Latest MS research
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 16/12/2010
Reporter: Natasha Johnson
New research is offering hope to ms sufferers. Recent research gives some scientific weight to a holistic approach combining lifestyle interventions and drug treatments.
Transcript
HEATHER EWART, PRESENTER: There’s no known cure for the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis, but recent research gives some scientific weight to a holistic approach combining lifestyle interventions and drug treatments. Medical researcher Professor George Jelinek began an exhaustive search for evidence-based treatments after being diagnosed with MS himself 12 years ago. As well as taking medication, he adopted major diet and lifestyle changes. Now, the effectiveness of his approach has been scientifically evaluated for the first time. Natasha Johnson reports.
GEORGE JELINEK: In medicine, we’ve actually lost our way a little bit and we have a very undue reliance on pharmaceuticals when we know what makes people healthy, and often we just don’t offer it.
NATASHA JOHNSON, REPORTER: He’s the mainstream medic turned self-help guru. 12 years ago, Professor George Jelinek was holding down a highly stressful job as head of emergency at a major Perth hospital, when suddenly over a few days he became numb from the waist down and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It was the same disease he’d seen cause his mother so much suffering that she took her own life.
GEORGE JELINEK: To say I was shattered is an understatement. To have been diagnosed with that illness after watching my mother deteriorate over 13 years with the illness to a point where she couldn’t feed herself was the most devastating blow I really could have imagined at that point in my life.
NATASHA JOHNSON: The doctor-come-patient set about trying to heal himself, gathering boxes of international scientific research papers and concluding that there was plenty of evidence diet and lifestyle could play an important role in tackling the disease. He wrote a book called ‘Overcoming MS’, and since 2002, has run retreats at the not-for-profit Gawler Foundation, east of Melbourne.
GEORGE JELINEK: I really don’t want to see other people go through what my mother went through.
NATASHA JOHNSON: The foundation has promoted lifestyle therapies for 25 years since its founder Ian Gawler went into remission from life-threatening cancer. Its self-help message attracted a shell-shocked Karen Law, who was diagnosed with MS in May this year.
KAREN LAW: The first reaction is just terror. You try to calm yourself down by saying, “Well, it’s not actually life-threatening.” But when you do digest it you start to think, “Well, what’s that going to mean for the rest of my life?”
NATASHA JOHNSON: Professor Jelinek advocates a holistic approach which combines mainstream drug treatments with a low saturated fat, vegetarian-plus fish diet, essential fatty acid supplementation, meditation, exercise and doses of sunlight or Vitamin D supplements.
For the first time, the approach has been scientifically evaluated by Professor Jelinek and his research team at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.
GEORGE JELINEK: People at the very least with MS can hope for a realistic improvement. There’s every chance that they will actually stabilise the illness, and on average, they’re likely to get better, as we’ve shown in this study.
NATASHA JOHNSON: The study published in the international peer-reviewed journal ‘Quality in Primary Care’ found that while quality of life usually deteriorates in people with MS, those participating in the study enjoyed on average up to a 17 per cent improvement in physical and mental health one and two and a half years after attending the retreat.
GEORGE JELINEK: Most of these people were experiencing a typical downhill progression of the illness at the time they started the study. So, without changing their medications or doing anything to them, but adding the lifestyle that we’ve suggested, their health has improved.
GARRY PEARCE, MS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA: The research – there’s not strong evidence because it’s not a randomised controlled trial, but it is significant because it hasn’t been – that sort of research hasn’t been done a lot, and therefore, it’s a good start, and I think we need a lot more studies.
NATASHA JOHNSON: Not all patients improved, but some like Linda Bloom had dramatic turnarounds. In 2002 at the age of 29, she had a sudden onset of disabling symptoms.
LINDA BLOOM: I had incredible fatigue to the extent where I couldn’t even lift a pen, I couldn’t move my arm from here to here. For about three months, I was flat out on a couch, I could barely move. I felt that bad that I thought, “I don’t know if I can survive this.”
NATASHA JOHNSON: Linda Bloom refused medication and adopted Professor Jelinek’s diet and lifestyle program after reading his book and attending a retreat. She says the symptoms slowly disappeared over 12 months and her health improved to the point where she felt well enough to have a child. Seven years after diagnosis, Linda Bloom had an MRI scan which she says showed changes in the lesions on her brain which indicate MS.
LINDA BLOOM: Incredibly, they found that the first lesion that I’d had from the first episode had completely disappeared and that the second lesion was barely detectable to the naked eye. So, that was amazing.
GARRY PEARCE: Lesions do come and go and people do feel well for quite a long period of time with MS. It could be just explained by the nature of the illness.
NATASHA JOHNSON: MS Australia also recommends many of the lifestyle interventions promoted by Professor Jelinek, but warns they shouldn’t be seen as a cure.
KAREN LAW: It’s a lot easier to deal with when you realise there’s a heap of stuff that you can do and suddenly it’s not so scary.
NATASHA JOHNSON: Relapse-free for a decade, Professor Jelinek has now stopped taking MS drugs, but given the widely variable and unpredictable nature of the illness, it’s not known how each individual will respond and he advises patients to incorporate both mainstream medical and lifestyle treatments.
GEORGE JELINEK: I look at some of these people when they first come to the retreats and in many ways they feel like they’re broken people. To see people years later living a great life, relatively unaffected by the illness, as a doctor, you couldn’t wish for anything more satisfying in your career.
HEATHER EWART: Natasha Johnson with that report.
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