Nissa Lee Phillips turned her life around after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis
NISSA Lee Phillips was travelling around Australia at the age of 24 when she became ill. Her body felt “weird” and she had pins and needles throughout her body.
“I couldn’t walk straight, half of my face had dropped and was tingling and I was terrified that I had experienced a stroke,” Nissa said.
When she was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS, she feared the worst, picturing wheelchairs, lost mobility and “scary things”, but it hasn’t worked out that way.
“There’s huge amounts of fear and a lot of the success stories and recovery stories don’t get shared a lot but there are quite a few and Nissa is involved in diet and lifestyle intervention trials and research studies along with many other people who are recording some of the good news stories.”
In the beginning, there was very little available by way of good news stories, Ms Phillips said.
“There wasn’t much education on what you could do to look after yourself. Most of the information was around medications, but there is a lot more research out there now about diet and lifestyle changes for MS.”
Along the path of learning how to “get better so I could function” Ms Phillips studied to become a naturopath.
“So now I see people with MS and other people in the community to help them recover their health wherever possible.”
Ms Phillip advocates lifestyle changes to reduce stress, get out in the sun and eat well, to help manage MS.
“It is an auto immune disease, and its neurological, inflammatory, but your prognosis after diagnosis is influenced by lifestyle factors.”
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