Lifestyle vs Multiple Sclerosis & More

This is Dr. Saray Stancic. She’s another from the ranks of “doctors who got a serious illness and it completely changed how they view the treatment of serious illness”.

In her case, Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and wasn’t impressed with the results from the treatments offered, so (after 8 years of pain, suffering, and many medications, only for her condition to worsen) she set about doing better with an evidence-based lifestyle medicine approach.

After 7 years of her new approach, she would go on to successfully run a marathon and live symptom-free.

All this to say: her approach isn’t a magic quick fix, but it is a serious method for serious results, and after all, while it’d be nice to be magically in perfect health tomorrow, what’s important is being in good health for life, right?

If you’re interested in her impressive story, check out:

Doctor With Multiple Sclerosis On The Collapse Of US Healthcare

If you want to know what she did, then read on…

Six key lifestyle changes

Dr. Stancic credits her recovery to focus on the following evidence-based approaches:

The plant-centered plate

This is critical, and is the one she places most emphasis on. Most chronic diseases are exacerbated, if not outright caused, by chronic inflammation, and one cannot fix that without an anti-inflammatory diet.

An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t have to be 100% plant-based, but broadly speaking, plants are almost always anti-inflammatory to a greater or lesser degree, while animal products are often pro-inflammatory—especially red meat and unfermented dairy.

For more details, see:

Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)

Movement every day

While “exercise is good for you” is in principle not a shocker, remember that her starting point was being in terrible condition with badly flared-up MS.

Important to understand here is that excessive exercise can weaken the immune system and sometimes cause flare-ups of various chronic diseases.

Moving thoroughly and moving often, however, is best. So walking yes, absolutely, but also don’t neglect the rest of your body, do some gentle bodyweight squats (if you can; if you can’t, work up to them), stretch your arms as well as your legs, take all your joints through a full range of motion.

See also:

The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

Mindful stress management

Stress in life is unavoidable, but how we manage it is up to us. Bad things will continue to happen, great and small, but we can take a deep breath, remember that those things aren’t the boss of us, and deal with it calmly and conscientiously.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is of course the evidence-based “gold standard” for this, but whatever (not substance-based) method works for you, works for you!

About MBSR:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Good sleeping habits

Getting good sleep can be hard for anyone, let alone if you have chronic pain. However, Dr. Stancic advocates for doing whatever we can to get good sleep—which means not just duration (the famous “7–9 hours”), but also quality.

Learn more:

The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

Substance intake awareness

This one’s not so much of a “don’t do drugs, kids” as the heading makes it look. Dr. Stancic assumes we already know, for example, that smoking is bad for us in a long list of ways, and alcohol isn’t much better.

However, she also advises us that in our eagerness to do that plant-based diet, we would do better to go for whole foods plant-based, rather than the latest processed meat substitutes, for example.

And supplements? She bids us exercise caution, and to make sure to get good quality, as poor quality supplements can be worse than taking nothing (looking at you, cheap turmeric supplements that contain heavy metals).

And of course, that nutrients gained from diet will almost always be better than nutrients gained from supplements, as our body can usually use them better.

And see also, some commonly-made supplements mistakes:

Do You Know Which Supplements You Shouldn’t Take Together? (10 Pairs!)

Human connection

Lastly, we humans are a social species by evolution; as individuals, we may enjoy relatively more or less social contact, but having access to such is important not just for our mental health, but our physical health too—we will tend to deteriorate much more quickly when we have to deal with everything alone, all other things being equal.

It doesn’t mean you need a busy social life if that’s not in your nature, but it does mean it’s incredibly beneficial to have at least a small number of people that you trust and whose company you enjoy, at least relatively accessible to you (i.e., their life need not revolve around you, but they are the kind of people who will generally happily spend time with you and provide support when needed if they can).

As for how:

How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

Want to know more from Dr. Stancic?

We recently reviewed this very good book of hers, which goes over each of these six things in much more detail than we have room for here:

What’s Missing from Medicine – by Dr. Saray Stancic

Enjoy!