Prof. Jelinek says:

Possibilities: Although there is no cure, the medical literature has considerable evidence that MS is a modern, lifestyle disease of developed countries like diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and that, as with these diseases, there are many lifestyle changes that modify its course. These therapies have been extensively researched and offer exciting possibilities for controlling the illness and preventing disability.

I love this guy! So much so that I’ve reprinted what I believe to be some very relevant and important thoughts from his site below (these can be found under the “mind-body connection” link). I encourage everyone reading this to check out the website for more – it’s extensive and chock full of information, but most importantly, it’s all given through the filter of believing that you can get well.

The Patient’s Influence on Illness

What is it that sets apart people who recover from serious illness? In general they find the illness a challenge and an opportunity for personal growth. They tackle the illness actively, rather than being passive recipients of doctors’ treatments. They go to every source for information, are open-minded about unconventional therapies, try everything. They feel empowered by the discoveries they make to take control of their illnesses, and indeed, their lives.

There is a movement in medicine away from the conventional parentalistic view of impersonal doctors treating passive recipients of their care, patients who don’t argue or say what they want, and who are therefore not empowered to tackle the changes they must make to overcome disease. Visionary physicians like Deepak Chopra and Bernie Siegel lead this revolution. They understand what potential we have within us for modifying the course of disease, if only we choose to, and are allowed to use it. And of course we can learn much from individuals, such as Ian Gawler, who have themselves recovered from ‘terminal’ cancer. The messages from all of these people are surprisingly similar.

Illness as a Challenge

Serious illness is a challenge. Many patients come to regard it as a gift. Like other challenges in life, out of the kernel of the problem may come wonderful insights and answers that transform our lives. For those of us with MS, and cancer, and many other serious diseases, it is worth remembering that the illness is part of us. I don’t like to think of tackling my illness as a fight. It doesn’t make sense to fight yourself. It’s just that some of the cells of our bodies are not behaving in the way we want them to behave. We have extraordinary power over how our bodies’ cells behave. If we get anxious and our blood pressure rises, we lower our heart rate to compensate. We don’t have to do it consciously, indeed we can’t do it consciously. If we get too cold, we start our muscles shivering to generate heat. Similarly if we get infected with a virus, we mobilise our immune system to fight the invader, and almost always win. When we break a bone, we don’t have to tell our body how to heal itself. Built into the DNA in every cell in our bodies is the blueprint for fixing itself when things go wrong, for developing into an adult, for producing children.

But in MS and cancer, something goes wrong with the message. If we can do all these other things, why can’t we control our bodies’ cells and stop the process going wrong when it does? The truth is that some people can. Countless case reports exist of patients terminally ill with cancer who go home and make a complete recovery. If they can do it, we all can, if we can work out how. It only has to happen once to make it possible. The body has a tremendously effective ability to heal when it is in balance. The difficulty is in quietening the mind long enough to allow the body to return to this natural state of balance. This is where meditation comes in.

Fear Versus Faith

One of the ways in which this important energy we need for healing can be wasted is when we are consumed with fear. In many respects, fear is the opposite of faith. MS is a frightening disease, particularly when first diagnosed. Most of us want to live a long, healthy life. So often we hear people say ‘I hope I drop dead with a heart attack’ or ‘I hope I die in my sleep after a healthy life’. The fear of incapacity and a long drawn out demise is distressing for most people. Yet that is precisely what comes to mind when given a diagnosis of MS. Suddenly the wheelchair comes into view, and being fed, and catheters and so on. But most people, when told, are comparatively well. It makes no sense to spend some of the precious time we have now, when we are well, consumed with worry about what might be when we are not well. Worse, using that energy worrying, robs us of the energy we need to heal ourselves.

My great friend and mentor, Dr Ian Hislop captured it perfectly: ‘The principle is straightforward. You have to replace fear with faith. Faith in yourself, your future, and perhaps in something which transcends both.’

Hope

This leads to the associated concept of hope. There is no such thing as false hope. There is only false ‘no hope’. While statistics help us describe the outcome for a particular group of patients, they are quite useless for any individual patient. There are always those that do better, and those that do worse than the statistics. There are always extraordinary survivors, no matter how bleak the outcome, or how advanced the disease. We can always have real hope that we will have a similar course. This is especially true for MS which is such a variable disease. We know that there is a group of people who do very well, those with so-called benign MS. At the very least, why shouldn’t we hope that we will be one of these people? How much better is it for someone to live positively in hope, than negatively in depression, when there is a real possibility that they won’t deteriorate.

The problem with telling someone that she has six months to live, or will be disabled within two years, is that it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The doctor’s relationship with the patient is charged with such authority, and patients usually do their best to please their doctors, that patients will often live out exactly the script they have been given. By giving patients this false ‘no hope’, we weaken their resolve, we literally take away some of their power to heal the illness.

One more thing: Jelinek just published a book called Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis which looks promising. Here’s the synopsis:

Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis offers real hope for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is a serious, progressively disabling neurological condition for which current medical treatment is not particularly effective and has many side effects. Professor George Jelinek, an experienced medical clinician and researcher, provides a genuine alternative. Through an exhaustive, evidence-based analysis of medical research, Professor Jelinek reached the surprising conclusion that MS is a disease largely determined by lifestyle factors. He has demonstrated that people with MS who modify their diet, sun exposure, exercise habits, and other aspects of lifestyle can stabilise the illness, and potentially recover. This book, now with around 700 references, consolidates and summarises all relevant recent research on what can be done to recover from MS. It is not only a major reference work for people with the illness and their relatives, but its scope and evidence base will appeal to a professional audience of nurses, doctors and other health professionals. Professor Jelinek’s experience with his mother’s death from MS, and his own diagnosis in 1999, lend an urgency and compassion to this meticulous work. His recommendations will change the lives of thousands of people with MS and support their loved ones.

You can order the book here. I’ll be ordering my copy today as well!

www.allenandunwin.com

www.gawler.org

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I read the book in one sitting – it’s that readable and captivating. And I want to share a few quotes from it that feel really fitting as I launch this site.

“Many of us confuse hope with optimism, a prevailing attitude that ‘things turn out for the best.’ But hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to ‘think positively,’ or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. Although there is no uniform definition of hope, I found one that seemed to capture what my patients had taught me. Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see – in the mind’s eye – a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion.

“Clear-eyed, hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them. For all my patients, hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform. Only well into my career did I come to realize this.”