S3E19 Coffee Break with community member Gillian Robertson

Geoff Allix  00:01

Welcome to Living well with MS Coffee break a part of the Overcoming MS podcast family, made for people with multiple sclerosis interested in making healthy lifestyle choices. Today you’ll meet someone living with MS for our global Overcoming MS community. Our guests will share their personal perspective on the positive and practical lifestyle changes they have made, which have helped them lead a fuller life. You can check out our show notes, and for more information and useful links, you can find these on our website at overcomingms.org/podcast. If you enjoy the show, please spread the word about us on your social media channels. Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. So get your favorite drink ready and let’s meet our guest Welcome to Living Well with MS Coffee Break Number 20, where we are pleased to welcome Gillian Robertson as our guest. As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome by emailing [email protected]. We hope you enjoy this episode’s conversation with Gillian, originally from the UK and now living in Switzerland. Gillian our audience wants to know a little bit about you and your life. So could you share some background on where you’re from what you do, any snippets of your family or personal life or anything about you that would give our listeners a sense of who you are?

 

Gillian Robertson  01:23

Yeah, sure. So I was originally born in Yorkshire, brought up in the UK, went to university also in the UK and then as part of my degree, I went off to Italy to study, I was studying History of Art and that really gave me kind of wanderlust and from that point on, I always really enjoyed traveling. So when I got the opportunity to move with my job to Switzerland, it’s about 18 years ago now, I took that opportunity and I’ve been here ever since. So I’m living in a ski resort now with my husband, we’ve got three grown up daughters who are all back in the UK and relatively recently, I changed career and retrained and now I’m working as a private chef.

 

Geoff Allix  02:25

So is that in for like ski resort customers and things like that?

 

Gillian Robertson  02:30

Yeah, it is, so I mean, it’s quite seasonal. So I basically go out and cook for people who either come on holiday and rent a chalet, or who own their own chalet and, you know, often they don’t want to cook when they’re on holiday, they haven’t got time, or we live in quite a small resort so they don’t want to sort of eat in the same restaurants every night. So it’s it’s an alternative to that.

 

Geoff Allix  02:58

Okay, and how about your experience with MS. So could you give us some context on when you were diagnosed? And how you initially coped with having MS.

 

Gillian Robertson  03:07

Yeah, sure. I mean, it was back in 2016, I’d always been fairly fit and I enjoyed sports, especially running and I suddenly started just to feel very weird sensations in my feet, either sort of tingling or numbness and I even started, I was kind of tripping up a lot, which I couldn’t understand and gradually, this feeling sort of spread up my legs and really ended up affecting sort of the whole of the lower half of my body. And I started obviously going, I went to the doctor and it was quite interesting, because I had a series of tests; first of all, he thought it might be a blood clot, which is a bit strange. Then he even and something we laugh about a lot now he even suggested that I might have one leg shorter than the other and I couldn’t quite understand why that would suddenly affect me now when it hadn’t affected me, you know, for the whole of my life and it was actually finally I went to see another doctor who asked me a lot of questions, carried out some tests and then he said, I think you need to go for an MRI. I think you’ve got a problem with something in the spine. And so after that that sure enough, the MRI showed that there were lesions on my spine and it took about it was probably seven or eight months after that, with more MRI’s, a Lumbar Puncture, and more lesions appearing actually on the MRI’s that they then gave me the diagnosis of MS. I didn’t have anything on the brain, still don’t have anything on the brain, but obviously, it was a huge shock and during that whole time, I was having physiotherapy, because it affected my balance quite a lot and gradually over, I would say over a year, I guess, my symptoms gradually subsided and I was able to start gradually doing some sports again.

 

Geoff Allix  05:44

And how did you come across OMS? And why did you why’d you start to follow that program?

 

Gillian Robertson  05:50

Oh, it was interesting because obviously here in Switzerland, I mean,  I have a very good neurologist and she wasn’t prepared to recommend me anything other than disease modifying drugs, I did decide to go with, with a drug but I started doing a lot of research on my own and actually, I think it was through the MS Society in the UK, I think it was through their website that I found a link to Overcoming MS. I did a lot of reading around different diets and at the end of the day, the Overcoming MS program just seemed to me, because it wasn’t just diet, because it was a whole kind of lifestyle and came at the condition from lots of different angles, It just seemed to make an awful lot of sense to me. And so I got the book, read it from cover to cover and decided, yeah, I’m gonna give this a go. And speaking with my neurologist, she certainly said, Well, it’s definitely not going to do you any harm and it’s a very healthy way of living and eating. So if you feel like it’s going to help you then go for it.

 

Geoff Allix  07:14

That’s almost exactly the same experience I had and I think that really helps. Some people have a very negative experience from neurologists, but my my neurologist said, it’s not gonna do you any harm, it will probably help you in terms of heart disease, diabetes, all these other things. And it’s not proven, but yeah, it might work and it won’t do you any harm certainly doing that. It’s not, well, weird and wacky, you know removing vegetables from your diet or something like that. It’s sensible eating, and it’ll be healthy for you. So, yeah. And what are some of the challenges that you’ve faced in adopting OMS?

 

Gillian Robertson  07:59

Yeah, well, I mean, from the diet point of view, it wasn’t too bad for me, because when I was younger, I had been vegetarian for several years. So I was used to, and I didn’t actually eat cheese, then either, It wasn’t just meat that I cut out, I cut out cheese. So I was sort of used to, you know, looking for options. I think personally, the hardest thing for me to cut out was probably cheese actually, because I love cheese. But even now, there’s something I buy now, which is a cashew based cheese rather than some of the processed ones which, which I enjoy. And because I’m such a foodie, and I love cooking, then I just saw it more as a bit of a challenge to adapt, favorite recipes. I think one of the things with taking the drug that I’m on that I’m on I take Gilenya and, of course one of the risks with that is increased risk of skin cancers. So in terms of getting your Vitamin D, that’s a bit of a challenge. So I do take Vitamin D supplements, and I’m very careful in the sun and then I think the main one for me, which I think is a lot of people find difficult is trying to fit meditation and mindfulness in. I did start really trying very hard to meditate at the same time, every day for 30 minutes and I think I probably did it for about three weeks and then was falling off the wagon. So I find now that I mean, I run and I run on my own and I find that I guess I think that helps with mindfulness. I try to do yoga twice a week and I do a class, it’s an online class and there is some meditation at the end of that. Then I’ve also been using for about a year now I use one of these sleep apps, I do a very short sort of guided meditation most nights with that. So I’m so I’m finding different ways of fitting it in, I think.

 

Geoff Allix  10:25

All right, I think you can, certainly running can be a very mindful activity, because you’re still in the moment and you don’t have to be stressing about bills or whatever, you can just be thinking about the environment you’re in and the actual simple activity of putting one foot in front of the other can be quite mindful, because I used to do like, long distance running and yeah, sometimes you kind of like completely in the zone, and you’re literally just you are being very mindful.

 

Gillian Robertson  10:56

Exactly. I mean, you know, often people say to me, well, why don’t you go running with someone else? And I say, well, for exactly that reason, you know, I’m trying to use it as a time when I can completely zone out of everything. Yeah.

 

Geoff Allix  11:11

And what benefits have you seen from following OMS?

 

Gillian Robertson  11:15

Well, I mean, I would say, certainly in terms of following the program, and taking the drug, I feel incredibly fortunate, because now it seems to have completely stabilised everything and I haven’t had any progression now for you know, for a few years in terms of increased number of lesions or anything like that. I mean, being totally honest, I think I would find it very hard to say, whether it’s the drug or the program, or the combination of the two, that’s really helping. But I think, I certainly feel healthy, in terms of the way I eat, and in terms of the way it encourages you to exercise, you know, I think I think that’s also great. I would also say it’s really helped me with a positive attitude towards the condition, and really feeling like, I’m not just taking a drug, but I am actively doing something myself towards managing my condition.

 

Geoff Allix  12:30

And I think that’s actually talked about in the book as well, the actual act of doing something, actually helps you, there’s a lot of, there’s the whole sort of placebo side of things. It’s like, there’s, you know, it works, plus there’s a reason why you tested against placebos beause placebos work. So actually, that idea that you’re doing something, and it will have an effect, just by the fact that you are doing something and you’re thinking you’re getting better it will your body can help.

 

Gillian Robertson  13:02

Exactly

 

Geoff Allix  13:03

So you will say you’ve been a contributor to the OMS program. So you contribute recipes, for example. So could you describe your experience and what you get up to with contributing towards OMS?

 

Gillian Robertson  13:18

Yeah, sure. I mean, when I got the opportunity to volunteer, I thought, well, you know, it’s that classic thing of, I feel like Overcoming MS is really helping me, so what what can I give back? And of course, because I’m sort of involved with food and cooking, I mean, that seemed to be one of the really obvious things that I could help by contributing recipes. And I’ve been testing recipes as well and I’ve just found my interaction with the OMS organisation. I mean, everyone’s super friendly, you know, it’s just something that’s really nice to be involved in. I’ve started now also, to contribute to the communications advisory group. So that’s a group of people from the OMS community, you know, we’ve got MS and from our perspective, were sort of sharing ideas and giving feedback on the communication side, which again, is very, very interesting and a chance to meet other people you know, and get involved.

 

Geoff Allix  14:37

And then we always ask so on a personal note, whether you have any interesting hobbies and I think probably know the answer this already, based on you living in the mountains, that is probably not Scrabble. But what what sort of stuff do you get up to the weekend?

 

Gillian Robertson  14:53

Well, it is, it’s very, I mean, because we live here, I guess. you are pretty much in winter, it’s skiing and snowshoeing and in summer it’s hiking and running at the weekends. We’ve actually just invested in some mountain bikes; e-mountain bikes. So I’m looking forward to, getting going on those. I mean, I can’t keep up with my husband now on an ordinary bike. So I’m hoping that an E-bike will just help me get out a bit more than on a standard bike, and if it’s raining, I’m in the kitchen, experimenting with food.

 

Geoff Allix  15:48

And just as a final question, if you could tap into your personal experience, for a nugget of wisdom to help people who are starting on the OMS program, what would that be?

 

Gillian Robertson  15:58

I think I mean, I’m, I’m certainly one of those people who is kind of all or nothing. So I kind of launched myself into it at full tilt. But I think what I would really say is, I think back to this idea of positive attitude and I think that doing things gradually and gradually adopting it is probably a good approach because everything, every step you take is a step towards this goal of helping yourself and following the program. And I think remaining positive and not being too hard on yourself if you can’t adopt it immediately and overnight would be my sort of take on that.

 

Geoff Allix  16:52

Okay, thank you very much for that and just I’d like to thank you for joining Gillian.

 

Gillian Robertson  16:59

Well, thank you too, and I’ve really enjoyed our chat today. Yeah.

 

Geoff Allix  17:04

Thank you for listening to this episode of Living Well with MS Coffee Break. Please check out this episode shownotes at overcomingms.org/podcast you’ll find all sorts of useful links and bonus information there. If you’d like to be featured in a future Coffee Break episode or have any suggestions, please email us at [email protected] You can also subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Living Well with MS Coffee Break is kindly supported by a grant from the Happy Charitable Trust. If you’d like to support the Overcoming MS charity and help keep our podcast advertising free you can donate online at overcomingms.org/donate. Thank you for your support. Living Well with MS Coffee Break is produced by Overcoming MS, the world’s leading Multiple Sclerosis healthy lifestyle charity. We are here to help inform, support and empower everyone affected by MS. To find out more and subscribe to our E-newsletter, please visit our website at overcomingms.org

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