How This Doctor Reversed Her Autoimmune Disease

There's plenty of research showing that dietary interventions are certainly helpful for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, for psoriasis, for Sjögren's, for Hashimoto's. It's an emerging field.

Dr. Terri Wahls is a clinical professor at the University of Iowa, an internal medicine physician, and a clinical researcher. She's created the Wahls Protocol that is a revolutionary protocol for people with autoimmune disease and neurodegenerative conditions that have helped create health and find healing.

When I was first diagnosed with MS, my understanding of the world was you take drugs and do all that you can because it's a grim diagnosis. And as I began to recover, because I had let go of the future and I had just took every day, 24 hours at a time, I had to remarkably recover before I realized this is all wrong. That is when I understood that the current understanding of secondary progressive MS was incomplete, and who knows how much recovery might be possible. If I can come back from such profound disability, there is hope for you as well.

Dr. Terry Wahls is a clinical professor at the University of Iowa, an internal medicine physician, and a clinical researcher. She was diagnosed in 2000 with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, requiring a tilt-recline wheelchair, and regained functionality with implementing a nutrition and lifestyle protocol that led to her biking to work daily and educating other clinicians all over the world. She's created the Wahls Protocol that is a revolutionary protocol for people with autoimmune disease and neurodegenerative conditions that have helped them create health and find healing. Dr. Wahls has also published 60 peer-reviewed papers. She's led NIH-funded clinical trials on dietary and lifestyle interventions for MS and other autoimmune diseases. Today, we are live at the Institute for Functional Medicine's annual conference, and we'll cover her personal health journey. We're gonna talk about the protocol that she followed and then the work that she's been doing for the last several decades to help other people that have autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions create health. Dr. Wahls, I'd love to start out with the statistic that you often quote, which is that 90% of autoimmune disease risk comes from modifiable lifestyle factors. Can you share what the research shows and why this isn't more mainstream in medicine?

You know, there, there are 3 steps to getting an autoimmune problem. You have the genetic vulnerability, Then there's an infection, and then there's the third factors, which are these environmental factors. Now my conventional colleagues say, "Well, we don't really know what they are; there are too many. Just take the DMTs if you're lucky enough to have a disease-modifying treatment for your autoimmune condition." We in functional medicine are like, "Okay, we know the environmental factors that are linked towards worsening health and to better health." So our approach is we're gonna take all those environmental factors, and one by one, we're going to optimize them towards health at the pace that you and your family can manage. And when we do that, we see this remarkable transformation occur bit by bit. People begin to youthen, look more vital, younger, often by about a decade, even people with genetic disorders. Discover that they have more energy, more vitality. People with cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and many genetic disorders that I don't know what they are. I have to go look them up. Those families are reaching out saying that they're doing better. People with autoimmune disorders that I've never heard of before reaching out to tell me that their lives have been transformed. And I have to look them up to see like, okay, so what is that disorder? Addressing the environmental factors, Step by step is the most powerful intervention, and often it doesn't cost that much.

It's so huge. And I wanna highlight the fact that your story is so inspiring because you were a conventional medicine doctor who didn't believe in these things until you had your own health experience. So I'd love for you to walk us through, you were seeing mainstream medicine doctors, incredible physicians at the Cleveland Clinic when you were diagnosed with MS, and walk us through what that experience was like.

So, you know, I'm an academic physician teaching at University of Iowa, at Iowa City VA. I'm deeply skeptical of all the billions that the public is spending on these supplements and voodoo medicine. And I really believe in the randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials. When I'm diagnosed, I start reading the science. I get so upset when I see that MS is a progressive disease that within 3 years, most people are no longer working. My spouse says, honey, you gotta stop. Let's find the best MS center in the country. Go see them, let them take care of you. I agreed to stop reading the research. We go to the Cleveland Clinic, see their best physician, whom I loved. And she said, you know, functions once lost will never come back. And so I treated my disease as aggressively as I could. At that time, I took Copaxone. You know, that's in 2000. By 2003, I'm in a tilt-recline wheelchair and I take Mitoxantrone, a form of chemotherapy, which when I read the adverse events, 2% chance of getting acute leukemia each time I took it.

Oh my gosh.

But I was happy to take it because, you know, my hands still worked. And so that was really valuable. I didn't wanna become even more disabled. That did not help. I was continuing to decline. Then she put me on—

In just 3 years, from 2000, the diagnosis, to 2003, you're in a tilt-reclining wheelchair.

Right. So age 45 to 48, and that's the time when you convert to the progressive form of the illness. Between age 45 and 55, there's no more relapses. And then really I only had one relapse with weakness of my right hand. Otherwise, it was this relentless decline. So then we take Tysabri, the new biologic. Everyone's, you know, so excited to take it. I take that several cycles, does not help. Tysabri's pulled from the market, then I'm switched to CellCept. And then I'm like, okay, I know how bad this is going to be, really terrible. And I go back to reading the basic science. And I eventually decide that, and mind you, no one's yet talking about mitochondria in the MS community.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm reading about Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, And I decide mitochondrial dysfunction is what's driving disability. And I look for supplements that help my mitochondria. And so I gradually create a supplement cocktail for my mitochondria. And then after about 6 months into this, I think, you know, it's not helping. I'm annoyed. I stopped my supplements. 36 hours later, I really can't get out of bed to go to work.

Wow.

And at 72 hours, my spouse comes in and says, you know, honey, why don't you take your supplements again? And I take them. And the next morning, I can get up and go to work.

Wow.

And I think, wow, that's really interesting. So 2 weeks later, I stop all my supplements. At 36 hours, I cannot function. At 72 hours, I take them again, and I can get up and go to work. And so now my conclusion is, The supplements are clearly doing something. Maybe they aren't helping me recover, but they're slowing my decline. And I'm so grateful. And now I am so excited to read the basic science.

And had you changed your diet at that point too?

Well, I'd already adopted the paleo diet. So I'd been a low-fat vegetarian, heart-healthy, plenty of vegetables, beans, and rice. And I had been introduced by my neurologist to Loren Cordain's work. I had gone a Paleolithic diet. So no grain, no legumes, no dairy. And I continued to decline. But at that time I thought, well, who knows how much, how long it takes for my brain to rebuild itself. Maybe it doesn't make me better, but it slows my decline. And at least I was doing something. And then I add my supplements and it's not recovering me, but I can certainly tell my fatigue is less. when I'm taking it. I can function better when I'm taking it. And so I feel hopeful. I feel like I'm doing something. I'm figuring stuff out that my neurologist and primary care doc don't know, but they're sort of intrigued with my observations. And by that time, I'm also— I have been assigned to the institutional review board reviewing research. And so now I tell the IRB, please give me all the studies related to the brain. So I'm getting better at reading Studies for neurology studies and psychiatry studies. And I'm slowly adding, you know, a few more supplements. And then by 2007, I'm getting to have a little more brain fog. My trigeminal neuralgia, electrical jolts of pain that start here, come down my jaw, really more frequent, more severe, more difficult to turn off. Those are getting much more difficult to control.

Before 2007, though, you had gotten out of the wheelchair?

No, no, no. No. Okay. So 2003, I'm in the wheelchair getting steadily worse. By 2007, I cannot sit up anymore.

Okay.

I'm in a zero-gravity chair with my knees higher than my nose. I'd been mentally clear enough to still work and, you know, staff the resident clinic. In July, my boss calls me in to say, Terry, We're going to assign you to the Mike Brainard Clinic. You'll start in January. There won't be any residents. You'll be examining the patients, writing the notes. I go home and I tell my wife Jackie, and she says, you can't do that job. I say, well, in January, that's where I'll go. And if I can't, then I'll finally have to apply for retirement.

So that's Pretty tough.

And also—

In your 40s?

52.

52.

Okay. And it's so clear that I'm on track to become bedridden because I'm very close since I can't sit up anymore. I'll probably become demented by my illness, and my trigeminal neuralgia will probably turn eventually permanently on where I can't turn it off. And when that happens, if I move my tongue, It triggers the pain. And so I'll end up at a point where I won't be able to talk. Very, very grim future. But, you know, I'm like, okay, I gotta do all that I possibly can. And then 2 weeks later, I get this study from the IRB to review electrical stimulation in people who are paralyzed. who will never walk again because they want to extend the study because the veterans didn't— the patients didn't want to stop. So it's super interesting. I ask, I tell Jack I want to buy a device and start doing it. He goes, honey, no. But what you can do is go see your physical therapist. So I see him and he thinks it's interesting. He gives me a test session. It hurts really quite bad, actually. But we add it to my regimen. And so I start doing electrical stimulation. And then also at that same time, I discover the Institute for Functional Medicine. And they have this course on neuroprotection, which I take. I have a longer list of supplements, which I add. And then, you know, actually I laugh now at how long it took to have this aha. What if I redesign my Paleolithic diet Based on this long list of supplements to figure out where these ingredients are in the food. So that's a little more research. And I start this new way of eating December 26th of 2007. And then in January, I go start in the new clinic. And the first 2 weeks I just watch. The 3rd week I start examining my patients. And at the end of the week, you know, I tell Jack, I think I can do this. And by the way, could I sit in a regular chair for supper? First time I'd done that in years.

Wow.

And the next week when I see my physical therapist, he says, now, Terry, you're stronger. He advances my exercises. And then in February, For the first time in years, I start walking in the hospital with 2 walking sticks, stunning my colleagues. And then in April, I tell Jackie, you know what, I'd really like to try riding my bike. She says, you know, honey, if things keep going well, maybe in the fall we can do that. And then on Mother's Day, I really want to try riding my bike. And so we have this emergency family meeting. And Jack tells my son, who's 6'5, Zach, you run alongside on the left. And my daughter, Zebby, who's not quite as tall, you run alongside on the right and she'll follow. And I get on that bike and I bike around the block. And, you know, that big 6'5 boy, he's crying. Zebby's crying. Jackie's crying. Oh, my goodness. And see, of course I've cried. I still cry reliving that moment because that is when I understood that the current understanding of secondary progressive MS was incomplete. And who knows how much recovery might be possible? And so I would bike a little more every day. I'd do my little exercises every day. In October, Jackie signed us up for the Courage Ride, 18.5 miles, and I completed that ride. And thank you so much. And it really transformed how I would practice medicine. It would change how I took care of those vets in the traumatic brain injury clinic. It would change how I took care of vets in the primary care clinic. It would change everything. And for your listeners, if I can come back from such profound disability, There is hope for you as well.

Wow.

Amen.

I mean, also, you've told your story so many times over the years, and it's, like, so powerful to see how emotional you still get because of, like, living what you lived with every day.

That was the moment, you know, because I had accepted— I had a very grim future. And one of the adaptations is you let go of the future and you'll just take the next 24 hours. I will just see what happens today. And so even though I was remarkably better, you know, walking around again, I had let go of the future and I was just taking my life 24 hours at a time until I rode that bike. And then I realized, like, wow. There might be a really great future ahead for me.

Especially because, as I've heard you say, that the consensus in the MS community is that once you lose function, you don't regain any of that function because of the nature of the disease.

Well, I'll take that back. When you're in the relapsing-remitting phase, when you have a relapse, then before the age of 45, you will get bad, better, bad, better. After age 45, when you no longer have those relapses and just have that slow progressive decline, that's when functions once lost are gone forever. And that happens for most autoimmune conditions beginning around age 45. It might take to 50 or 55, but nearly always your immune cells get old, decrepit, as my mother would say. They no longer have those acute exacerbations for your autoimmunity. In its place is this progressive march towards disability, towards frailty, towards multiple autoimmune conditions, and eventually death due to complications.

Yeah, wow. Your story is just so remarkable, and you've taken that story now, and you've educated so many people with the Wahls Protocol in your clinical practice. And so, I wanna talk about some of that. When it comes to the nutrition and some of the things that you started to dive into in the research, when you took the components that were in those supplements and then started to think about, how can I apply this to my diet? Is that where you started to do the 9 cups of vegetables per day?

You know, what happened is, so I created the list of foods to eat. So I had a long list of foods that I was now stressing. But when I met with my vets in my traumatic brain injury clinic, I had 20 minutes. When I met with my vets in the primary care clinic staffing residents, I had 5 minutes. So I wanted to teach them how to do this. I couldn't use long lists because I wasn't approved to make a handout. So I had to come up with a quick way, memorable way to teach the concepts. So this is how the 9 cups got born. You know, 3 cups of green leafy vegetables, 3 cups of deeply pigmented colorful vegetables, 3 cups of sulfur-rich cabbage, onion, mushroom family, then, you know, fermented. And my veterans, they'd say like, okay, doc, is that per week or month? And we'd laugh and say, oh no, that's per day. We would take it from there, but.

Yeah, I mean, 9 cups a day seems like a lot of vegetables to most people.

I don't want them to be hungry. And now my petite ladies, It's not gonna be 9 cups. For them, it's probably gonna be 4 to 6. But most of my patients were men. I wanted them to not be hungry. So 9 cups of vegetables, and then your protein sources. And we had strategies for the vegetarians and strategies for the meat eaters.

So when it comes to the 9 cups of vegetables and why you then highlighted those 3 buckets of 3 cups of the leafy greens and 3 cups of the sulfur-rich, can you explain the mechanisms behind that?

Yeah, so we'll go leafy greens. They're full of carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin, meso-zeaxanthin, incredibly important for your eyeballs, your retina, but also for your brain. A great source of vitamin K, folate, and calcium, magnesium that's very well absorbed. Then you come down to the sulfur-rich cabbage, onion, mushroom family vegetables, really great for detoxification, for making neurotransmitters, for making Intracellular glutathione, really important master antioxidant. They help reset the gene expression in favorable ways. So very, very helpful that way. More mushrooms you eat, less anxiety, less depression, less cognitive decline. Then we get to the bright colors. Purple, blue, black being most potent, but, you know, reds, oranges, yellows, those are also very helpful as well. There's more research that these polyphenols, the multiple ring structures that are part of pigments, speak to our genes, help shift our microbiome, again, in favorable ways, lower the risk of diabetes, heart disease, autoimmunity, anxiety, depression, all-cause mortality, really powerful stuff.

And then you also removed other, you removed certain foods from the diet. You removed, in the Wahls Protocol, the first step is gluten and dairy.

Yes, and eggs.

And eggs. Can you explain why?

Well, you know, that's part of the ancestral health perspective. We know that we added wheat and dairy about 10,000 years ago. And we also know from the research that gluten is associated with inflammatory lesions in the brain, neurologic symptoms, psychiatric symptoms that can resolve if you remove gluten. If you have wheat, let's see, wheat anti-alpha-trypsin inhibitors, independent from gluten, have been linked towards animal models of neurodegeneration as well. So it's another reason that it may not just be the gluten, it may be the other proteins in wheat that are a problem for us. Dairy, particularly cow milk dairy, gets metabolized to Beta-casomorphin-7, which can cross the blood-brain barrier, create more inflammation. And if you have molecular mimicry, will attack your cerebellum and other brain structures. So definitely worth taking dairy out. And for me, I was sensitive to eggs. So taking eggs out helped turn off my trigeminal neuralgia.

Yeah.

I tried reintroducing eggs, turned on my trigeminal neuralgia. And so I kept eggs out. And then my IRB, when I did my research, required me to use my diet for my recovery. So we've always studied taking gluten, dairy, and eggs out. And I caution people that eggs are the 3rd most common food protein that causes an abnormal immune response. So it's worth taking out eggs, you know, ideally at least 4 weeks. And then you can retest to see, 'cause you may discover that your headaches go away when you take out eggs, your skin is less itchy when you take out eggs, your balance is better without the eggs, or you may be one of those, be fortunate enough that you can take the eggs back, because eggs really are super nutritional.

It's true, it's true. So the whole process is removing these foods and then working on gut healing so that then you can reintroduce them, ideally without symptoms, but then some people, Right, you reintroduce the eggs.

I do not recommend putting cow milk back. I don't recommend putting gluten back or wheat back if you have autoimmunity. If you don't have autoimmunity and we're treating, say, anxiety or depression, that may be a slightly different circumstance. But for autoimmunity, I would keep the gluten and cow milk out.

And then for doctors who say that there's no research, you know, we hear that a lot from clients that we work with. They're like, my doctor said there's no research behind being gluten-free outside of having celiac disease, and then it might just be the fact FODMAP reaction or other things, that gluten is actually a very healthy food for supporting the gut microbiome, because there is research to show that. What do you say to that?

It's very hard to keep up with the research. You go through medical school, then you're in busy practice, and most physicians, unless you're doing research, you're not gonna spend time monitoring the research and keeping up. We have published now 86 peer-reviewed, publicly available papers I have another 3 or 4 that are out under review. So the research is out there. There's plenty of research showing that dietary interventions are certainly helpful for multiple sclerosis, for rheumatoid arthritis, for psoriasis, for Sjögren's, for Hashimoto's.

Fibromyalgia, you have fibromyalgia?

Well, actually, we're studying fibromyalgia right now. I'm not as familiar. There are research studies for fibromyalgia as well. in long COVID. It's an emerging field. I tell my postdocs, my medical students, my undergraduates in my lab that it takes about 30 years currently to change the standard of care. And the usual sequence is you have a case report published, then maybe a case series, then a single-arm trial testing, is it safe? What's the effect size? Then you can do a small randomized controlled trial. Then you do larger, longer, randomised controlled trials. That is the sequence, and that's about a 30-year sequence. And then you have to have multiple randomised controlled trials that are presented in scientific meetings, and eventually it'll be accepted. You can think of Barry Marshall, who said, you know, bacteria cause stomach ulcers, duodenal ulcers. He was laughed at. He had case report, case series, small trials, larger trials. And because he patented his means to detect those ulcers, he's a multimillionaire. I get criticized for writing a book in that, you know, I study this, even though I wrote the book, I'm never gonna be a multimillionaire. I'm not, I can't patent my diet. All I can do is educate people. I can publish books, I can teach clinicians. Sadly, that will not make me a multimillionaire.

Yes, it's true. I think so. There's— you could be attacked by the medical community for the things that you're saying, and that can make someone upset or angry. But the true anger should be coming from the fact that people aren't given this information and they're struggling without having the— at least someone suggesting that this would be helpful.

You know, I'm empathetic for my conventional colleagues, and I think we have to hold Some compassion for them. Their understanding of the world is their understanding of the world. Anytime we have a new bit of information that doesn't fit with our understanding of the world, we dismiss it. You dismiss it, I dismiss it, we all dismiss it. And so it will take a lot of evidence for them to change their understanding. And when I was first diagnosed with MS, my understanding of the world was you take drugs and do all that you can. Because it's a grim diagnosis. And as I began to recover, because I had let go of the future and I had just took every day, the 24 hours at a time, I had to remarkably recover before I realized, this is all wrong, that who knows how much recovery might be possible. So that bike ride was really Quite, quite profound. And then I start teaching, you know, talking, get severely criticized. I'm a banned speaker. I'm attacked, vilified. I have to— I get called in to my chief of staff, to my chief of medicine, get reprimanded. Oh, really? And say you're—

Because of your TED Talk?

No, no, no. I hadn't done my TED Talk yet.

Okay.

My partners were complaining that I was doing things that were not FDA approved. And my chief of staff said, Terry, you're going to lose your license because all you need is someone to complain. The Board of Medicine will audit your record and right now you'd flunk. So I'm going to send you to the complementary alternative medicine clinic so you can learn how to talk about this without losing your license. And what I learned is that I have to be very careful to say, I'm supporting your physiology. I will monitor your blood pressure, your blood sugar, and your medication use and make adjustments. And if your cells work better and you have healthier cells, you'll probably feel better and your need for prescription medicines will change. So I changed my notes to say, this is not FDA-approved treatment. It's an alternative to support your physiology. And interestingly, my partners were all much happier with that. And I changed what I was saying in the public. I always have this disclaimer side now when I talk to the public. So actually, I'm profoundly grateful that John called me in to say, people are complaining, you gotta stop what you're doing, you're gonna lose your license. 'Cause I, that would've been a problem. And I'm also much more compassionate that we all ignore information that does not fit with our understanding of the world. And so our conventional physicians, they're being rational, but we have to tell the public, and where we are invited for a message as loudly as we can, like, here's an alternative to FDA-approved treatments. Address your environment as best you can. And then if you're on prescription meds, stay on them. Know that your blood pressure may improve. If you're on those meds, they'll have to be adjusted. If you're on blood sugar meds, your blood sugar will probably improve. And if you're taking any of those, they'll have to be adjusted. If you're on mental health meds, your mood will probably improve, and those meds may need to be adjusted. If you're on pain meds, your pain will probably be reduced, and those meds will need to be adjusted. So we have to have compassion for our colleagues who are struggling. And know that they're just doing the best that we can, but we can go to where we are invited. And thanks to the really powerful work that you are doing, more people are hearing that, yes, there is an alternative that they control and that is very affordable. A lot of what we teach doesn't cost any money. You can learn how to forage. You can rely on your friends who hunt. You can use beans and rice. So, you know, it's certainly cheaper than meat. And we can take back our health bit by bit by bit.

I love that. That was amazing.

One more thing I wanna explain as to why I've been able to weather such withering cruises. And I've been attacked, attacked, attacked, attacked, attacked. Now, you may know, and many of your audience may know, that I'm a lesbian. I have a longtime partner who fortunately I've been able to marry. When I was growing up and figuring out that I really liked the girls more than the boys, and there's a lot of internal conflict. And it was, you know, I hid during college, I hid during medical school. I would eventually come to terms with this, be willing to just live my life. But coming to terms with, I have to live my life as it is, allowed me to have a very thick skin when I have been so attacked and vilified. for years for telling my experience, for offering people hope. And I think that was part of God's plan, sort of toughened me up for this point in my life so I could offer this wonderful gift to the public.

Well, I mean, it had to all come together because enduring the criticism is not easy. So the fact that you've gone through the experiences that you have, like, it was— there was a meaning behind it.

There was a meaning. And that's how we get through the difficult circumstances in our life. It's not the event that creates the trauma, it's our interpretation of the event. So true. So true.

So I think when you sat down and I asked, like, what did you really want to cover today? I love the response that you had because I think that what today in the field of functional medicine and everything that's out on Instagram and social media is that it can seem super overwhelming, expensive, not realistic for a lot of people to implement functional medicine principles. And you've shown that that's not the case because you've been working in the VA hospitals, you've been teaching people that have very low financial status in, in many ways. So what, what is your take on that, that approach or that idea?

Yeah, here's, here's my experience. In the traumatic brain injury clinic, I could order no labs whatsoever. I could give them a structure for following a paleolithic diet or a gluten-free vegetarian diet, get a step walker, and start taking Epsom salts baths. And I had to convey that in 20 minutes. I'd see them every 6 months, and I transformed their lives. At first, it was about half the vets implemented what I suggested. By the time I left the traumatic brain injury clinic, 90% were implementing what I suggested in my 20-minute intervention. In the primary care clinic, I had 5 minutes to give that same message. My residents soon were so excited to have me talk to their vets because they were so impressed that I could convince people to make these changes with a 5-minute conversation where I'd say, this is an experiment. Start, you decide when you start, think about doing this for a 2 to 4 week experiment and see how you feel. And Likewise, at first, about half would make the change. By the time I left the primary care clinic, 90% were making the change, and I'd got convinced my residents to be excited. Then the VA in Iowa City pulled me out of primary care and said, we want you to create your own clinic because we've seen how effective you are. The Therapeutic Lifestyle Clinic, I had a dietitian work with me. I went to the pain clinic, I went to specialty medicine. I said, give me your most difficult cases, people with pain that you can't help. I will take care of them. I'm not gonna change their drugs. Well, this is gonna be a diet and lifestyle thing. And you can come see what I'm doing. The nurses can come see what I'm doing. So we got just a handful of patients and we transformed their lives. And very quickly, I had to reimagine my clinic into a, Small group, large group, and then classes. And we would teach people how to analyze their timeline as a group. We'd take notes, then as a group talk about the common themes, which was, you know, poor diet, stress, lack of social connection. And we'd talk about the food changes. We would make cooked greens for them and a green smoothie. And this was a really wonderful start. We would pass around a kale leaf. We'd all take a piece. We'd eat it. Bitter, terrible, no way. Heck, my kids, my spouse, am I going to eat that? Terrible. We agree. Like, oh my God, it's terrible. Then we take that kale plus green grapes plus olive oil plus ice plus water, whip it all up. Pass it around. Well, actually, that's pretty good, Doc. You know, I could drink this. How about your spouse and kids? Oh yeah, they'll drink this. Then we ask, does everybody here eat bacon? And if everyone did, we'd fry up bacon. If not, we would use ghee. We'd fry up bacon to the desired level of done, take the bacon out, the vets would chop it up. Then we'd take the chopped kale, you'd strip out the stems, but, you know, chopped leaves, Stir it in about 60, 90 seconds till it's wilted. Add the chopped bacon, pass it around. They're like, oh my God, that's delicious. And I say, okay, this is the basic recipe for vegetables. They became bitter when we went low fat. So you could use ghee, you could use bacon. And if it's still bitter, double the bacon and do it again. And our veterans are like, oh my God, this— I love it. This is good. We could do this. So they have to have that food experience. And the other thing that I want people to know is the people I was teaching and serving were people who were disabled. They were living on food stamps. They're living in rural Iowa, rural Iowa, which has been decimated, that no longer has grocery stores, no longer have grocery stores. They're often having to shop in the little, you know, QuikTrip kind of convenience stores. We would teach them, you know, to work with their neighbors who were hunters, beans and rice if they're vegetarians. And so they learned how to implement, you know, the Wahls Protocol, living on food stamps in rural Iowa.

It's amazing.

We had remarkable health transformations. I would have to make presentations to the VA leadership in our hospital and back to specialty medicine a couple times a year, showing that the medication use was going down, A1C values were going down, weight was going down, blood pressure was going down. Lives were being transformed. We were saving money. VA Central Office came out to see what I was doing, and they implemented several of the concepts that we were using in the Whole Health clinics. And then, you know, and we're growing. We'd gone from small groups to large groups to classes to large classes. And then, you know, I had research funded by the National MS Society that was getting ready to launch. And I made the decision to retire from the VA so I could have more time for my research and have a greater impact teaching clinicians in running in-person and now virtual events for the public.

I think it speaks so much to the power of using food as medicine, right? That you're making these changes in these communities by changing people's diets and getting them to eat 9 cups of vegetables per day, or getting them to eat kale, and like the phytonutrient chemicals and these vitamins and minerals that our cells need in order to function properly, that helps to then reverse these conditions.

You know, and another part of what we did is we had monthly classes, group classes. So they went through their initial intake as a group, then they came back every month as a group to talk about their changes. And then we'd have a mix of people who were newbies to the concept and more senior to the concept. The more senior folks would coach and mentor the newbies. So we had that deep social connection.

Mm-hmm.

And that was also another profound part of this. So we talked about food, we talked about connection, we talked about movement. And we never used any fancy testing. You know, the testing I did was a CBC, a lipid, a glucose. We eventually would add insulin. We did a vitamin D, homocysteine, a highly sensitive C-reactive protein.

That's it.

That's it. No fancy stuff. And the supplements I used, a multivitamin, multimineral, 2,000 units of vitamin D, a B complex.

Omega-3s, or no?

Yes, we got cod liver oil. And I use cod liver oil because I could get a little vitamin D in there as well.

Oh, smart.

So, yeah, that was very handy.

It's amazing. I mean, it's amazing the work that you've done and the impacts that you're having on so many lives.

So, you know, absolutely, in my clinics, We would see people coming back, and my vets would say, this is the first time I begin to feel better. I have more energy, more mental clarity. Their weight's coming down. Some of our patients said, you know, I went to see my kids. They went to pick me up at the airport. They didn't recognize me because, you know, I've lost weight. And gosh, Mom, you look 10 years younger. I did not recognize you.

Wow.

And we heard that again and again. And then the other couple fun observations, my veterans, and we had people from the Iraq, Afghanistan wars, young men who had put on, you know, 50, 100, 100-plus pounds from their deployment, had lost their jobs, they were really struggling. And they come back with a big smile like, oh my God, Doc, you didn't tell me, you didn't tell me I'd get my sex life back. You know, I have erections again. Like, oh my God. The men are so excited. And what is super interesting, the women are so excited, like, oh my God, I've lost 20 pounds without trying. I've lost 40 pounds without trying. And you can ask the women, and how's your love life? Well, actually, yeah, you know, I'm more interested in sex. And the men who are so excited that they're having sex, you look at them, well, they've lost 40 and 50 pounds too. So, you know, and this is a little bit of bias here, the men are interested in performance. And the women were more interested in appearance, but both were having the same effects.

Yes.

Both were having better libido, better sexual responsiveness, which is a great marker of health.

Yes.

And both were having their appetite controlled and getting back to a more normal weight for them.

Yeah, it impacts so many different things from a metabolic, I mean, it's basically the concept that you have of creating health and the way that it impacts so many different systems in the body, because we're one interconnected organism. Where when you're eating in an anti-inflammatory, mitochondria-promoting, gut-healing, you know, blood sugar balancing protocol, it has many different effects from—

And your GLP-1s optimize normally. You don't have to take a GLP-1 medication if we teach people how to improve their nutrition.

So profound, so profound. I'm so grateful for you to sit down with me today and to share the work that you're doing. Can you share with everyone where they can find you and benefit So everyone, please go to terrywahls.com, T-E-R-R-Y-W-A-H-L-S.com.

If you are a health clinician, we'd love to get you trained. We have a lot of health clinician resources. If you're a patient or a consumer, we have lots of free webinars, usually have one every month. And everyone should follow me on Instagram @drterrywahls. You get to see what I'm eating and doing. Sometimes you get to see me go from my sauna out to roll in the snow.

That's great.

That's super, super fun.

Dr. Terry Wahls, thank you so much for being here on the Being Brigid Show. If you know someone that could benefit from this interview, please send it to them. Leave a comment and review, and I will see you next time.