A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions with Dr. Terry Wahls

understand what you want your health for I have a clear understanding of your mission and purpose in life have a big hairy audacious goal because we're asking to do something that's difficult I and so to be willing to take on something it's difficult it's helpful for you to have a clear mission a clear purpose a big goal hi everyone drupe road here hosted the broken brain podcast in today's episode we're interviewing my dear friend physician and clinical researcher dr. Terry Walsh she's the author of the walls protocol a book that documents her journey from recovery of progressive MS look at this before-and-after photo look at the before and the after this is Terry previously in a wheelchair and a few years later recovered riding a bicycle this does not happen to people that are diagnosed with progressive MS find out what she did to turn her life around and how she's on a movement and a mission to help other people do the same when it comes to their chronic autoimmune conditions stay tuned incredible conversation welcome to the broken brain podcast where we dive deep in the topics of neuroplasticity epigenetics mindfulness functional medicine mindset and more I'm your host you're prod in each week my team and I bring on a new guest who we think can help you improve your brain health feel better and live more all with the goal and understanding that your brain and your body is not broken this week's guest is a friend of mine dr. Terry Wallace dr. Terry Wallace is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa where she conducts clinical trials she's also the author of multiple books including the walls protocol a radical new way to treat all chronic autoimmune conditions using paleo principles which is out in March and you can find a link to the book to pre-order or if it's available time this podcast you can order it in the show notes dr. Terry walls welcome to the broken brain podcast hey thanks so much for having me it's an honor to have you here so I want to start off the beginning because your work has been out there for a while but this is the first time that you've been on our podcast and listeners may not be familiar with your story so let's start with your diagnosis and what diagnosis you had when it came to multiple sclerosis specifically you actually I'm gonna take you back a little bit earlier please so we'll go back to medical school in 1980 I start having episodes of face pain electrical jolts of discomfort along the right side of my face so occasionally the left and over the years these episodes would become more frequent more severe I would eventually be diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia seven years later 1987 and just pausing for a second I remember reading in your story that those early episodes you didn't necessarily think you knew that something was not right but you didn't think that it was something major correct you know I'm a farm kid your work has to get done as I'm pretty stoic and I did observe that I was more likely to have these episodes if I'd been up all night or under a lot of stress and over time you know they became more frequent more severe I and you know finally I went to see my physician in 87 and I again was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia I started taking I believe it was tegretol but I developed a drug rash so I had to stop he tried a few other drugs none of them really helped and so I just had to wait for this intense period of pain to subside sometimes to take a week sometimes it would take as long as six weeks and so I just you know kept carrying on then in 89 had an episode of dim vision in my left eye and that happened while I was out roller skating or actually rollerblading on a hot August day I'd gone out for what I was thought was going to be a 20 mile rollerblade but I you know got into trouble about five miles out and so I came back got a big evaluation you know MRIs referral - homology cardiogram etc etc no clear evaluation and then I in 2000 I developed weakness of my look and I went back to see neurology and he ended up with a huge evaluation MRIs spinal taps nerve conduction velocities lots of blood tests and that's when the diagnosis was made now in retrospect you know when I had the trigeminal neuralgia and the dim vision they could have made the diagnosis of MS much earlier back in 89 but I actually immensely grateful they did not because I probably would have not had my kids so I you know I'm I'm very fine with the fact that they didn't make the diagnosis I had my kids and then when my kids were very very young I had more palms and would have the diagnosis so starting from that point it was I believe three years later from the time of that diagnosis yes you know so I keep in mind I'm a conventional medicine doc I believe absolutely in science I believe in the best drugs the newest technology so I of course wanted to see the best people take the newest drugs treat my disease very very aggressively so I did some research who was doing the best research and I went to that Center and I saw their best person because I did that research too and I took the newest drugs and I went relentlessly downhill just like my face pain had been going relentlessly downhill and worse so within three years I'm in a tilt line wheelchair my physicians tell me to take my toes Antron which is a form of chemotherapy and I read the package insert and there is a 2% risk of developing leukemia with each cycle that you take but of course I'm far more terrified of becoming bedridden and demented by my illness so leukemia looks like a pretty minor thing compared to what I was facing so I was very happy to take the mitoxantrone but I went relentlessly downhill so we actually have a photo of that time period here of you in the wheelchair this is October 1st 2007 and what was your mental state at that time well you know I was facing a very grim future you know clearly I was going downhill it was severe fatigue my pain was increasingly severe and it was clear that the very best drugs from the very best people were unlikely to stop my slide into a bedridden life possibly demented life and quite possibly intractable pain on the other hand I have two young kids and and so I was having to reimagine how I parent and what was most important and that was having resilient kids who could be emotionally successful and economically successful so and of course I can do less and less I thought I was going to teach them how to be resilient by a mountain climbing by teaching how to do martial arts being a an athlete like I had been now my only tool was I could get up and go to work every day I could do my little simple tiny little workout simple as it was every day I could model that you don't give up even when things are incredibly difficult and so that's what I did and of course that was far harder than any of the workouts I did as an athlete in this time period where you noticed yourself as you mentioned earlier progressively declining where was the first opening where you saw that in addition to all the best drugs that you were on the latest technology that there might be a new way forward for you well you know what when I was taking the chemotherapy and was not helping and I was switched to Tysabri the new TNF alpha blocker the new biologic that was not helping I'm like okay I want to go back to being the basic science because when I was first diagnosed I started reading the basic science the literature I and it just really got me wound up and agitates I saw that you know ms is a progressive disease and that's what my wife said now Terry you got to stop reading will get you the people but this is just getting you too upset but you know he'll now I knew how upset to be I had a very grim future but if I was going to do everything that I possibly could to slow my decline because I I understood all of my neurologist and everything I was reading was this is a progressive disease I clearly had a very aggressive case that there was no recovery no functions that already lost we're going to come back but I could try and slow it and so I started reading the basic science for MS and then I started thinking like well I don't really have any relapses so I should be reading about other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's Alzheimer's Huntington's ALS and so I started doing that every day you know I'm reading and decide that mitochondria are key I and that and all these little mouse and rat models that there are a variety of supplement studies so I start experimenting translating these little mouse and rat doses to human sized doses and begin experimenting what was one of the first supplements obviously this is in the context of the literature that you were reading for that so it was one of the first supplements you start experimenting with creatine carnitine b12 of course coenzyme q high-dose omega-3s and you know I think I was probably six months into this there was no no change and you know the skeptical professor reared up her head so I fully on this you've wasted enough money and I quit everything and you know a day later I couldn't really get out of bed and go to work and my I was still working full time in the midst of all of this the VA and university had redesigned my job multiple times so I didn't go to work and next day I could function even less well and on the third day my wife says you know honey I think gotta try these take your vitamins again so I did and the next morning I could get up I thought wow Wow that is really interesting so I I waited two weeks and I stopped all my supplements and again I became exhausted couldn't really function waited three days stirred them up but I again could function no and so Mike I was thrilled I like oh my god I'm figuring stuff out I thought my neurologist is not telling me about that my primary care doc is not telling me about and maybe it's not gonna recover me but it sure as heck is doing something and that if I'm not taking it I'm in much worse shape so now I'm even more excited about reading the literature and the university has in one of their attempts to redesign my life to let me continue to work they had put me on the institutional review board I and so in that role I'm reviewing human studies to be sure that they're being conducted ethically and safely so I tell the IRB give me any study having to do with the brain I'll be happy to review it and so I'm and these were studies of the University was doing them so that the university you know they had a PI a principal investigator there and so now I'm reading the neurodegenerative research basic science and that Mouse studies now I'm reading the human studies related to any kind of brain stuff and I'm getting more and more comfortable reading the research and so I'm I am also getting more confident going to my primary care doc and saying we're going to add this I in my primary care doc and neurologist were willing to run the drug list against the supplements that I was adding to be sure that wasn't inadvertently creating harm I and what I observed was I was slowing the rate of my decline I was certainly not getting stronger I was slowing the rate of my decline you know and the other thing we should step back is before I hit the wheelchair two years into my diagnosis my Cleveland Clinic Doc's had mentioned the work of Loren Cordain in the Paleo diet I read his book and his papers and this was a big deal because I've been a vegetarian for 20 years being swear the rebellious farm kid I i couldíve meat and I decided that the there's a rationale that seemed reasonable so I after a lot of prayer and meditation went back to eating meat then of course the next year and it so I give all grain aw legumes all dairy this was like it's nominally big change but you know it's still a very low-fat vegetarian diet lots of whole whole grain wheat and legumes and some vegetables but I've continued it had to go downhill so I then the next year needed the wheelchair and then more aggressive chemotherapy so I'm still on the low-fat I had I had a band of the low fat diet I was on the Paleo diet I'm adding supplements I'm still going downhill but it does seem to be slower with addition of the supplements and so let's zoom back to where you were talking about where you notice the difference and you were doing something that a lot of functional medicine doctors teach their patients which is that sometimes you just have to try things you have to be a guinea pig and balance out the risk versus the rewards and when things are safe and there's not a lot of downside you actually do a challenge experiment and see do you notice something and so this is what you were doing first hand you had the support we carried have your primary care doctor right no I as I was once I got into like okay I'm gonna do everything I can I'm reading on the internet I'm reading PubMed and if I found an article in the internet my criteria was if they don't have any links to PubMed articles I threw it away if you had linked stupid meta articles I'd read the PubMed article I wouldn't really cared for what was on the internet other than this is a way to get me into a new way of thinking about what to look at in PubMed and so I was very careful that I wanted to have science behind my interventions a mechanism that made sense to me that was at least plausible I have to look at okay were there any drug interactions with but the medications I was on we're their supplement supplement interaction so that gets to be sort of complicated but fortunately because of my academic role at the University there's some databases that I could do that do those cross checks with talk to my primary care doc and get them to agree and sign off on it I and so can I ask you one question about yeah do you think that your primary care doctors were more open-minded because you were coming to the table with all the research that's plenty of people that come absolutely I want to talk about things but then sometimes it feels shut down or don't feel like that doctor that's willing to kind of explore with them because they may not be trained like you are correct so it helped that I'm seeing a cadet partner a colleague and it helps that I brought in at the paper and then I would just highlight very succinctly the key point from the paper as to why I thought this was a reasonable thing to consider in that at all ready then then once I began to do the cross-check on drug drug interactions so I had to make it as easy as possible for my primary care doc I didn't want to burden her did you ever go against them and they said well we don't think this is a good idea or I wouldn't do this and you said well I've actually kind of made up my mind and I've looked at anything about it what did that happen often no actually and eventually I quit checking with my primary care doc because as I get more comfortable with knowing how to run the search myself yes I just would inform her like every when I went to see every six months okay these are the new things that I'm doing yeah I did say okay and to record it so continue the story from there so you know but by the summer of oh seven my face pain is it has been getting relentlessly worse for 27 years I and when it turns on I have to go the pain clinic have to get multiple injections which is really quite horrific so you have these Electrical face pain it's it's worse than getting a c-section under local which by the way I have had it's worse than broken bones it is absolutely the worst pain I've ever felt and while that's happening to get the pain injections they have to palpate my that my scalp to get the landmarks which trigger those jolts I have to hold still well then they do the the injection I and then I would also end up going in for a high dose IV solu-medrol and in the summer of o7i depa sewed turn on had gone in for a pain injection I would gone in for IV solu-medrol at normally you get three doses of high-dose IV solu-medrol that turns off microglia activation it took five days to turn off my pain and daily injection local injections to turn off the pain and by the way I'm on the highest dose of gabapentin that you can take without being toxic so and I have clearly seen in the twenty seven years I've had the trigeminal neuralgia that this is getting relentlessly more difficult to turn off more frequent more severe at times when the pain turns on and I make a little tearful here so if you guys could get some tissues for me uh yeah absolutely when the pain turns on light dhruv's the pain dark triggers the pain swallowing can trigger the pain talking configure the pain touch by my kids can trigger the pain there has been occasions where the pain jolt turns on and the world becomes white that because all of my sensory input is overwhelmed by this pain input so I'm thinking you know that if this gets the point where I can't swallow anymore there's no feeding tube I've not got a consent to a few two and so it's like okay there's there's the final solution that was certainly on my mind in the summer of Oh seven but on the other hand you know I have these two young kids who are getting their adolescence they can certainly see that I'm struggling but I am going to work I do not miss work other than when my pain is turned on and I have to go get my injections and take the site you medrol I'm beginning to have brain fog yeah and so it was that summer that my chief of staff pulls me in to say that he's going to reassign me to the traumatic brain injury clinic there won't be any residents in that clinic I'll be seeing patients along with the physical medicine rehabilitation and I'll be doing the primary care intake for these patients and he describes the job and I'm thinking there's no way I can do that job physically and he knows it but what he's doing is letting me know that the VA is done redesigning my job so I tell my wife and go yep so when I have to start this new job in January I'll either be able to do that job or I can't and then I'll finally have to apply for medical disability so I having to be stoic yeah stoic as I can but you know God works in mysterious ways because it was two weeks later that I discovered virtual simulation in a study that I was reviewing favorite shields where he was using electrical stimulation of muscles for patients only had a a traumatic spinal cord injury and I thought Danny they want to extend the study because people didn't want to quit because they had such an improved quality of life now they still couldn't walk but it was reducing the harm of inactivity and it really improved their quality of life so I thought well I wonder if it might help me so I do a quick search there's only 212 articles it doesn't take that long to read them and just scan the abstracts and read the relevant ones I in ninety site I want to do this and so the electrical can you explain what it is stimulation so electro simulation of muscles you put electrodes over this muscle on the skin and you'd similar to what like a chiropractor might use and the chiropractors use it primarily for pain control this is to force the muscle to contract so you have to put in slightly different location it odd ments the contraction of the muscles so if you're paralyzed it's really good now your muscles are still being used if you're not paralyzed but you're weak it lets you get a more effective workout so in the in the end I get my physical therapist to let me add this to my regimen because mind you I was still working out a tiny little itsy-bitsy little 10 minute mat exercise before going to work but now I added estim during the workout and so I was able to get a more effective workout I and also it just felt incredibly energizing and Dave said it's probably the endorphins and now the research also tells me that's also really released see nerve growth factors and muscle growth factors so this was things that my brain had not been able to see for a long time because of the how inactive had been forced to be debilitated by my illness so this was just doing really great things for my mood in my brain and then two weeks after that I discovered the Institute for functional medicine how I was sort of doing an internet search and it popped up came up with my browser and I'm reading this and I'm looking at it's like wow pretty interesting and they were talking about mitochondria they had this course neuroprotection of course and I read through the syllabus oh that yep that's definitely what I want so I ordered that course and that was the audio synced powerpoints Jay Lombard and Catherine Willner were the two neurologists that led that course and so I'm going through it and of course I have having some brain fog so I may have to go through the lectures multiple times and still have a longer list of supplements much longer list actually and I'm doing the estim and maybe a tiny bit stronger maybe my pain is a little less didn't I have this really big aha moment like what if I take this list of things I've taken in supplement form and I figure out where they're at in the food supply and I restructure my paleo diet to stress those particular nutrients that foods probably a lot more complicated and supplements that if I reorganize my diet maybe I'd get some some other things that'd be good for me so I go ask my dietician friends I take in my list of nutrients and they throw up their hands say like no I would did a Dietetic intern to help you I I I don't know so then I go over the pub the Health Sciences Library in tucked librarians and they aren't really that helpful either I and then I go back to Google and I discovered the lightest Pauline Institute of micronutrients and that's a goldmine so now I have the food sources for all these key nutrients and I had these lists of foods I'm gonna start emphasizing my diet now mine you've already been meticulously gluten-free dairy-free because I'm doing the AIP protocol per dr. Cordain but now rather than just focusing on what Noddy now I'm focus on what I have to eat I and in that period of time that you were going dairy free and gluten free just like with the original supplements I know there's a lot of different things that are going on did you notice that that improved things not at all slightly not at all not at all it's so you might ask so why did I stay with it I figured like well yeah my brain it was I cleared vanilla for quite a while I clearly had a very aggressive disease I did not know how long it would take for things to repair at least I was doing something so yeah you know I want to be doing something and so I'd stayed with it I had it supplements and I wasn't getting stronger with my supplements but I did figure out I was better with them than without them and I was slowing my decline right and so March of probably December 26th I started this new way of eating we had salmon we had a big kale salad we had a lot of garlic in it we had some ginger in it we had berries although I don't quite remember which berries that was and then we made some other vegetables probably cauliflower all reverse-engineered from you looking at that database that database the nutrients what were some of the examples of like some of the key things I mean you just mentioned some but what were some examples to compare and contrast that we're not really in your diet even though you were gluten free so I wasn't eating liver you know so I was backed by God it's gonna have Liberty once or twice a week I just might also want to be sure I was having heart I was much more missing only organic food only wild-caught or wild cost fish or grass-fed grass-finished meat and if it was not organic I was not going to eat it so in a way to to zoom out a little bit big picture because diet is so central as part of your protocol even though you were doing paleo before it was primarily when that from what's Nadi and also meats from sort of muscle proteins protein I was I wasn't organ meats wasn't bone broth you know and in retrospect when I look back at my youth I'd had a lot of times lightest age three tonsils out age four probably had a lot of antibiotics yeast overgrowth in dysbiosis Lee he got severe gluten sensitivity I and that although I've been gluten free dairy free I probably not healed my leaky gut right so a lot of different foods would trigger that correct so when I added the organ meat and the bone broth likely healed that leaky gut now the other thing some other really interesting observations when I started adding all this kale and cooked greens I discovered I had this incredible craving of Coach grains in green so when people get shocked they talk like nine cups of vegetables like Terry how can you possibly eat nine cups which is the recommendation inside of your protocol we haven't gotten into yet but it's like it's a big emphasis on like nine cups of vegetables every day yeah you know it's a way of thinking about merging the best parts of the Mediterranean diet and the Paleo diet try to end up with something it looks a bit like the walls diet but the nine cups is actually much less than what I was doing I was probably having nine cups of greens plus the additional vegetables in when I became well enough that I was traveling drew and I couldn't get that huge volume of vegetables within 24 hours my energy would start tanking my mental clarity would start taking tanking now the scientists sort of caught up orissa poor I've discovered the science more that vitamin K turns out they have a huge role in my and my own repair in brain stem cells and for those listeners on the podcast that aren't familiar with the role of myelin plays in the body what can you explain that oh sure so the myelin is the fat wrapper around the wiring between brain cells so if you have a nice thick coating myelin the transmission is fast and efficient when the myelin breaks down and it can't be repaired while then the transmission is slow and spotty you're more likely to have weakness more likely to have sensory disturbance so now in retrospect I would say that my intense craving for greens once I began eating I would realize like I could not get enough was probably reflecting that when I had all those greens the bacteria in my small intestine could help metabolize that into k2 which would then be absorbed in my ileum which would then go to my liver to be metabolized to K 2 MK 4 which could then go up to my brain and help support the oligodendrocytes peeker Cir cells that help us make the myelin so sort of a long sequence there so it was just phenomenal the benefits of having all those greens so you discovered the Institute of functional medicine you're going even further there's this emphasis on additional things of focusing what to eat not just what not to eat and if I could zoom out for a second were you also getting a better understanding of what potentially were some of the factors that led to the build-up of having an autoimmune disease sure so as it went through the nerve protection course that was really focused on mitochondria in the brain and then it wasn't actually until I recovered quite remarkably and I'm going through more AFM courses that I'm really deepen my understanding of the process and for anybody that's not familiar we've mentioned it many times before but the IFM is the Institute of functional medicine they're a nonprofit that educates practitioners all around the world many of them are physicians or practitioners like yourself who have gotten sick at some point I'm like dr. Hyman and many others that's how nearly all of us get to the Institute there's this new generation of people who are coming in like my brother-in-law who's a cardiologist in in San Diego who are not sick because now there's so many authors like yourself we're teaching them it's like young med students and individuals who are getting into it but the first wave was literally doctors who are looking for an answer could not find the answer or found a piece of the answer it got referred to IFM and then began their additional training into the route factors that actually cause health and caused is correct it correct almost like a med school you know like a set of phase of it so my my undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art painting and so I decided I was gonna starve as an artist and went back picked up my science and applied to medical school got in basic science was really hard or way harder for me than many of my colleagues I was so thrilled to be done with biochemistry in physiology and so thrilled to discover it again when I became ill and realized that that was going to be the key to my recovery and so it gives me a lot of smiles now and laughs to realize I just love reading about biochemistry and physiology now in immunology neuro immunology because those certainly were the keys to my recovery so you know we're following this story and just like everybody's listening so intently let's continue on on the story okay so December 26 I start this new way of eating you know and January begins I'm going to go off to this new clinic that have to be in the traumatic brain injury clinic and I'm you know assuming I can't do that job it's going to be more physically demanding than what I can do the first week you know it's the middle of January now I'm there and I've I've just been watching my partner's do these exams week of January okay Terry time for you to do the exams so I'm into three weeks of eating this way I'm bout ready to start my fourth week I start seeing the patients and you know at the end of the first day I'm like wow that wasn't too bad at the end of the week I'm like I can do this and I realize something's happened and so it's with breathtaking speed I'm beginning to realize you know my my my thinking is more clear and then I realize you know my energy is better and then I realize I don't have to sit in the zero gravity chair at home to have supper like I can sit in my other desk chair I can I can I can sit upright and then I think it's about three months I have a a piece of mail that I should take down to the mailbox that's probably better oh the equivalent of about half a block I haven't done this for years at the VA I pick up my walking sticks I put the letter in my pocket and I walk to the mailbox and I mail that letter my colleagues see me in the hallway go like oh my god dr. Wallace you're walking and then I start walking I'd leave my wheelchair in the corner I have a scooter I take my wheelchair home park that and then the garage I have my scooter I leave that in my office but I'm not really using that six months into all this now it's stuck white six-month leave four months five months into this my every two year follow up with my chair of internal medicine is do and now that's a little bigger walk than just around the hospital it's down a hill up a hill you know it's maybe like half mile that's clearly too far so I get my scooter I'm driving my scooter over and I'm going up the hill and you hear this more to go yet so I get out that's okay what if I just walk next to it so I get a few more feet and that stops again then I disengaged the drive shaft and I push it up the hill and then I get to the door and the attendant offers to call me the patient mobile and I'm like oh my god I'm already late to see the chair of medicine I can't how long am I gonna have to wait so it's about half an hour I can't do that so just watch my scooter and I finished the way walking get into my Chairman's office the secretary is quite perturbed because now I am late I and they assured me in to the Chairman's office on I apologize home that my scooter died on the way over because oh oh you had to wait for the patient mobile so no no I I push it up the hill and I walked over now he hadn't seen me in about nine months the last time I seen you you were in wheelchair I was in a wheelchair and I looked really bad so I explained to him he said oh so you must be taking Tysabri so well no actually I'm not actually I'm off all my disease modifying drugs with my neurologist approval I'm just using diet and lifestyle and so I showed in my Eastham device I told him my story talk about what I was doing he's a Rheumatologist by the way it says Terry this is so important your job for this year is to get a case report written up hmm sit on myself sit yes work with your treating physician just read medical team you get this written up this is so important people do not recover from progressive MS so I did that and then he would call me back when I had that done I thought I was done it goes no now we're gonna have you do a safety and feasibility study so he would have been down that path and then a couple months later on Mother's Day I had family meetings I wanted to ride my bike the first time in six years I and fortunately for me the family Jackie said that I could I could try anyway I should have my son jog on the left my daughter would jog on the right she would follow from the bike and I was able to bike and of course that felt like a really quite miraculous because there was something I completely accepted would never happen again and so when when that happened certainly how I understood disease and health was very different otherwise medicine would be different and actually was shortly after that that my chairman called me back and said I want you to do a safety and feasibility trial we're gonna have you changed the research that you do incredible and I'm sure even for in addition of the magnitude for yourself just the magnitude for your family witnessing all this for your partner oh well your rides we're all crying well crying a lot yeah and the joy of that because anybody who knows somebody with how would you rank I mean how would you rank the severity of MS and progressive MS compared to like other oughta mean diseases in terms of how much it affects the mobility of the body body and how quickly sort of the decline is well typically you know everyone is unique and it depends on what part of your body is impacted I got into really quite profound disability very quickly is that typical why was that much much more aggressive yeah for the newly diagnosed person within 10 years one-third will have some kind of gate impairment eating a cane walker or wheelchair so within three years I needed a wheelchair within seven years I could not set up like you are in this chair I was unable to sit up in a regular chair I had to have a zero gravity chair or be in bed but as your gravity chair I mean one that lets me lie back so my knees are higher than my nose and I was beginning to have brain fog there's a lot more recognition that impaired thinking it begins to accrue anxiety and depression can begin to accrue now there was some a lot of fortunate things my hands were so working well and even though I've had optic neuritis and there's clearly evidence of optic neuritis in both eyes my vision is still really quite good but so I want to zoom out because people have heard the term MS and we'll come back to your story but I want to do a little bit of what when you were a med student and you were learning about autoimmune conditions and diseases like MS what were you taught about the fundamental reason that they happen inside the body and then as that journey continued and your research continued and you connected with IFM how did that understanding grow further from there so the conventional way that people are taught about autoimmune issues is that your immune cells begin attacking otherwise healthy tissues we don't know why there appears to be some genetic risk factor maybe an infection of some type maybe and a host of other unknown mental factors because in twin studies you are at slightly increased risk if you're a twin or a sibling it has an ottoman condition but you don't necessarily have it even if you have two parents or an identical twin with Auto B and condition there's still a greater probability that you will not have it so these other factors but no one talked about you know diet quality stress or sleep or exercise they just said take the disease-modifying drugs uh there's no cure no cure it's really just focused on treatment and the primary intervention for treatment is maybe some this primary drugs maybe some physical therapy depending on what people you know you know ironically enough I had referred myself to physical therapy because I was like I mean I'm a former athlete so I knew exercise be really important and I kept sending myself to physical therapy to be sure I was doing as much exercise and as optimally as I could so primarily drugs primarily drugs and the drugs are to block the immune cell function now to suppress the immune system to suppress the immune cells so they can't attack you and mind you I was happy to take those drugs because I would had treat by disease aggressively and so I was very willing to do all of that but now I also with my functional medicine understanding and my own clinical experience and my reading the science we need our immune cells to repair and maintain our bodies if I want to repair the myelin damage that's occurring I need my mutant cells to go in mop up the damage and supervise the repair when you take immune suppressants you block the repair that your brains been attempting to do all of this time so in traditional medical literature and the approach that doctors are taught that we need to bring in these immune suppressive drugs because if it's the immune system that's attacking our body that's causing this degradation we have to suppress that but in that process we also end up suppressing our general immune system which is important for all sorts of functions inside the body correct so we need our immune cells to maintain repair all of our function without that you have accelerated aging increased vulnerability to infection increase vulnerability to cancers which are of course increased when you're taking me in suppressing drugs you have a higher rate of infection and cancers and you'll have accelerated aging I and no one is talking to you about general wellness no one's talking you about okay so it's a it's a mix of genetics unknown environmental factors so what to have you do is let's have you do all of the known and there's thousands of studies that will tell us what are the diet and lifestyle factors associated with improved health outcomes we could have just said you know we don't know so let's have you do all these diet and lifestyle factors that we can that are associated with improved health which is basically what I was doing once I started reading the basic science myself is like okay I got to do everything I can and so you know the summer of oh seven I'm like okay I'm really on the knife's edge of catastrophe here I have to do everything so I went back to meditation I was convincing my physical therapist to add Eastham to get even more out of my exercise I was reading the basic science and you know zeroing in on nutrition as well as I could then I had that big AHA like I shouldn't be relied just on supplements I should be structuring my diet as maximally nutrient-dense as I can using this template of nutrients as the most important ones that my brain needs so you gave us the the typical thinking and where did the understanding of functional medicine your own research like what dots did that connect for you like if you would bring in a new distinction that was there that we're gonna you know you you change your diet you had any supplements you know you're addressing some root systems correct what were the dots of that connected for you well so up until then I was doing this sort of pubmed article by PubMed article by PubMed article but with functional medicine I now had a framework to organize my thinking and so a much more comprehensive approach that validated yes make time to do your daily meditation you need to prioritize that I certainly reinforced the power of exercise and then all of them like in a pathways that exercise was benefiting and then as I was getting to the root cause and thinking back that I needed to address at a condo function because that's what I was really zero down on was I have to support those mitochondria and detox pathways I would eventually realize that the microbiome is really a big thing that I was supporting with all of those vegetables all of that fiber and that increased diversity and then as spending more time stressing the fermented vegetables as well so I would continue to refine things over the next year but it was the framework the more comprehensive look at what I was doing and you know steadily growing confidence that I am on to something and then when I get onto my bike I'm like who knows how much recovery is possible clearly the the present understanding of multiple sclerosis is incorrect is incomplete the present understanding of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis is incomplete I and that I mean I think like well maybe jogging to be possible biking it apparently is again I and so the the possibilities and then at you know in the meantime in my traumatic brain injury clinic you know when I first got assigned to that clinic the treatment was well what just gave you psych drugs to control your rage and we'll just see what happens then I come to clinic I like to all these poor men and ladies who were as having immense suffering and I'm like there's a lot we can do and we teach you how to eat and I'll talk about exercise you want to talk about meditation and you're gonna get your life turned around and we started training people's lives around at first my colleagues were very very unhappy with my approach and what do you think was the primary thing that came up for them that you're breaking the mold and now other patients are asking them questions or you know I'm sure there's a bunch of factors but what were you noticing from them well the first thing I got called to the chief of staff's office he said you know terry people what are you doing people are complaining and so patients or other doctors other Doc's know patients were loving patients were thrilled that they so I ended up having to go meet with the director for the complement alternative medicine who taught me how to talk about this more precisely in my clinical notes and in the public so I was careful to not overstate my claims to say that I'm just improving saw your physiology watching for a reduced need for medication so we don't end up with you being overmedicated if your cells improve their function so that I had to learn how to speak carefully there disney how to be more politically correct absolutely but but it is important to maintain those relationships with your colleagues of course yeah - and to help patients understand that no I'm not curing them but I'm letting them treat their cells in a more effective way and their cells or rebuilding them by quickly made molecule by correctly made molecule and as that happens their need for a blood pressure meds going to goes down their need for blood sugar meds goes down their need for pain meds goes down and everyone starts being less irritable and they start getting along a whole lot better with their colleagues at work and their family similar to your situation if I could interject you never say that you're cured from them oh never say that's right now symptoms have been reduced to such a big degree and your body function correct has returned now exactly if I get exposed to gluten dairy or eggs my face pain will turn on or you know if I have too much stress if I take too many flights in a month so my toxin load is too great my face pain will turn on so I manage my disease I always have those that genetic vulnerability but as long as I do all of my self cares I do very very well do you use the word recovery that you've recovered from a mess that you like what's the word that you use to describe the transformation that you've had so I've certainly have recovered a great deal of function the question is am i a normal 64 year old my kids will say mom you'll never be normal and I think that's true but when I saw my neurologist last week so I sort of take stock of where you're at so what's the most rigorous athletic thing you can do so okay how about I'll start doing push-ups for you we'll see out and so I did ten push-ups for my toes it's okay that's pretty good you can stop now they said okay how about vertical leaps how many so I did ten vertical leap said okay you can stop now that so okay I'll stand on one foot so after minutes okay why'd you stop now I think we clearly have established that you're in excellent shape I don't know what a normal 64 year-old American woman could do in terms of push-ups but probably not ten and I bet most of them can't do ten vertical leaps and they probably can't stand on one foot for longer than a minute but I'm not as athletic as I you know I had hoped when I was a young athlete I was hoping to be running marathons it it'd be the white-haired grandmother running marathons passing the youngsters so I'm not quite up to that yet but I'm still hopeful I'm still hopeful yeah so we wanted to show his photo it was one of those moments when you were biking and then together you have the before and after photo and now visuals can see it what is remarkable about that is so in 2007 I could not sit up on a regular chair I have brain fog and I have severe pain one year later I'm able to an eighteen point five bye cried my brain fog is gone my pain is gone as long as I continue to follow myself cares I'm doing very well I could seem to get stronger if my self cares get derailed my pain comes back and this is the journey that you wrote about in your book the walls protocol which dives into much of the story that we talked about over here how it happened starting first with those face pains that you had early in medical school from stress and other factors that were going on in lightness and the factors that you grew up with doesn't it you know as a child antibiotic exposure dietary other things like that and in addition to your story and your recovery process a detailed step-by-step protocol that you followed but that can be helpful not just for patients with the same diagnosis of progressive MS but potentially for other autoimmune correct diseases in fact you started getting a lot of people writing in saying that they were doing your protocol for things like Parkinson's Parkinson's what are some other examples of chronic diseases or conditions that people had that they were noticing that they were getting significantly better or not declining as fast when they were following your walls protocol so other autoimmune problems things like systemic lupus fibromyalgia psoriatic arthritis inflammatory bowel disease autoimmune thyroid disease then we also have other neurologic issues like Parkinson's mental health issues anxiety depression bipolar obsessive-compulsive disorder then we've had myasthenia diabetes obesity heart disease chronic pain you know the the VA I became so impressed with the work that I was doing in the traumatic brain injury clinic and in the primary care clinic they asked me to create a clinic that was devoted to doing medicine the way I wanted to do it and we called it the therapeutic lifestyle clinic I and I went to the pain clinic I went to primary care I said yo give me your most challenging patients but they need to know they're not getting drugs for me we're just going to do diet on lifestyle I and so the most common diagnosis or issues that I was helping people with were pain brain fog eye and mood issues and they've come with a variety of diagnosis it might be old war injuries it might be back pain and autoimmune problem and a health problem obesity diabetes but the most common symptom that people were trouble with was pain brain fog some mood issues and then of course there underlying disease states and we put them basically on the walls protocol I would personalize it to address their issues we had such success ended up having to switch things over to a group classes because we had I wanted it and top as many people as possible we had long waiting lines to get in and the VA because it has an electronic medical system was able to monitor blood pressure blood sugar use lab values and saw that we were consistently improving blood pressure improving blood sugars needing fewer drugs it was it was really very very satisfying you know sometimes I've shared your story just I'm in conversation I have so many friends family members that are physicians or in research or in the medical system in some shape or form or I'm on vacation somewhere and I'm just chatting with somebody about the work that I do and where I come across somebody who has MS and I'm talking about your story and oftentimes when somebody is in the space of research or a physician I can immediately see this sort of you know not always but often glance of and then sometimes a comment of well there's no evidence that immediately the jump to yes I'm show that this actually works in so who knows this could be just her story this could be anecdotal and I think the thing that sometimes well first of all you are working on a ton of research and there's research that's out there to talk about in a second but I want to start to talk about the first part of your story is that I think sometimes people forget that the way that research gets funded especially when it comes to lifestyle interventions like the research that you're doing is you shared your story you did a case study and that case study turned into the case series case series turned into a feasibility trial feasibility top trotted into randomized controlled trial turned into randomized parallel group trial so yes there's a definite sequence it's it is you know people when I first recovered my normal I just said you know Terry I get so many calls I I'm so glad you want to see the Cleveland Clinic because people keep accusing me of being incompetent saying that you couldn't possibly have MS and I get to say no no she saw the best the center in the country so she has MS I but then of course then we can say that you do prospective clinical trials and you've gotten that very nice results in others as well and I want to add one other element to it you know you're in this field you're in this space where you have access to do these trials the support of the colleagues through earning that support but in addition to that you also based the protocol on first of course your own experience what you were noticing getting better or not but that was also based on research that was out there it's all science-based that's all science-based but it you don't have to have big clinical trial on ms not that that's not useful and we want that and that's what you're doing to begin to make improvements and to see if you notice or a patient notice a difference you might be working with a doctor who says look these are the pros and cons this is what the research says these are what the animal models show out there this is what pathways it's linked to or the core issues that are there and I think it's worth trying and and what you always want to be doing is judging the risk of the intervention how risky is the intervention so as I was doing things I was you know assessing how worrisome were these supplements and so I was checking them always against the safety data to verify that they were safe and then I can make a decision how risky would it be to go back to a daily meditation that's pretty safe how risky was it to do physical therapy every day well I've been doing that for years under my therapist so that's pretty safe adding electro-stimulation that was under my therapist direction so that's a pretty safe redesigning my paleo diet to stress a more nutrient-dense diet again that's pretty safe a lot of the dietitians will say you know when you do a paleo diet and any diet that excludes a whole food groups puts you at risk for nutrient deficiencies and that would be terrible for you so we when I wrote these analyses to analyze our diet using rigorous registered dietician nutrient software we published it in high impact registered dietitian Nutritionals analysis of the walls died and it's no surprise superior to the u.s. governmental Dietary Guidelines for many many of the nutrients and so we've published that and I update that in my book so I think it's important for us to be skeptical I think it's important for us to evaluate carefully these interventions are they riskier now and you can decide I want to wait for randomized double-blind controlled trials where you can decide that vegetables are pretty safe meditation is pretty safe exercise is pretty safe supplements supervised by your personal physician it's pretty safe it and you know the thing that's exciting drew is when I first started talking about diet and exercise is critical to protecting your brain the neurology community that was back when my TED talk went viral 2011 when my book came out in 2014 they were very upset mmm they said you know diet has nothing to do with it you know you got a terrible disease eat with you want but now you know the science is caught up the microbiome research has caught up the epigenetics research has caught up and now the leading neuroscientists are saying we have to preserve your brain even if you take disease modifying drugs you're at high risk of developing early cognitive decline at high risk of having accelerated brain atrophy you need to eat a nutrient-dense diet you need to do a stress reducing program you need to do daily exercise you should monitor your vitamin D level should know your homocysteine status and you know what it sounds like they read my book the landscape of the conversation has changed yes those same researchers and physicians are thinking a lot more holistically because they understand that every part of the body affects another part of the body and if we don't keep that in mind it's not enough to just look at what is this one drug doing to improve this one thing that we're looking at when it comes to this disease but what are the other aspects so that leads me to the question of you know you were sharing in your story that in addition to the things you were focusing on adding you also were off of those drugs that were given to you in the beginning when at what point in time in the journey from the time that you were in a wheelchair were you off all of those medications so in 2007 I started all this stuff I'm on cell Sapta which is a disease modifying drug I'm recovering I'm walking around I in March where maybe it's the first week of April I want to see my neurologist and I told him that I wanted to go off the disease modifying drugs because you know I think that's fine Terry well first off he was stunned when he saw me walk into his office because the last time he had seen me had been in the wheelchair looking really bad so he was thrilled he got an MRI he was so disappointed that my MRI had not changed and they said you know it was probably foolish to think that it would because those are really old lesions so the thing is that your brain isn't shrinking you don't have new lesions and yes I've we should still taper you and take you off those drugs so we did and I've been off all disease modifying drugs since the second week of April I'm still on gabapentin although now I'm on a very tiny dose yeah I bet I've attempted to go entirely off the gabapentin but my face pain comes back so I have scarred my spinal cord so likely my I will be on very low dose gabapentin forever because when that pain comes on it's so horrific that I'm just like taking 400 milligrams of gabapentin for those my life is like no big deal I'm happy to do that and this brings up the larger point which is that when people work with even your a physician you were working with your doctors to decide what medications were there but I'm hearing and I want to say it back to you and you correct me if I'm wrong that a big part of your recovery in addition to the things you were doing was knowing when to get off the drugs in the right order correct correct you know a lot of people will reach out say I just discovered your protocol I'm gonna stop my drugs and that's the wrong answer it's absolutely the wrong answer you implement the protocol and you may if you have great response have be able to have a future conversation say I'd like to taper and get off my drugs we don't know what the appropriate time frame is yeah it's based on every patient and every way and you want to dependence on your disease do you have a mess do you have lupus do you have fibromyalgia do you have a comment or a bowel disease so you need to be monitored for your disease activity and then I think slowly tapered at the time that it's appropriate and then you need to know that lifestyle your self-care zarnow you're potent disease-modifying drugs and if you let's say in two years you're feeling so great you think oh I don't need to do this anymore my I'm at my nephew's wedding and I want to have wedding cakes so I do and then I have a severe rebound flare your neurologist will say see I told you you can't stop the drugs and I would say see I told it you can't cheat your lifestyle is your disease modifying therapy if you stop it expect a rebound just like if you stop your potent disease-modifying drugs you expect a rebound it's almost like a colleague of mine used to say a functional medicine practice sure he would say how strict you are is based on how sick you are and in some cases where people have very chronic autoimmune conditions they really don't have the ability to return back to the way that they were eating before the symptoms got never really bad correct correct correct so this just is that a new lifestyle the way that they're living that's that's the way the way you live a small price to pay for regaining function correct brain health and all of the things that you saw on your own journey so my kids one child has has made the observation that migraines are gone as long as they follow the walls protocol migraines come roaring back if they go back to the standard American diet and the other doesn't they feel a little more energetic when they follow the walls protocol it doesn't have a big impact on them although even that child has said you know they can tell they are migrating more towards following the protocol more completely it's fantastic quick story that I'm gonna jump around a little bit here yeah and I'll talk about all the new things that you've incorporated based on what your community has shared with you what you've seen yourself that you've incorporated into the new version of the book that's out there but talk to us about how you went from once being banned by the National MS Society right one of the main organizations when it comes to multiple sclerosis how did you go from being banned by them to then receiving the funding from them well I actually I'm very grateful that they did ban me because that a band looked like did you receive a plaque in the well I received a notice from my chief of staff and from the chair of medicine too that I had appointments to go to speak with them said to explain why I was banned and that's when I heard that people were complaining about me and then to them and that's when I got the appointment with the chief of the California alternative medicine clinic which was actually very helpful I learned how to speak more appropriately in the public and in my medical record to be sure that I was telling people we're trying to improve cellular physiology and that we want you to work closely with your personal physician so that as you as your cells work better and you need fewer medications we can safely we knew away from drugs so very helpful in them it was sort of like what happened with a fellow named Barry Marshall the guy who said h pylori cause stomach ulcers you know if he had this theory 1980 couldn't get his books his work published he had to get published in regional very low impact almost negative impact journals and then he worked with a publicist to get his an article about him published in the US with a sensational headline guinea-pig doctor cures self of stomach ulcers using antibiotics and that was published in The Reader's Digest and in the National Enquirer which then generated a huge public buzz then he started being able to get more funding for his research with philanthropic donors more rigorous studies which got into bigger publications and 25 years later the guy gets a Nobel Prize in medicine needs a millionaire because he's created some patents around the h pylori theory for me you know I have my recovery 2008-2009 I finally get my studies underway in 2010-2011 to have that Ted talk that goes viral can you share the title of that minding your mitochondria and you can see it in the show notes if you click below it's a great little talk that goes viral that gets me my book deal and so that's game published I get a conversation with my chair of medicine and Sharaf and VI making sure that I'm not overstating my claims I'm very careful about how I write that book so that people are carefully guided to work closely with their physicians not stop drugs work you know vegetables are pretty safe monitoring your vitamin D levels pretty safe meditations pretty safe exercise supervised by a therapist again pretty safe but work with your personal medical team as you do these things book becomes a best-seller the MS Society monitors their social media platform and this is their monitoring that this is before the band comes in or off oh the band the band happened in 2009 okay and and so before my TED talk yep yeah before my research yeah and the band just before we go to that point where they're monitoring social media just curious also what web man what do you mean what happened to you the local Iowa City chapter could not let me come speak to them okay got it and other chapters couldn't let me speak to them but apparently some other chapters for you to how to go around that because I was speaking to chapters on the telephone and so I don't know how they got around it I didn't ask so some some local chapters figured out their local their own local workarounds and one more question about that because I think this is important in the process of doing things the right way and also that when you are on to something in any industry whether it's the industry that you're in and you have an idea that's out there you will get backlash you'll get pushback and you know actually I'm really grateful that the EMA Society banned me because that led me to my uncomfortable conversations with my chair of medicine VA chief of staff that got me educated on a more prudent way of talking about all this for sure it was a part of candid part of my growth and development for which I'm very grateful so so then they were monitoring social media so that so my TED talk comes out my book comes out it's a best-seller they monitor social media to know what their constituents are talking about and what happened in 2014 there is a sudden explosion of social media mentions about diet lifestyle the walls died at the walls protocol dr. Terry walls that swamped all the conversation about disease modifying therapies combined so in the summer of 2014 they decided they need to hold a wellness conference and they tracked me down get me on the phone to say we're having as well this conference would like you to come with and I'm like well I would come but see I'm a being speaker I don't think I could attend your conferences as a band speaker so they were very apologetic and they said yeah you're not banned and they really would like you to come but in writing and so I came and so they had 45 people who were scientists 45 folks who were patient advocates so I was a twofer and for the 45 patient advocates they all had copies of my book times as we're registering there I'm signing all these books and I'm thinking I'm probably pissing people off but you know I'm gonna sign these books I during that conversation and they had these presentations I saw that graph which explained why I was there that showed the social media mentions before my book came out and after my book came out she's boom I said so it's apparent to us that our constituents want diet and lifestyle programming and with diet lifestyle research so we're that's why this meetings been convened then I kept advocating that we could agree that we don't know the role of gluten we don't the role of dairy but we could surely all agree that sure is bad and vegetables are good and the neurology scientists neuroscientists are saying there's no proof for that and so for free they're more or we're saying specifically about sugar or pencils okay got it and so and so my response to that was yeah I'm not always socially the most skilled so I stood up I said well if you guys can't be on the side of no to sugar yes to vegetables and you don't tell your constituents that in your clinicians that your constituents will think that you are only on the side of Big Pharma then I guess standing ovations from the 45 members of the audience that were patient advocates and sort of stony silence from the neuroscientist I thought okay this is not going well I should probably behave better and then we had we broke out into the diet group and I kept saying if you're going to do dietary research you have to reconstitute the people who are reviewing these studies because based on the comments I'm getting back for my proposals to you you guys your reviewers know nothing about doing dietary intervention studies and just like the neuroscientist who was in the audience who had shared that comment I've heard jeffrey bland say this before you know he's considered one of the god for those that are listening he was instrumental in setting up the Institute of functional medicine is considered one of the godfathers a functional medicine really incredible guy I've heard him say is that your lack of awareness is not an absence of evidence that's out so this individual is saying there's no proof for that there's no proof that sugars bad and vegetables are good that individual who I'm guessing was probably a little bit of like older you know not a young doctor a little bit older actually they were quite young oh they were okay that's my situation they grew up in the animal model they grew up in they will steadily process these one biochemical pathway at a time got it life is much more complicated than that life is so much more complicated no to the it must societies credit yes we had this little banquet several internal folks came by and said Terry we are so rooting for you we so appreciate what you're doing shaking up the MS Society and then I was very pleased to see that they in fact did create a handout that reviewed the gluten-free diet the Paleo diet the Swank diet that a trained e'en diet the evidence limited evidence that there was pro and con for all of those diets by that time we had one little research paper that came out our work had gotten mentioned they didn't quite have him up the framework for my diet correct but you know they had this out there so they were finally telling people diet matters you should talk to your patients that these diets are out there and if they should consider that yeah and then I was the standard standard American diet which was it doesn't matter eat it doesn't matter correct and so many people who were listening this podcast whether they have gone through breast cancer or something else that's out there or a traumatic brain injury they often get that standard response which is that diet doesn't matter to see whatever you want and that's all the first time the MS Society this is a pretty big deal is saying actually we think that diet does man doesn't it so that was 2015 then they put out a call for dietary research I and so then we wrote proposal now mind you at 2010 there were only two dietary prospective intervention studies that ever been done I was one of the PI's in 2015 when they put out a call for dietary intervention studies again I was one of the few people doing dietary intervention studies they've ended up plunging us they gave us a million dollars incredible so we launched that in August of 2016 and when that confirmation came in that you had funding from them where were you and like what like give me the mental state and where were you exactly when you got the news well this was wild so I just had surgery on my back for a spinal stenosis I was at home going through my email and I got this email from the MS Society it is from Nick LaRocca he said Terry give me a call so I called him and he said well here this is blah blah blah he gave me the news and so I was like wow it's called my called my staff so okay we're this is what's happening and then we ended up getting everything lined up and I started enrolling participants in August of 2016 Wow full circle moment to being banned Sweden take a million-dollar chat to get funding it has the ability to change people's lives and and and the other thing that immensely satisfying so in 2010 there are two people doing dietary intervention studies for MS now in 2020 ten years later there are 13 dietary intervention studies and I'm involved in five of the thirteen incredible so we've made huge progress and that progress is really driven actually by the public because it was the public's response to my TED talk to my book that drove the MS Society to create the funding initiative which then allowed for all these little pilot studies to be underway which allowing for larger studies funded by the NIH the public is the big driver the public and the ability of you know often in this landscape social media sometimes gets negative connotation but it's really through the power of social media people sharing your TED talk being able to share their own patient testimonials online on Twitter on Facebook on Instagram and saying that guys have been doing this and that's not crazy I'm getting better or I'm not getting as worse as I was that or you know the the the people that we have who say they tried the drugs and then they lost their insurance lost their job couldn't afford the drugs so now this like well that's all I've got so I'm gonna do diet lifestyle but now since it's all I've got I'm actually going to do it 100% and their contact is saying oh my god my life's been transformed my pain is gone my vision is better my hands are working better I can walk better time and time again we hear that people stay there using these potent drugs they finally can't work have to go off the drugs because now they can't afford them and now they realize like it's all I've got it's diet and lifestyle hmm and they finally actually do it now the Wallis protocol doesn't work at 70% or 80% or 90% can't actually do the whole really implement the dietary choices it's a central portion of it before we get into some of the new things you've added into the book and the learnings that have been there for the last few years since publishing it and the TED talk talk about the research landscape from here on what's coming up and what's your hope and your dream you never know who's listening this podcast of what you'd like to see funded so the big question is if I'm newly diagnosed I'm terrified about my disease the neurologist is trying to tell me I have to take these terrible drugs so I don't become profoundly disabled I'd like to know could I just do diet and lifestyle and not take the drugs we don't have any studies that compare the two controlled or randomized so doing that study will be profoundly helpful now I have funds to do a small study getting funds so we can make that study much larger it would be of course excellent but what does it take to fund something like that with your experience like oh this is millions of dollars yeah because what you're doing is you're hiring staff that train and support people to implement the diet and lifestyle you are adding MRIs beginning at the end we're adding all these biomarkers and then blinded assessments and then you want to have be able to bring people in for the control arm who are getting usual care and we're not supporting them with diet and lifestyle and ideally you would like to have a couple hundred people in that study right so because you'd like to power it with enough people so you can clearly answer can you what happens if you don't take drugs and it may be that yeah taking drugs plus doing diet lifestyles butter or it may be that not taking drugs and doing diet and lifestyle is better we really don't know but that would be a incredible study to answer it with the funny I do have we can do a small study with just diet and lifestyle compared to control so it can begin to get the safety numbers to know am i creating harm by letting people do diet and lifestyle without the drugs right from the point of diagnosis is there a difference in terms of the intervention of just going straight to lifestyle and all the interventions in the walls protocol correct or you know going into traditional drugs that's a very compelling question we get a lot of questions about that I would like to know that answer and I'm very transparent we don't know that answer that's why this next study is so so important the other studies that we're doing and we're writing grants for and I'm is to develop the animal model to study the walls protocol in little mice so we can compare that doing the little drugs to doing diet and lifestyle so we're in that process of creating the mouse channel that that goes with that and designing those studies because another reason that my colleagues are more couple drugs is they have the mouse model that explains all the mechanisms so this is very rare that you get to see that an intervention works in humans and we haven't worked out through millions and millions and billions of dollars worth of research in the animals to know what are the precise molecular pathways are involved and again this is part of what what is so exciting being at the University I have my scientific colleagues basic scientists who are like Terry this is so exciting to be able to be part of your research team to begin to elucidate the the mechanistic pathways that are responsible for the transformations racine in clinic because of what you're singing your own story and from a lot of anecdotal stories that people are writing in and for the early research that you've done out there if that continues to hold true at bigger and bigger and levels in these studies that you want to do it fundamentally changed is that really approach of all not just autoimmune diseases but this thinking for other chronic diseases too and we did have the presence of mind to freeze biospecimens for all of my studies so I have a freezer full of biospecimens and again you know if we had more donors coming in we could go back to buy freezer with my basic science colleagues and then pay for the analyses to look at these molecular pathways that changes in gene expression the changes in the metabolomic genetics so yes powerful powerful stuff powerful stuff it's hard to sleep at night it's so exciting I know incredibly exciting talk to me about some of the new things you've put in the paperback version of the book you sure the same foundational protocol that's there yes and you've added a lot of new insights basically learning well the the first thing to the functional medicine colleagues that are listening out there the reason that our patients don't get better sometimes is usually not because I didn't order the right test or the right supplement it's because my patients struggled with implementing the ball in the first protocol it's really hard to implement diet and lifestyle changes and so I've done a lot of work with health behavior change from my experience in the end the VI where I'm helping people who are severely disabled living on food stamps how to help them be successful so there's a lot more in here about how to successfully help people adopt and sustain behavioral change I in including for people who are living on food stamps so that very very accessibility is a huge current issue because often it's thought of as these interventions are just so expensive the inventions are expensive the testing is expensive it can only do this if you could have a Whole Foods you could only do this you can only get organic foods and so I walked through that then I remind people that my patients at the VA we're living on food stamps what's one of the mean they were living in rural Iowa having to go to this little small dinky rural grocery stores so yes if you can do strictly organic you'll recover more quickly but you can still recover living on food stamps for people who do have limited funds yes on Social Security or food stamps don't have that accessibility that maybe some individuals have it was one of the biggest things you added into the book will help them implement the program so we talked about it you do the best you can given the resources that you have you have to learn how to begin cooking that's fundamental we have to have you to begin cooking at home doing things like making a menu making a grocery list shopping planning for leftovers so that you're using all of your resources and you're not wasting things then we talk about things that are easier to begin meditation mindfulness I and doing that how to improve your vagal tone to get in that parasympathetic state where we do more of our digest and repair in maintenance phase one thing that I saw you do right before we started is you did a quick gargle was that yes activate yeah there you go we want a gargle yeah talk to us about gargling so gargles my grandmother I come from like Indian tradition or you know like she was so big on like oh you should gargle each morning and you know she didn't have the tools or resources or the research to be explaining why she just knew that her grandmother had taught her that and how it was a great way to start the day and not just salt water gargles when you're sick or your throat is opening up just so it has like a way to activate in the morning right you you gargle to activate your bagel nerve yeah and you can sing you can hum you can do voiced voice training you could do chance you could do breath work in exhalation that's twice two three times as long as your inhalation you could do labor and walking diaphragmatic breathing you could do a gentle neck massage range of motion all of these things are are very nice vagal tone activators in the case of you gargling right before the interview is it sort of to put you in a place of just rest and relax before you're on campus yes you want to have your voice calm you don't have your throat calm and I like to get into that more vagal activated state it's it's a it's a great thing to do before your Mills mmm chewing your food you know chewing your food having bitters you need something that's bitter before your meal all these things very good for bagel tone in addition to the accessibility what are some other things as you mentioned earlier in the interview the research has come so far in the last few years even since you've published what are some additional items you felt more comfortable recommending where in the beginning was like okay we know vegetables are good we know this you know I was like more politically correct based on the learnings and the research that was out there what's something that you felt like okay I can really go all-in on this recommendation because now the science is a lot clearer so hormesis ketogenic eating fasting mm-hmm so we talked I talked about and I had three levels to my diet an easy introductory level the Wallace diet then the next level Wallace paleo which is basically the diet that we investigate and then a ketogenic version of my diet now I've I've made several nuances with variations in the ketogenic diet so for those who have to avoid saturated fat we have a olive oil version and then we talked about fasting the various ways that you can fast that you can get into ketosis without being in a high-fat diet I and we talked about the benefits of extended fast prolong fast I talked about the fact that I like to tie me strict I'll eat typically one meal a day and then a week out of every month I will do either a calorie stricted fast or a water only fast so a day like today where you're in Los Angeles you're visiting and you have different interviews things like that you've drink you know a little bit of tea have you eaten today and will you eat later on so today is just today's fasting today's fasting and did you plan it that way yes and what do you notice for yourself on days you fast like this on a regular basis well if I did this for five days seven days I'll be pretty hungry by the fifth and seventh day yeah for the first two days it's very energizing yeah no eating digestion your food requires it's a lot of work metabolically to digest your food and so paradoxically and the first one to two days some the first few times you do this but it is not easy but after you've been fasting more consistently you may find that it's quite energizing and give us the science pitch on fasting we've done we've talked about fasting a lot of episodes we've done a couple of episodes on fasting but in the context here where they may be listeners I hadn't heard that give us the elevator pitch on the science of fasting so has did something called hormesis if you have intermittent mild stress from which your body can recover and repair and that will give you the chemical signals to improve the efficiency and effectiveness about yourselves when the chemistry of life so your ancestral mother and father thousands of generations ago would intermittently have captured their game by being an endurance hunter I and depleting their glycogen stores or they had terrible hunt and then to have any food for a few days and depleted their glycogen stores and if they didn't have the machinery to tolerate that well they probably did not have reproductive success so hardwired in all of us is that resilience to tolerate intermittent stress from glycogen had been depleted and depletion so being in ketosis but you have to be able to repair from that stress it turns out being in stress from cold mild cold mild heat that's also really good for our bones are built our muscles are built from mild stress if there's no gravity your bones dissolved it disappear if your muscles don't do any work they disappear because there are a very expensive resource for us our bones and our muscles and our brain so we'll replace it with fat well won't make it go away if we aren't using it so we have to use these things and they have to stress them but then you need to have enough recovery time to repair the damage that would have occurred from that mild stress that made gave you the signals to build a stronger bone a stronger muscle a more resilient mind it's incredible and there's so much more research that's out there you know the last five years and yeah was there previously and bottom line we weren't designed to eat three meals a day all the time and we're not designed to be comfortable where else am i comfortable we're designed to have things be difficult now none of us wants to have give up all of our comforts but it does mean that we we benefit greatly from intermittent mild stress I was recently visiting a vineyard an organic vineyard and they were just taking us through the basics of how to make strong grapes and they were like look in a way we have to stress these eyes out we can't give them all the water that they want we can't grow the biggest fruits that are out there if we want really great grapes and strong grapes that can withstand disease and other aspects we have to limit certain things like water and other exposures and we don't want the plants to get lazy because when they get lazy they produce more grapes for those grapes or bad quality and they're more disease prone go ahead we're the same you know I've been reading a lot more about evolutionary biology you know and I think that's one of the things that I've brought the functional medicine is my interest in evolutionary biology ancestor health principles and functional medicine yeah because you didn't see functional medicine talking as much about paleo for example they would talk a lot about like the Mediterranean diet and I thank you for that right yeah and a lot of the doctors I would say that was most progressive or some of the younger folks would say look I FM is great and you'll understand all the pathways you'll understand exactly what happens you'll understand the gut microbiome but in terms of the recommendations we've gone so much further than what's available to us out there and thank you for bringing that into the we're all do juicing that conversation correct and as I evaluate things I now do it through the lens of evolutionary biology and I think about do we have evidence for my ancestral mothers and fathers that have used these concepts these principles in the past if the NF we do it I'm much more comfortable with experimenting us or considering that this is an area that we should investigate and actually get my basic science colleagues at Iowa thinking more along the evolutionary biology principles as well in that I think about the behavior psychology how to get people to because what we're wired to enjoy pleasure we're wired to enjoy today's pleasure over tomorrow's benefit and we're wired to enjoy comfort I and so that's part of my behavior change is so incredibly difficult so again thinking about all of that to help people and help clinicians figure out how to help their patients be more success successful with for going today's pleasure and being willing to value tomorrows benefit what do you think is one of the biggest tips that you could bring in for somebody that feels like they've tried different programs or has had a challenge in implementing kind of any health program out there or wants considering the walls protocol what can support them in the process of implementing and tapping into behavior change so that they can actually succeed in the program I learned this one from my vets and that is understand what you want your health for I have a clear understanding of your mission and purpose in life have a big hairy audacious goal because we're asking you to do something that's difficult I and so to be willing to take on something it's difficult it's helpful for you to have a clear mission a clear purpose a big goal and so you know for some of my vets I might have been I want to dance with my son or daughter at their wedding I want to walk again and so once we get their goal then I can break down - okay now we can talk about what's the little small next micro commitment towards getting you a little bit closer to that big goal and then we talk about addiction that a lot of our food dietary issues are tied into cravings and addictions so there are things that a functional medicine doc can do to help you lower the suffering from addiction so we can do those kinds of things and then if I'm thinking behavior change if you remember the marshmallow experiment with kids you know martial law firm can you not if you got it out of the kids line-of-sight they could double how long they could wait before eating them the marshmallow so that means we have to help people create an environment where they where success is easier and failure is harder and again that that's all in my chapters on behavior change how to make it easier for you to succeed harder for you to fail there are a bunch of things a week that you can do to help and they're a bunch of things that your family and your friends and your physician can do to help you how important is community as part of that process again this is what I learned from my vets you know I thought all that one-on-one time with me would would make the difference well golly gee it's the one-on-one time with their peers in community that is so powerful behavior change is much more effective with peer mentors peer support it's for much like the Alcoholics Anonymous model that that peer support that sponsor it was very effective for them and it's really quite effective in health behavior change as well because we know from things like the Framingham study of like obese the spread of obesity and social networks that things that we don't think of as contagious diseases like obesity can become or communicable diseases sorry not contagious communicable they can be that way because we adopt the behaviors of the people that are closest to us our friends more so than our spouses or our partner or even our kids so what we're talking what we're talking about now is cultural evolution so evolutionary biology you know talk about how our DNA through random mutations lets us get steadily more closely aligned to our environment and then cultural evolution change our behavior changes yeah it leads to the development of these mismatch diseases and so I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how we can use cultural evolution to help us reduce the severity innocence of these mismatched diseases and that will have to be my next book I said a lot of so we're working on that I'm covering that in my practitioner retreats in at my seminar and I can see that that's where we'll have to go for my next book so your big hairy audacious goal if I'm hearing you correctly when you first got started was so driven by your family you know you teared up a few times talking about your kids your wife and how much your family meant to you and how much you wanted to be there for them as your journey continues and you look at yourself now how does that goal shove for you what's that big hairy audacious goal what's that big Y that drives you moving forward from here we can create an epidemic of health we could use our cultural evolution to create an epidemic of health so that instead of steadily worsening rates of obesity autoimmunity mental health disease we see steadily in in health and vitality I and that is through a cultural revolution that's certainly possible both have to help people will have to help create a paradigm shift for them and we will probably have to do this unfortunately I think our government is not going to be a position bill to do that very well our corporations will not be able to do that very well it's going to be you and me through our books our podcasts reaching directly out to the public it can happen and here you are just doing exactly that yes dr. Terry Wells thank you for being here how can our listeners find you and keep in touch with all the research and the great work that you're doing out there and the other offerings that are available so my website's Terry walls comm if you add forward slash research papers you get to see all the papers that we have and we had this amazing video with those gate changes people who are struggling to walk who can you'll see there is gate steadily improving so to recommend that I come to our seminar where we have hundreds of people come year after year to learn more about our approach to health and wellness and recovery and for the health professionals think about coming and getting certified so you can learn about the walls behavior change model which i think is is the driver how we can help our patients be more successful with transforming their mismatch diseases getting rid of them and reclaiming their health and vitality and if there's people there out there that are looking for a doctor that's certified in that is their database or is no easy way to find yeah if you come to toe walls comm and there there's under resources you'll see the links to the certification fantastic and you're pretty active on Facebook yes I spoke a little bit more than Instagram I see well no we have more things on Facebook but my wife manages the Instagram so you follow me you'll see what we're eating you also see that I go to the women's basketball games a lot you in the sauna stuff and I gotta see yep yep so yeah and the new book well the paperback version of the book which is 30% new content I think I was reading upstairs so I consider that pretty new it's a read content that's inside of there it's out the walls protocol a radical new way to treat all chronic autoimmune conditions using paleo principles it's available you can find in the show notes that's out there dr. Terry Wallace thank you for coming on the broken brain podcast spreading your word and really having the courage I think the thing that is really so admirable and beautiful in your story is there's so many times where you crossed an intersection where you could have stopped because of backlash or what colleagues were saying and you continued on and you went direct to the public and the world is better because of it so thank you for that thank you [Music]

Channel: Dhru Purohit

Views: 379,109

Rating: 4.8998089 out of 5

Keywords: dhru purohit, broken brain podcast, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune conditions, Paleo diet, brain health, Wahls Protocol

Id: xIurbDArpEU

Length: 109min 45sec (6585 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020