I was wrong about that.

Chemicals make food taste flavorful and addicting. That makes people buy it. When people buy it, the companies producing that food get rich. Chemicals also make it so that products can be “instant” – staying on the shelves of the supermarket without spoiling and requiring little to no prep time to make, which, let’s be honest, you and I and everyone else appreciates. You get where I’m going with this? There is a very strong financial incentive to create foods with chemicals, regardless of the fact that these foods are toxic to our bodies. There is very little incentive to do otherwise. Even the produce we buy is chemical-laden, sprayed with toxic pesticides and treated to stay and look fresh on its trip from the farm to your market. We want tomatoes that look red and ripe and we don’t ask how they got that way. We want sugar-free gum and sugar-free soda, but we don’t know much about what’s in there instead, making it taste so good.

Our country as a whole has made a silent, collective decision to operate with the ignorance-is-bliss policy. Only there is no bliss, because everyone’s sick! If you have MS, you cannot afford to continue on this way.

As some of you may already know, diet and supplements are the primary way I treat my MS. I do not take any of the disease-management drugs. For the last two and a half years, I’ve eaten a diet free of sugar, gluten, wheat, dairy, soy, and red meat, and I do my best to avoid any meat raised with antibiotics and produce that’s not organic. It was challenging at first – and still is in some respects – but something magical happened at around six months. My body reset to this new way of eating, and suddenly, when I would eat something with sugar or wheat or dairy, I would feel an overwhelming urge to cleanse my system of it and get back to my pure diet. I could actually FEEL the toxicity in my system when I would stray from my diet and eat a processed food.

If you have MS, regardless of if you choose to treat it with the drugs or not, eating a clean diet is simply essential. It will have a profound effect on how you feel. Your symptoms will improve, your energy will increase, and you will begin to heal your body. Suzanne Somers said it well in her book Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness, which I strongly encourage everyone to read:

“We are what we eat. I realize it’s a cliche, but that’s the bottom line. Good food feed our cells. Cells make up who we are, and reproduce themselves by the billions each day…unless we are in a toxic state. When chemicals and toxins are part of our diet and lifestyle, our cells malfunction and malfunctioning cells are what make us sick and cause disease.

Malfunctioning cells are an umbrella for every disease known to man. … It really doesn’t matter the name given to the disease, the reason you have the sickness is because your cells are malfunctioning.

The toxins in your diet make it impossible for your cells to receive the nutrients they need to be healthy and reproduce. Toxins essentially turn your lights out. You fade away, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Toxins wipe out your hormones, and the process of accelerated aging and disease begins. Toxins will kill you, it’s just a matter of how soon.

To be healthy you have to take your food seriously. Yet, we rarely give it a thought…we are so used to having chemicals all around us. We mindlessly grab that handful of chips, packaged cookies, instant soups, or consume dangerous oils. Trans fats, hydrogenated oils, additives, and irradiated foods are making us sick and killing us.”

I’ll be writing more about Suzanne Somers and the work she’s doing in future posts, but for now I want to just say that she is a true pathbreaker – leveraging her celebrity for an excellent cause, bringing to the public first-hand interviews with cutting-edge doctors who understand how vibrant, kick-ass health can actually be achieved (hint: it has very little to do with allopathic medicine). She’s amazing and I’m gonna call this required reading for anyone who wants to be or stay healthy.

Having a chronic illness like MS is a powerful wake-up call (for those who choose to hear it) to get that we’re part of an intricate system, and everyone in the health field – from Big Pharma to your neurologist to your loving partner – has their own motivations, fears, and insecurities, many of which could conflict with your effort to get well, in whatever form it comes. MS can be your curse, or it can your blessing – an opportunity to take control of your life in a way you never have before. I know it’s been that for me.

Check out the article here.