There is so much mis-information available on the internet. When Googling MS cures, the search returns thousands of results, offering false hope to many people. While certain diets or lifestyle changes may have helped some people with their MS symptoms, none are a proven cure and accepted by the medical community. People should be extremely cautious in exchanging money for any 'cures' they find online without first discussing it with an MS professional.
In this article Ian Daly takes a light-hearted look at the increasingly bizarre 'cures' which are often freely available and heavily promoted on the internet.
So, it is a newish year and I have a plan. First a quick introduction. My name’s Ian and I have Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis or PPMS for short. This will be the fourth year of this rollercoaster of a disease and I have realised I’ve been making a huge mistake with my chronic illness. I have avoided all the cures being touted on the internet. All of them. What the hell is wrong with me? I feel maybe I should adapt my behaviour and perhaps try something new. After all, conceivably the entire global medical community is indeed in denial and kale really is the cure for MS?
A brief Google for ‘MS cure’ returns approximately 243,000,000 results. A worrying amount of these are adverts for what can only be described as ‘unlikely’ curative procedures. Example: ‘100% natural therapeutic package composed of medicinal herbs.’ What? Really? An envelope of Rosemary, Oregano, and Sage will cure my MS? Brilliant. I’ll take it. Where do I sign?
‘Who says there is no cure for MS?’ Well essentially the entire MS medical community. Doctors, Nurses, Consultants, but what do they know? After a brief search of my chosen examples' website, it reveals that apparently, MS is down to an individual’s inability to deal with traumatic incidents in their lives. They also mention diet and yoga so I think we can see where they’re leading us. If their website weren’t so funny, I’d report it, although I suspect there are no laws against fraudulent stupidity.
There is a lot of power in self-belief and if you can convince yourself you feel better after eating a vegetable then that’s grand.
Now I’m no fan of negativity (as you can no doubt clearly tell) and would encourage anyone to try pretty much anything if they feel it may help them. There is a lot of power in self-belief and if you can convince yourself you feel better after eating a vegetable then that’s grand. What does bother me is the newly diagnosed, the young or the elderly, searching the internet for information about their new disease and coming across this nonsense and believing it. An hour’s session with this 'miracle cure' company is £90. A half hour is £60, and they take all major credit cards. ‘Emotional work and trauma are more efficiently done in one-hour slots.’ Are they really? How convenient… at £90 a shot. Nowhere does it state how many hourly slots I will have to fund before my bladder stops making me visit the toilet every hour, my constant pain will diminish to an acceptable level, my vertigo will stop, and I’ll be able to walk more than ten feet. As an additional service they also treat hay fever, and ‘listen to your body with our hands and experience’. I kid you not. It says that. On a public website.
So, here’s where my plan comes in. My partner has recently invested in a bread maker, a wonderful machine that produces the most delicious bread in a couple of hours and requires virtually no effort. Now selling bread as a cure for MS would clearly be ludicrous. Not as ludicrous as ‘medicinal herbs’ but there you go. Now then, if I were to break up the loaf into inch or so cubes using say a bread knife (a small investment will be required here but it’ll be worth it), and then package the pieces into those little plastic bags that drug dealers use (more expense but bear with me), then sprinkle a pinch of wholemeal flour into each one together with some soil, I could market them as ‘Earth Nuggets – The cure for MS’. Each would retail for let’s say £90 (or £60 for a half nugget) and would need to be consumed regularly. Earth Nuggets are renowned the world over for their curative qualities (they are not) and are completely safe for human consumption (they are not) although there is a need to be wary of overdose. For this reason, they should only be sourced from reputable retailers (That’ll be me then) and consumed under a controlled environment (my garage, with some white sheets hung up to establish a ‘floaty atmosphere’, with whale music playing through a hidden speaker). I’d most probably get some form of business grant and am already looking forward to marketing the product through a network of franchises for say £10,000 a time with a guarantee of a supply of ‘Earth Nuggets ©’ at cost. What could possibly go wrong? There are over 100,000 people with MS in the UK. If 25,000 of those purchased ten ‘Earth Nuggets ©’ (Ten being the minimum, consumed over a three-month period, that may bring about a cure) I’m in the money. I could spend it getting someone to ‘listen to me with their hands’ whilst gorging on kale and sitting in the lotus position. Sorted.
At the moment, there is no cure for multiple sclerosis. Current treatment is based on controlling disease activity by reducing the number of relapses someone experiences, or by managing the individual symptoms of MS. To find out more about what a cure might look like and where that might be found, have a read of this page.
