Diet and NMO:
A Three-Step Approach

By
Allen C. Bowling, M.D., PhD,
Complementary Medicine Advisor

Many people with NMO and related conditions would like to use dietary approaches to try to control the disease. These approaches have many appealing features. They may be a way to slow down the disease process in a safe and “natural” way. In addition, they may provide a sense of control, hope, and empowerment. Due to these features, dietary strategies are, for some, an important component of their treatment plan.

For those who are interested in using dietary strategies for NMO, it is extremely important to be well informed. High quality information allows one to identify and use approaches that are low risk and potentially beneficial and avoid those that are possibly harmful or ineffective. Due to the complexity of NMO and NMO medications, it is challenging to evaluate dietary studies within the context of this disease. As a result, it may be difficult to obtain high quality, unbiased NMO-specific dietary information.

Some people who provide dietary information may have financial incentives, biases, or limitations in their knowledge base that lead them to provide inaccurate--and sometimes potentially dangerous--information. For example, those who have financial interests in specific dietary products may provide information that is excessively supportive of those products and disregarding of other approaches that may actually be more reasonable. Also, people who are only knowledgeable about a few therapies may, without evidence, make those therapies relevant to an excessively wide range of diseases, including NMO. Finally, people who have little or no specific knowledge of NMO and NMO medications may apply dietary information to this complex disease in a way that is incorrect or overly simplistic.

The aim of this article is to help people with NMO make well informed decisions about diets and dietary supplements. There are two main parts of this article. The first part, “Background Information,” objectively summarizes NMO-relevant dietary research. This information was obtained from an unbiased review of hundreds of scientific and clinical studies. The second part of the article, “A Three Step Approach,” translates the research findings into practical dietary strategies. “Appendix I” and “Appendix II” provide detailed information about specific dietary supplements. Finally, the article concludes with “References and Additional Reading.”

When reading this article, several key points should be kept in mind:

• Before pursuing specific dietary approaches (or any other unconventional therapies), the risks and benefits of these approaches should be discussed with a conventional health provider.
  

• There are multiple conventional medications that have been shown to have beneficial effects on the disease process of NMO. The dietary strategies discussed in this article should not be used instead of conventional medications.
  

• Unfortunately, no dietary approach has ever been systematically studied in NMO. Thus, for those who are only interested in absolutely proven therapies, there is not a dietary approach that can be formally recommended. This article provides information about approaches that are not absolutely proven but are low risk and may possibly benefit the underlying disease process in NMO.

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