(audience applauds) MS can be a debilitating disease. Our first guest was a busy doctor and mother of two when symptoms left her unable to walk or continue doing her job. Have a look. (gentle music) I loved being physically active, and I loved riding, biking, skiing, and doing martial arts. So it began about 40 years ago with abnormal sensations it he face. It eventually become very electrical, very, very, sharp. Almost 10 years later, I had division in my left, no clear explanation. It was frustrating, I was clearly getting worse with my face pain, and now I had visual problems. So after 20 years, my next symptom came up, and that was weakness in my left leg. I ended up seeing a neurologist and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and that's when my pain episodes were more frequent, more severe. I can not even sit up. I'm in a zero gravity chair with my knees higher than my nose, but then I began to have trouble with brain fog. Light triggers pain, sound triggers pain, touch from my kids triggers pain. Without my kids, I don't I could get up every day. No one can endure that amount of pain. After I ame to terms with having MS, I decided I wanted to treat my disease aggressively. They told me about the paleo diet, I continued to go downhill. Then my face pain relentlessly worsened. The next year, I needed a wheelchair. Once I hit the wheelchair, it was very clear to me that conventional medicine was not going to stop my slide in to a bedridden, possibly demented life, and so I decided it was up to me. What if I redesigned my diet to stress all these nutrients I was taking a supplement for in the food? Within the first month, I could tell that my pains began to lessen. I was about three months in to this, I had a letter to mail. I took that letter, I put it in my pocket, I grabbed my walking sticks, and I walked down the hallway. And my colleagues were like, "Doctor Wahls, you're walking?" They hadn't seen me walking in four years. Then when Jackie and I were walking around the neighborhood, I said, "Do you think I could bike again some day?" Just another five months later, Jackie told me that there's a cancer fundraising ride, it's 18.5 miles. I was able to do that 18.5 mile bike ride with my family. It was so miraculous. Whenever I talk about that moment, I'd always cry, and it was miraculous then, and it's miraculous still. (dramatic music)
(audience applauds) Joining us now, we are blessed to have clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa, and MS researcher, Doctor Terry Wahls. Such an honor, Dr Wahls,
(audience applauds) to have you here. Your message is one of hope, it's also seeing you as a doctor in the system, having to go outside the system and be your own health advocate is something we talk a lot about on the show, but I wanna ask you about a particular story you shared. You changed your approach to eating, and you went from being wheelchair bound in six months to riding your bike. How did that feel? Like, oh my God, I still cry talking about it, because it felt so miraculous, 'cause I had given up hope that I would ever be able to bike, and I just was taking one day at a time, but now, I had just ridden my bike, I'm crying, my wife's crying, it was a miraculous day.
