The Psychology of Beating an Incurable Illness | Bob Cafaro | TEDxCharlottesville

[Music] in December of 1998 after just having turned 40 years old I started experiencing a strange numbness in my right leg and I didn't think much of it until about a week later I was at a rehearsal and I stepped off the riser onto the stage of my right leg collapsed from under me at this point I saw two doctors and they both thought it's probably just a pinched nerve nothing to worry about good two months later I started to lose peripheral vision in my left eye which was now a worrisome situation and I saw my very first neurologist and he examined me and said you have MS and I didn't want to hear this my only knowledge of multiple sclerosis was the Great British cellist Jacqueline Duprey who was forced to stop playing at the age of 26 and later died from complications of the disease at 42 so you could imagine a professional cellist being told I have this debilitating disease denial was a river in Egypt I was not willing to accept this and then four months later I started losing peripheral vision in my right eye which was really scary because my left eye had never recovered completely and about one week after that I came down with what I thought was a stomach bug but it didn't go away it turned out to be a prolonged period of something like motion sickness I wound up vomiting couldn't keep food or water down for a week and I wound up in the hospital for severe dehydration I was released from the hospital four days later and I was unable to move my hands I could no longer play the cello I could hardly walk I was incontinent my entire body felt like I was receiving electrical current I was hearing helicopters all the time and I saw my neuro-ophthalmologist whom I had been seeing for the previous six months and he gave me a basic vision test and I was unable to see even the largest letters on the chart and he proceeded then with a visual field test where you're given a clicker and you click every time you see a light flesh in the periphery and I sat there completely frozen not one click I couldn't see a thing he changed through the other eye i sat there once again no clicking he stopped the test and he said the words I'll never forget I'll write you a note for permanent disability whoo this was just insane I don't know what happened at this point but something went through me and I told him you can take that note and you can use it as a suppository because I'm going back to work in six weeks when the orchestra season started I said I'm going back to work in six weeks when the orchestra season started and he said how are you gonna do that he didn't believe it was possible but I did so what do I do I have this I'm completely taken out my central nervous system is up in smoke I can't do anything there's a story of a tractor-trailer that gets stuck under an overpass and structural engineers are brought to the scene how do they raise the overpass dig grooves into the pavement under the wheels a six year old boy comes along on his bicycle and says hey mister why don't you just let the air out of the tires so we were all six years old once but we lose that over time and with education so I said to that six-year-old boy inside me I need your help you've got to show me how to let the air out of the tires of this disease so together we started looking for obvious things that were overlooked by the experts and the first thing I found was the water cure I started drinking half my body weight in ounces of water a day I noticed my first signs of improvement I looked at other things I looked at MS rates around the world and noticed that your very poorest nations have rates of MS that are about 1/3 of your wealthy affluent industrialized nations I looked at Japan having been there with its environmental and overcrowding issues very low rates of MS I saw the Okinawa centenarian study over 900 people that were looked at over the age of 100 and in perfect health so I began to believe that our wealthy lavish lifestyle has some link with higher rates of multiple sclerosis I also looked at something called the placebo effect and this is where the six-year-old boy helped if you look at clinical trials where you get people who inexplicably improve in the placebo group it's written off as an anomaly by the experts the six-year-old boy said something is happening here so I started learning the placebo effect by meditating to 30-minute sessions a day that the MS was going into remission and leaving my body completely one of the other things I used experiences all through my life and I was once on a backpacking trip not far from here in shannon Doan National Park and after three days in the woods I came out at a visitor center and I saw a big sign with a beautiful picture of a deer and it said do not feed the deer when you feed a deer human foods such as chips and candy you reduce its lifespan by 30 percent so I'm thinking I'm gonna be as healthy as this deer so I basically adopted the deers diet a deer drinks water eats vegetation probably some insects I passed on that one but another thing I started to do is I looked at people who accomplished the impossible how do they do this your most basic example is in 1954 the first person to run a mile in under four minutes was Roger Bannister prior to that people said it's impossible human body can never do it he does it it's now an achievable goal the baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan who threw his seventh no-hitter at the age of 44 and in that game throwing the ball 96 miles per hour he stayed off the aging process of the human body for 25 years so I've adopted his lifestyle every morning I begin with yoga stretching weight lifting you name it cycling I live a very disciplined lifestyle in 2013 I had the privilege of meeting someone who accomplished the impossible and that was Nando parado who survived the famous plane crash in 1972 in the Andes Mountains and when the plane crashed in the winter high up in the mountains nanda was thrown from row 9 into the bulkhead his skull was fractured in four places he was given up for dead and placed in the cold with the bodies three days later he awoke from a coma and 72 days after the crash Nando showed up in the foothills and got help this man had gone 37 and a half miles through one of the most difficult mountain ranges in the world in the winter he had never seen snow he had no survival training no gloves no boots no equipment and no food his only source of food was the people who had perished in the crash mountain climbing teams that reconstructed his route said what this man did was not possible so I met him and I said to him I always wanted to meet you and thank you because you were one of my guides when I was finished I'm not supposed to be here and he said I'm not supposed to be here either and when this giant gave me a hug something went through me I felt like for the first time that I had cured myself of this incurable disease and I went back to my neurologist whom I Sene for 11 years and he did a complete series of MRIs again on my brain and spinal cord in 1999 my brain had over 50 active lesions in my spinal cord had one that was three and a half centimeters in length and I worked so hard at my recovery and true to my word I went back to work in six weeks when the orchestra season started wasn't easy but I kept going never missed work I missed five weeks of work that year when I was hospitalized so I had in 2013 I had a complete series of MRIs then when my neurologist looked at the results he said to me you did the impossible because there were no more lesions and no traces of the disease anymore whatsoever so I was so taken out in 1999 but I worked hard and everything came back I got the use of my legs back I got the use of my eyesight back I now make it to the bathroom when I need to go I I don't hear helicopters anymore and I don't feel like I'm receiving electrical current anymore but the most important thing I've gotten the use of my hands back [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 113,096

Rating: 4.8855171 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Health, Art, Control, Disability, Disease, Goal-setting, Hardship, Illness, Life, Meditation, Mindfulness, Music (performance), Personal growth, Positive Thinking, Success

Id: ZqoRGr3icTo

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/rvodenh]

I have not watched the video, only read the description and some comments. But I expect some reactions on here based on that. Please remember to be kind to one another :)

[u/andthenrun]

Short answer - maybe legit for his own experience (as in - he probably does have MS and is better now, although his cause and effect are likely wrong) but pretty irresponsible to claim you can cure MS if you just try hard enough. Insulting, really. The thing is - MS is extremely variable person to person, and it's not well understood why this is, so that makes it vulnerable to people pushing "cures" based on their own experience. I have a mild case of MS (so far) - should I try to get a TEDx talk to preach the power of a diet full of toast and Thai takeout and a mindset of being "constantly annoyed"? I think these kinds of things are inspiration porn for well people, and damaging for everyone else. I would be very upset if someone without MS sent this to me.

[u/ichabod13]

I can't wait until my MS gets better so I can get rich off selling BS to people.

[u/fuzzyballzy]

Such a quick diagnosis of MS is not correct - story does NOT sound like MS. The fact that the neurological damage changed suggests it was not MS.

I do not doubt his story, but having tried special diets, exercise, life style changes, et.c. over a 15 year period I have had no similar luck.

Try whatever you want -- it's a craps shoot if any will work for you!

[u/NotAFishYouCanCatch]

If you Google his name, he does have a book available for purchase and he does speaking events and consults for tailoring an exercise/diet/meditation program to MSers. So, he has some products to sell.

However, he also posts his MRIs from 1999 and 2013 on his website, and the 2013 ones look pretty damned good. I don't know think he's a big enough figure in the MS world to have had a thorough investigation done of him and his regimen to see if he's being truthful about his story/his regimen has any scientific standing. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'll say good on him and I hope he keeps doing well in the future.

[u/frednote]

I always take TEDx talks with a grain of salt, as most of them are anecdotal and not as heavily reviewed as normal Ted-talks. I watched this video last year, and got annoyed. Today, I still think a lot of it is simplified, but I think it paints an important picture of MS as a disease; namely that there are most likely not one reason people get MS, and no one way to go about treating it (which we have proof of already). Considering the body CAN repair the nervous system, I think certain people's bodies are more apt to do so, and in conjunction with the cause for MS in an individual, I'm positive it is possible to go through a similar journey like this guy. But I think medical research is going to be the way home (once again), as this is going to be an "it depends"-issue, and not a cure-all. Like cancers, some are milder (benign, even), easier to treat and some don't answer to anything. But to go about not getting medical intervention, as this point in medical advances, I consider foolish. Bottom line, I wouldn't consider this guy "legit", and I wouldn't follow his advice. Trust your doctor more, and if you can't trust them, find a new one.

[u/marcpeters_xx]

Watched the video, he is right. I have very similar beginning stages of MS. I did'nt have a doctor say their gonna write me permanent disability. It took me 5 years before I went to work, feeling good walking and talking. Attempting to eat better and exercise can cancel the affects of MS from experience.