HOW THE FOOD WE EAT BECOMES THE BRAIN & BODY WE LIVE IN: A Deep Dive with Dr. Terry Wahls
Hello everyone and welcome to a very special 2-part episode of the MS Gym podcast. At the moment, Jodi and I are currently on our usual summer podcast hiatus, but when author Dr. Terry Wahls, the creator of The Wahls Protocol, reached out to us to help share information about a new study she's working on, we were honored and MORE than happy to oblige. We both thought it would be a perfect opportunity to host an episode together and, of course, we couldn't wait to share the episodes with our listeners.
So, you might be thinking, who is Dr. Terry Wahls? What's the Wahls Protocol?
Dr. Wahls is currently a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A., where she teaches internal medicine residents in their primary care clinics. She also does clinical research and has published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific abstracts, and papers.
What gives Dr. Wahls a unique perspective in her field, is the fact that in. 2003 she was diagnosed with RRMS and quickly transitioned to SPMS a few short years later.
At that time, she put her researched-oriented brain to work and discovered that most MS treatments centered around drugs that were years away from approval. Given that, she diverted her attention to the role of vitamins and supplements, which were readily available, in helping brain disorders, as part of a treatment plan. She added to her research repertoire functional medicine, a biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease and from there started compiling a list of supplemental nutrients that would assist in brain health. Her ah ha moment came when she asked herself, what if she created a diet that would include those important brain nutrients, not from supplements, but from the foods she ate...and the rest is Wahls Protocol history!
In this episode one of two, we'll get a closer look at Dr. Wahls own physical decline and how she ate her way back to health and onto creating the now infamous Wahls Protocol. We'll also ask her about the new study she's working on.
EPISODE NOTES:
- Who is Dr. Terry Wahls?
- Her unique perspective
- Eating her way to healthy
- Too weak to sit in a chair
- Why mitochondria is key
- Diet, exercise and supplements
- How it changed her career path
- What MS drugs she's taken over the years
- Her chemotherapy experience
- Redesigning her Paleo diet
- When the magic happened
- The highlights of the Wahls Protocol
- Where are the nutrients in the food?
- Her troublesome trigeminal neuralgia
- Being able to sit at the dining table
- Making symptomatic strides from food alone
- The bike ride that changed everything
- Bringing the Wahls Protocol to the masses
- When her own residents started trying her protocol
- Running her own clinic
- "Give me your sickest people"
- Is it a healing diet?
- A body's regenerative capacity
- Fixing the microbiome
- Is it a high fat, low carb diet?
- Less sugar, more vegetables and protein, yes or no?
- FATS, what types are important?
- How the standard American diet is destructive
- Meeting people where they're at
- Explaining why there is NOT a one size fits all diet
- Is coconut oil really like "the devil"?
- Pre-diet blood work
- How our genetic differences change the efficacy of our diet choices
- Should children be on a ketogenic diet
- Who you shouldn't be listening to
- The family factor
- Dr. Wahls study
LINKS:
DR. TERRY WAHLS:
Book - The Wahls Protocol - with access to BONUS content
THE MS GYM:
BROOKE SLICK: