I was diagnosed with MS in February of 2016. Before my diagnosis, I was thin but not in a super-healthy way. I lived off of small amounts of all the wrong foods and paid no attention to proper sleep, but other than that, my body felt OK. I got MRIs done to investigate years of chronic lower back pain, and they ended up finding my multiple sclerosis instead. I had one lesion on my spine and several on my brain. At the time, I was a little more tired than usual but couldn’t recall ever having any of the related symptoms. I refused medication because to me, the negative side effects from taking them far outweighed how I was actually feeling.
It wasn’t until that summer that I started feeling the extreme fatigue, heat-related tingling and numbness, and after a particularly stressful workday, I developed optic neuritis. That summer, my husband also asked me if I wanted to go vegan with him. For moral reasons, I jumped right on board. Cutting those products out felt good mentally and physically, so much so that I wondered what else my diet could do for my health, especially in terms of my MS.