George Jelinek - Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Handbook: Roadmap to Good Health

If you or someone that you love is impacted by MS this book is a must read. The seven-step process for self-management presented in the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Handbook is a comprehensive and thoughtful approach to living your best life despite having this disease.

Dr Aaron Boster, The Boster Center for Multiple Sclerosis, Columbus, Ohio

This highly recommended book highlights the importance of a holistic approach to MS management, offering a path to achieve the best possible outcome in this potentially devastating condition.

Professor Richard Nicholas, Imperial College London

A deeply insightful account and instructive guide for adopting healthy lifestyle behaviors and thriving while living with MS.

Dr Sarah Mulukutla, Founding Chairperson of the Section on Neurohealth and Integrative Neurology at the American Academy of Neurology, New York

Written specifically for people who have MS, this inspirational book provides a comprehensive, practicable program for living a full life with this disease.

Dr Alessandra Solari, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, Italy

Overcoming MS is now the essential mainstay of MS management, before or alongside drug therapy, offering the best chance of a full and healthy life for people with MS.

Dr Peter Silbert, Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of Western Australia Medical School

A wonderful resource for people living with MS.

Dr Ilana Katz Sand, Associate Professor of Neurology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York

First published in 2022

Copyright in the collection George Jelinek, Sandra Neate and

Michelle ODonoghue 2022

Copyright in individual chapters with their authors 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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ISBN 978 1 76087 878 8

eISBN 978 1 76106 368 8

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Cover photograph: Daniel Kay/Shutterstock

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For Eva and Iva

George Jelinek

For my brother, Colin

Sandra Neate

To my family, in particular my husband Andrew,

for their unwavering support

Michelle ODonoghue

The Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis 7 Step Recovery Program (the OMS Program and the Program) outlined in this book has the potential to radically change your life for the better. I know because it has changed mine. Even more importantly, nearly every contributor telling their story in the following pages is a testament to the power of the OMS Program too.

I first met Professor George Jelinek in 2002 in Melbourne, Australia, where he had just started running workshops for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). I was the 28-year-old woman slumped on a bright yellow beanbag in the middle of the room, struggling to get through each day, debilitated by an array of symptoms. Four months earlier I had received the devastating diagnosis, which explained the sudden and dramatic onset of symptoms that had engulfed my body and in turn my mind and spirit. It transformed me from a strong independent woman in the prime of my life to a bedridden shell of myself, reliant on others for care.

I sat among a room full of people, all there for a glimmer of hope from a man who himself had been dealt the same diagnosis and had witnessed his mothers decline and eventual suicide as a result of the same illness that had ravaged her body years earlier. At the time Professor Jelinek was considered somewhat of a revolutionary, some would even say a maverick. He had consolidated the evidence from around the world and put together a holistic lifestyle program that he believed had the potential to completely change the lives of people with MS.

For me it was a pivotal moment. As I embraced the OMS Program, it empowered me little by little to take back control of my health. It provided me with the evidence to understand why the recommendations work and it motivated me to do whatever it took to overcome MS.

In the subsequent years Professor Jelinek paved the way as a leader in the field, ultimately setting up, and then conducting health and lifestyle research in MS at, the Neuroepidemiology Unit (NEU) at the prestigious University of Melbourne.

When I set up the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis (OMS) charity in the United Kingdom in 2012, it was with a passionate belief that this lifestyle information needed to be made available to every single person newly diagnosed with MS. I felt a sense of responsibility to share Georges work, as I had experienced its life-changing outcomes at first hand. In fact, it felt negligent not to spread the word. If I could turn my health around, so could others; they just needed to be given the opportunity to understand the evidence underpinning the recommended changes.

And now, a decade later, the real testament to Georges work is that this latest book is a handbook that is written by our community and for our community. It builds on his ground-breaking book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis: The evidence-based 7 Step Recovery Program, which provides the detailed scientific evidence base of how changing ones lifestyle can positively affect the development and progression of MS.

Joining Professor Jelinek in bringing this book to fruition are two other editors from opposite sides of the world, steeped in medical and scientific expertise. Dr Sandra Neate is a specialist emergency physician who heads the NEU at the University of Melbourne but also has significant involvement in forensic aspects of medicine, in particular through the Coroners Court of Victoria and the Mental Health Tribunal in Victoria. She has also run many residential OMS retreats with George. With her academic rigour, Sandra bridges the divide between teaching and research in medicine and her practical clinical contributions, as well as her insider perspective on living for twenty years with someone who has lived and breathed the OMS Program.

Professor Michelle ODonoghue is a US cardiologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School whom George and I met on the OMS tour of the United States in 2016 and who herself was diagnosed with MS in 2010. As a researcher and clinical trialist, she has a particular appreciation for the evidence on which the OMS Program is based.

These editors now release, for the first time, expanded practical information condensed into a simple, practical guide on how to follow the OMS Program, written so that anyone who has been touched by this life-changing condition can benefit. Nearly all the contributors, as well as being international experts in their own fields, follow the Program, having been diagnosed with MS themselves. They say that the job of a master is to create new masters and so it is hugely inspiring to read what these new masters of the OMS philosophy, from all corners of the world, have to say as they come together to share their insights. As you dive into this book, youll find a manual brimming with super accessible, practical tools and information drawn from professional knowledge and personal experience.