Player Intro
Colton McGriff played basketball at Covenant College. He pursued a professional playing career, but was thrown off in his first tryouts by a strange numbness in his hand. Join us as Colton shares his journey through a significant health challenge, and how he has changed to take control of his health.
Gameplan
pD: Alright Colton, thanks for joining me today to share some of your story. Appreciate you being here today.
CM: Hey, no problem, I appreciate it, Isaiah, for having me.
pD: Yeah man. Let's just get started: if you could please share some of your sports background, and some of your current involvement in sports.
CM: Yeah, I'd be happy to. So I guess growing up I played as many sports as possible, so I would play soccer, baseball, and basketball were my three main sports. I think, early on, I was a big baseball fan, probably until age 12, and then it shifted a little bit towards basketball. So my sports career has always been fairly diverse, just playing year round in different types of sport, and then, I guess, currently I'm still playing a little bit in church league basketball, and helping out some with a local high school, so doing some volunteer work, just coaching.
pD: I know that you experienced a pretty major shock, being diagnosed with MS. For those of us who are unfamiliar, what is MS, what's the story behind how you got this diagnosis?
CM: So I'll start with just explaining how it all started. So I graduated from Covenant College in 2015, and was looking to continue my basketball career professionally. So I tried out for this team called USA Select, and was able to go over to England for a 21-day period where we were going to play professional teams in their preseasons. So during a 21-day stretch, we had 24 games planned, where the goal for each of us was to essentially audition during the preseason of this league to hopefully get one of the last roster spots for each team.
So with that opportunity, I was super excited, probably playing the best basketball of my life. About a week before we went on the trip, I started to develop this numbness in my hand that I just couldn't shake, and it was getting more and more difficult to just simply catch the basketball, take one or more dribbles. So I was going on this team specifically because I was supposed to be a good shooter, which is funny because during the 21-day audition that I had, I probably airballed more shots than I have in my entire career.
So I knew something was wrong, and I guess the biggest thing for me is I had to adapt my game and do different things while I wasn't having full feeling in my hands. So once I came back just to get testing and figure out what was going on, I, like you mentioned, I was diagnosed with MS, which is multiple sclerosis, which is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. So basically, it disrupts the flow of information from your brain to the rest of your body. And so, I guess we can talk a little bit more about the reaction from that, but that was a pretty big hit at the time, and during all this, I was still able to find a team that was willing to sign me on and offer me a spot to pursue my Master's Degree in England, so I was basically blessed with that opportunity despite the MS diagnosis.
pD: So how did you respond initially when you first heard this news?
CM: Yeah, my response, I can trace it back to when I was seven years old. I was taught by my parents, I was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, so I had a pretty big event early in my life, where I was fortunate to have parents that didn't let me feel sorry for myself in any way. They essentially celebrated the diagnosis of diabetes, saying, "This is something that you can control, and you've got the opportunity to basically take health into your own hands and not play the victim here."
Because of that, I think, fifteen years later, when I'm diagnosed with this new challenge, I go back to the same process, which is, how am I going to respond to this? The medical community is saying there's no cure for this, and it's just going to be a slowly progressing thing, to the point where, eventually, you're likely going to be in a wheelchair; it's a very grim outlook when you get a diagnosis for MS.
So my response initially, there was definitely a period where there was some sadness and some unknown, but I think because of the early diagnosis of diabetes, I was able to respond, maybe quicker than I could have otherwise.
pD: I imagine, being an athlete, even looking to maybe make your living based off of what your body could do, that must have been really scary to hear at first.
CM: It definitely was, but I guess I can share a little bit about what the diagnosis looked like, and what the response was. Because I guess with modern Western medicine, with MS specifically, there's no cure currently, so the treatment is essentially, you'll take these immunosuppressant drugs, and slow the progression of the disease. I was told when I was first diagnosed, that on average, with MS, you'll be in a wheelchair within ten years of the diagnosis if left untreated. So obviously, there's a lot of fear that's put into you right there, thinking, "Maybe I should do this treatment, I should do something to slow it down."
So I think that, very quickly, leads you into something, and then with such a strong mandate or process to go about this disease, immediately we started looking for alternative solutions that may be more light at the end of the tunnel. I think that's where we ended up finding some doctors that have treated MS (and when I say "we" I mean my parents, who played a crucial role in this), and were able to help me find some doctors out in California that had treated MS strictly with food-related changes. And so, to me, it seemed like a big deal at first, but not so much to counter the chance of being in a wheelchair within ten years.
pD: Thank you for sharing that. Like you said, you ended up going with less traditional approach to combating this disease in your body. So, tell us about the thought process, and maybe some of the specific things that you changed.
CM: So I guess the key thing that I did change was that, since October 2015, I've been on a strictly plant-based diet. So I guess the easiest way for most people, like everyone's heard of a vegan diet, so it's essentially a vegan diet with limited oil intake as well. What some doctors have learned over the process of treating MS through the diet-based approach is that the amount of saturated fat that's in our typical diet is actually causing a greater chance of inflammation and future lesions in the brain, which is what's so important for MS. As lesions increase, then it restricts the ability for outer extremities to work; so whether it's numbness in your hands like I developed at first, or feet, or something in the future, it's just a very progressive disease, that over time, just kind of takes over.
So for me, looking back, it was a big change to go from the diet I was eating to this very strict and very different diet; that's the biggest thing, it's just the change, and now I see it as a blessing that I have this opportunity to change, and I did, and now I'm seeing the results of what that looks like.
pD: Appreciate you sharing some of that. One question that just came up for me; athletes will talk about protein intake, especially if you're working out regularly, playing ball regularly. I think that's one of the hurdles for a lot of athletes, because there are a lot of recommendations for plant-based food; how do you get your protein?
CM: That was actually one of my big questions when I first started; like you said, there's so much information about increasing the amount of protein, then maybe increasing the amount of after-workout protein shakes, that kind of stuff. I guess what I realized is that a lot of that is actually driven through the meat and dairy industries that are promoting this protein with a workout-type mentality. I think a lot of that has been debunked through a lot of science and research behind it.
One of the cool things for me, is that about a year and half, two years after I started this diet, a lot of those questions still existed in my mind. There's this really cool documentary called Game Changers, I think it's on Netflix, and it kind of addresses some of the top-performing athletes in the world, including some bodybuilders that have gone plant-based, and what their experience has been like, and why the protein side of things is a little bit over-talked about. You still need your protein, but maybe the emphasis that we put on it is a little too strong. So I would recommend, if anyone is thinking about making a change, or even just wants to look into the role that diet plays on sports, to watch that movie Game Changers.
pD: Got it. Sounds like a good recommendation. So you started talking about that; a lot of athletes will look to alter their diet for health reasons. After you've made, like you said, this really dramatic change a couple years back, what have the results been like for you both health and fitness wise?
CM: I mean, the results have been amazing for me because, just from a health standpoint with the MS diagnosis, we were also told, if left untreated, that I would have a relapse (it could be numbness in my hands, it could be something else like I mentioned before), but I would have a relapse every 9 months, on average. And if I took the drugs that they were recommending, then it would drop to about 12-15 months.
So since my diagnosis in October of 2015, it's been now 67 months, I've had 0 extra relapses. So from a health standpoint, just looking at MS, it's been phenomenal; where I haven't had a single relapse. I've actually done a better job because of this, with my diagnosis, with my diabetes as well. So after having diabetes for 15 years, now I'm having the best blood sugar numbers in the last five years of my life. So from a health perspective, it's been amazing.
From a sports-related, it's a little bit tougher to compare just because I'm not playing basketball as much as I used to. So it may be more running, and it feels like I have more endurance, but again, I wasn't doing long-distance running while I was playing basketball at a serious level. So it's a bit harder to tell, but I would definitely say that I have more endurance.
pD: Fair enough. Congratulations, that is really amazing to hear, you said, like, what, 67 months with no relapses in that time period. Just absolutely blew out any of the prognosis that the doctors gave you earlier.
CM: Exactly.
pD: So thinking back now, I know that you said this was kind of a long-term diagnosis. But as far as you've gotten at this point, why has it been important that you've experienced this challenge?
CM: Well, I think that's an interesting question, because I ask myself that sometimes, and it's easy when somebody asks themselves, "Why does this happen to me?" to slip into a "Why, me" or "Why did this have to happen to me, I had my life planned out," or something along those lines; but I was reading a book recently, and there was a quote from it that says, "We learn our lessons with the tickle of a feather, or the whomp of a sledgehammer, depending on how open we are to learning that particular lesson."
So I look back at my life, and I think, Ok, maybe my diabetes diagnosis was that tickle of a feather, and I had something to learn. But maybe I didn't fully learn what I was supposed to take from it, so maybe my diet needed to change in another way. So I learned a lot from a mental aspect of, "Hey I can be in control; I can take care of my own life and be in control of how my health turns out because of the advanced in modern medicine through insulin availability."
But could I have taken that next step? And that's where, now I have an MS diagnosis and I'm actually very thankful for it, because maybe again it was another tickle and it was before the whomp of the sledgehammer. Like in America, the leading cause of death is heart disease every year; and it's always that way, so maybe that's the whomp of the sledgehammer, and I avoided that because now I've changed my diet in a way.
So looking forward, we don't know the end result, but I'm thankful for the changes that I've made, and some of the changes I've seen in the people that are close to me, including family members that have also had the benefit from changing health habits.
pD: Yeah, that's really amazing. For anyone who is listening to this, for athletes who are coming up, what recommendations would you have for them based on what you've learned over these past years?
CM: What I've done is probably a bit on the extreme just because I was in a situation where it was pretty drastic, like I'm not going to make a small change, it's going to be either all or nothing.
But if I would have read one book when I was fifteen years old, and implemented some of the changes in it, then I don't know if I would be in this situation, and that book is called "Fit for Life." It's written by Harvey Diamond. Just a little bit of his backstory, Harvey Diamond is a Vietnam War veteran, and he was exposed to Agent Orange over there, and was actually the longest-known living American after being diagnosed with Agent Orange, and it was because he started to look into diet and how it affects the human body, and how we can make changes.
So I think that book would probably be my go-to book in terms of learning just what kind of changes we could make in diet specifically in order to live a more prosperous, a more productive life as an athlete.
pD: Alright, sounds like it's definitely worth checking out. So I'll leave the ball in your court here, Colton, for any final thoughts that you might have that you might want to leave us with.
CM: For sure. I'd say, I mean I think the biggest thing for me is, as a believer, and I think you share with me on this, we're always trying in our life to plan our future out so much, and the biggest thing for me is realizing that we can't always connect the dots looking forward, but looking back, we can.
So you can always connect the dots looking back, like with my story being diagnosed with diabetes at age seven, and then that led to developing the mental attitude or the acumen, the ability to be able to fight something new when I'm 22 years old.
So is that going to be the end of my story? I highly doubt that. I expect something else to happen, and so, with the expectation that life is going to hit you, but we're equipped, and God's preparing us for that along the way; I think that's my biggest takeaway from my story and my journey, is to just trust in what God has for us, and the future that He will display for us.