Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - How Your Mitochondria Play A Role In Autoimmunity - With Dr. Terry Wahls

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep124/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about autoimmunity and how the cellular defense response plays a role in chronic conditions.  Dr. Terry Wahls is a professor at the University of Iowa where she conducts clinical trials testing the efficacy of diet lifestyle to treat multiple sclerosis and is the author of The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles. Pick up a one-page handout for the Wahls™ Diet at https://terrywahls.com/diet/ Please see our medical disclaimer.

You can't exercise your way out of a terrible diet. The food we eat will ultimately become the cells that I have. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here, and I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring me. you Dr. Terry Wals. So why I wanted to bring Dr. Wals on is I really wanted to leave an episode for you all on autoimmunity. And if there is a pioneer in the autoimmune movement, it is Dr. Wals. So if you are

not familiar with her book, with her own journey with an autoimmune condition, I want to bring you up to speed because she literally changed the way we looked. at approaching multiple autoimmune conditions. Her specific one is MS. And you will hear her story in the beginning of how she was really able to mitigate her MS symptoms through diet primarily and supplementation. You'll hear her talk about that.

But where this conversation really goes and why I wanted her to really give us a big, broad picture of autoimmune conditions is you will see that it's everything from diet to toxicity to stress to this modern world that we're living in. We even dove into human connection and the power of human connection on the healing response. She also entertained my science brain by diving into a concept that's really being brought to light right now called the cellular danger response or cellular defense response,

which is at the root of all chronic diseases, especially autoimmune conditions. So this is a really thorough discussion on autoimmunity. Dr. Walls is an incredible researcher, incredible doctor, an incredible person. You will definitely feel her heart. You will see how thorough she is in her approach to chronic disease. And I hope whether you are dealing with an autoimmune condition, you have a relative with an autoimmune condition, or you want to prevent an autoimmune condition, that you really get some incredible insight from this discussion. So as always, leave me a review.

Let me know how you resonated with this. And I hope it helps. Here you go. Dr. Terry Walsh. Enjoy. I've been following your work on autoimmunity and MS for years since the famous TED Talk you had. So for my audience, can you just give a little backroof?

on your experience with MS and your research on autoimmunity. Why I tell the story? It's a great story. Please tell it. So 20 years ago, I'm out walking with my wife, Jackie. My left leg grows weak, dragging it a hobble home. And the next day, I see the neurologist who says, Terry, this could be bad or really, really bad. So at night, in bed next to Jackie, I think about my zingers due to trigemble neuralgia that have been getting relentlessly worse for 20 years.

And I pray secretly for a fatal diagnosis. Now, three weeks later, I hear multiple sclerosis. Three years later, I hear tilt, recline wheelchair. Clearly things are getting continually worse. My zingers are worse. My face pain turns on. My 10-year-old daughter hugs me as tears streamed down my face. Wow.

I'm a physician. Night after night, I go to PubMed to read the basic science, and I begin experimenting myself. I think mitochondria are the big drivers. The speed of my decline slows. Then I discover a study using electrical stimulation muscles. I ask my physical therapist, can I try that? He says it's for athletes.

He calls it e-stim. But he does give me a test session which hurts like health. But when it's over, I feel great. And so we add e-stem to my physical therapy. My physicians have all said because I have secondary, progressive multiple sclerosis. Functions once lost will not come back. That's why I've been so aggressive with my treatments. But now I'm wondering, am I really doing all that I can to slow my decline?

So I redesigned my paleo diet that I've been on for five years based on all the science that I've read and the functional medicine course I've just taken. And that is when the magic happens. My pain is stopped. My mental clarity improves, my energy improves, and I'm able to begin walking again. And then for the first time in six years, with my son jogging alongside the, the left, my daughter on the right, I get on my bike, and I bike around the block. Crazy. My kids are crying.

My wife's crying. I'm crying. And of course, that changes how I think about disease and health. It will ultimately change the way I practice medicine. And it will change the focus of my research. And so what did you discover about the mitochondria? Because now, I mean, that was years ago. You really pioneered the idea that.

You can heal chronic disease by healing the mitochondria. Yes. What did you discover? So, you know, as I was reading the basic science, at first I was looking for drug studies. Then I've had the high, like, well, I got to look for things that I could access. And so I started looking for supplement studies. And I was reading, I was looking for progressive neurologic disorder. because I wasn't really having relapses.

I just had the slow progressive decline. And so I thought I had more in common with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS. I was reading that literature. And for all of those disease states, mitochondria seemed to be the key driver. And so no one was yet talking about mitochondria for a mess. But I thought mitochondria are probably the driver. What can I do to help my mitochondria out? So, you know, I was slowly building a supplement cocktail for my mitochondria.

And, you know, then I discovered the Institute for Functional Medicine. They had a longer list of supplements, which I, you know, happily added. And I, as mentioned, I discovered e-stem and I was doing that. And then that summer I had like, you know, I wonder if I figure out where these are in the food supply, all these things I'm taking in supplement form. That'd probably get, you know, more nutrients that were important that really hadn't been named yet. And so I now created a very structured paleolithic diet that I started following, and that was in December of 2007.

and in that first month, at the end of January of 2008, I realized my energy is definitely improving. My mental clarity is improving and my trigemial neuralgia was less. And then my physical therapist was saying, you're getting stronger. He was advancing my exercises and he had me start starting to lift weights. Amazing. They were little tiny weights, mind you. I was very, very disabled at that time. So I'm thinking about the paleo diet.

So you used the paleo diet to heal the mitochondria. And now we have a lot of talk about the ketogenic diet and the power of ketones. What are the difference between those two? So we're going to sort of walk through the standard American diet, very high in carbs, high in work toast, high glycemic index foods. And not so many vegetables. Right now, the average is one and a half servings a day. So that's shockingly terrible.

Horrible. And I had done the autoimmune protocol, AIP diet. I had not recovered from that. When I redesigned my diet, at first, it was sort of a list of hear the food stuff's to eat and then when I started teaching it, that's what I thought deeply and said, okay, I have to make a framework to give people some guidance. The Wall's paleo diet probably has about 50 to 80 grams of carbs in it. So it's, and then if I go on the ketogenic version of my diet, now it's 25 to 50 grams of carbs.

and then I also have a vegetarian version of the walls diet, and that's probably more like 80 to 120 grams of carbs. So it depends on which version of my dietary plan people are doing. And I certainly have the vegetarian option for people who are vegetarian for spiritual reasons and also for people who are vegetarian. doing more vegetarian meals because of the economics of it. Yeah. And thanks for, it's so great that you have a vegetarian version because what I've noticed in the

ketogenic paleo world is that vegetarianism can sort of be criticized. And so explain where you can use vegetarian diet in this manner to really heal those mitochondria. So the first thing I think we all. should be mindful of that some people are vegetarian or vegan for their deeply held spiritual beliefs. And if you, and they may have a medical reason why you want them to eat meat and so you can present that. But I need to acknowledge their spiritual beliefs.

And for many, it's important enough that they, to force them to eat meat, wounds them spiritually. and so that that is just not going to work. For that person, I need to be sure they're getting sufficient protein. So that's going to be a gluten-free grain and a legume combination. And I'll put it in a pressure cooker to reduce the lactants. I'll still want to be sure that they have plenty of omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats. I would probably use a DHA from an algae source. so I can honor their vegetarian vegan spiritual beliefs,

although I may ask them how they feel about krill oil, that might be okay to them or it might not be. And we'll still want to have a plan of omega-3 fat, omega-6 fat. I'll certainly encourage a lot of olive oil, and then non-starching vegetables. It may be more, and then I'll have to watch their glucose,

their insulin, see if they have any metabolic syndrome that we have to address and sort out, help them navigate that. Yeah. So one of the first teachings that I really grasp from your journey was that ketones heal the mitochondria. Well, ketones are, so ketones are very helpful. I want to remind your listeners that our mitochondria can burn ketones. They can burn glucose.

they can also burn amino acids. And interestingly, as we age, our brains become somewhat less effective at utilizing glucose. But we continue to, for most of us, we'll continue to be able to use ketones and amino acids fairly well. We'll still be very vulnerable to a sudden crash in glucose. So you can so, if you're diabetic, you're taking glucose- slowing medications, the diabetics have to be very careful to keep the blood sugars even. But certainly you can benefit from having ketones, but you can also have your mitochondria burn amino acids as well.

So would it be fair to say that as we. age ketones and amino acids become more necessary because they're such a usable resource? As we age, you'll probably benefit from more ketones. And certainly, you know, I think it's interesting if you look at all of this from an evolutionary biology perspective, our ancestors, you know, six million years ago, we're a bunch of are the primates. We begin to separate. We started eating more animal proteins. We are still having a lot of greens, a lot of of relatively non-starchy vegetables. We gradually eat more animal proteins. We're eating long bones. We're having bone marrow and brains and shellfish that we're having. And we have to work

incredibly hard to get our food. The men and the clan run down big game by endurance, which might take all day in the big game, keel over, fall over, and then they carry the big game back. So the men are in ketosis on the basis of physical activity. The women in the clan are probably also in ketosis on the basis of physical activity, although they're only traveling maybe two miles from the campsite, they're doing their foraging and carrying food back.

Because if you're physically active for a couple of hours of moderate physical activity, you've burned up your glycogen. So our ancestors were in ketosis, most often on the basis of physical activity, we would also be on the basis in ketosis on the basis of, we eat up all our food. Right. So, you know, we don't have food on hand.

That's why we had to go out and do our work together. We get our food and then we get to eat, probably a higher protein diet, some fat, and probably a fair amount of leafy greens and perhaps some root vegetables that are dirty. And occasionally we get to have berries in the fall. And so we go from a fat burning state to a fed state. So there's a fair amount of metabolic switching going back and forth. And probably the spontaneous mutations that occur that make us more efficient in switching between the burning ketones and the fed state that offer survival advantage from being able to switch back and forth easily increase. in our genome. And that's how we survived.

Then your species shows up 250,000 years ago. And so between then and now is about 64,000 generations. In most of that time, we were, I had lots of physical activity. I had to work really hard to get your food. Then you'd have enough food to eat. you would eat, then you'd have to go back out and work really hard to get your food again. This concept of having food all of the time, eating all the time, is really a very new concept. At best, only 10,000 years old, probably more likely for most people only about 300 years old.

and this continuous, really continuous eating that we have is probably only about 50 years old. Crazy. That's crazy when you put it in that perspective. And so it would, my observation is it would appear continuous feeding, high stress, inactivity, low vitamin D, high glycemic index food, that's all part of the environment that just, you know, appeared in the last hundred years. And so in my practice, in my tribe, I invite people to like, okay, let's begin to do a better job of aligning my environment. So it's a better match to how my DNA evolved. Yeah, I agree.

And so you can decide that I'm just going to fix everything all at once. that's a few people can do that. Most of us have to do things sort of one at a time, one achievable behavior change at a time. Yeah. So would it be fair to say that when we're eating all day, when we can sit on our couch and have DoorDash come to our straight, straight to our front door, that when we're eating highly processed foods, we are literally going against our genetic design. Oh, you know, absolutely.

Our ancestors couldn't do that. And our biology is such that we're set to crave sugar. Why do we crave sugar? Interesting question. There aren't many mammals that can't make vitamin C. I believe it's hamsters and humans. and some primates. Interesting.

Pearl water posited that, he said, so, and we also lay down fat far more effectively than most primates. He said, so why, you know, why did that become an advantage? His theory, and it's certainly a very interesting one, is that the earth cooled, he said 15 million years ago, I don't know the stats as well. So I'm quoting Pramutter here. But those ancestors who couldn't make vitamin C had to eat more fruit and eat more, so more berries, some more fructose, and berries have lots of vitamin C in them. And if you have more fructose, you lay down more fat. If you lay down more fat, you're more likely to survive a cold challenge. You're also more

likely to have reproductive success in the women. Your milk will be more productive as a woman. And so you'll have a higher survivorship. And it probably also made it possible for us to grow our bigger brains. And so history was losing our ability to make vitamin. and C, ensured that we'd have to eat more fruit. And that ensured that we'd have to, that increased the ability to store fat, which increased milk production in the ladies and bigger brains for everybody. Interesting theory, I don't know what my other evolutionary biology folks would think of that, but okay, well, that's, it's a good question to ask.

So why did it become helpful for humans? Why did it become a survival advantage to not be able to make your own vitamin C? Right. Because that normally goes up when you're severely stressed or fighting an infection. And the fact that it can't for us makes us more vulnerable to infections. And then where my brain goes with that is like how do we rectify that with the need to keep glucose. because if we start to go towards fruits to get our vitamin C, we would be strategic about which ones.

Our ancestors, how big were fruits in the wild? They're not the kind of fruits that you get in the grocery store. Yeah, not mangoes and papayas. When I go out into the wild the forage, you know, fruits are very small. Crab apples are very small. Plums are a little bit larger, sweet, incredibly delicious. Wild grapes are quite small.

The berries are all really quite small. And so we would consume those. They would be delicious. They'd be available more and more in the fall. That's a signal for strong. more fat in the fall to make it easier to survive the winter. Now, how, but again, you could raise the question that that may be faulty logic because we evolved in equatorial Africa.

And so winter wasn't probably a big thing. But still, having more fruit in our diet and more fat in our belly with more milk production would be a huge advantage whether or not you have to face winter. And having more fat in our belly to let us grow a bigger brain turns out to be helpful. So do you think we become this culture that's obsessed with thin? Do you feel like we're actually should be having, carrying a layer of fat than on our body? Is that a helpful tool for our brains? I think becoming underweight, body mass index of 18.5, certainly markedly increases frailty.

So I think underweight has very serious health consequences. Healthy weight, 18.5 to 21, you know, that's, I think it's healthy weight goes all the up to 24.9, I think. So the optimal weight, I think, is a BMI of 20 to 21, which is still very, very lean. Right, right. So we have to put it in perspective, is what I hear. So the other concept, nutritional concept that you really brought to people's attention was organ meats and the power of organ meats on the mitochondria.

And they're so delicious. Like, oh, my God. You know, our ancestors, you know, absolutely treasured organ meats. You know, treasured brain, heart, liver, kidneys, thymus, bone marrow, bone gross. These were all vital. And of course, our ancestors ate nose to tail. They consumed the entire organism. Yeah, you know, we dove into some organ meats here in my house.

household. And it turns out that we like chicken hearts. My 19-year-old son, like downed a bowl of chicken hearts that I just cooked in onions and garlic. And it was so good, but my brain really struggled to eat them because they look like little hearts. Well, another really great recipe. Okay. Put some, you eat bacon. Put bacon in the, um, um, put bacon in the, um, um, um, oven, bake it for 10 minutes or so. So it's a little bit done. Then put a layer of chicken livers on the pan, lay the bacon across the top, put it back in the oven about 275 degrees. And now you're going to have to watch it intermittently keep checking the liver. You want it to be pink, but not bloody. And they will just.

sort of melt in your mouth. It's incredibly delicious. Oh. I think if you wrap, start drooling. Yeah, I was going to say, I think if you wrap, put bacon on anything, it seems to make it a whole lot better. Yeah, you know, that's because our cell membranes are fat.

They're cholesterol, saturated fat. And then there's about 10% omega-3 fat, and 1% omega-6 fat. We have to have that cholesterol and the saturated fat to make our cell membranes. And the low-fat craze created a lot of strain

and makes it more likely that our cell membranes may be struggling, which makes it more likely that your myelin in your brain may not be as robust as it would have been if you had maintain your cholesterol at a somewhat higher level. Do you feel like we could solve most autoimmune conditions by just looking at the nutritional needs of our cells? They have a huge impact, absolutely. I tell my patients that you can't exercise your way out of a terrible diet, that the food we eat will ultimately become the cells that I have.

And so if I don't eat the nutrients that my cells require, I'm not able to repair the broken down cells or maintain myself. I will have aging at a much more rapid rate. I will have more complications if I have autoimmunity. I will have more anxiety, depression. I will have more metabolic dysfunction. Now, for some of my folks, and we've done this in dietary studies that I do, we'll see these dramatic reductions in fatigue, dramatic improvements in quality,

of life by changing their diet. And we tell them, you know, please don't add exercise or stress reduction because we're trying to measure the impact of diet. And, you know, in general, people actually follow that instruction and they, and they, because they put little bonchers on them so we know if they were exercising more or not. And so we see that in my clinical trials, changing their diet can lead to remarkable changes in the autoimmune health of these individuals. And if you had to give, I know you have this all in your book, so I definitely want to

and you have incredible resources online. I want to direct everybody there. But if you were to create a checklist for the nutritional needs of ourselves, could you do that? Like is it a five? Oh, yeah, sure. So key things, get rid of the sugar, get rid of the highly processed foods, replace them with non-starchy vegetables,

strep greens, cabbage family, onion family, mushroom family, and color. Be sure you have plenty of protein. and we have to sort out are you a meat eater or not a meat eater. And then we want to talk about are you interested in a fasting strategy? Are you someone that we should consider ketosis? Should we do ketosis through a time restricted eating or a fasting strategy? Should we do metabolic switching? So there are a variety of ways to personalize all of this.

The other thing they teach is we'll be much more successful if we do this as a family. I love that. You know, I have a, my community, we fast a lot together. And I have a term that I refer to called a fasting lifestyle. And I always say that there's four pieces to it that you need to know what you're trying to accomplish with your fasting efforts. You need to vary your fast, vary your foods. and do it in community because I feel like we have lost sight of the healing power of community.

And when I hear you say family, that's what I hear is you are talking about pulling people together that you love and doing health with them. Many of our Christian, pardon me, our religious traditions include a fasting component as part of their religious experience. The Christians have a lent fasting period. Ramadan in the Muslim community. Fasting as a purification, spiritual purification practice is a healing practice. We've been doing this across many cultures and all of our continents, probably since humans

have emigrated from Africa. Yeah, which is whenever somebody says that they're nervous about fasting, I always say it's a, yeah, I get it, but it's like sleep. It's a very healing response for the body. So, yeah, 100% agree with you. Where do you feel like toxins fit into this? Because I know you're doing a lot of discussion right now on mycotoxins, hormones, autoimmunity. Where did the toxins fit in?

Well, toxins are a threat to our cell biology. They can interfere with normal cellular function. And so we have biologic toxins, as in the biotoxins. We have synthetic toxins that we have created in and out part of our atmosphere, our water, our food, that our bodies have to process and eliminate in that we'll have to. have biologic consequences. So we talk about that in my book. We'll be talking about that in our seminar series that comes up very shortly, June 9th and 10th.

But yes. Yeah. Have you heard of a term? This is something that we've been studying in my community called a cellular danger response. Yeah, the cellar danger response. Absolutely. So there's a lovely quote that. you know, the cell defense is a very ancient biological response that the cells have to be able to recognize a threat and respond appropriately.

And so the, you know, the molecules that reside normally inside the cell are doing their important biological stuff they have to do to run the cell inside the cell. But if they escape the cell, for example, ATP, if it gets outside the cell, now that ATP molecule will interact on the cell membrane, and the neighboring cells will say, there's a threat here. So that will activate the intracellular machinery to create inflammatory inflammation producing molecules that activate the innate immune system. because the innate immune system will then come in and neutralize the threat, eat up the damaged cells. And the question that everyone's talking about is, okay, the cell danger response is vital to our survivorship. How do we help the body respond appropriately to the threat and then resolve the threat? and turn off the cell danger response. And so, again, that's something that I'm talking about in my community as well,

that it's vital, it's a necessary part of life. Why does it say on abnormally? Yeah. And I think it explains why some people do everything to get well, and they just aren't gaining some momentum with their healing. It's direct. They're stuck with it chronically on. Yeah.

And do you feel like the cellular danger response is not just a nutritional thing, not just a toxic thing? There's also a thought and trauma, emotional trauma. Correct, correct. It's everything. It's the whole exposure. It may have to do with early life stress. It may have to do with sleep.

It may have to do with your hormones. It may have to do with toxins. It may have to do with no. nutrition. And in my practice, we go through the exposal and say, okay, we'll have to address things as we can step by step by step. I also note that, and again, this is part of what we can discuss is it will depend on where you are in the disease process, that.

Have you gotten so far along that we're not able to stop and reverse and restore health, that all we can do is slow the decline? And there will be people with their complex chronic disease that science yet does not know. Even the best functional medicine approach doesn't know how to stop the decline. the disease processes may be to advance. Yeah. And do you, it bodes the question of the way we need to approach health when we're in those

chronic conditions is very personalized because we don't know what's triggering this response. Everybody, what's triggering it in you may be different than what's triggered. It will be unique. Yes. Now, you'll, you can still have some common themes in terms of,

I want to investigate the exposome as thoroughly as I can in that person's story as thoroughly as I can and begin to collaboratively address all of those factors at a pace that that person and that family can manage. Right. And that's key is how do you put it into the lifestyle? of the person, I think, is absolutely key. So when it comes to autoimmunity, would it be fair to say that it's not like there's one drug, one diet, one specific thing that's going to help an immune system balance? If we look at the drugs for MS, the very best drugs can reduce the

relapse rate by 64%. Which is a very exciting benchmark, huge response rate. In our clinical trials, I would say in my clinics at the VA, in the clinic 70% to 80% of the folks had a really remarkable response to our diet and lifestyle program. So very high success rate. It's not going to be 100%. And that was at the VA when I couldn't do more advanced, functional medicine testing. In no doubt, if I'd had those resources, we could have increased the number of folks that would respond. In my clinical trials, where all I got to do

was the diet. I mean, that's it. We could just put them on the diet. We could see, again, 70 to 80 percent having a very nice response to reduce fatigue, reduce pain, improved quality of life. That's not with any kind of personalization based on, you know, their lipids, their vitamin D, they're homocysteine. And so that really is quite dramatic. That's amazing. Yeah, absolutely. So if they came to see me as a private patient and now we do diet, lifestyle, personalized testing, we can have remarkable improvements. And if they have motor difficulties, difficulty walking or with the hand function,

and now we add in fiscal therapy, occupational therapy, to address that rehabilitation, we can achieve some remarkable improvements in function in addition to the quality of life. And is this the same for all autoimmune conditions? I know you're studying MS, but is it the same for everything? Absolutely. So my clinical trials are for multiple sclerosis.

My clinics at the VI and my private clinic and in my tribe, we have all sorts of autoimmune issues. Rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory biol disease, systemic lupus. There are literally hundreds of autoimmune conditions that we take care of. And then most of those folks who have an autoimmune problem also have other significant comorbid problems, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, insulin resistance. Very, very commonly has not been recognized by their primary care team and specialists team because they didn't know that people with autoimmunity have much higher rates of metabolic syndrome. So we also help deal with those issues as well. And is it true that autoimmune conditions

tend to, I've always heard that they hang out in gangs that once you get one, then you get another one. And it's very common to have. It's very common. So you get your first autoimmune disease and you see your specialist for that autoimmune disease and start the disease modifying drugs for that. if you've not addressed any of the diet and lifestyle environmental factors, over the next, the underlying disease processes will continue. And every decade, five to ten years, you'll pick up another autoimmune diagnosis. And so certainly in our clinical trials, we saw that the longer people had their MS, the more likely they were to have a second and third.

third or more autoimmune conditions. And so if you're put on a medication, and you're getting great results with the medication, that's only one part of the story is what I hear. It's only one part. And I want to be clear that it's a clinical decision for your autoimmune condition. Are you on disease modifying drug and what level of medication you need? fortunately there are more specialists they're now saying diet and lifestyle matter but they usually don't have the expertise to help you improve your diet or lifestyle

and so they send people to primary care they tell them you know go get some books I probably don't pay attention to it but I don't know how to help you with that I and there are certainly more neurologists more neuroscientists all agreeing that diet and lifestyle matter. Next week, I'll be going to the consortium of MS centers. We'll be presenting some of our research. And every year when we go, there are more lectures about diet and lifestyle. And there are more neurologists coming up to you saying, can I get a picture with you?

My patients would so appreciate that. And so that's sort of fun. Yeah. So do you think, are we moving in a direction where there are more autoimmune cases going on in the world right now? The rates are suddenly increasing. And at younger ages, earlier, more earlier onset of disability, earlier onset of loss of work. And would it be fair to say that it's really the confounders of this modern world that we're in,

that our ancient healing body is stuck in a modern world and that's a mismatch? Well, certainly many of our chronic diseases are mismatch diseases. that our current environment is radically different than what the environment we're in 10,000 years ago or even 100 years ago. Yeah. And if you were to stop, let's say you were the general surgeon of America and you were to try to stop the progression of autoimmunity right now. You wanted to change the direction it's going.

What would you say to do you do? So the kind of things that I would love to see happen is, phasing out of the subsidies for soybean and corn. And if we're going to subsidize anything, subsidize vegetables. That would be lovely. I appreciate the desire to have more protein. So that's a separate conversation. I'd rather see regenerative farming take some of our marginal lands out of corn and soybean,

put them back to pastures and have a push towards gardening, a push towards, in World War II, we had victory gardens, everyone, 80% of the world of the United States had the victory garden and they were growing their own vegetables and food. So if we had victory gardens for chronic disease, taught children in parents how to cook, how to meal plan so that I am using up all the food that I purchase about throwing anything away. That would go a long way. And teaching our children a stress-reducing practice. Sugar.

We have a tobacco tax, and makes it somewhat more manageable. Having a sugar tax in a white flower tax to make the high glycemic foods more manageable, I think would be helpful. Yeah, amen to that. I 100% agree with that. Where do you feel like I don't want to lose this concept because this is a new one that I've been really diving into since the pandemic, which is the power.

of human connection on healing. Where do you, I feel like with the social media, Zooming our phone, we're connected, but we're not really connected. How can we use human connection to heal us? So the vast majority of us need person-to-person connection. There are a very few number who thrive and do well, living entirely alone.

Most of us will wither and need to have, at least one other human in our life. And being able to see the face and read the social cues we get from each other's faces are important for that. Phones and letters, not quite as good, but still could be very helpful. Finding a way to maintain that social connection, and ideally that face-to-base connection, very helpful. The more time we spend on our phones and social media,

Science tells us the less empathic we have, the lesser social skills are. And certainly, I think the social media and the lack of social skills, empathy, the irritability of our microglia are probably driving more anger, more rage, and a shorter fuse to violence. And is that because we're comparing ourselves or is it have something to do? I heard recently something about the way that we scroll down social media is not in alignment with our nervous system because we're meant to look horizontally like out into the sunset kind of experience.

I'm not aware of that. Yeah. Interesting thought. So but because it, I mean, I'm just speaking for myself, I can go to social media, see an old friend comments on something. I get a little dopamine rush because I'm like, oh, I haven't seen that friend in a while. That was a really neat interchange.

But what I'm hearing from a lot of experts is that's really not human connection. That's just a dopamine hit. And so how do we bring back human connection in this social media world? Schedule time face to face with people. schedule time where you are not on a social media device. Think about having 24-hour, 48-hour fast away from social media.

I encourage people to revisit going back to church or your spiritual community, your support group and have some regular interaction. with your tribe, your family in some capacity. Yeah. That's been my 22 discovery is just how much more pleasure and oxytocin and joy I get when I'm in the presence of somebody I care about. It just is deeper than Zoom or the phone can offer me. It's really profound.

So thank you so much again for just enlightening us all. And I also want to thank you for just being a pioneer in the autoimmune world. And really, I mean, you really brought to the attention to the world how powerful diet is on all kinds of conditions. So I just have a deep. We've made a lot of progress. You know, I was a crazy, dangerous person in 2009 and 10. And now I'm seen as this brilliant, innovative scientist in 2022. too. So we've made a lot of progress in 12 years. I love that. So I want to finish up on this.

This is this season in our podcast. We've been really emphasizing gratitude. Do you have a daily gratitude practice? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, I love as I fall asleep, and I'll visualize some point in my life, someone who has been very supportive in some way, and I'm thanking them. So I might start out visualizing my parents, cuddling me as an infant, or my father teaching me how to build a fence or my mom teaching me how to make bread. And then I'll go through various other aspects of my life, perhaps college or medical school, residency, my professional career. And it gives me an opportunity to visualize the gift that someone gave me. thank them. So lots of opportunity to thank my parents for the many things that they've done for me. It's a lovely way to fall asleep. Another thing that we did during the pandemic, my daughter,

our adult daughter, moved back in with us during that time. And so before each meal, we would stop and each one of us would be grateful for something that day. And that we would, was pretty helpful. It's a very stressful time, Jackie. My wife was working in helping with ER overflow. And so, you know, we had many concerns for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. We did, we've done something in my family over the years that I, my parents started with me and then I continued with my kids, which is every Sunday night was family night dinner. And you had to be home. You could bring a friend, you could bring people, but you definitely had to be home to commune with the family. And we started asking a question, and it can be anything from, you know, a philosophical

question to gratitude, to a compliment. We've, we have had times where we go around the table and give a compliment to each person. And as, as cheesy as it sounds, it has been an amazing way to connect as a family. So I just, I love that. that. And again, your teachings are everywhere, but where do people find you? And I especially want to talk about this summit because it's about hormones. And I really think our audience I love that. So find me at Terrywalls.com, T-E-R-R-Y, Wals, Wals, W-A-H-L-S-L-S-com. And if you want a overview of the diet, just add Terwalls.com forward slash diet. And we'll, we have a great visual for that. On June 9th and 10th, we'll have the next in our seminar series,

and we're focused on hormones and mycotoxins. So we'll have some great lectures related to that. My two lectures that I'll be giving, one will be on the consortium of MS Center highlights. So we'll talk a lot about bowels, bladders, and sex. That will be lots of fun. And then I'll be covering the highlights from the annual international conference for IFM. Oh, I love it. I love it. I'm going to be tuning in. I think that sounds amazing.

And we will leave all the links, all your links in the notes so people can get those. But Dr. Walls, I just, again, I have so much respect and admiration for you really leading the way for those of us that are trying to make an impact on, with diet, on the human health. So thank you so much for being here with me. And I'm sending you joyful thoughts and hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you.

If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.