Personal history

I started (during 2013) to take a closer interest in the topic of ‘nutrition’. Before that, my interest was solely focused on drinking fruit and vegetable juices daily. I began with 1 kg of carrots plus 1 lemon, occasionally 1 to 2 apples and 1 orange per day. I did this for several months, so soon I was asked at my trusted supermarket if I had a horse at home :-).

My skin slowly started to look like a carrot (e.g. yellow palms), but that quickly settled. The initial skin discoloration is said to be a sign that the liver is undergoing a cleanse. Well, it wasn’t just this idea that made me keep drinking carrot juice, but also that I simply felt better just because of it. Depending on a person’s condition, carrot juice can be drunk daily in a reasonable amount from half a litre up to 2 litres. My opinion is that you just have to try it out to see what amount works best for you.

Carrot juice not only helps normalise body functions, but also provides vitamins A, B, C, D, G and K. It also helps maintain bone structure and teeth. My special interest in carrot juice, however, was the fact that it boosts resistance to infections and helps prevent things like throat infections and sinusitis, which I used to get very often. And finally, it protects the nervous system and is said to be an unmatched strengthening and revitalising drink.

Today I drink a juice smoothie every day (enhanced with oats), which I prepare with different seasonal fruits or vegetables. In doing so, I make sure to provide my body with the necessary (micro) nutrients every day, so that it can get back into balance through food. It also shows here again that it’s simply worth it to keep at it for your health. After all, as they say, „nothing comes from nothing“. …

After I reached the point where I wanted to make a juice or smoothie out of just about anything that could be called fruit or vegetables :-), I focused specifically on the topic of ‚anti-inflammatory foods‘. I wanted to cook daily with fresh ingredients and, even when I was out, I preferred eating Asian food rather than burgers, pizzas or pastries from the bakery. Right at the start of my MS, I first came across ‚Low Carb‘ through my then GP. This basically means eating a low-carb diet. Even back then, I was fascinated by it and wondered how much, for example, bread I actually eat per day? That wasn’t a hard question to answer, especially growing up in a bread-eating nation where there’s almost always a bakery on every corner. That made me start reducing my intake of things like pasta, cakes, cookies and bread at first.

Over time (early 2015), I wanted to take it a step further and completely give up gluten, because I kept finding in various specialist books and studies that people with autoimmune diseases are much more likely to have a leaky gut (and often don’t know or notice it), which can lead to disproportionately strong immune reactions when they eat gluten. The immune system then goes into overdrive, triggering a negative reaction in the body.

For me, it was and still is exciting to find out how it actually works completely without ‚gluten‘. Where do I shop, where is gluten actually hidden everywhere, and ultimately – how does it affect my health, my well-being, and… will it also relieve my constant headaches. So I did it – gradually I switched to gluten-free food and drinks. After just a few months, I started feeling better, after half a year the kilos began to drop, and after about a year, I had lost around 10 kg. How much someone loses in a certain period certainly depends on their metabolism and also on whether they move or exercise in parallel. I will go into this topic in more detail later. …

What inspired me the most to completely and permanently change my diet were the following books. Dr Terry Wahls, a doctor who herself suffered from MS and managed to halt it through her own developed diet programme, wrote the book ‚Successfully Treating Multiple Sclerosis with the Paleo Programme‘. Doctors Prof Dr Richard Béliveau and Dr Denis Gingras wrote in their book ‚Cancer Cells Don’t Like Raspberries‘ about foods that help fight cancer, boost the immune system and offer targeted prevention.

This reinforced my belief that diet plays a big role in your own health and that there is a connection between all inflammation-related diseases. I told myself that if people who have MS themselves managed to positively influence the course of the disease or even stop it, then I can do it too. When I then studied the other book about cancer cells and saw that diet, with many foods that also have a positive impact on MS, plays an important role and constantly relates to cell health/function, this path convinced me.