therideproject.com

Big News! – therideproject.com is ready for your viewing pleasure. Eventually, you will be redirected to the new blog when you visit this page but for now, please check out the new website and the new blog. I would love your feedback!!

I remember

MS Symptom I wouldn’t mind

I do not take symptoms of disease lightly so please don’t misunderstand the following.

If I HAD to pick a symptom for myself it would be the one I read about today on Julie’s Blog. It’s called  “foreign accent syndrome”. Evidently, you still speak your native language but with a new accent.

This is a true story! While a little unsettling, I think it would be a blast to wake up one morning and have a perfect Australian accent!

Now, I don’t know if the symptom is so cool that you choose what accent you get, but if you could, what would it be?

Eat Less

If you know me or this blog, you know I think that food and weight can dramatically impact MS or any chronic health issue. If the truth be told, I feel like I have struggled with weight issues since I was twelve or maybe even younger.  I doubt that is unlike many of you, especially women.

I have counted points, ate only protein, eliminated carbs, counted points again, exercised too much, exercised too little, taken diet pills (way back when), binged, starved and anything else to lose weight and then gain it right back again. I have lost and gained the same twenty pounds for over twenty years.

Since my MS diagnosis, I started to look at food and weight very differently. It became about health instead of skinny jeans. I am almost rid of that pesky twenty pounds again and hope to approach the rest of my life much differently in terms of maintaining a healthy weight.

When I read this, it really made sense….

“Think of the insignificant gimmicks that you’ve been told will help you drop
pounds:

• Eat breakfast every single day: If you don’t, your body goes into ’starvation mode’.
• Drink Coffee to speed up your metabolism
• Drink 12 glasses of cold water every day
• Eat protein for lunch
• Sip Green Tea all day
• Take your Fish Oil Pills every day.

In reality NONE of these things are going to result in significant or long lasting weight loss results.

Each one is either a misuse of scientific fact (confusing an association with causation), is an exaggeration (the ‘metabolism boosting’ effects of green tea or caffeine) or is simply repeating common myths as facts (protein for lunch).

And while the health marketers that push these info tid-bits may or may not mean well, convincing you to focus on the minor and mostly irrelevant tasks can not only prevent you from losing weight, it can also affect your health.

Successfully losing weight seems to be one of the most difficult life-problems to solve.

Yet it can be solved with one of the easiest solutions: Eating less.”

Often overlooked, but so obvious.

Reflect

It is time for a cure for Multiple Sclerosis

Natural history data suggests that after ten years, 50% of untreated patients diagnosed with relapsing remitting Multiple Sclerosis will be categorized with secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis. After 25 years, 95% will make the switch. People with MS are untreated for a variety of reasons. The reasons range from personal choice to treat the disease holistically and the fact that MS drugs can often be cost prohibitive, even with health insurance to the reality that MS drugs are not always effective or the side effects can be impossible to tolerate.

Ten years or twenty five years does not feel that far away. Just looking at the last 5 years, I know I will not be ready for my MS to progress anytime soon.

5 years ago I was not:

married

blogging

selling my photography

raising a teenager

knowingly living with MS

a homeowner

growing my own veggies

cycling

paddle surfing

in love with Yoga

planning to move to Mexico

launching a new website

donating $1,000,000 to research

thinking about where I would be five years from now….

We have something to offer the world in the next 10 years and the next 25 years. We cannot continue to rely on current MS therapies for long term success. There are too many variables and too many MS patients that need another alternative. We need a CURE for MS.

Newly Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis?

Have you or someone you loved been recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis?

Do you remember when you or a loved one was diagnosed?

While my diagnosis was just over three years ago, I remember the day clearly, the events leading up to it and the months afterwards trying to figure out how I was going to be healthy with Multiple Sclerosis.  I read books, talked to MS patients and medical experts and I searched the Web for other MS stories.

I will be featuring a resource page on my new website and want to include powerful books, websites and other things that helped you through your initial diagnosis and continue to help on your journey with MS.

What do you recommend?

New image for theRIDEproject

Clean Diet and theRIDEproject update

Today marks the first day of yet another clean eating phase for me. While I usually put a time limit on it, I don’t often have a good follow up plan. This time, I am hoping a month of clean eating (no white stuff) will parlay into a mostly vegan diet. While it always amazes me to see how clean eating affects my weight and skin and energy, I am really curious to see how it will affect my creativity.

I know many creative  types turn to booze or hallucinogenics or cutting off ears, but for me it will have to be green tea, spinach, apples and white fish! TheRIDEproject is almost ready for take off and I have great ideas for more images. I just reviewed a first draft of the website and I think final revisions will be done by the end of next week.

In the meantime, you can see updates on theRIDEproject Facebook page by clicking Here or watch for information on Twitter Here.

Have a great weekend and guess what I am shooting this weekend.

Can a friend make you fat?

While we all have to assume personal responsibility for our health and well-being, I think it’s true that other people can affect our health. Think about the times you spend with negative thinking, complaining people. You might feel drained or negative yourself. Compare that to a great evening with positive, uplifting friends and you can really see how the people you surround yourself with impact your health.

Friends can also affect our health with their healthy habits (or not so healthy ones).

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a  study found that “obesity appears to spread through social ties,” suggesting that the condition, which afflicts over 30 percent of the U.S. population, moves in a manner not unlike an infectious disease.

But just how does this work? The authors speculate that having obese social contacts could increase a person’s “tolerance” for obesity (if everyone around you is big, it doesn’t seem abnormal), or might influence their adoption of certain behaviors (getting super nachos instead of a salad). Having an obese friend was found to increase a person’s risk of becoming obese by 50 percent; having an obese sibling increased the risk by 40 percent, and an obese spouse by 37 percent.

We have to make our own decisions about what we eat, how much we sleep or exercise and what medications we take. But we also need to seriously consider how our friends decisions affect our behavior or how we affect theirs, both physically and emotionally.

Cut the negative talk (and the super nachos) and enjoy great friends!