30 min
Dr Terry Wahls, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Ep 45, How stress and nutrition impact repair in autoimmune disease The Bend Like Bamboo Resilience Podcast
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- Mental Health
Dr. Terry Wahls practices internal medicine and treats psychiatric patients at the VA in Iowa City Iowa. In the year 2000, she was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis.
MS is an autoimmune inflammatory disease that damages the myelin of neurons (imagine the white plastic that covers your phone charger cable), causing breaks in communication between the brain cells, neurotransmitter imbalances and cell death, with resulting physical and cognitive disabilities, including blindness, dizziness and pain. In its earlier relapsing-remitting stage, MS is treated with chemo and immune system suppressants. Dr. Wahls pursued the best and most aggressive treatment available.
Nevertheless, in 2003 her MS had developed into the secondary progressive variety. At that stage, the treatment strategy was to slow the inexorable loss of function. Dr Wahls was using canes to walk, soon she was in a wheelchair almost all the time. Wahls is a doctor and she researched her condition, but there were no treatments to reverse the loss of function, not even any clinical trials available for her to join.
So she went back to school, staying up at night after the rest of the family was in bed. She studied the basic science of her condition and similar ones, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's Huntington's. Then she designed her own treatment based on the basic science about why brain cells die. She experimented on herself, developed a diet regime, tested potential food sensitivities. She started working with a physical therapist to use neuro-muscular electrical stimulation, continued the diet modifications. And then she got out of her wheelchair.
Over the course of that year, Wahls went from moving around on a scooter to walking with canes to riding a bicycle eighteen miles without assistance. Today, Dr. Wahls has recovered, she walks, bike rides often with her family, and actively shares with the world how she is doing what people with secondary progressive MS don't do - and that is recovering.
In her first book “Minding your Mitochondria” she explains how those little maintenance workers don't have all the proper nutrients, like amino acids, the correct minerals, and fatty acids, then they can't build according to the DNA blueprints. Those nutrients are the building blocks that mitochondria in our cells need to keep our bodies healthy. If those replacement molecules and structures get made incorrectly or not at all, our bodies begin to deteriorate.
That led to her creating “The Wahls Protocol” a nutrition program that I followed with great success when I was also in a wheelchair and paralysed. When I began to learn how to flood my brain and gut with the right nutrients, the game literally changed for my recovery. My symptoms began to subside, alone life changing. I began to feel better mentally and emotionally, physically I walked faster, and I began to jog. In 2010 did my first MS Fun Run with MS Limited Australia and it has been a yearly tradition since.
Naturally, I had to meet this amazing woman.How Dr Wahls and I met
I met Dr Terry Wahls in 2013 in Iowa, I was travelling n the USA and reached out to her. She agreed to met with me after I shared with her how much of an impact her protocol made in my recovery from a paralysis from MS.
I was so excited, and nervous. She was so lovely, she sat with me in her office, talked with me and listened to my story and the impact she had made in my life. She showed me the research she was doing, and we remained in contact. I am so excited to share this heart-felt podcast with you, where together Dr Wahls and I re-unite and chat about the further progress she has made helping people with autoimmune disease.
The impact stress and nutrition have on autoimmune disease
When I was 24 I was diagnosed with MS, and 5 years later I was paralysed at age 29. Thankfully after months in hospital, and taking a balanced approach of Kinesiology and Neuro-physiotherapy I was mobile again. I
Dr. Terry Wahls practices internal medicine and treats psychiatric patients at the VA in Iowa City Iowa. In the year 2000, she was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis.
MS is an autoimmune inflammatory disease that damages the myelin of neurons (imagine the white plastic that covers your phone charger cable), causing breaks in communication between the brain cells, neurotransmitter imbalances and cell death, with resulting physical and cognitive disabilities, including blindness, dizziness and pain. In its earlier relapsing-remitting stage, MS is treated with chemo and immune system suppressants. Dr. Wahls pursued the best and most aggressive treatment available.
Nevertheless, in 2003 her MS had developed into the secondary progressive variety. At that stage, the treatment strategy was to slow the inexorable loss of function. Dr Wahls was using canes to walk, soon she was in a wheelchair almost all the time. Wahls is a doctor and she researched her condition, but there were no treatments to reverse the loss of function, not even any clinical trials available for her to join.
So she went back to school, staying up at night after the rest of the family was in bed. She studied the basic science of her condition and similar ones, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's Huntington's. Then she designed her own treatment based on the basic science about why brain cells die. She experimented on herself, developed a diet regime, tested potential food sensitivities. She started working with a physical therapist to use neuro-muscular electrical stimulation, continued the diet modifications. And then she got out of her wheelchair.
Over the course of that year, Wahls went from moving around on a scooter to walking with canes to riding a bicycle eighteen miles without assistance. Today, Dr. Wahls has recovered, she walks, bike rides often with her family, and actively shares with the world how she is doing what people with secondary progressive MS don't do - and that is recovering.
In her first book “Minding your Mitochondria” she explains how those little maintenance workers don't have all the proper nutrients, like amino acids, the correct minerals, and fatty acids, then they can't build according to the DNA blueprints. Those nutrients are the building blocks that mitochondria in our cells need to keep our bodies healthy. If those replacement molecules and structures get made incorrectly or not at all, our bodies begin to deteriorate.
That led to her creating “The Wahls Protocol” a nutrition program that I followed with great success when I was also in a wheelchair and paralysed. When I began to learn how to flood my brain and gut with the right nutrients, the game literally changed for my recovery. My symptoms began to subside, alone life changing. I began to feel better mentally and emotionally, physically I walked faster, and I began to jog. In 2010 did my first MS Fun Run with MS Limited Australia and it has been a yearly tradition since.
Naturally, I had to meet this amazing woman.How Dr Wahls and I met
I met Dr Terry Wahls in 2013 in Iowa, I was travelling n the USA and reached out to her. She agreed to met with me after I shared with her how much of an impact her protocol made in my recovery from a paralysis from MS.
I was so excited, and nervous. She was so lovely, she sat with me in her office, talked with me and listened to my story and the impact she had made in my life. She showed me the research she was doing, and we remained in contact. I am so excited to share this heart-felt podcast with you, where together Dr Wahls and I re-unite and chat about the further progress she has made helping people with autoimmune disease.
The impact stress and nutrition have on autoimmune disease
When I was 24 I was diagnosed with MS, and 5 years later I was paralysed at age 29. Thankfully after months in hospital, and taking a balanced approach of Kinesiology and Neuro-physiotherapy I was mobile again. I
30 min