Reversing Multiple Sclerosis Using Functional Medicine

[Music] Hoess dr. Mark Hyman and welcome to the doctors pharmacy a place for conversations that matter and today our guest is dr. Terry walls who is an extraordinary physician who cured herself of multiple sclerosis which doesn't seem like a sentence you can even say but here she is to prove it and I can share with you that she's an extraordinary woman who's who's really pioneered a new way of thinking about how we treat chronic disease she's a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa she's the author of the walls protocol how I beat progressive MS using paleo principles and functional medicine and of course the cookbook that goes along with it the walls protocol cooking for life the revolutionary modern paleo plan to treat all chronic autoimmune conditions that's a big promise we're gonna get into that you can learn more about her work at Terry walls dot-com she hosts the walls protocol seminar every August where anyone can learn how to implement the protocol with ease and success you can follow on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and learn more about her MS trials by reaching out to her team at MS diet study at healthcare.gov you and this is an important thing because we have to research these things now she's basically had a story that has sort of rocked the world of multiple sclerosis which is she was this active human who basically became debilitated from MS and was barely functioning in a wheelchair and tell us Terry how you kind of found your way to health through this approach that you call the walls protocol well I thank you Mark it's such an honor to be here with you and I'm so glad to count you as a very good friend so you know I'm a academic internal medicine doc I was very skeptical about diet and lifestyle supplements and complementary alternative medicine I couldn't understand why people wasted billions and billions of dollars give you expensive urine right yep absolutely I was very skeptical yeah but God has mysterious way about him or her and so you know in 2000 I was diagnosed with MS and years ago 18 years ago but you know in retrospect my symptoms began during medical school in 1980 with episodes of electrical face pain which I stoic ly put up with I could figure out that they were worse with stress and gradually more frequent more severe in 2000 I had weakness in my left leg got a big workup including MRIs of my brain spinal cord spinal tap and they said well this is relapsing remitting ms i and being like all a very bad diagnose a bad a bad diagnosis and I looked at the literature and saw that within 10 years 1/2 have difficulty walky need a cane walker a wheelchair and half won't be able to work due to severe fatigue so I wanted to treat my disease aggressively I sought out the best center doing research here in the Midwest that was the Cleveland Clinic so the best people took the newest drugs and within three years I needed it so it reclined wheelchair well that's a good progress yeah so I definitely it was not going the right direction and that's when I started researching I started reading PubMed I would begin experiment in myself I adopted the Paleo diet i last based on the recommendation of my cleveland clinic physicians really so that was pretty interesting i continue to go downhill I took Tysabri continued to go downhill I switch to Saul Sept I continue to go downhill these are powerful and mean surprising very powerful but I was happy to take them because I knew I was headed towards becoming bedridden possibly demented I was having more and more trouble with severe pain that was very difficult to control so I was thrilled to take these drugs and attempt to stave all of that off i as i read pubmed i started experimenting with supplements and would eventually figure out that supplements targeting my mitochondria helped my fatigue somewhat although and I was slowing the speed of my decline so I'm thrilled I'm grateful and I'm really excited about reading PubMed graceful from a wheelchair very grateful from a wheelchair very very grateful and then you know by the summer was half full person clearly you know in this by the summer of o7 I was so weak I could not sit up on a regular chair I had a zero-gravity chair I'm fully reclined or I'm in bed I'm struggling to walk ten feet using two walking sticks my boss cause man calls me and tells me he's assigned me to the traumatic brain injury clinic in six months I'll be seeing patients without residents and I know that of course that means what he's really saying is Terry we are done redesigning your job for you and I'll be forced to take medical disability finally at that time yeah so that's a difficult summer but you know two months later I discover on one of my Google searches the Institute for functional medicine yeah and I took the course on neuroprotection in the midst of my brain fog so this was it was a bit challenging but I got through it had a longer list of supplements a little deeper understanding of the things I could be doing for my mitochondria and for my brain I and I added that and then I had another really really big aha moment like yeah I should I should take this list of supplements and redesign my Paleo diet to maximize the nutritional intake so yeah I redesign my diet me eating paleo cookies all day and yeah exactly and that's not that the right thing so I restored my diet and within a month my fatigue was markedly reduced my mental clarity was clearly improving in three months I get up and I'm walking with the cane in and out of your wheelchair I'm out of my wheelchair walking around with a cane and in nine months I'm on my bike and I pedal around the block for the first time and six years and in 12 months I do a twenty mile bike ride with my family so so is a year a year now take us a little bit slower through what you did because you I did a lot of Paleo diet then you did the drugs but then you went to this no protection plan for Maya famine that you learned from their rapid do to optimize your systems so optimize my system I also add in there I added in electrical stimulation of my muscles that was a technique that athletes have been doing for decades to speed the recovery from athletic injuries so my physical therapist I had agreed to let me add that so I was doing that I had gone back to adding meditation at night so I added that back I and then I had this very intensive nutrition so I had ramped up my vegetables to like nine cups of vegetables a day 18 serve 18 servings not the five to nine yeah yeah 18 servings and so a small amount of meat lots and lots of vegetables and very specific groups of educators very specific medicinal effects that you talked about exactly it's all designed very intentionally around my mitochondria around detox around myelin production around brain structures and neurotransmitters you know based on on science in a very methodical way and I did all this mark not to get better because I had completely accepted what my neurologist primary care Doc's had told me for years so one way street functions once lost with progressive MS are permanently gone so I was doing all this so I could have the limited function that I had a little bit longer and not get worse I you know and I so I was thrilled to do all of that to not get worse but and then nearly it's really interesting Marcus as I was getting remarkably better but as part of having a progressive neurodegenerative disease is you get to a point where you take every day as it comes one day at a time no expectations about what it means so I'm remarkably better I'm thinking more clearly I my pain is gone which is a huge deal for me is a big symptom in MS a pain is a huge symptom it was a huge problem for me as well so my pain is gone I'm walking I'm thinking I'm biking it actually wasn't until I biked that I realized like you know I think I'm getting better because until then I was just taking it one day at a time yeah amazing you know the day the day that I biked it was on Mother's Day you know and I'm crying my wife's crying my kids are crying I and that's what I understood that who knew what the future would hold yeah that clearly neurology has it wrong yeah clearly neurology has it wrong and who knew how much recovery might be possible it's a very hopeful story and I think I'd love to know what exactly you're eating people are probably listening about what are the what are the 19 or 18 servings of vegetables you ate and what yes we're then what do they do okay so first yeah and I think the most powerful one is all these greens so I was having tons and tons of green leafy vegetables so it's probably having six to actually six to nine cups motion raw collards kale collards kale a little bit of spinach I was very I really craved kale in a huge way but have collards I would have Swiss chard I had lots and lots of salads would have some cooked greens I was very big into cabbage family vegetables so cabbage broccoli turnips rutabagas lots of it raw some cooked but it's also very very big Interop garlic's lots of garlic shallots onions that's all for the sulfur my own boost the detox Boostability to bake gamma-aminobutyric acid intracellular and then very much into mushrooms mushrooms stimulate and prime adaptive and innate immune cells they also stimulate your ability to make nerve growth factors so yeah medicinal mushrooms are powerful very positive all kinds amazing ingredients that other foods and and garlic and mushrooms are medicinal foods across many many cultures across all the continents so these are medicinal foods with a lot of ancient cultural wisdom so it means brassicas color and then color so the polyphenols are a marker for color and the polyphenols again and it's study after study the more color you have the lower the rates of heart disease diabetes obesity cardiovascular disease different answers so you want color and furthermore blue purple black a lot of studies showing you can have measurable improvement in cognition in this little as 16 weeks using just a cup of blueberries as in placebo double-blind crossover trials that's hardly any time at all no nuts good also not skittles that's colorful so again three cups of deeply pigmented stuff and then fats you know fats have have a critical role all of our cells are wrapped in fact there are fat wrappers the cell membranes and our brain is 60 to 70 percent fat so your nerve coverings which get destroyed and ms are also fat fat and they need arachidonic acid that eat at cosa pentanoic acid they need the Cossacks annoyed acid they need omega-6 and omega-3 fats and so I needed to have more fat in the diet reduce saturated fat you know actually I did so I I used lots of fat so would have flax oil hemp oil in the dressings did I'd use and then we would cook in saturated fat I'd use coconut oil I'd use bacon fat duck fat my that's cuz I you know for years I worked at the vet so I would teach that that's my favorite recipe was bacon and greens you cook up some bacon take the bacon out leave the bacon fat dump in the greens strip around to the wilted at the bacon back if you didn't like it just double the bacon the next time you make it and my bets are go like oh my god I mean I can eat bacon yeah that actually tastes know sounds like it tastes wonderful so and we have lots of avocados as well get into nuts and seeds and so what is remarkable was the speed at which I could see the difference I in 30 days so so is anything about it you know that you took all these drugs they didn't work but when you use food as a drug as medicine it actually worked faster and very fast and that's exactly what I saw in clinic I was able to teach my residents and clinic as well that food is the most powerful medicine and it works amazingly for the most drugs and yes it's it's an amazing substance and when people understand it's not just calories they're learning function medicine it's information and they can go any minute I can upgrade my biology by putting better information and it's your body absolutely absolutely so besides the food that's powerful and the stimulation and the meditation you also probably did other things were there diagnostic tests done yourself what you discovered anything that was all for out of balance you know so into my recovery so two years into my recovery I thought well I'm sure toxic load was a big issue in all of this so keep in mind I've been walking around hiking now I've been biking vertol pain so I'm in great shape and I fell I did a 24-hour heavy metals challege test and I was diffusely toxic and everything yeah everything all your medals were high all my medals were high I think they're only four that were not high as even high in uranium thorium thallium thallium is you know kale is now in California that ground is thallium and so so we have so poisoned our our soils that it was so with many of our fertilizers are relatively toxic so yes unfortunately many of our foods are toxic and now the other thing that I should tell you I repeated all of that four years later and everything is gone amazing so who knows like how incredibly toxic I was in the big war right how did you get rid of them all well when I designed my protocol I designed it around Boosie the detox enzymes so that's why I stressed the Greens the software the collar I added in there was some intensity of cysteine and some algae as well in minders to get the metals out this will stop regulate your it and then the other thing six months into my recovery I was able to overcome my heat intolerance yeah and so I got a sauna and I've been sunny and clear ever since amazing so it's basically food food supplements in very basic supplements we be vitamins and essential cysteine analogy that's it that's it I'm no vitamin D well yes there is vitamin D then of course there's the evidence around right yeah the plant vitamin D and I also use sunlight sunlight you know sunlight is more effective than vitamin D or you some luck on your face but the rest of your body oh yeah definitely be a good one eh fast but yeah it's powerful I agree yeah so you've taken this insight that you have from your own healing yes and you've extraordinary thing which is you've created a model that you use to treat patients yes and to train other physicians yes providers and to do research in his space and you were at the VA and Iowa and had an amazing work with people who had very little resources done not a ton of money couldn't do a ton of testing yeah and you know people think functional medicine so it's all about testing it's all about supplements but you really were able to show that it really is primarily food and lifestyle just a few basic things very base a huge difference so tell us about what you learned yeah so so I had my personal transformation and then I started talking about food and exposures I change how I practice medicine in my traumatic brain injury clinic I'm really focused in on diet lifestyle and I have to deal with physician complaints because I'm not practicing like my colleagues so I had to meet with my chief of staff go over what I was doing and why bring down my papers and get some coaching on how to document in the medical record so I could pass peer review and make sure everybody was comfortable I was doing happy so we got that forbid you're telling people to eat better yeah so so I got that down and then because I was having such great results the chief of Medicine it came in and told me he was pulling me out of primary care and would I open up a clinic where I could practice the way I wanted to practice and I said no I won't do that and and here's why I'm refusing you need to get endorsement by the chief of staff and the director of the hospital because we just want to be sure that they know I'm gonna do and that they approved it yeah and so I thought that was probably to be the end of it two weeks that we came back he said I have the endorsements okay so we got the endorsements going and then we decide that we'd call it the therapy lifestyle clinic so it's very clear to my referring physicians and to the patients that this was all about diet and lifestyle that I'm not prescribing drugs and diet and lifestyle as treat not just as treatment prevention utak it was therapeutic and you could come you had to be referred in by a physician could be for a mental health problem medical problem so you saw people from all sorts of issues I met with primary care the sub specialty clinics and said give me your most ill people who are willing to use a therapeutic diet lifestyle I'm using no drugs it's just gonna be a diet lifestyle we did this through a series of group classes the first class was here's my story here's the concepts of the therapeutic lifestyle we talked about functional medicine integrative medicine diet lifestyle detox mitochondria all of that stuff and then invited people to either just go back to the doc and say this is too hard or I'll work gradually in my diet and then meet with the dieticians or if they would commit to being gluten-free a hundred percent lots of vegetables for a hundred days they could come work with me we'd have a group intake where I'd meet with them for two weeks as a group to sort of do their timeline of their health experiences and then they would meet with dietician for two hours who would have a cooking class and help them reimagine breakfast and lunch and reimagine the relationship with practical and then we would see them once a week for skills class as many people sit in the room could come get the skills classes and we'd have a support group of six to twenty two people at a time that we'd see every other month in the labs that I had a CBC vitamin D homocysteine very basic fasting lipids that was it I and the kind of supplements B vitamins fish oil vitamin D and then I could tell people if they want on their own to go by knack in algae methyl b12 methyl Foley and that was it and now and before I got the lifestyle clinic going when I was just in my traumatic brain injury clinic no labs I only got to see people twice a year for 20 minutes and even in that click we had stunning success so that's why you've done research down this so you had it yeah how has the research gone and what have you learned and can you share some of the most exciting sure that you've discovered in your research because this isn't just an idea or something that's on the fringe you've actually been in a major academic center doing yes yeah yeah and the model and seeing extraordinary changes so the the very first things we call a safety feasibility study so and after thanks safe to eat 18 it is safe to meditate you know and my chair of Medicine Paul Rothman I had me write a case report up what from my own personal story and then he called me back in when that was posted okay now we're gonna have you do a safety study I and I said well this is outside this is the type of research field that I means yes I'll get you the mentors so he helped with getting the mentors on board design the study then I had to get the funding so I worked with a group in a philanthropist in Canada that gave me the funding to get the safety study going so we wrote up the protocol that copied everything that I did the supplements the meditative program the exercise Eastham I and we codified the diet we got funding it got it through and then the Clinical Research Unit refused to give me permission because the diet was not safe because it excluded food groups like grains and beans right there yeah right so so it got declined so I was required to do a pre study on myself to show that it was the traditionally sound so we did that the dietician who analyzed my diet who's been doing dietary assessment research for 35 years said this is the most nutrient-dense diet I've ever analyzed about the food groups how that came about was as a way to sell more agricultural products meat dairy grains yes you know vegetables those those were food groups that had nothing to do with science I had to do with and and there is no biological requirement for grains or even daring yes and so once we finally get permission we then I was required to have a safety report that I would fill out back to this IRB the institutional review board after we did the first ten subjects and that worked out really I also know excited money to do 20 but you know that worked out very well because we had great success with the first ten so went back to my Canadian philanthropists and I said you know we had such great success how would you feel about getting MRIs on the next ten and he said yes so we have those MRIs and s'matter of fact we showed those results on those MRIs earlier this week here I was able to show that brain volume is protected by following the walls protocol Oh what is the myelination improved well the brain event right so the mask you see these white lesions white matter lesions right me we analyzed total brain volume and for disability brain volume is much more strongly associated with disability then whether at the white matter lesions or acute lesion so we were so we were mostly very very curious about was what happens with the brain volume you know and originally I was really disappointed cuz we still had brain volume loss overall for the group but brain volume loss in a progressive MS occurs much more rapidly two to three times as rapidly in progressive MS than it does in healthy aging we're able to show that our brain volume loss was less than even healthy aging right so we're we are protecting our brain to extraordinary levels in that first study and so we'll be submitting that for publication in a journal but we're so we're very excited for that we had remarkable reduction in fatigue remarkable improvement in quality of life the neurological symptoms in the neurological symptoms we're also able to show that in half of our folks we had remarkable improvement in gait which is remarkable with progressive MS yeah because none of them should have improved right in fact that we had clinically meaningful improvement in gates in half I was really quite remarkable then the next study that we did was a randomized study which is a waitlist control so people we did just the diet in relapsing remitting ms folks they came in we did assessments we randomized them to either get trained on the diet or to wait for 12 weeks and then get trained on the diet and again we're able to show that fatigue went down quality of life improved and motor function again improved I and now we have a study funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society that comparing the low saturated fat diet and the walls died because a swank diet was a low-fat diet very low that was recommended for MS patients only by dr. Swank the conventional neurologist for a long time have convey steadfastly held there's no scientific prospective study that has shown diet has anything to do with MS now fortunately as they're being to understand the role of diet has on epigenetics on the microbiome yeah that conventional neurology is catching up to us and saying diet does matter yeah yeah no it's amazing that food is the single biggest information input we have to our bodies every day yeah it controls every function of our biology and yet how can it not be connected to well you know it's so challenging to do good dietary studies because if you do a food based intervention study supplement studies are easy that's like you know a drug toilet but if you do food now if I'm going to do it well I have to convince you mark to give up foods that you love straight eating foods that you don't like you don't know how to make get-get your family do it with you so you can sustain it and there's a real art to train you to be willing to do that and then another art to measuring what you actually did this is complex research to do it's expensive to do far more expensive than drug studies so that's one of the reasons what there's so little research yeah that's true so you also exploring not just ms but other branches yeah talk about the kind of things besides ms that you're working on and what kind of results you're seeing so so in my lifestyle clinics again we were able to keep track of who's coming to see us pain was the number one reason that people would come in then autoimmunity metabolic problems like diabetes heart disease in terms of the types of neurologic problems that people would come in Parkinson's myasthenia gravis cognitive decline Alzheimer's of course traumatic brain injury PTSD mood disorders which everything for which we have very poor dream treatments poor treatments and certainly what we would consistently would see some of the first things people would notice is fatigue going down energy going up mental clarity improving brain fog diminishing irritability dimensionality of life so quality of life absolutely improving now because the VI has electronic medical record I was also able to get my quality improvement people do some analyses for us we're able to show that the hemoglobin a1c was coming down the body mass index coming down blood pressure coming down at the same time that the number of medications was that rebound was coming down as well and the pain medications coming down and the narcotic use coming down so you know incredibly exciting stuff very very gratifying and then you know in the thousands of followers that I have you know routinely I'm being contacted by people who are telling me that they're treating physicians had given up on them saying there was nothing that they had to offer them for a condition which I of course I have never heard of and there tell me that they've implemented the walls protocol and that their functions are improving and so that I'm googling like so what what are these conditions and you know some of them are autoimmune some of them aren't neurodegenerative I and it very consistently it's it's a similar pattern that I see energy is improving mental clarity is improving pain is diminishing the protocol is in inflammatory it's detoxifying its mitochondrial boosting its gut repairing absolutely these are all the foundations of creating health and so when you do that regardless of what condition you have people seem to get better you know and I'm trying to teach people that what we need to be focusing on is the creation of Health that this is your best treatment for whatever chronic disease you have yeah you are watching the disease you treat you create health health right you create the disease goes away as a side effect I saw often say it will often diminish and depending on the person that yes you may still die from your cancer you'll have a higher quality of life you may still die from your Huntington's but you'll have higher quality of life and what you may discover is that your previously untreatable problem that your physicians say I don't have anything to offer you may fight you may discover that it can be stabilized these steepness of the decline can be slowed or to everyone's amazement you may discover that you in fact are slowly but steadily improving like you like me how many stories you hear like your story where someone really was in a wheelchair and they get up and they're good and they're riding their bike 20 miles you know just today I've had several physicians tell me that they've had john from hungary said that he had people coming to him in the wheelchair who is out running marathons unbelievable I'm like well I'm not doing that yeah but I'm hoping that's how amazing it's so powerful and and you know multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease yes so your focus on the neurologic stuff and the pain stuff but how does this apply across autoimmune disease and what are the oh so much this can help with that you know certainly this has been very very helpful for Hashimoto thyroiditis and we've had people with rheumatoid arthritis who were severely disabled have resolution of their pain and marked improvement function I've had people with psoriatic arthritis again marked improvements in function people with psoriasis marked resolution of their skin problems so it certainly this is a great approach for somebody with autoimmunity in people with diabetes high blood pressure heart failure I've had folks with heart failure who were told that they're gonna be needing a heart transplant and like what happened well yeah their ejection fraction keeps improving that's the how much blood their heart can pump it goes down with heart failure yeah yes I keep telling them you gotta be eating liver a couple times a week heart once a week and I mean it sounds too good to be true but the truth is that when you look at the principle of creating health there are certain foundational concepts here the right food exercise stress reduction sleep the right nutrients and it doesn't matter what disease you have because when you provide the body what it needs it often can recover so it's not like there's one treatment for MS another diet for cancer another diet for Alzheimer's another diet for rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis like it's the same principles that you can apply to all these things you know when I was first changed how I was practicing medicine my colleagues my chief of staff was calling me and saying oh teri you and your colleagues are saying you're using the same treatment for everyone you just can't do that I said well I think we all have mitochondria I think we all have liver kidneys brains we all have cells we all we need to provide the building blocks and so I'm just trying to create health yeah and we'll see what happens yeah and you don't you just follow those principles of functional medicine and it just you're like okay I've never seen this disease before and yet well just see what happens yeah it's powerful and I think that you know I want to sort of get in a little bit into the diet again because you said you came into this through the Paleo interact and then you sort of modified it to add a ton more veggies yeah which I started joking call the pagan diet which is you know basically very low glycemic but what are the principles if people aren't aware what a paleo diet is is it removes grains beans and dairy so why would you remove those foods see it yeah so and I want to clarify for your audience that Paleo diet did not fix me supplements did not fix me so I'd been vegetarian 20 years lots of grains beans legumes and there's a lot of prayer and meditation but I went back to eating meat and I had lots of meat I was still having eggs had some vegetables and I continue to go downhill I added the vitamins and supplements could continue to go downhill I'll be it more slowly and my energy was better when I took my supplements very very grateful and then when I had my longer list of supplements Thank You Catherine Walder and Jay Lombard I have appreciate all you've done for me meteorologists that focused on my medicine I'm functioning yeah then when I said okay where is all this in the food and I redesigned my Paleo diet this is all about ramping up these about vegetables so now my amount of meat is really pretty modest I have two palm sizes of meat to 1 to 2 per day so that's 6 to 12 ounces of meat per day and then you know 9 cups to 15 cups of vegetables per day now we weren't talking about the microbiome back there in 2007 but what I was doing was really ramping up my microbiome as well I was ramping up my body to detoxify and I was ramping up the enzymes involved in and and protecting my mitochondria you made the detox pathways more effective intracellular glutathione more effective and so it was providing that structure you went to the pharmacy that's F our ma see why that's why I call this the doctors pharmacy because it's really about how to use food as medicine and that's what yeah you know and so the the reason to remove the beans grains legumes has to do with something called lectins again this depends on your genetic predisposition and I think I probably am one of those people who are vulnerable to lucked incivility response if I have gluten or dairy or eggs my face pain triggers and I have horrific incapacitating levels of pain in six to 24 hours I don't get you off the gluten now I can't have hummus on occasion so so occasional use of hummus is fine eggs would get me into big trouble galectins I mean are there other inflammatory things in those foods because like when you cook for example beans and grains properly you can reduce reduced electon so you can soak them sprout them overnight you can reduce them and so in my book I did create a protocol for vegetarian and vegans so I do think it's really important to recognize that you have people who are spiritually very committed to being vegetarian vegan and so I wanted to be sure that I could help them do that in a way that's very optimal and in mark clinics even at the VA we have vegetarian vegans that I would help there are some people to do thrive on that diet and other people don't and I thought you really have to pay attention to your body instead of a dogma or a belief yes and I think your body is going to tell you what it works and what doesn't and there are people who do not do well do not do as well eating the Paleo diet know people say meat is inflammatory then well I think a diet that has made my paleo friends who might love the early eat meat and very few vegetables and I think they're gonna get that's a problem yeah I think that can be inflammatory and I would but tried to have moderate they meet and do some intermittent fasting and have more vegetables with them I love the 9 to 15 cops of obstacles that's yes that's right 18 to 30 servings vegetables and I think it seems overwhelming but it's not that hard one because one there's no almost no calories in them yes - they're delicious and you can eat a lot and get full I mean I literally will binge on Benji I'll make three or four side dishes of veggie - you know that the proteins a side dish yeah you know and at the VI it's how people I don't want you to be hungry so you know it's two palm servings of meats and then as many vegetables as you're hungry for and it's fine to have fat they have plenty of olive oil flax oil walnut oil hemp oil but there's no need to be hungry if you're still hungry eat more vegetables and you find that the patients who are vegan or vegetarian do as well in terms of the recovery from autoimmune or MS potential yes there are some folks who really need to figure out how to address the b12 issues and may have some issues with lectins so sometimes it can be more challenging but the vast majority of folks either the vegans and vegetarians I can work with and do very well so what have you learned through this journey of your own health and then treating these patients building these programs running the walls protocol hearing feedback what is sort of the surprising things that you've learned that work or maybe that don't work things you've had to change everything what have you learned over time I've come to appreciate more and more the importance of personal resilience of understanding what is it you want your health for what is your personal mission why is it you're doing this meaning and purpose meaning and purpose and connection because I have to connect to all of that to have you be willing to do the hard work that it takes to sustain the diet and lifestyle changes I've also come to appreciate that this is a family intervention not an individual intervention that families to do this together are very successful the person who does it alone with their family not supportive not eating and doing the diet my lifestyle with them will struggle it's all about community it is that community and powerful and that's how your groups are so 60 yes yes we'll do it together so one last question if you were queen for a day and you could change anything in health care or food medicine what would it be to make the world a better place oh absolutely I would reach out to our children I want our children to learn how to cook I want all of our schools to grow gardens I want to have Hallmark and to teach kids to cook beginning in first grade I want to have our true champions in every school kitchen in every school and in every Church and every synagogue every mosque every temple we need our families to be cooking and eating together as a family and eating lots and lots of vegetables hmm I love that that is a great vision I I think we need to understand that cooking is not a revolutionary act that it will help us take back our food from the food system the convenience is killing us and that we need to reinvent how we think about food because one it's pleasurable it's fun it's delicious and it's easy and it's cheap to cook your own food if you know what you're doing by teaching people how to cook we made it affordable for people with food stamps if we're going to create an epidemic of health we have to teach our young people and all of our current families to cook again and that you can adopt the Wallace protocol on food stamps but you have to learn how to cook absolutely that was what I saw with his family in South Carolina where I went down as part of the movie fed up and they lived in a trailer on food stamps and disability a family of five morbidly obese diabetic renal failure on dialysis hypertension pre-diabetes almost diabetes and this 15 year old kid and they didn't know how to cook and two generations of that family that didn't know how to cook I showed him how to cook one meal gave him a little guide on how to eat well for less and it was one of the worst food deserts in America and they lost 200 pounds in the first year as a family the son gained a bunch of it back they went to work at Bojangles and then he got himself together and he lost 140 pounds and he's now going to medical school so it's it's not gonna happen it can happen it's can happen so thank you so much for showing us that one person with determination and courage can go up against a system that doesn't support what they're doing and can actually make a real difference and change the world and it's inspiring for all of us not just your own recovery but what you've shown can be done with a little bit grit and determination so thank you dr. walls for being on the doctors pharmacy a place for conversations that matter if you've liked this podcast please subscribe leave a comment a review we'd love to hear from you makes a difference for us and share this with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter and social media and we'll see you next time on the doctors pharmacy hallelujah [Music]

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 92,267

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Id: b7-b13aThpU

Length: 44min 54sec (2694 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 15 2018