrictive diet regimes.
