Dr. Terry Wahls on "How to Use the Wahls Protocol Diet”

hello everybody this is unworthily from little bite to be calm and today I had the honor of interviewing an incredible woman who's that dog really inspired me to dig deeper into the connections between our health and food we eat dr. Terry walls is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa where she conducts clinical trials in the year 2000 she was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis and in 2003 she became dependent on a total client wheelchair she began studying the medical literature to find an alternative solution to traditional drugs and in 2007 she developed her own program of intensive nutrition and exercise that allowed our Jews within one year to walk again and even go on an 18 mile bicycle ride and today she pedals to work every single day dr. Terry walls is the author of the walls protocol a radical new way to treat all chronic autoimmune conditions end of the cookbook cooking for life you can learn more about dr. Terry walls on our website terry was calm ordering this interview hello dr. Terry walls I'm so happy to have you here hey thank you so much for having me today yeah thanks so much for joining us and for those who are listening and don't know you yet can you give us a little introduction to what the walls protocol is who is for and just how you developed it well we'll start first with my story I'm a conventional medicine physician academic at the University of Iowa and I really believe in the newest drug slave's technology I thought special diets and supplements were a huge waste of money and I I was not at all into alternative medicine but you know God has a mysterious way and in 2000 I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis I wanted treat my disease aggressively so I sought out the best MS research centers I could find which was the Cleveland Clinic saw the best people took the newest drugs and so within three years my disease had transitioned to secondary progressive MS at that point to recline wheelchair I took chemotherapy I continued to decline I took the new biologic drug mitoxantrone and I continued to decline it was quite apparent that the best conventional medicines were unlikely to stop my slide into quite possibly a bedridden possibly demented life I also had a lot of MS related pain that was not well controlled and so I was looking at more and more difficulty with pain and that's really when I started searching and began to experiment on myself and I would ultimately create a diet and lifestyle program that I designed very specifically for my brain and for my mitochondria and you know I and at first it was diet only paleo diet that wasn't enough with supplements that wasn't enough and then I discovered the Institute for functional medicine I took their course under protection had a longer list of vitamins and supplements and that was helpful then I had a really big aha moment and that was what if I redesign my paleo diet and focused on what I should be taking at us again in pill form to get it from my food I and so that would also become what I now call the walls diet in the walls protocol a very specific and diet and lifestyle program this would as you mentioned earlier in a year's time it got me from a place where I was when I was so weak I could not even sit up I was in a recliner chair or in bed I could walk very short distances like ten feet so in a year of this intensive program I'm walking again I don't need to cane in fact I'm biking I was able to do basically a twenty mile bike ride with my family so this really changes how I understand disease and health it changes how I practice medicine and it would ultimately change the type of research that I do so I know that the dietary program in the walls protocol has three different levels our walls diet walls paleo in wall of walls pd+ so I was wondering what are the foods to include and avoid during these three levels and how should one progress through them so what people what I want your followers to understand is I designed the diet to be maximally nutrient-dense for the brain and I've designed it in a way so that you can have a place to begin we have guides for people who are vegetarian and vegans for their deep spiritual beliefs we have guidance for people who are wanting to eat meat and to go on a paleo diet and they have guidance for those who have very particular needs that should think about the ketogenic diet and then I have a more restrictive version that looks a little bit more like autoimmune protocol and it's more of a elimination diet but in all of these variations of the walls diet they're designed to be maximally nutrient-dense so we can restore the mitochondria restore the function of the cells I which then can lead to healing of the brain in healing of many different organ systems so why should my goal be if I start the world's protocol should I aim to reach the level three like walls pineal plus or should I just settle on level one or two if I notice significant improvements you know my advice is the people were going to be most successful are those who are able to do this as a family so you want to think about your family what your family can do and sustain I and you know most of us are eating a pretty conventional diet that's filled with a lot of sugar and processed foods so I really have the vast majority of my patients start on level one and then we see how they're doing I and in you know my lifestyle clinics that Iran at the VI for many many years I'd say the vast majority of my folks 80% had remarkable health transformation on level one and that's all the further they needed to go now there are some circumstances where people have more specific health needs that I may put them on a ketogenic diet early on or I may put them on a more restrictive autoimmune type of protocol early on but the vast majority we just start at level one and see how they respond because I think it's so important to do this as a family and experience a success as a family that's great and do you think that following this protocol is only good for people who are suffering from what immune diseases or or also from other health issues well and this is to you and all of your people who are listening imagine your future yeah and imagine when your 60s in your 70s and in your eighties and nineties and 100 would you like to be playing in your backyard playing soccer with your kids good doing hikes with your kids would you like to be playing cards with your children and your grandchildren great-grandchildren do you want to still be reading books getting up and down off the floor you want to be living independently so all of us I'm sure went to have a really full and vigorous life into our 60s 70s 80s 90s and 100 I certainly do and I'm sure you do as well this is the diet that will give you the best chance of being able to do that so it's very good in my clinics for people with a wide variety of health problems but it's also great for people who have great health now in their 20s and 30s who would like to have a great strong and vital body in their 60s 70s 80s 90s and 100 awesome and there's a question I receive very often from the people who read my blog and newsletter and that is how should I balance my nutrients in my plate and in and I know that you like to talk about that and especially about the importance of fat so many physicians after World War 2 we got very concerned about the rising rates of obesity and heart disease and there was a new theory that it what the clog in the arteries was because of the cholesterol on our plate it had to do with the fact that during World War two people had mark dropped in the intake of eggs and butter I and so we headed down this hypothesis that fat is the problem cholesterol is a problem butter and eggs are the problem that we should have a low-fat high-carbohydrate diet now the problem from my point of view is that every one of my cells are wrapped in fact the cell membranes or little fat wrappers I and 25% of the cholesterol in my brain is rather 25% of the cluster when my body is in my brain so my brain needs a lot of cholesterol it also needs a lot of omega-6 fat which is a fat that we can't make we have to eat and a lot of omega-3 fat again that's a fat that we cannot make that we have to eat and so I'm very concerned that people have a diet that has sufficient cholesterol sufficient omega-6 fats emission omega-3 fat so we can make these fat wrappers and we can make all these fat structures that need to happen in my brain and a lot of the diets in this very low low-fat diet is starving the brain just one of the reasons why a lot of the lipid research that use these drugs to lower cholesterol saw it the sort of surprising side effect that there was a higher rate of homicide ality in a higher rate of suicidality in the treatment arms and i think that may be tied in to the fact that if you starve the brain for lipids that there are some unexpected bad effects while that's so interesting in if we're talking about the ideal composition of a plate in terms of percentages of Maca of macronutrients um why should I put in my plate in terms of fat car proteins so my preference is that your plate should be mostly vegetables and then it should be non starchy vegetables mostly if you have starchy vegetables that rather you eat them raw because that way you'll be feeding your microbiome a little bit more effectively and then you'll want a quarter of your plate to be devoted to protein so if you are eating meat then that could be meat fish oysters mollusks if you don't eat meat then I have a no different guidance for the vegetarians those folks I would have do a combination of a gluten-free grain and a a legume I in that will want to teach them how to prepare that in a way that reduces the lectins which can be very inflammatory for people who are genetically predisposed to that kind of excessive immune response and if you have an autoimmune condition you're likely somebody who has an aggressive inappropriate response to elect ins right there's a very irritating lectin yes so like would you recommend that anybody who has an autoimmune disease and if it's not specifically celiac disease oh yeah absolutely absolutely if you have an autoimmune condition so in my clinics where I would see people people could get referred to me who have autoimmune conditions who have mental health problems who have neurological issues like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or early cognitive decline I'd have and obesity and diabetes I would have all of them go on basically the level one walls diet gluten free dairy free we'd work out with their budget Aryan or a meat-eater and so we'd make sure that they'd have a high quality protein I am we would start start them out that way so lots of vegetables some meat and we talked about having sufficient fat I'm very fond of olive oil I'd like in general for people to have some nuts and seeds but I prefer sprouted nuts and seeds because that reduces the inflammation standpoint and you were talking before about the different kinds of Omega and and I have done Diep the autoimmune protocol and usually they recommend to balance out the omega-6 intake with omega trees because omega-6 fats are not as good for my understanding so is that right yeah yeah I disagree with their interpretation there because our brain needs to have those omega-6 fats if you starve the brain of omega-6 fats entirely that creates problems as well some very interesting work does looked at what is the optimal ratio Omega 6 2 mega 3 fats in terms of the ability to make neurotransmitters the ability to make cell membranes and it looks like that optimal ratio is for omega-6 to everyone omega-3 now what the autoimmune people are very concerned about is the lectins which are in nuts and seeds and can be very inflammation producing and so if you're Annette have nuts and seeds there are strategies you need to do to try and reduce the lectins you can look for other sources of omega sixes such as liver avocados you could get some from olive oil but you know you can because i from my understanding that's like one of the meats that you should like limit or always try to balance it out with fish well so ideally the the best source of meat in fish would be stuff that is pasture fed wild-caught so the the food source that that animal was consuming was grass and it was their native food when animals are for see the diet that is different than what they would in the wild such as grain that fatty acid content of their meat is not as helpful okay and I know that you know like in all of the healing protocols that there are today like gaps Thailand the Ottoman protocol diet is not the only thing that usually yes Wow and I know that stress has a massive impact on on your health and your success if you're trying to heal from the chronic condition correct you know when we were analyzing in our research study the first 20 folks that we that we studied that that follow the protocol that was essentially was the protocol that I used for my own healing and then we ant we did this sort of complicated statistical analysis to see like how important was each component so how important was they recommended food how important was that you avoid the excluded food how important was the stress reduction how important was the exercise electro-stimulation so it's no surprise that eating the right stuff avoiding the wrong stuff was very very important to my surprise after that I expected exercise was going to be the most important it was stress reduction that was very powerful and you know I think stress reduction is so important now we need to keep in mind that stress it's not a bad thing in that we need stress I need stress of gravity to keep my bones strong I need the stress of working my muscles keep my muscles strong I need the stress of having to learn stuff to keep my brain vital and young it is the absence of stress that is so catastrophic it's the absence of the relaxation because during relaxation is when we get signals from all signals are set all of my cells that that's the time when repair and maintenance of that cell occurs that's the time when I can begin to secrete some hormones that's the time I'll be more effective at the detoxification pathways so you can sort of imagine if in your home or in your vehicles or your computer for that matter if it ever did any of the maintenance functions how long would your home or your vehicles operate how long would your computer operate if you never did any of the maintenance work it'll have a much shorter lifespan and that that's what's happening to us if we don't have that period of deep deep relaxation we don't get any of that maintenance and repair time and we shorten our lifespan considerably wow that is so scary especially because I feel that stress is one of the like sneaky is danger you know product for our health because nobody thinks they're stressed and I feel like we always associate stress with being overworked and they're like you know so people are like no I'm not working two months I'm not stressed but stress has many faces well it and we accommodate we keep accommodating you know we're successful people ask me I do more stuff and we tend to accommodate we normalize things and it will come on gradually so like boy you know putting two frogs in a pot of water one you dip into boiling water he jumps out right away the other one you put into cold water and you heat it up slowly in that frog who he'd got into water he did slowly will die because the heat change comes on to graduate but if they get thrown into a pot of boiling water they jump out and they survive so when stress comes on gradually we accommodate and we don't recognize its destructive force yeah like we get used to it and then we don't know we're stressed correct and so you spoke just now about the importance of the detoxification and what is it that we need to detoxify from exactly well you know since World War two we've relied on the modern wonders of modern chemistry to make manufacturing more efficient and that greatly improves productivity of our workers we relied on chemistry to make farming far more efficient and so we were far more productive per acre I and we've changed industrial processes food food processes and main and building processes all of these chemicals interact with us in the food we eat the air we're breathing and the water we're drinking and so many of these compounds also interact with our biology and make our biology the chemical processes that happen in our bodies working less effectively and that has negative health consequences so what you want to be able to do is take these chemicals process them quickly get them out of your body so they don't get story in your fat but the reality is for most of us we are acutely these chemicals more rapidly than we can get rid of them particularly if we have a diet that is suboptimal so that's a big part of what I talk about in my book is the role of these toxins and the many strategies that we have to make it more efficient to process and eliminate the toxins and you have to do that at a very careful way so that they're going out at a pace that my kidneys and liver and sweat glands can appropriately manage if I try to excrete them too fast I damage my liver and my kidneys if I do it too slowly these toxins accumulate where they cause more and more a disruption to the way my body does the chemistry of life so like what is the procedure to get rid of this toxins because like I know that was the most common follow the walls protocol I died I designed my diet very specifically to give you a lot of cruciferous or cabbage family vegetables Brassica family vegetables cabbage family radishes turnips rutabagas onion family like onion garlic shallots because they have a lot of sulfur in them and sulfur is a important component of detox they will also induce ya induce the enzymes in my liver and my kidneys they're involved in detox pathways so they give you the substrates and make the enzymes more effective so that's why I'm a big tall lady I'm 6 foot tall so I try to have a plate full of cabbage onion and mushrooms every day it's a dinner plate a nice big big dinner plate that's amazing I want to remind everyone that in my healing story as much as I love the Paleo diet but the Paleo diet didn't recover me I figured out to create these vitamins and supplements to boost my mitochondria and to boost my detox that didn't recover me although I couldn't figure out that it really reduced my fatigue it was when I redesigned my diet using food to stress these nutritional needs that's when the magic really happened food is it's just so much more powerful than supplements supplements can augment food somewhat but food is absolutely the most powerful what was the difference like that made you see that improvement because if you said that with the PDO diet you couldn't really see improvement and only when you stepped up to your product protocol you saw those changes and like what were the modifications that you added to the plate while a bit like the most important so instead of focusing on what to not eat I focused on what should I be eating so what when I when I made that shift away from here the excluded foods cuz I I removed all grain all dairy all the goom's I was really following the AIP I did not get better when I created the loss protocol which instead of focusing on what you can't have I focused on what do I need to eat to nourish my brain it was breathtaking within 30 days I could see readily improving energy readily improving mental clarity so it's two components yes you have to exclude some things but you also have to be sure you're getting what your brain and your mitochondria need to function and AIP focused on what takes food and did not focus on what to include I feel that a lot of people like the biggest mistake that people make when it comes to like following this human diet is that they only limit themselves to staying away from the foods that you know they shouldn't be eating but then they don't want to drink bone broth they don't want to do liver because it's not you know that appealing and that they don't he'll focus on what to avoid and failed to realize it equally important is what you must eat properly nourish even I in my own journey I saw like that when I started to eat liver and I really didn't want to eat it but the first day that I ate it like I felt incredibly better just like two hours later and he did include my symptoms right away and he fell asleep because it can be possible it was that it was remarkable you know in liver it can be so delicious my my my kids my teenage kids yeah I mean I'd go back to learning how to prepare liver properly say I didn't realize how to make it in a way that was yummy my teenage kids really love liver they like they find it very very delicious in liver pate very yummy so my daughter likes to make liver and onions as a special meal so I it really can be delicious to make these organ meats one one of your kids live in Florence right yes yes yes they do a lot of stuff with liver there it's one of these specialties I think rabbit liver a lot which I really saw in Italy it's really easy to find and I think you have to come back to Italy so that's the best liver in my opinion because it doesn't really taste like liver and it's really inexpensive to buy Wow I know that you're about to leave for Australia very soon yes seminars there so like tell me a little bit about that yes so I'm really very excited I'll be going to Australia and doing a couple of big live shows one in Melbourne one in Sydney and we'll be talking about my story talking about how diet and lifestyle changed over the times and how that's contributed to our health decline then we'll do some teaching about how to begin to reclaim help a healing diet in the healing lifestyle I'll be doing some cooking we'll have some live demos this should be a very fun and very entertaining session and then we'll go into a little more detail in the afternoon about autoimmune of processes and we'll talk about the many things that are under your control that it needs I call these your personal control factors so the lifestyle is contributing to health or to disease and in addition to our live in person seats we have some video virtual seats as well and I believe that you have the opportunity to have people in a drawing for those virtual seats you were so kind to offer for free tickets to for my readers and my followers and they're gonna bet they're going to have access to the livestream of this entire seminar and if you are they're gonna learn so much this is right this will be you know really very very nice you won't quite get to taste the food but still you'll get to have the ambience learning and experience yeah and for all those who want to enter I'm gonna put the link below in the description so that they can click on the link and then leave their name and an email and then I'm gonna choose four winners by April 20th when is the event exactly April 21st and May the Australian Saturday which I think is the fifth okay so I feel this is a great opportunity for anybody who is interested in trying the the walls protocol and even like just learning more about nutrition and how to optimize their diet for their health so like make sure to enter it and dr. Dawg I'll put one more plug yeah this is not just for MS this really is for any of the autoimmune conditions rheumatoid arthritis lupus psoriasis we've had some folks with my seen it gravis do really well we've had people with Parkinson's Alzheimer's early cognitive decline do really really well and of course people with obesity diabetes and heart disease do really well so if you have a health challenge and you want to learn how you could begin to use diet and lifestyle it's so you're doing all that you can as part of your treatment plan it's not in in place up or instead of what you're doing with your regular physician but what you're doing in addition to whatever your approaches are at your health challenges this is the event that will help change your life Wow and because you mentioned so many of these like Ottoman diseases I was wondering I know that it's not a not immune disease but would this be good also for people who have cancer you know yes as a matter of fact it is one of my son's closest friends his father developed a metastatic cancer I and had a very very grim very grim prognosis but I met with him and his family and we talked about using diet and lifestyle give him the best chance of doing well and so he did that yeah I gave him some coaching through all of that he's now four years cancer-free doing extraordinarily well and as physicians along the journey have been impressed that diet and lifestyle should be a more active part of all of their treatment programs manok in there are there certainly is growing demand by the public wanting to have diet and lifestyle be part of the cancer treatment program and there's this is the one circumstance where in fact I do recommend people go into ketosis during cancer treatment because and I go over that in my book why ketosis is particularly good for people going through a cancer therapy and one of the plugins I want to put in people have been seeing me playing with my dog this whole time playing with a dog playing with a pet it can be a wonderful way of reducing your stress reducing your stress improving your microbiome and so I do encourage people to to get a dog it gets you out walking your dog every day and it gives you a lot of the social bonding stung me with your dog like this all this petting that I've been doing during this interview boost something called oxytocin which is a very calming soothing hormone in your brain so lots of great reasons to have a pet that you might enjoy be part of your family life well thank you so much for sharing all these tips with I'm even and I can't wait to watch your I'll be watching the screen for sure oh good you'll love it I'm gonna learn so much because you really created created something that is incredible so thank you so much not only for being here but also for for what you did really it's incredible the contribution that you gave to the world well you know I I just feel so privileged to have my life back you know in 2007 I thought I knew what my future held and it was pretty grim but of course here it is 11 almost 12 years later and in fact I'm writing books I'm drawing the world and feeling like I'm you know I just got my life back and I want you and all of your readers to know that there's a good chance they could get their lives back too if they'd be willing to try diet and lifestyle yeah this is a great message so thank you again for being here and thank you everybody for watching the video and make sure to leave your details in the link below so that you can enter the giveaway and have a chance to see dr. Terry walls live - all right thanks again [Music]

Channel: Ambra Torelli

Views: 104,131

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Id: QPpD3vDCbfU

Length: 34min 46sec (2086 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 11 2018