Autoimmune diseases are on the rise globally ...
'The hidden autoimmune pandemic.'
There are over 80 different types
... and as luck would have it, I've got one.
We're lucky in as much as we do have access to more and more drugs
but we know there's still going to be some patients who don't respond.
With growing numbers of people turning for the booming wellness industry
to help manage these lifelong conditions outside of conventional science,
I'm keen to find out if it can offer anything to a sceptic like me.
Do you worry that people will look at this and think it's just ridiculous?
The methods that we're using here have been around since time began, they've just been suppressed.
Is this not just an elaborate placebo? – No.
Am I asking stupid questions? – no you're not asking stupid questions, I think you're just a little bit naive.
So what do I need to do to be a goat whisperer?
Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and it was made clear to me that
the deterioration in my physical symptoms would continue,
in spite of the medication I take to slow it.
Although not marketed at me, I've always been a bit sceptical of wellness,
seeing it as a money-making world of candles, crystals and chakras; of Instagram
filters, pseudoscience and Gwyneth Paltrow – self-indulgence to the point of narcissism.
So what better way to delve into this world than by producing a series of videos all about me.
Balanced Spirit Therapies. Healing the shadow. Ice therapy is big right now.
I've got MS and I'm wondering whether harmonic egg healing might help me? No guarantees? Oh, that's a shame.
I'm interested in Earthing and Grounding, the Rosen Method, Eurythmy. Conscious Dance classes.
Oh, it can, brilliant. How does it help? I have a body. I'm not hideously traumatised, no.
Sacred Geometry, what's that? No, I definitely don't want a healing crisis, that sounds terrifying.
Get out.
Bloody cat.
My mind is swimming with different wellness options.
There's all sorts of different therapies available today and some of them might genuinely help someone with MS,
but I don't know which ones and I don't know how to find that out without spending a lot of money trying them,
over, perhaps, a long period of time.
Helpfully, my local Town, Stroud, is a holistic hotbed.
I've asked Marcus Blackett, community organiser behind the Beacon Wellness Hub, to be my guide
on a tour of the town's therapeutic offerings.
I'm sort of tasking you with with showing me, kind of, what the alternatives look like outside of the NHS, I suppose.
What's the, sort of, first stop on that journey?
Well, just explore, you know. There are a lot of people who've had a lot of success,
not only just arresting the deterioration of your condition
but also to actually even reverse it, and that can be proved.
That's a bold claim, right? The mainstream scientific Community would say that's not possible.
Yeah, well, the mainstream scientific community have their limits.
I mean, I think, merely a fact that a doctor in a white coat,
figure of authority, says to you, you know, it's incurable, it's almost giving you a sentence
and many, many illnesses start here, with your thinking and your mentality.
I've been looking to reduce my symptoms but an outright cure seems far-fetched,
however seductive the hope of one might be.
We human beings are built to move.
Marcus introduces me to Alicia Kon, one of numerous local therapists.
It's a competitive marketplace, isn't it?
It is, true. Sometimes I wonder if we are all talking about the same thing but giving the different names
Right, okay, yeah. – with a different tweak here and there.
I find the complexity around all this stuff quite overwhelming.
Yeah, that's why I was saying use your intuition also and you will ... – I'm not sure I even trust that, though, you know.
Ah, well we are told not to but it is a power that we have. – Right, okay.
Give them a knock and see what they say.
Marcus and Alicia took me around town to see if we could find anything I was intuitively drawn to,
but we weren't having much luck in getting the town's therapists to answer their doors
Alexander technique, that's the one ...
How does one end up at any one of these things? Do you just sort of say, well,
I fancy a bit of rhythmical massage today, I wonder what's available,
or is there someone who is going to sit there and say: 'These are your problems,
I would suggest your best starting point would be non-violent communication'.
Intuition will draw you towards where you want to be. – Okay.
It is a long, long journey for some people, this could be a lifetime's journey.
Success at last, as one of the practitioners here is willing to give me a brief demonstration of her approach.
I am a trained singing therapist, so I work with the voice as a therapeutic tool.
Would you give me five minutes of your techniques?
Yes, so here and then we're just going to just do a kind of sense of letting go, like ...
and, if you're happy to sing, I then put a song tone into that so we do a [sings].
Thank you for being so brave, that's great.
Good, that's probably good to give us a little bit of a picture of something.
Okay.
Do you feel that that would benefit someone with MS? How would that benefit me?
You can say for good health, one has to have good breathing, no matter what actually the condition is.
Can I free my lungs and all the muscles that are involved in the breathing, that they can breathe as a
whole organism and I can have naturally healthy balance, breathing, balance between inhalation and
exhalation that then supports my health, actually, no matter what the condition is that I have.
Though Pia was keen to stress her singing therapy couldn't cure MS,
the taster did give me a sense there may be a number of ways I could better manage my health.
How are you? – Alright, how are you?
Someone who has become something of an expert in managing her health
is international athlete Lena Nielsen.
'She kept it secret, until now.
At the Commonwealth Games, Lena Nielsen finally told everyone about her condition.
She was an athlete with multiple sclerosis.'
Lena's under-par performance at this Summer's World Championships was the result of a recent relapse,
something I was Keen to exploit for my own benefit and wellbeing.
Shall we have a race? – Shall we have a race?
Go.
I'm gonna ruin my shoes. Ah, should we call it a draw? – Good effort.
I'm just watching you you move and me move though. It's clear that our MS is probably slightly different
and your experience of MS will be slightly different to mine. – Yes.
But you've had it a long time?
Half my life now, yeah, 13 years.
We've just kind of brushed it under the carpet and went on with life and then I had my second relapse at 17,
so a good four years and then that's kind of what led to my diagnosis, yeah.
It is a very varied disease, right? I mean, when there are so many different ways that it presents
it can be very hard to know exactly what might work for you and what might work for someone else, I suppose.
You kind of have to learn your own body, respecting your body and just finding out, you know, trial and error, what works for you,
not only physically but mentally as well and I say you don't have to stop life
you just have to adapt and that's been my message so far.
But there are people out there who think that, you know, and even cure is possible, right.
Yeah and I think that you should. I think it provides a bit of hope to think that it could be possible, you know?
But if that hope is like a false hope, that's kind of like, is that not more damaging?
I think the damaging thing would be to say you can never, ever live the life that you've wanted to live.
I think that's more damaging than giving that little bit of hope.
Despite our differences, I'm curious to know if I too might gain something from employing Lena's positive approach.
But, I do want to get a sense check from conventional science before getting stuck in.
James Lee is the author of a recent study that links western lifestyles to this global rise in autoimmune conditions.
We've seen, over the last 40 years, this huge explosion in pretty much
all autoimmune diseases, to be honest. We know the genetics isn't really changing in that time so the
thing that's likely to be happening is whatever the environmental trigger is that's setting this
off in people, that is becoming more common. And we are seeing associations with westernisation and
there might be diet but there's also pollution and obesity and various other things so we know that
there's something in that mix, but it's going to be different for each disease, I suspect.
What rule of thumb would you use in order to differentiate between pseudoscience and stuff
that actually might be of value, or at least not do any damage.
To give you some sort of specifics, I think anything that's claiming it's a cure,
I think anything that is talking about detoxifying you – your liver and your kidneys detoxify you very well,
you don't need additional things to do that; anything where, you know, fundamentally it just doesn't make sense,
you just think why would taking the root of a Himalayan tree, you know, fix me of all my known woes?
And yet if you speak to people offering Eastern medicines and that sort of thing,
you'll find that they are very serious about what they're offering .
So, I'd probably draw a bit of a distinction because, actually,
you know, Eastern medicine, there are a lot of things that are very beneficial.
I think one of the challenges is we don't necessarily know what the active ingredient is in some of these things,
so I wouldn't necessarily put that together with, you know, the people who are selling you celery shots
and telling you it's going to detoxify, you know, your brain for you or whatever it that might be.
I don't think we as scientists should be, sort of, snobbish about saying:
'Oh no, none of this is going to work and only the stuff we do works.'
but I do think we have to be scientific about it.
Having now secured the blessing of an eminent scientist, I'm ready to throw myself into the
wonderful world of wellness
and where better to start than that bedrock of the movement, yoga.
Fortunately, I know a good teacher. It's another weapon in Lena's armoury for keeping MS at bay.
Take an inhale, hands go up. Lengthen the spine, be as tall as you can, forward fold.
Rest your hands on your thighs.
See this is why I don't like yoga because it just reminds me of all the things that my body can't do.
It's fair enough and that's why I always say yoga is a journey.
Most people can get their forehead on their knees, this is as far as I go.
Oh, really.
I wonder if you think that Eastern therapies are perhaps some sort of antidote to the Western lifestyle?
I wouldn't say it's so much an antidote, I think if we go the other way. So I think Western lifestyles have
almost strayed away from what us as humans should be doing, which is not as fast-paced as the Western
lifestyle, you know; eating less processed food, not staying indoors for nine, ten hours of the day.
Try not to drop down, just keep using the core. You might shake a little bit, you've got it, you've got it,
all the way, nice. Find your final resting pose, your Shavasana. This is my favourite yoga pose.
Oh this is great. – and this is Yoga.
You can do this as your starting pose, your resting pose.
What about for the whole session?
You could do for the whole practice.
Obviously you keep fit and concentrate
on kind of other ways that you can look after your health. Is the drug side of it, sort of, a
final port of call for you?
Yeah, I look at it as a final resort I think. I think at that age, when I was 18,
I didn't really want to commit to medication for the rest of my life,
so I thought let me see how long I can go without and so to this day I'm still not on any medication.
But I think it's something I have to consider, obviously, getting older, I'm not the 18 year old I once was.
But it's something that I really have to take the time to think about because it's the lifelong commitment.
It's a commitment I've already made, but I'm fascinated to explore some of the more unconventional corners
of the wellness industry, alongside my regular treatment.
One area that specialists on all sides agree on though is the importance of diet
so in the next episode, I'm getting to know my gut.