Information Overload

Is anyone else getting tired of other people telling you how to manage your MS?

• “Eat this, not that.”
• “I read this book that told me you should be doing this.”
• “But an expert said you should be living THIS way.”

The list, unfortunately, goes on. Since my diagnosis 4 years ago, I feel like my brain is going to explode from more than just the lesions–I am in permanent state of information overload. With all of the research coming out today, I feel beyond fortunate for all of the options I have at my fingertips for medication, food and more. But when is enough actually enough? Just when I feel like I’m getting my life together and have my MS under control, someone else pops up with more information. It all comes from a good place, of course, but whatever happened to figuring out what’s best for my body my own way?

Figuring out how to manage MS is frustrating enough on its own, because there is no set way to determine how our bodies are going to react until we try something out. There is nothing more frustrating than coming to my own conclusion based off of my own experimentation (like going gluten-free) and having someone completely discredit everything I just went through because someone else disagrees. As a certified nutritionist, I feel that I have the knowledge base necessary to help myself and others figure out what is going to help or hurt their bodies; when there are multiple people telling me I am wrong because of something they read in one person’s book, it can become discouraging.

The only true way to know what foods, activities and habits are going to help your body heal is to try them out yourself, safely, and after consulting your physician first. If you experiment and you find that something has worked for you where it hasn’t for others, don’t feel discouraged, but feel thankful it’s working for you! You are in control over your own body.

Take kind advice from people and always thank them for caring enough to share, but do not feel obligated to follow it if you’re already on a successful war path. This is your battle, so you fight it how you see fit. We are all here to help and support one another in the MS community, but information overload is becoming quite an issue when it’s causing people to give up hope. Take the information you can, keep smiling and do what you need to do.