This is a YouTube video titled "The Root Cause of Multiple Sclerosis" created in May 2017 featuring Dr. Mark Hyman (Ask AI Mark) hosting a weekly Q&A session. The content includes a listener's question about managing multiple sclerosis without conventional medication, and Dr. Hyman provides detailed advice on functional medicine approaches, diet, lifestyle changes, and resources for autoimmune disease management.
Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And today we're covering some really important subjects, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. Now these illnesses can be devastating and I want to dive in and give you some hope and some strategies. First, let's listen to our question.
Hi, I just have a quick question. I was diagnosed with MS about 15 years ago, and I've never taken any of the medicine that they wanted me to take. And for the last year or two, I have weakness in my left leg when I walk, and I have eliminated dairy and grains and gluten, and I'm not really sure, like, what else I should do at this point. Like, I don't know if acupuncture would be beneficial. I was doing that. for a while, but it just kind of didn't really make it completely go away. But I'm just trying to figure out what I can do to completely restore my body back to perfect health. And any of your suggestions would be extremely helpful. Thank you.
The question is from somebody who didn't provide their name, but it was a voicemail. And this was the question. I was diagnosed with MS about 15 years ago. and I haven't taken any of the medication that my doctor wanted me to take. And for the last year or two, I've noticed more weakness in my left leg. And I've eliminated dairy, grains, gluten. I'm not sure what else I should do at this point. I'm not sure if I should try acupuncture. What can I do to restore my body? Well, MS is an autoimmune disease of your nerves, and it can affect your entire body. It can cause all sorts of havoc, including nerve damage, prevents you from walking, bladder problems, and it can be devastating. and even deadly. So let me tell you about my friend and colleague, Dr. Terri Wahls. She's a doctor who was diagnosed with MS and she used the power of functional medicine and food as medicine to manage and treat her MS. She actually used the hunter-gatherer diet, basically what they call paleo, to create her own food plan and went from using a wheelchair to actually participating in and completing an 18-mile bike tour. She literally couldn't even sit up by herself. She could barely work anymore. She was highly dysfunctional and she really changed her diet which led to a dramatic change in her biology and literally reversed her MS. And now she's lecturing all over the world. She has a TED Talk that's had millions of views. I'm going to provide a link to the TED Talk so you can see in some of her work. There really are a number of things that we do to fix MS. It's mostly looking for the cause. Hidden infections, viruses, molds, food sensitivities and allergies, gut problems, we call dysbiosis or imbalances in gut and leaky gut. And there's a lot of things you can do to optimize your diet. Basically a diet that's high in healthy plant foods, high in fat, low in sugar, no grains, no beans. And she outlines this in her book, the Wahls Protocol, which is a really great book. She came to Cleveland Clinic and did an amazing grand rounds for us and taught physicians, medical students, It was really quite astounding what she showed in her case. Now, other things are important, like vitamin D deficiency. Those have been linked to MS and other neurologic issues. Exercise is critical. Finding ways to reduce stress, getting great sleep, all these things are simple things you can do. And if you're really stuck, you need to go see a functional medicine doctor, have them help you figure it out. So nobody wants to hear their doctor say the words multiple sclerosis or any autoimmune disease for that matter. It's scary. and that's real. But it's also manageable and often fixable. I've seen literally hundreds of patients over the years with autoimmune disease that have been successfully reversed or dramatically improved using the power of functional medicine. So there's some great resources and tactics we talked about, but there's more. You can check out the written companion to this blog, so you can get all the resources you need to address through functional medicine, MS, and other autoimmune diseases.
