MS and Backpacking IV

If you get determined that you will backpack and damn the torpedoes anyway, you should spend time on preparation of yourself for the walk.

There was a time when the first day or two of any walk I took was felt to be a 'shakedown' period, which would get rid of water weight and toughen the soles of the feet. With MS, the feet should be stable for the walk already. Good walking shoes, strong and not too heavy are ideal. I have five-pound Vasques which I loved and which occupy an honored place on my bedroom closet shelf. I will never use these again.

On general principles it is a good idea to maintain a low weight. This also has a relatively anti-inflammatory effect and prevents the Metabolic Syndrome. It will be easier to walk if the one-fifth of yourself which is lard is gone. As usual, do as i say...

The Paleolithic Diet has been the subject of books and articles and is worth our consideration.

This is not a 'diet' in the same way one of the many fad diets of recent years may be. This is a reversion to a way of life our ancestors used with great success from our development as a species until the rise of agriculture ten or so thousand years ago. This is the diet of the migrator and in spite of all the cash I have used to buy those same books or magazines in which it is described, its' basic rules are simple. Eat lean meat, birds, fish, fruit and vegetables, nuts,honey and NO GRAINS. White sugar, dairy foods and loaves of bread were not found happily by the side of the trail; they are not used in this way of living. Interestingly,though milk was not drunk, grapes and honey were foods used here, so wine and mead are imaginable.

The Paleolithic Diet in it's modern incarnation is hyped as a fairly easy way to control weight and to rid ourselves of Diabetes type II, adult onset, which plagues Americans or anyone else in the First World or I guess anyone with a burger shack or pizza parlor in their neighborhood. I have used it. It is hard for me, a life without bread, crackers, chips, ice cream, cheese in great slabs in sandwiches of rollups, most border food, you get my drift. But. This style of eating sans the meat was used by Max Gerson MD and is still used in his clinics for treatment of all sorts of diseases and has been espoused for the dietary treatment of MS.

In the Second World War, when the German army invaded the Netherlands, all beef cows, grain and dairy foods were taken to feed them. The Dutch were left to subsist on birds, fish, root vegetables and garden plot vegetables, fruit in season, nuts, honey - hey, presto! a Paleolithic diet! Records show a significant decline in heart disease, cancer (especially of the bowel, I assume), and we will not be surprised at the recorded drop in MS as well.

The Diet, in my case has majorly resolved my Diabetes and, when I totally abstain from gluten grains, my ataxia seems to improve.

This is all I will say today but future blogs are left with much non-gluten grist for the mill.