DEALING WITH MS

Like Shona Daubé ( Health, January 7), my daughter Karin has multiple sclerosis (MS).

She is a fan of the programme advocated by OMS (Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis). Last year, she and her husband,

Ian, attended a workshop in Austria, where they live, with Professor George Jelinek in attendance. The experience confirmed Karin’s view that lifestyle changes were important to her well-being.

She accepts that for some people the dietary changes may be hard. Ian loves to cook and has worked hard to ensure the household has tasty and nutritious meals. Karin meditates, too, and exercise is a big part of her self-care.

She is able to run half marathons and is fundraising, through a JustGiving page, for OMS by running half-marathons in the eight countries bordering Austria – six down and two to go.

As she says, “I have MS but I don’t let it define me. I am an artist, a wife, a daughter, a tutor and a runner who happens to have MS.”

Dr Christine Robertson (Runanga)

I have had MS for 30 years, run a successful business, did

a degree in psychology when I was 60 and am finishing a master’s thesis in German literature. Initially, MS left me exhausted and my mind was not very good.

Maybe I was the only person in New Zealand in the early 90s who’d ever heard of and followed the Swank diet. I became better. I love the food I eat and do not see a problem following a plant-based, lowfat diet including lots of fish, which Asians and Italians have fared well with over the centuries.

A revised edition of Professor George Jelinek’s book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis, which came out late last year, should be compulsory reading for everyone with MS and every GP in the country.

Jutta Mark (Cambridge)