Good Life Project - Dr. Terry Wahls: When Hope Returns

Episode Date: April 24, 2017

The earliest signs of Terry Wahls' condition began to surface in med-school. An electric shock of unknown original seemed to randomly radiate across her face. But it would be many more years, deep into her practice as a physician, before additional symptoms would lead to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.Within three years, she found herself largely confined to a tilt-recline wheelchair and was told that her condition had progressed quickly. Function, once lost, she learned, would never come back. Being a doctor, she accepted this and began treatment, the only goal to try to slow the progression. Medication seemed to be failing her. But, in the background, she began to research related conditions and started to focus on the then maverick offshoot known as functional medicine.What happened over the next few years defied what the entire medical profession thought possible. Developing her own food-based protocol, she was able to not only stop the progression, but regain strength and function. And, along with that, came hope, energy and a sense of mission. In the intervening years, Wahls has now brought her ideas to the world through a viral TED talk, books, trainings, research and is now conducting clinical trials to bring her protocol to more people living with MS, as well as other neurodegenerative conditions.In this powerful conversation, we explore her journey, the decline in health and ability and acceptance that reversal or recovery was not possible. We dive into the detailed steps and research that uncovered a radically different approach and the deeply emotional moment hope returned and she realized there was a different way. We also talk about how hard it is to bring radical eyes to a very established profession, the difference between hope and false hope and how her experience has shaped the lives of her family as well.Terry's entire approach is detailed in her book, The Wahls Protocol and her new recipe book, The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life.+++ Today's Sponsors +++Today's show is supported by FreshBooks, cloud accounting software that makes it insanely easy for freelancers and professionals to get paid online, track expenses and do more of what you love. Get your 1-month free trial, no credit card required, at FreshBooks.com/goodlife (enter The Good Life Project in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section). Good Life Project is also supported by Camp GLP. $200 Early Bird Discount expires April 30th! Come spend 3 1/2 days with "your people," make amazing friendships, drop the facade, reignite your vitality and learn powerful strategies and breakthrough business ideas. Learn more now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And I realized that, yeah, I don't know what my future is, but neither does the physicians. No one knows because the conventional understanding of progressive MS is wrong. The conventional understanding is clearly wrong, that the functional medicine point of view is probably superior. Imagine receiving a diagnosis that basically said you have a condition that will see you progressively losing function in your body, in your muscles over a period of, we don't know, weeks, months, years, and you will never get it back. Well, this was the diagnosis that this week's guest, Dr. Terry Walls, got when she was told that she had MS and a form of MS that was progressive. She was told that as she lost

function, this would never come back. She started down the road of all of the traditional medical treatments because that was her training. She was in fact a physician and a professor and a researcher. But she started to get exposed to the world of functional medicine, which looks at nutrition and how it affects our body, our brain, and our muscles and our nerves. And especially what she began to research was the mitochondria, the, quote, power plants of the cell. And through her own approach to supplementation and then natural foods, she began to see a return of

function that she was told was not possible. She shared what she was doing and the entire protocol that she developed, which we now know as the WALLS Protocol, first in a TED Talk that kind of exploded a number of years back, then in a book entitled The WALLS Protocol, and more recently in a cookbook, which actually shares her recipes. And I wanted to sit down with her and really talk about her journey, her awakening to a different approach to disease, to conditions, and to treatment, and also about the idea, some of the bigger questions that go on around this, the idea of hope, the idea of false hope, and how she navigated sort of the cultural implications of what she was doing, the political and career implications of really

paving her own way. It's a deep, wide-ranging conversation. And for any who are sort of living with things in their lives where there have been pronouncements made about this is the state of things, there is no other way. I think it's an eye-opening conversation. So really excited to share this with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of

charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Iowa, fifth generation, raised on a farm. Raised on a farm, got up every morning at 530, milking cows. Every afternoon after school, came home, milked cows again. And if you weren't going

to be there, you had to negotiate with another family member to cover your chores. So we understood that your chores were your responsibility. Yeah. How many siblings do you have? I have two older brothers. So those are some serious negotiations, I imagine. Serious negotiations. And yeah. At some point, you developed an interest in... So growing up on a farm, of course, this is context that I have nothing for. I grew up right outside of New York City. But I know that as your sort of interest evolved, you developed an interest in art, in fine art. Yeah, yeah. You know, growing up, I really liked drawing, sketching, and I got into art.

I got into painting, clay, doing metals, and decided to go off and get my Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. Yeah. What was behind that? Was this, in your mind, this is your career path? Well, no, that was my career path. I thought I was going to do the arts. I also liked Da Vinci a lot and had a lot of respect for his engineering and appreciation for science. And so as I was finishing my Bachelor of Fine Arts, that was a big decision. Okay, am I going to go on and get a master's? And then I began to think like, I'm going to have to support myself. I think maybe I'll go pick up some science here and decide to go be a physician. At first, I was thinking of Frank Netter and doing medical illustration, but ended up really enjoying the clinical side.

And so I went off and did my internal medicine residency and did primary care practice for many, many years. Yeah. So fifth generation, I went and growing up on a farm. Did you feel like there was at any point an expectation that you would continue in that tradition? Oh, my goodness. Well, certainly my parents, particularly my father, wanted me to marry a local farm boy. And so, you know, if I was going to go off and get my BFA in Panty and come back and marry the local farm boy, that was going to be okay.

But, you know, initially his response to my decision to go to medical school was not very supportive. He eventually, after I became a physician, he did become quite supportive. And for a while, I was angry at my father for not being excited about my going off to medical school, being a physician, leaving the farm. But actually, I became much more sympathetic to his point of view in the brain drain that happens to rule America with the best and the brightest, feeling like there's nothing there for them and they all leave. And I think that is a loss for

rural America. It'd be much better if we could find a way for rural America to take the best and the brightest, help them be entrepreneurs in their local communities. And so I actually am very excited to see that in northeast Iowa, in my community of Elkater, there has been a development of an artist colony there with more people who are into pottery and painting and resurgence of the arts. And there's a lovely opera house that's been restored, and they have really very lovely theater productions as well.

And I had been into theater very much in high school and college as well. So I think that's a wonderful development in the interest I see in Iowa in the micro farms and the farmer-to-consumer CSAs. So I think there is less brain drain going on because of the entrepreneurial opportunities. And perhaps had that been happening, you know, years ago, as I was going through my BFA, I might have had a different calculus. But as it turned out, you know, this is exactly how it needed to happen. So I could have my transformative experience with the MS and then with my recovery journey. Yeah. I'm curious, we could go down a whole tangent there, but I want to sort of pull

this back. I've had the opportunity to sit down with so many people who've entered the field of science engineering, who also have a strong interest and have developed a lot of a strong skill set in arts and fine arts. And I'm always curious about that overlap. Yeah, you know, I think many of my colleagues in medical school, you know, came through with their chemistry or engineering degrees or physiology degrees. And so basic science was, you know, pretty straightforward because they had taken a lot of those courses already. For me, I'd taken the minimum requirement of science,

aced all those courses, but my background was in the arts. So basic science was a whole lot more work for me. But it was also very clear when we entered the clinical world, I had a different point of view. I was much more interested in the narrative, the patient narrative. And I had probably, from my point of view, a better sense of observation, the details on the physical exam, the subtleties, visual orientation was so much stronger for me than my colleagues. Yeah. So it's like you see more of what's in front of you. It's almost like you have more data points to bring into the diagnosis. I had more data points. Yeah. More data points. I mean, they were maybe better with the laboratory and the physiology, but in terms of the story of the illness, I had way more data points. The story of the physical exam, way more data points. The

story of the skin exams and what was going on, really looking at the person, more data points. Yeah. And when you're working in a profession where, I don't know what the term is in the medical profession, I know in the business world, when you're doing performance, it's garbage in, garbage out. But in any diagnostic thing where the quality of what goes into the equation has got to have a massive impact on what comes out of it. Well, there's a big temptation to rely a lot on laboratory testing, imaging, and use that to make your diagnosis. I have much more appreciation for the critical role of the patient's story to make the diagnosis. And that we don't need near as many laboratory points. story and the person and their experience of their health, vitality, fatigue, cognitive performance

is a much more sensitive indicator of how well their physiology is working than any blood test I'm going to have. It does seem like that subtle difference could lead to extraordinary changes in both diagnosis and prescription and in outcomes. Yeah. You know, one of the things I learned during my training from Professor Bill Bean, he taught me that whenever you have your patient encounter, at the end of the encounter, ask the person, what did they learn and what are they going to do? Because that's the most important thing that you're going to know is, are you effective at teaching the concept and what they're going to do? Because if what they're going to know is, are you effective at teaching the concept and what they're going to do? Because if what they're going to do doesn't match what you told them to do, you have to start

over and work with them because they're the ones who's going to decide to take the pills that you prescribe. And if they're not going to, you might as well know that before they walk out of your office. And so those two questions taught me an immense amount because as I would ask my patients what they learned, I learned how to speak in plain English so people could understand. And then as I asked, what are you going to do? I learned that they're the ones who decide. And I could make recommendations. They decide. And when I learned to honor that, I became a much, much more effective physician.

Is that the norm in medicine? Because that hasn't been my experience. It seems like almost the exact opposite. Well, if you worked with me, we taught students to do that. But very few students then work with that. Yeah, I love that. And what's so interesting about that also is that it places the burden of education on the physician. And I guess compliance has got to be one of the biggest challenges when you're working with patients. And rather than saying, hey, listen, I can tell you everything.

I want to be a little more radical. Compliance implies that I'm the one who tells you what to do. But I don't think that's really my approach is I inspire people. I tell them the story. We help understand how their lifetime of dietary choices, their lifetime physical exam choices, their lifetime of environmental exposures created their health problem. And then we talk about what are the most powerful next steps. So identify what I think the most powerful next steps are. And then I'm asking like, okay, so what are we going to work on? And so it's a much more mutual collaborative decision where the person goes. And it might be that the person says, you know what, I can't do that diet. It's too hard.

And then I make some suggestions about who else I could work with, or that maybe this is simply not the right time in their life. But the person has to be ready for action. And if they aren't, then I invite them to come back when they are. Yeah, that's a big thing. So you enter the practice, you're building a private practice. What were you, were you specializing early on? Yeah. So I was a primary care doc in internal medicine and I was at the Marshfield Clinic. I did that many years up there in Wisconsin. It was just basic primary care, you know, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, whatever infections come up and other complaints that I would evaluate and then perhaps refer on to specialists.

I loved Marshfield. I loved Wisconsin. But as my children were getting a little bit older, I decided that I wanted to have a different environment for them. And that led to reaching out to some of my university contacts and going back to the University of Iowa and getting back into a more academic center where I was teaching residents and medical students. So I really loved that teaching aspect. Yeah.

At some point along the way, you start to experience some physical challenges. Yeah. You know, in retrospect, it was during medical school that this all began. So I'd have these electrical pains in my left temporal region or my right temporal region. When it first began, it was just a little twinge of discomfort, more likely after severe stress, but this would get to be more intense, more troublesome over the years, eventually very electrical. Like a headache type? What's that?

Like a cattle prod got stuck on my forehead, and it was just a jolt of sharp electrical pain. Last seen just for a second. They would come more frequently over a period of a week to six weeks. It would get to be so intense. I'd sort of have this involuntary grimace. I saw a neurologist, got worked up, and they called it occipital neuralgia, gave me some medications. I got a drug rash,

tried some other medications, didn't work. And so I realized, I just got to put up with this. I could tell that stress made it more likely for those things to happen. But it began during medical school. And it's been progressive ever since. Then I had an episode of visual dimming and became essentially blind in my left eye when I was roller skiing on a hot August day after work. Again, big workup, no clear explanation. They just said, don't train in hot weather. So it's like overexertion or something. Overexertion and heat made it worse. If I trained really, really hard, so my heart rate went up, the blood flow to my retina didn't compensate, and my left eye would become blind. And if I would cool down, my vision would come back about eight hours later.

So I did learn to not work out or race on a hot day, and I quit doing races even during the winter. If I raced during the winter, I'd become blind in my left eye. So I just did skiing for fun and that seemed to work out. I also learned I couldn't do saunas or hot tubs anymore because I'd become blind in my left eye. So it was even just environmental heat that would... Environmental heat. Now in retrospect, I certainly had made enough diagnoses with the facial pain and now visual dimming several years later that you could have made the diagnosis of probable MS at that point. I am immensely grateful that my neurologist did not do that because I would not have had my two kids. And so, you know, fortunately for me…

Meaning you would have chosen not to because of the diagnosis. Yeah, because I would have been fearful of the fact I was going to be at risk of becoming disabled. I wouldn't want to take on that responsibility. So, you know, God was kind. I didn't get told that. So I got to have my two kids. Had a continued worsening of my pain. I went in to see neurology again. They this time sent me to the pain clinic. I got some injections and was placed on a seizure medication that helped control the pain. I did that and would intermittently have to go off to the pain clinic. And the severity of these painful episodes continued to grow over time. Meanwhile, you're practicing medicine at

the same time. I'm practicing medicine. I have a very successful practice. I have some leadership positions at the clinic because I work hard, I have high ambitions, and everything seems to be going well. And then I've made the decision that I want to go back to the university and I come to the University of Iowa. And during that transition,

I develop a new problem with weakness of my left leg, which, you know, I stoically ignore for a short period, but it gets to be a problem. I'm stumbling. And I finally go see physicians, get evaluated with the MRIs of my brain, my spinal cord, spinal tap, and everything comes back consistent with multiple sclerosis. Did you have in the back of your mind at that time, was that an option? Were you thinking, well, this could be? No, just enough. It was not. I mean, in retrospect, it should have been.

But, you know, maybe I was in denial. You know, I was focused on my career and what I was doing. And so, you know, here I've just moved. I had this diagnosis. I start reading the literature. You know, like many physicians, we go to PubMed. We start reading about our diagnosis. And oh my goodness, that was so jarring to be reading that and realizing like, okay,

I have a disease that generally is progressive, is at a high rate of causing disability due to severe fatigue within 10 years so that you can't work. And that a third of folks within 10 years will have some sort of gait disability, needing a cane, walker, wheelchair. So I'm just getting more and more agitated, more upset. And my wife says, you know, honey, you got to stop reading this. It's just getting you upset. Let's find the best MS center here in the Midwest. We'll go there and let them take care of you. And so I do some research and decide that the Cleveland Clinic is the best center doing research. And so I start going there. They agree that it's MS. And I start my disease modifying drugs. And I give them the control

for all of my treatment decisions. And that is the protocol. You know, that's what you should do. And I'm an academic doc. I believe in the best medicine, the newest technology. I'm treating my disease aggressively, so I'm doing everything as correctly as possible. But of course, you know, the disease progresses. Every time I go back to see the MS docs, yeah, I'm a little worse. that my physician suggests that I get a tilt-reclined wheelchair, and that I take mitoxantrone because my disease is now classified as secondary progressive MS.

And what does that mean? That means there's no more spontaneous improvements that you can expect. That functions once lost will be gone forever. You can try taking this chemotherapy-like drug, mitoxantrone, to slow that decline. But then the goal now is to slow the speed of decline. Well, you know, the good news about that was that now that I understood how bad things were going to be, I thought, well, I might as well go back to reading the scientific papers. So I go back to logging on PubMed, and I spend some time every week trying to read about the newest drugs in the mouse models. You know, and then it occurs

to me that, well, that's sort of senseless. I can't get any of those drugs. And so I begin to read, start looking for drugs that are being used off-label. And that's pretty hard to search for. And then I have a really big aha moment, like, well, what if I start reading about other, you know, all the brain neurodegeneration, brain shrinkage kind of diseases, since in progressive MS, the brain is shrinking. So I'm reading about Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and Huntington's and ALS. And I began to look for articles about neuroprotection, using vitamins and supplements for these diseases. And so I see that mitochondria are a big part of why the brain shrinks in all these other diseases. So I

think, well, maybe that's part of what's going on with MS. Right. And mitochondria, sort of in layman's terms, we all learned the power plant of the cell. Yeah. Back in, I think, ninth grade biology, we take that class. So about a billion and a half years ago, when all of life here was just single cell organisms, we started, the cyanobactors started making oxygen with photosynthesis. And over about 500 million years, there was too much oxygen in the air. That led to an oxygen crisis, killed off about 95% of all life. But there were a few of these ancient bacteria that had an interesting mutation that allowed for them to use the oxygen more effectively in their biochemistry. And they were really thriving. They got engulfed by a bigger bacteria. And this new organism had these

tiny early prototype mitochondria. And they thrived, and they were using the oxygen now very efficiently to run the chemistry of their life. And these organisms would evolve into animals, and of course, eventually into us. And these ancient mitochondria are really ancient, ancient bacteria that help us run the chemistry of life more efficiently, help us get more energy out of the food that we eat. And the cells in our body that are really energy-intensive users, like your brain, like our retina, because that's a movie theater, and our heart, will have like 10,000 mitochondria per cell. So how efficient that mitochondria is really determines how effective and healthy that cell is in your brain,

in your retina, in your heart. So as I was learning about these vitamins and supplements, I decided that I would convert these animal model doses into human doses, and I began experimenting on myself. So, and of one. And of one. And I talked with my primary care doc. She checked to make sure that these vitamins and nutrients are going to be okay against my other med list. And I began. And I did it for six months. Nothing happened. Right. And you're still taking the pharmaceuticals. Yeah, I'm still taking the pharmaceutical drugs. Because that's the protocol.

And that's the stuff I believe in. Right. You know, and at that time, I had thought that all those people spending money on vitamins and supplements and special diets, you know, that was, you know, wasted money. Right. And that's, and your experience is validating it. Yeah. And so after six months, I'm like, ah, phooey on this.

So I quit my supplements and i can't get out of bed i'm just like flat out even more exhausted you know the third day my wife jackie comes in and says you know honey i've got to take these again and i take them and so the next day i can get up and go to work i thought wow that's sort of interesting so you know about a month later i do the same thing. I stop my supplement cocktail. I'm completely exhausted. Three days later, I take them again. I can get up and go to work. So I'm exhilarated. Like, okay, they may not be curing me, but they're clearly doing something. And so my conclusion is they are slowing the speed of my decline. And I'm also energized that I am learning stuff that my

neurologist and my primary care doc aren't telling me about. So that actually is very exciting. And the other thing that's really exciting about this is I get that what I do is really, really important. I've taken some of the control back from my physicians, back to me, some of the responsibility that this is going to be up to me to read and figure out as much as I can, not to recover, because I totally have accepted that recovery is not going to be possible. I'm doing all this stuff to slow my decline and try and maintain the little bits of function that I have, you know, as long as I can. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot?

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Right. Physically, how were you when you were on the job at that moment? Well, in 2003, 2004, I'm in the wheelchair, and that certainly has helped my energy. I have a lot of mental clarity, so that's not a problem. But things are gradually getting worse. By 2007, it's the struggle to walk 10 feet with two walking sticks. I have severe fatigue by 10 in the morning and I'm beginning to have some brain fog. In July, my chief of staff, you know, and this is really quite understandable. He calls me in to tell me he's reassigning me to the traumatic brain injury

clinic and I won't have residents with me. So I'll be seeing patients directly as part of a multidisciplinary team with a physical med doc, a neuropsychologist, social worker, et cetera. And I'll do that in about six and a half months. You'll have me start that at the end of January. So I come home, and I'm telling my wife about this, and she goes, you can't do that job. And I said, yeah, it's unlikely that I can, but here's how this has to play out. Come January, when clinic starts, I go to that clinic, and either I can do the job or I can't. And if I physically can't, then I have to apply for disability, and we'll see what happens.

Now, she and I both know that getting disability as a physician is extremely difficult because as a primary care doc, most of what I'm doing is a cognitive task. And so traditionally, it's been very hard for physicians to get disability for MS. So, you know, that July was a pretty tough month. I was feeling down, somewhat depressed that, okay, it's finally going to come to pass. And I'm only 52, so I'm very young. And zooming the lens out, you also have two kids. What's going on in your, or in their experience? So my kids' ages, let's see, would have been 11 and 8.

And so they watch me in the wheelchair, having to deal with having a disabled mom, and that's tough for them. By 2007, my son's probably 14. My daughter is 11. These are not easy ages for my kids to see all this going on. This is tough. But I'm also mindful that, okay, my kids are watching. I'm going to stay positive. I'm not going my kids are watching. I'm going to stay positive. I'm

not going to model giving up. I'm going to model resilience. Privately, away from the kids, you know, my wife and I are very concerned about what does the future hold for us. So where do you go from there? Well, you know, God works in mysterious ways. So this is August. In September, when I'm reviewing the Institutional Review Board research protocols, which I did every month, the protocol that I was assigned was one by Dr. Rich Shields that looked at electrosimulation of muscles in the setting of acute traumatic spinal cord injury. And he wanted to extend the study because the subjects didn't want to stop. So I read through the protocol.

We certainly recommended approval, but it got me very curious about eSTEM. So I go to PubMed, do a search. There's 212 articles. So most of them were about athletes. There were a couple about stroke. For people who had stroke 5 to 10 years earlier, used eSTEM, and it helped them get some of their function back. And a couple about cerebral palsy.

So I convinced my physical therapist to let me have some sessions. And he wasn't sure. He knew that he could help me grow a muscle. He didn't know if my brain could talk to the new muscle, and that if my brain couldn't talk to the new muscles that we could grow, then it would be like putting ankle weights on. And it'd be making everything a whole lot worse. But we started down that path.

And it was painful. But I felt great after each session, probably from the endorphins. And so after a couple weeks in clinic, he got me a home device. And I started at home. Now, when I was doing this at home, I am so weak. This is my exercise program. I'm laying on the back. I have my electrodes on my belly.

I lift my head and shoulders. I touch my knees. Count to 10 while I'm getting zapped, and then I go back down. And I can do like three to five curls, and then I'm exhausted. And now I'm just laying there sucking in my gut while I'm zapping. And then I move the electrodes. I put them on my back and I get on my hands and knees. And I lift one arm up off the floor and the opposite leg off the floor. And I can only hold them up for a second or two and they come back down. And I can do that three times, maybe five times. That was the depth

of the workout that I was doing in the beginning. And now at this very same month that I discover the eSTEM, I discover the Institute for Functional Medicine. And they have a course on neuroprotection that I order. And so it's about, oh, I think 20 hours of lectures with a PowerPoint and synchronized audio and a big notebook of cases. So I get that and I'm reading through that. And so I have a longer list of things I can take for my mitochondria and a little deeper understanding of some options for protecting my brain. So I'm adding the E-STEM. And as a former athlete, this made a lot of sense to me. I'm adding the vitamins and supplements for my mitochondria. It made a lot of sense to me. Right. And for those who don't know, the world of functional medicine really looks at

lifestyle and with a really strong focus on nutrition as almost like the functional equivalent of medicine. Absolutely. What they really focused on, which resonated deeply with me, was how does the environment, that is your diet, your lifestyle, sleep, physical activity, stress, interact with your genetic efficiency of your enzymes, so my genes, to create the diseases that I have. So that paradigm of understanding how diseases develop resonated. But they have a very heavy emphasis on supplements, and they had a diet. You know, and I should probably back up to tell you a little bit about my foray into the paleo diet world.

Because in 2002, I'm still walking around, my Cleveland Clinic doctors had mentioned the work of Ashton Embry and Lauren Cordain, which introduced me to the paleo diet movement. So I read their books, their papers, and decided that there was a scientific rationale. So after 20 years of being a vegetarian, a lot of prayer, a lot of meditation, I went back to eating meat. I'd given up all grain, all legumes, all dairy. So huge, huge dietary change for me. And of course, it didn't really make a miraculous change. Next year, I needed the wheelchair. But I'd stayed with the paleo diet because at that time, it was something that I could be doing to fight the MS. And I thought, well, at least I'm doing something. You know, and then I had started adding the vitamins and supplements a couple years later in 2004.

So now we fast forward back to 2007. I have a bigger list of supplements. I think there are about 17 that I'm taking. I'm still doing the paleo diet. I'm doing electricity with my exercises. Then in November, I have another big aha moment. And it's like, well, you know, maybe I should take this list of nutrients and reorganize my paleo diet to stress the foods that would cover those nutrients. Yeah, first I go to some dieticians. They can't really help.

I go to the library. They can't really help. So then I go to the University of Google and I find the Linus Pauling Micronutrient Center and use that to help organize what foods I should be stressing. So this new way of eating begins on December 26th. And the quest being, can I move from supplements to getting sort of an analogous nutrient density from actual food? From actual food. Right.

Now, and I'll admit, I didn't take away the supplements, but I knew I should pay more attention to the food and get these nutrients in the food. So that took about two months worth of research to get my food list organized. And I remember very clearly going to our local food co-op on December 26th with my list of foods we're going to start eating, shopping, and we got those and we started eating. Actually, I sent my wife to go get this food because I couldn't walk around that much yet. So she brought it, and we started. And then a month later, I'm starting in the traumatic brain injury clinic.

And the first week, I'm just observing what my partners are doing, so I'm not really having to get up and do anything. So it's the second week that now I'm going to have to get up and start examining folks, and I could do it. So I come back home at the end of that first day, and I go, you know, Jack, I saw the patient stay, and I wasn't too tired at the end of the day. Explain why that is such a profound moment. Well, you know, in July, I was completely exhausted by 10 in the morning. And I had, the way I could work was that I had these two zero-gravity chairs, one that I used at the VI for seeing patients. So I would be in the staffing area in my zero-gravity chair, which is basically a fancy

recliner with my knees higher than my nose. So none of my muscles have to hold me up. Gravity just holds me there. And so I'd staff residents. I wouldn't have to get up and go examine patients. I could just staff residents, occasionally see someone, but it doesn't require a lot of physical effort on my part. I had another chair like that at home. And so going to a clinic where I'm still going to my wheelchair to the exam room, but I'm standing up during the exam and sitting back down. So this is a lot more physical activity. And in July, I couldn't conceive that I could possibly do that for the day.

I just knew that I wouldn't have that kind of strength. So when in January, that first clinic, and they were half-day clinics, so I went and examined several folks, you know, stood up, did the exam, sat back down, did my notes, and did that for all the patients in the afternoon. And I was not exhausted. So that was quite, quite remarkable.

And then a couple months later, so just two months into the snow wave eating, I am walking to clinic with a cane. Stunning. And by six months, I am doing these clinics without a cane. And I begin taking short walks in the neighborhood, like, you know, just around the block with a cane. But really quite remarkable. I would also make the observation that when you have a progressive illness for which there is no cure, you go through, at least for me, anger, and I was angry at the wrong people, of course, and crabby and irritable, and behave in ways that I should not have.

And then you go finally into acceptance. And when you hit acceptance with an uncurable disease, for me, it was a reflection that I don't know what the future is going to bring. I'm going to let go of that. I'll just take each day as it comes. And so even though I was recovering function, quite remarkably, I was still in the, I don't know what the future is going to bring. I'll just take each day as it comes. So I didn't know what this meant that I could walk around. So for you, this wasn't like, oh my God, everything's changing. It was just like, I know this day. I know this day.

I feel differently. This day is a good day. And I'm not going to take tomorrow for granted because I don't know. We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. I know that, at least for the moment, I'm not applying for medical disability. Right. And I mean, the fundamental assumption of your diagnosis also has now been, at least on a day-to-day basis, refuted, which is that once you lose function... Well, I was not at that point yet. I was still at like, okay, this day worked out.

Got it. I got up the next day, this day worked out. And that next spring, I was beginning to think about biking. This is still a very emotional thing to talk about. Jackie and I had biked a lot. We loved biking. We loved doing road biking, mountain biking, biking with our kids. And it was very painful to give that up.

It had been probably five years, maybe six years since I'd biked. But I remember asking Jack, do you think I could bike again? He said, well, you know, if things keep going well, maybe in the fall. And that was a very exciting possibility. But two weeks later, it was Mother's Day. It's a beautiful, beautiful day. And I decided that I was going to go biking. So I go out to the garage. I did not tell my family that I'd make this decision, by the way. So I just went out to the garage.

My son had been using my bike, and he's 6'5". So I was adjusting the seat, putting the seat down. I got his bike helmet, and I put it on. And my daughter heard me out in the garage. So she comes out, you know, she's very upset and concerned. So she's calling for the family to come out. And so everybody comes out and we have an emergency family meeting about the fact that mom wants to go biking. And the kids are very upset, very fearful that I'll fall and something terrible will happen. But Jack decides that maybe I could do this. So we get situated. I'm on my bike. I'm on the curb. My daughter's going to run, jog along the side on the right. Zach, my son, will jog along the side on the left, and she'll follow.

So she's watching for traffic, making sure everything's clear, and we get the signal that I can try. And, you know, I push off, and I pedal, and I can make it. I pedal around the block. My kids are crying. Wife's crying. I'm crying. And that is the day that hope came back. Because at that moment, I understood that something had fundamentally changed. That that premise that functions once lost are gone forever was wrong. Because I could now bike. And that was a day that felt very miraculous. It still feels miraculous. You can tell when I talk about it.

I get very emotional because that's the day that I moved away from that acceptance where you just take one day at a time. You don't know what your future is. And I realized that, yeah, I don't know what my future is, but neither does the physicians. No one knows because the conventional understanding of progressive MS is wrong. The conventional understanding is clearly wrong, that the functional medicine point of view is probably superior and that who knows what level of functioning might be possible.

And so I was clear. It's a big watershed moment. I am absolutely changed as a person. I'm much more confident in talking to my, and I've been talking to my patients in the traumatic brain injury clinic all along about the power of diet and lifestyle to recover from traumatic brain injury. And I was getting them on a paleo diet and on B vitamins and fish oil. We were seeing great results in my traumatic brain injury clinic. But now I became much more comfortable advocating for that in my clinics and in my primary care clinic. And I was a new person, a bit of a zealot after that. So that was a very pivotal change when I moved away from that acceptance, fatalistic attitude. That's pretty common when you have a progressive disease that is going to take you into a terrible place. becomes real. When hope comes back. Regardless of what you're moving through in your life,

if it's gone away, when that comes back, it's like, not a guarantee, but just when the flicker turns back on. Yeah, you know, and when I was doing everything that I'd done before then, I mean, I was still doing it in an effort to try and keep my function good as long as possible because of my obligations to my family.

You know, I was a big financial breadwinner for the family, and I knew I couldn't beat my disease, so I was just doing everything that I could. But on that day, I understood that maybe I could beat my disease. Maybe I could. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk.

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Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. You becoming a zealot. Yeah. Because this is now not just personal. Like you said, you're already sharing bits and pieces of this with your patients and with the people who are going through research that you're involved in. But this now becomes so much bigger than you. Yeah. After that, and I'm not sure how long after that, I call on our local organic grocer, and I pitch the idea of doing a talk about how changing my diet reduced my MS symptoms. And their response is, well, we're all about cooking classes. We've not done anything like

this before. But we have a lovely conversation. She goes, well, what the heck, we'll give it a try. So they scheduled the class and had to move the location three times because of the demand in the size of the class. And so that was very popular. And so I started lecturing for the co-op and then for the community college. And so regionally, I was doing more and more lectures. And then I had the chance to do a TEDx. I gave that talk. And that talk went viral.

And within the year, it had 500,000 views. I think it's now up to about 2.8 million views. And then that led to the book deal. I must say, at that time, between the TED Talk and the book deal, there were people at the university, at the VA, who were not very happy with me. I want to go there, because this is not conventional. This is not conventional. People were concerned that I was creating false hope. So I worked with people at the U to be very careful about that I was creating false hope. So I worked with people at the U to be very careful about that I was describing my experience. I was describing the rationale for how I created my

program. I invited people to make these changes to improve the health of their cells, and that their cells might improve their organs, might improve their health. So I tried to be very careful in how I would talk about this. People were sort of nervous. I certainly got a fair amount of criticism. But I also felt morally just absolutely obligated because I needed to be very transparent that this was my experience, that I was doing research or I wanted to be doing research in these areas.

But people could decide, are vegetables safe enough that I could do the same thing that Walls did while she's doing the science to figure it out? Because if I don't, with my progressive illness, I'm going to be bedridden and demented before we get the double-blind randomized controlled trials to answer the question. And beets and kale are just not that toxic. You know, and removing gluten and dairy and replacing them with beets and kale is a pretty safe thing to do. A lot of work. It's hard.

It's certainly not easy. And I wanted the public to be able to make their own informed decisions. So I had this conversation with many physicians and many academic docs who disagreed with my point of view. But, you know, that felt like the moral imperative. And so that was the path that I chose. Yeah. And you eventually took what you were doing and developed it into a protocol that was essentially the idea was, let's take it out of the clinic and let's create something that's safe and that people can ease their way into to do their own experiments, their own ends of one. The ends of one.

And that's what I invite in my clinic. I say, okay, just don't see this as a permanent change. Do it first as a 100-day commitment at 100%. And then at the end of your 100 days, you decide, is this worth continuing or not? That's easier for people to get their heads around. So there's what I was doing in the clinic, but I also felt a moral imperative to make it available to the greater public because I had this crazy idea. I want to create an epidemic of health. So I write the book and I create a program so people can ease their way into this, working with their family and their personal

physician. And I explained how to do it, the rationale, and some guidance for physicians who want to do this as well. And it worked out pretty well because we created enough buzz that this really begins to change practice and expectations. You know, and I'm sure that TED Talk with 2 million views, there were a lot of physicians that had to deal with patients coming in and saying, well, what about my diet? What about that doctor who got out of the wheelchair changing her diet? Does diet matter?

You know, a lot of physicians would end up having to say, you know, I don't know. Shameful. Shameful that physicians would have to say, I don't know if diet matters. But fortunately, I think more and more physicians are beginning to realize that, well, of course diet matters, and the quality of the diet matters. And of course, replacing sugar and white flour with vegetables is a healthier diet. Yeah. And it seems like now, since then, there now is, you know, it's almost, I don't know if I would call it mainstream, but it seems like- Getting closer. It's getting a lot closer, and it's getting a lot more accepted. And there is, you know, it's almost, I don't know if I would call it mainstream,

but it seems like- Getting closer. It's getting a lot closer and it's getting a lot more accepted. And there's, you know, the Cleveland Clinic, what you mentioned earlier, now actually has, you know, a huge focus on functional medicine. It's becoming much more accepted. Yeah. You know, and I was at the Cleveland Clinic, I gave them grand rounds. I talked about the research that we're doing. So I told my story, I explained the scientific rationale for why I created the protocol the way I did. And then I talked about our research, we reviewed a couple of published papers, and then I showed them the

videos before and after of some of our test subjects, because we videoed their walking, and it's really quite dramatic. And we had some folks who went from cane and walker to jogging. And so that's very, very compelling. Now, where are you at right now? Well, you know, because our research was published, that made it much easier for me to write grants. And so one of the grants we wrote to the MS Society pitched the idea of comparing the Swank diet and the Wallace diet, so a low saturated fat diet that's popular in the MS community by Dr. Swank and my diet. And we're able to use our preliminary data to explain,

A, that we can do this, and B, that the preliminary data looks very exciting. And this time they funded us. So they gave us over a million dollars. We've got that study underway. I believe we've recruited 25 folks so far. Our plan is to recruit 100. And we'll probably be recruiting another two years to get everyone in. It'll be another three years to have the whole study completed, analyzed, and written up. That's incredibly exciting. And I'm working on some other grants. Another grant that I'm working on has to do with ALS because anecdotally, we've had some great success with stabilizing ALS and getting that reversed. So I'm working

with our ALS team at the University of Iowa to create a protocol and a grant that'll be going in. I'm immensely optimistic because of the speed of change I see in the public and the speed of change I see in the medical community. And, you know, the speed of change I see at the University of Iowa. At first, I was an eccentric oddity that they didn't quite know what to make of. And then as I started doing the research, they had more respect. And then when our data came out that was so remarkably positive, that got noticed. And then when philanthropic donors started cold calling the university to give money into my research lab, then the dean of the medical school calls me up,

and then I have a meeting with the dean, and they say, okay, what's going on? What all are you doing? And so they're very excited. And so now the university, remember, it was not so long ago that they were calling me and questioning my decision to be so public about what I'm doing because I might be creating false hope. Now the university position is, we wish our other scientists would do what you're doing, to create a public space, to talk about the research publicly, and to explain all of that, to have a social media presence,

to have a book deal, to be doing TEDx talks, to be so visible about your work. Because philanthropic support lets us do the really innovative stuff to get the pilot data that you could do then back to the NIH. So now I've gone from, you know, oddity to brilliant innovator. It always works that way, right? It has been a very, very interesting journey. Yeah. And physically, as we sit here today, what's going on with you?

Well, I'm doing really well. I had a period of pretty intense back pain that was annoying. I ended up with back surgery last year. I'll confess it takes a little bit longer to recover from that at age 61 than at age 30. But right now I'm feeling really great. I can take my dogs for walks and hikes again. So I'm back to my usual workout. I decided to spend more of my time doing research. So I actually resigned from the VA last December. So I'm working halftime at the university for research. I've been promoting my recent book, and I'm launching a private practice that will be opening up in June. So actually, you know, I'm incredibly excited.

Just so many wonderful, wonderful things are happening for me. And just a little bit of energy behind all of that. You're sitting there holding like your second book, third book, right? Which by the way, and we'll link to in the show notes in it, but you know, Terry's got this, like I was looking through a beautiful cookbook that kind of like talks about all these, you know, all the stuff that you talk about and how to actually make it integrate into your daily life. I want to start to come full circle. We're coming up on an hour now. When you were sharing the moment when hope came back on and your experience with your family and your two kids, it's clear that family is so important to you. And it's clear that you

have such a fierce connection with your wife and with your kids. Your son was vaulted into the limelight a couple of years back too. Can we talk a little bit about that? Sure, sure. So Zach was asked to testify in front of the Iowa Judicial Committee when they were considering an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to ban gay marriage. So he went down and spoke for three minutes about his life being no different than anyone else, and he had been raised by two moms. A very eloquent speech that was recorded without his knowledge. They put it up, and he had a million views,

probably in about one week. And so suddenly he was on national TV, and he was doing speaks around the country and around the world. He dropped out of the university. He said, Zach, you've got to drop out. Don't ruin your grade point. Please withdraw around the world. He dropped out of the university. I said, Zach, you got to drop out. Don't ruin your grade point. Please withdraw from the university. So he did withdraw. Spent a year, I think a year and a half, speaking around the country. But then he did get back in school. He graduated. He created a nonprofit, Scouts for Equality, to help the Boy Scouts be more comfortable about allowing gay youth

and gay leaders into the Boy Scouts. He's now going to Princeton, working on a master's in something that's like public policy. And I know there are many, many people that are hoping he'll get into politics. We'll have to wait and see. He clearly loves to lead. He likes to change. He and his sister created something called the Woman Cards. So they've been lots of fun watching him develop and bringing his sister along as well. Yeah. I wonder if, do you have a sense that them participating in your story, your journey and seeing- Oh, absolutely. Has lit this fire within them to sort of rise up and advocate.

I think it's certainly helped them be more successful adults because we had a lot of conversations. I remember my daughter, I think she was 10, complained bitterly about having to do the laundry, that none of her friends knew anything about laundry soap. It's just life's not fair. I shouldn't have to do this. And I'm like, yep, yep, life's not fair.

You shouldn't have to do it. Life's not fair. I shouldn't have MS. I shouldn And I'm like, yep, yep, life's not fair. You shouldn't have to do it. Life's not fair. I shouldn't have MS. I shouldn't be worrying about whether or not I can continue to work. But it's not fair. You have to do the laundry. And I have to carry on the best I can. And then her response was, mom, I think you are glad you have MS so you can lecture me

about life not being fair. And so she's horrified that I tell that story now. But it's typical of what any 10-year-old would have said. But the fact that we're able to talk about, yep, life's we say, but they sure watch what we do and they absorb and internalize what we do. And so they saw this incredible resilience, this incredible, and I talked a lot about how we always have a choice. When the stuff happens in your life, between that moment when stuff happens and what you do, there's a space and you make a decision, a choice. And the choices we make define our character. So do you want to make choices that are inspiring

to others? Or do you want to make choices that are things that you'd be ashamed of later? Yeah, so powerful. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Well, a meaningful life. I've learned from our patients that if people understand their purpose, their mission, and we are giving back to a greater community in some way, that that person has far more resilience for all the troubles that they may encounter. And for me, when I was talking to the medical students, helping them learn how to deal with patients who had progressive incurable diseases,

that was the beginning of my giving back to the greater society. And in many ways, I look back to that moment as the beginning of my healing journey. It was a couple of years later that I began to experiment with vitamins and supplements and began to take charge of my life. But I think whenever we can figure out how to claim the gift in our circumstances, whatever they are, and still give back to society in spite of that gift, or perhaps because of that gift, then you have a very meaningful life.

And it will be meaningful even if I have something terrible with cancer that's going to kill me. It will be meaningful if I have ALS and I'm going to die from a progressive illness. Or it will be meaningful if I have an autoimmune disease that I can defeat because I learned how to use diet and lifestyle. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life. Take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person

listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much, as always, for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-nest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.