Dr. Steven Gundry – For those on my channel who don’t know you or your story, can you tell us a little bit about your incredible health journey?
Dr. Terry Wahls – I’ll sort of tell it in real time. We’ll go back 23 years ago, I’m out walking with my wife Jackie. My left leg grows weak, dragging it, I hobble home. I see the neurologist the next day, and he tells me, “You know, Terry, this could be bad or really, really bad.” And I begin the workup. While I’m going through that workup, Steve, I’m thinking about the fact I’ve had 20 years of worsening electrical face pain due to trigeminal neuralgia. And so I’m like, “Oh my God, this is a progressive disease. I don’t wanna become disabled.” So I’m secretly praying for a fatal diagnosis. Three weeks later, I hear multiple sclerosis. I do my research, I find the best to MS Center in the country, I take the newest drugs. Three years later, I hear tilt reclined wheelchair. I’ve adopted the paleo diet, I’m continuing to decline. I take Mitoxantrone, a form of chemotherapy, it does not help. I take TYSABRI, the new biologic that we’re all so excited about, it does not help. I’m switched to CellCept, and that’s when I ask myself a really important question, “Am I doing all that I can?” I’m like, “Well, I can still think.” So I start reading the basic science, going to PubMed night after night. I decide that mitochondrial disfunction is what drives disability. I create a supplement cocktail for my mitochondria. It slows my decline. I’m very grateful, but I’m still declining. I discover a study of using electrical stimulation of muscles. I ask my physical therapist, “Can I try that?” He says, “It’s painful.” Yes, he could grow bigger muscles, but he is not sure my brain could talk to the bigger muscles, he might be making things worse. But he gives me a test session, it hurts bad, but I feel really great afterwards. And so we add the electro stimulation to the exercises. And I can do 10 minutes of exercise on the mat. If I do longer than that, I can’t go to work and function. So I’m adding a little bit of E-stem to my little bits of exercise. I discover the Institute for Functional Medicine. They have a course on neuroprotection, I take that. I have a longer list of supplements, which I add, and then I have this big aha. And Steve, I sort of laugh at how long it took me to have this aha. Like what if I redesigned my paleo diet that I’ve been doing for five years based on this long list of supplements? What if I figure out where those ingredients are in the food supply? So that’s a few more months of research. And I start this new way of eating December 26th, 2007. Now at that time, I want all of your listeners to know, I am so weak, I cannot sit up in a regular chair as I am now. I’m in a zero gravity chair with my knees higher than my nose. That’s how I staff clinic for the residents. That’s how I take my meals at home. And I’m so weak, I can’t go to the movies, I can’t go out to eat. It’s a struggle to drive the 10 minutes that takes me to get to work. And I start this new way of eating. Shockingly, by the end of January, I realized that my mental clarity is improving, my energy is improving, and my physical therapist says, “Terry, you’re stronger.” He increases my exercise to 10 minutes twice a day, then 15 minutes twice a day, then 20 minutes twice a day, then half an hour twice a day. And then I start walking at the hospital with two walking sticks, you know, stunning my colleagues. And then with one walking stick, and then with none. And then in April, I tell Jackie, who’s my wife, that I would like to try biking, which I’ve not done in six years. And she says, “You know, honey, if things keep going well, maybe in the fall.” Well, two weeks later, I really want to try riding my bike, we have an emergency family meeting because my kids don’t want me to do that, they don’t wanna risk my getting hurt. But Jack says, you know, Zach, who’s my 16-year-old son, Zach, you run alongside on the left. She tells Zebbie, my 13-year-old daughter, you run alongside on the right and she’ll follow. And we all get in the position, I get on my bike and I bike around the block. And that big 16-year-old boy, he’s crying. That 13-year-old girl, she’s crying, Jackie is crying. And as you can tell.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You’re crying.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Why did I retell that story? I cry again, because that’s the moment when everything changed because when you have a progressive neurologic disorders and secondary progressive MS, I was taught, and all of my neurologists told me that in the progressive phase of the illness, there is no recovery, functions once gone, are gone forever. And I’m like, how much recovery might be possible? And so I biked a little bit more every day. And then in October, Jackie comes home and says, “Honey, I’ve signed us up for the courage ride, it’s 18.5 miles. However far you go, will be a triumph.” Now at that point, I just biked eight miles. That was the furthest I’d gone. But I did it. I crossed the finish line. And you know, once again, we’re all crying, my kids are crying, Jackie is crying, I’m crying. And this fundamentally changes how I think about disease and health, it will change the way I practice medicine, and it will change the focus of my research. And I’ve made it my mission to teach other clinicians and the public and to do the research to show that diet and lifestyle are critical for having a better outcome for people with MS and other neuro immune conditions.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You know, back in 2008, your ideas, much like mine were seen as unorthodox. In fact, I recently was on a podcast where my ideas, and your ideas and my ideas are very similar, I think that’s why we’ve become good friends. Those ideas were ridiculed. And that certainly is not conducive to a good medical practice or good medical advice, and yet, you know, here you are, we could call it miraculous, but I think you, and I think it is very different than calling it miraculous. There are things that happen that, we all have luckily some control over if people are given the tools. So as this was happening to you, what did your colleagues say to you?
Dr. Terry Wahls – So at first, when they see me walking around, they’re like, “Oh my God, you must be on TYSABRI.” And I said, “Well, actually I’m not.” And you know, my neurologist has taken me off all disease modifying drugs, and this is all diet and lifestyle and that I show my electrical stimulation device, which I was carrying around and stimming much of the day. And so they’re thrilled until they realize that in my clinics, both the traumatic brain injury clinic where I’ve been reassigned and my primary care clinics, I’m now asking what they’re eating and talking to ’em about diet and exercise. And so I’ve changed how I practice medicine. And yeah, I think it was probably about a year later, my chief of staff calls me into his office to say, “Terry, we’re getting all these complaints about you. What’s going on?” And by the way, I’d also been banned as a speaker by the MS Society, and he had heard about that, it’s like, “What’s going on? You’re banned as a speaker, what’s going on?” Now fortunately, I had known this was gonna happen, and I brought with me a handful of scientific papers, I was explaining what I was doing and why. And John said, “Well, but it’s not the standard of care, you have to practice the standard of care.” And I sat back, said, “Well, of course John, send out an email to all the faculty that we have to practice the standard of care, that we can’t use the latest science to guide our recommendations for patient care.” And of course I’ll follow that. And I sat back and smiled, and I don’t smile a lot, so. And so it felt like a long time, it was probably not that long, then John goes, “Well, okay, but if anyone gets hurt, you’re going through peer review.” I go, of course we all go through peer review when someone gets hurt. And in the end, John became a huge supporter and champion. And he was actually very supportive when the chief of medicine at the university wanted me to conduct our first clinical trial where we used the protocols I’d used for my recovery in others with progressive MS. And John gave me the clinical time away from practice, a couple days a week to do my trials. The university gave me space to do the trials, a PhD student who used our trial as her dissertation materials. And so we conducted that first study. That John did, which actually I am very grateful for it now, said, “Terry, you have to learn how to do this without pissing everyone off. So I’m going to send you to the Compliment Alternative Medicine Clinic at the university and to work with Dr. Nicole Lisle because what you’re doing is good, but you are upsetting people and I think you’re putting your medical license at risk. So I want you to learn how to do this safely, both for you and for the patients and for the BA and the University.” So I went and I did learn how to play better in the sandbox.
Dr. Steven Gundry – I’m gonna go have to go take that course as well I guess. Let’s talk about these trials. You recently published a paper on the Swank Diet, which I know about and you know about versus the Wahls Diet study. So what was the standard of care for diet when all this came about?
Dr. Terry Wahls – So the standard recommendation is eat a healthy diet, whatever that is.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Whatever that is.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Or it is that diet doesn’t matter, just take the disease modifying drug treatments. Roy Swank was the very first guy after World War II said, “I think diet matters.” And he made the observation that a very low fat diet that people had to eat during World War II led to much lower rates of MS relapses and disease activity and slower disease progression. So he hired dieticians in his MS clinics and instructed them on a very, very low fat diet, less than 15 grams of saturated fat a day, so white poultry meat, white fish, lots of carbs. And he followed people. And he published on that cohort, started out with 250, ended up with 144. And of course the problem is the people that dropped out were probably non-random. So because he doesn’t have a control group, he didn’t have blinded assessors. You don’t really know what to make of it. But I still have to put a lot of credence, he’s the very first guy who says, “Diet matters.” Then there’s the McDougal’s study, which looked at McDougal diet, a vegan low fat diet. They were not able to show any difference between the McDougal diet and usual diet. Then we come along and we do a parallel arm comparing the Swank diet and basically the Wahls elimination diet, which is very similar to the diet that you recommend as well. It’s low in lectins. People had a 12 week observation period where they ate their usual diet. They came in, we did the assessments. We said, “Eat your usual diet, come back in 12 weeks.” We repeated the assessments, then we randomized them to either the Swank or the Wahls, gave them five calls to the dietician to learn how to implement this in their family. They came back for assessments. Then we let them in the Wall side begin to reintroduce ingredients one at a time. And then they came back again in another 12 weeks. So we had 24 weeks worth of intervention, 12 weeks of observation. During the observation period, you know, things didn’t improve, fatigue got worse, quality of life got worse, anxiety, depression got worse. And walking hand and working memory did not change. What we saw when we did analyze the data, the Wahls and Swank both reduced fatigue similarly for fatigue severity index, for the more sensitive measure, modified fatigue impact, Wahls was better than Swank at 24 weeks, although they’re equivalent at 12 weeks. For quality of life, Wahls and Swank both improved at 12 and at 24, although Wahls was significantly more improved at 12 and at 24 for mental health, quality of life, Swank improved at 24 weeks, it did not improve at 12. Wahls improved at both 12 and 24, significantly more so than Swank at 12 and 24. Interestingly enough, working memory, Swank did better at 12 weeks than Wahls. Although Wahls and Swank were equivalent at 24 weeks. Walking endurance, that is how far you could walk in six minutes. Neither Wahls nor Swank improved at 12 weeks. Probably not surprising because we said don’t add an exercise component because this is a diet study, we were trying to figure out what diet does. Surprisingly, at 24 weeks, the Wahls group significantly improved their walking endurance, and it was clinically significant as well, although the Swank did not improve at 24 weeks. What I tell folks is both Wahls and Swank were vastly better than the usual American diet. Wahls is better than Swank for many of the measures, although not all. You can do a low saturated fat diet while you’re doing a Wahls diet. If you want to, you can certainly follow a low saturated fat version of the Wahls diet, if you wish. If doing the Swank diet has more appeal to you and that’s what you and your family can do, that’s what you should do. But if you want the diet with the largest effect size, that would be the Wahls diet.
Dr. Steven Gundry – No, that’s fantastic.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – What do you now teach your neurology residents with this information?
Dr. Terry Wahls – You know, there was a really lovely study that Dr. Schuttler did who looked at all of the diet studies that had been published that were randomized and had an outcome in fatigue, or quality of life that had been published before May, 2021. And with that, fund 12 studies, eight diets, the anti-inflammation, Mediterranean, ketogenic, paleo, low saturated fat, fasting, calorie restriction, and usual diet. And for fatigue, there are three diets that where the mean standard deviation and 95% confidence interval are all on the side favoring intervention, and those three diets were the paleo diet, basically, you know, the Wall’s elimination diet, the Mediterranean diet, and low saturated fat. And the paleo diet was about 50% more effective than the Mediterranean or low fat diet. For quality of life, and there’s both physical health and mental health, quality of life diets there, are paleo and Mediterranean, with the paleo diet being twice as effective as the Mediterranean diet. So what I’m teaching residents in neurology, what I’m teaching residents in internal medicine is that diet matters. It’s easiest if you can do it as a family, but clearly the most effective diet is the paleo diet. A Mediterranean diet would be my second choice, but for clinical reasons, there may be times that I will say a ketogenic diet is a better diet choice because of type two diabetes, severe obesity, more cognitive issues. There may be times I’m gonna be more into stressing low saturated fat. There are times that what people can more successfully do might be intermittent fasting. So I want to listen to the patient and the family because the people who are successful are successful because the whole family does this. The people who struggle are the ones who say the person with the disease will change their diet, everyone else will keep eating the standard American diet. That’s a recipe for struggle, relapse, and finally giving up saying, “Diet doesn’t matter.”
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, I think that’s very true with my patient population as well. It makes a huge difference if you can get the family on board ’cause one of the biggest complaints is, “Well, gee, you know, I have to cook this meal for me, or I have to eat these foods and everybody else is eating wonderful garbage, which I really want to eat.”
Dr. Terry Wahls – We spent a lot of time on behavior change. It was at the time that I had this transformation and changed how I practice. I’m in the VA system so I can’t do any functional medicine testing. None. Which at the time really annoyed me. But now actually I’m so grateful that I couldn’t because my only tool, Steve, was behavior change. And what I learned was that we could in fact be enormously successful with behavior change. My VA partners saw my amazing results. The chief of medicine called me into his office and I thought I was gonna get another dressing down for, you know, not playing nice. And it was like, “Terry, I’m pulling you out of primary care ’cause I want you to have your own clinic. We’d like to send the most difficult people to you.” So I said, “Okay.” So we created the Therapeutic Lifestyle Clinic. I went to specialty medicine, primary care, and the pain clinic. And I said, “Give me your toughest cases. We won’t be prescribing any drugs, this is all diet and lifestyle.’ And I worked with dieticians, health psychologists, a physical therapist, and over time we created what I now call the Wahls Behavior Change Model, which incorporated what I learned from my research, my own personal experience. And what my vets taught me were the elements to successfully changing behavior. And so we were extraordinarily successful. I would say we had an 80 to 85% response rate in our clinic where people would actually make these dramatic changes in their diet and sustain that. And so I would get to come back to my specialty pain team, medicine, chief nurse, chief of staff, the chief of the hospital, and report our success with improvements in A1C, improvements in blood pressure, improvements in BMI, reduction in narcotic use. And we were extraordinarily successful without drugs, with only the very basic, basic primary care labs, you know, things like an A1C, insulin, vitamin D, lipids. And after having the previous couple years using these concepts in my traumatic injury clinic where I got no lapse whatsoever, it felt very luxurious to finally get to have even a, you know, just a few lapse.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You mentioned that this was a number of years ago, you were getting a fasting insulin level. I have third year family practice residents rotate through my clinic, and none of them have ever heard, I kid you not, of measuring a fasting insulin level. None of them.
Dr. Terry Wahls – It is shocking. Poor metabolic health is such a driver of so many disease states. In my population, people with multiple sclerosis who are metabolic health, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, diabetes accelerate disease processes. And I should also tell you that in every one of my studies, metabolic health improves, insulin sensitivity improves. Of course you and I are completely not surprised by that. My neurologic colleagues are like, “Hmm.” They struggled because they can’t imagine one eating all these vegetables and two, giving up gluten, you know, giving up all of the ultra processed flower based products.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, my new book “Gut Check” will be out in a couple days as we speak. And one of the things I’ve been doing now for a number of years with 80% of my practice is autoimmune disease as you probably know. People who have been to oh, six or eight clinics or doctors and yeah, they’re on biologics or they’re not working or they’re just fed up with not being taken seriously. But interestingly enough, a 100% of my patients with autoimmune disease have antibodies to the various forms of wheat, Ryan Barley, whether it’s about 98% of them have wheat germ and glutenin antibodies, a 100% of them have gluten antibodies, gladin and glutenin, a 100% of them have non wheat protein antibodies. A 100%.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And these are people, a lot of these people have been gluten-free for even 10 years, and they still have very powerful antibodies. Now the good news I think that you and I recognize is when we fix the problem, which in my opinion and probably your opinion is intestinal permeability as a part of this process, all these antibodies disappear. By a year’s time, none of my patients have antibodies to the various forms of wheat. They’re gone, the immune system’s been retrained. And the good news is the people don’t have intestinal permeability anymore.
Dr. Terry Wahls – It takes a long time for conventional medicine to change. It will certainly take a long time for society to change. You and I are accelerating that because of your podcast, your books, my books, so that the public, when they’re ready, the teacher appears, they’re like, “Okay, I am ready to consider that maybe I should be doing the diet and lifestyle factors.” Unfortunately, what I’m seeing, and I’m guessing you’re seeing this too, Steve, that because of the pandemic, the number of autoimmune related diseases are dramatically increasing. And I think that is part of the consequence of the increased activation of the innate immune system, the increased number of antibodies that are being generated and therefore tissue damage to a variety of end organs. And so there’s certainly more MS and neuro immune conditions. And in the MS world it activates our microglia. And so if you have MS, you’re more likely to have what we call the pseudo relapse and increased flare of MS related symptoms that may linger for many months and can lead to a worsening level of function, worsening disability.
Dr. Steven Gundry – I published this, about 90% of my autoimmune patients, their markers resolve return to normal, and their functional status returns to normal. But about 10% of ’em, and a lot of ’em are late in the process, they’re definitely better, but they still have issues. And that’s actually one of the reasons I wrote “Gut Check” is I wanna find out why that 10% in my practice is better, but they haven’t fixed themselves or I haven’t fixed them or whatever the word is. But you’re right, if you catch it early, this is good stuff.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Early is much easier, late is much harder. Yeah, I think it’s rather like Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yep.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Mild cognitive deficit, we can certainly get people back pretty close to normal cognition.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yep.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Early Alzheimer’s, we can get them close to normal cognition. Late Alzheimer’s, pretty tough.
Dr. Steven Gundry – No, I agree. Yeah, there’s these windows of opportunities and maybe I think the important part that everyone should know, and Dale Bredesen of course preaches this is, let’s catch this early and not say, “Oh, you’ve got Alzheimer’s and there’s no hope for you.’
Dr. Terry Wahls – I want people to know that the windows that we’re talking about are actually fairly long. For the prodrome autoimmune, that’s usually a five to 10 year window.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Before, the prodrome before you get the autoimmune diagnoses. And then if we can get to you early, preferably before the age of 40, the probability that I can get you close to good health is very high. If I’m gonna see you in your 50s, I can improve your quality of life, I can improve your function, I don’t know how close I can get you to really good health, but I can certainly improve your quality of life, and I can flatten, stop the decline that, it’s very rare that we cannot achieve that.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You’ve got a new study that’s gonna dive deeper into.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah, I am so excited about our new study.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So tell me about that and can people participate in this?
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah, yeah, we are still looking for folks. So this is for people with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis between the ages of 18 and 70, who are willing to be randomized to either a ketogenic diet, a modified paleo elimination diet or usual diet. You have to be willing to come to Iowa at month zero, month three, month 24. Our primary outcome is quality of life. We’re also gonna look at fatigue, anxiety, depression, walking function, hand function, working memory. And Steve, we’re gonna get MRIs without contrast at month zero and month 24. And we know that people with MS, as a group, our brains are shrinking 1% per year, which is terrible. Which is why we have more anxiety, more depression, more cognitive decline, more frailty, more and earlier nursing home care. In my clinical practice, and just as I’m sure you see as well, we do a great job of getting rid of brain fog, of improving mental clarity. And so I am very, very hopeful that our intervention arms, we’ll be able to get to healthier rates of aging, brain volume loss, less than 0.3% per year. I should also say in the control arm, the usual diet arm, we are giving tips once a month on how people can improve their diet. And people who are willing to be in diet studies all want to improve their diet. So in fact, I anticipate all three arms are going to improve their diets, and that all three arms will have some improvement in their brain volume loss. This will be the largest, longest diet study that’s been done with the MRIs. We’re also collecting blood at each time point, so we’ll be able to do biomarker analyses as well. We are very excited, I’ve got 120 folks in.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Wow.
Dr. Terry Wahls – I still have another 36 I’m trying to recruit, I anticipate, ability to get them in sometime in 2024. We’ll have all of our data collected by the end of 2026, we’ll be data cleaning and then analyzing our data in 2027, and presented it presumably in the fall of 2027, and having the manuscripts out in 2028. And so I’ll be back to talk with you about that.
Dr. Steven Gundry – This is a great idea and it’s a huge study, so we’ll definitely include a link in the show notes.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah. It’s an easy link to remember terrywahls.com/msstudy.
Dr. Steven Gundry – That’s an easy one to remember.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Since we talked about that, maybe people I hope who follow you or me know kind of what an elimination diet is, but for those who don’t.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Oh sure. So we take out the foods that are, have the highest amount of food proteins that irritate our immune system, so grains, legumes, nightshades, and also put eggs in there in dairy. So grains, legumes, nightshades, eggs, and dairy. Those are the big categories. And we have, you know, our dietician helps people think through meals now. We also have, we have a diet app for the keto arm, for the paleo arm to help people identify recipes and they can search for lunch, breakfast, supper ideas, they can search for recipe ideas featuring a particular food ingredient that gives them the recipe, tips on cooking, meal planning. Our state participants have found that to be a very, very helpful tool.
Dr. Steven Gundry – All right, now having grown up in Nebraska and you’re in Iowa, what you’re proposing goes against I think the state constitution of both Nebraska and Iowa.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah, that would be true. Although giving up grain, giving up dairy, you know, I grew up on a dairy farm, that’s certainly a big deal.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, I wanna echo that and I write about that in “Gut Check’. Initially in the plant paradox, I allowed pastured eggs or Omega-3 eggs, but I eliminated casing A1 dairy and I allowed casing A2 dairy. But the more food sensitivity testing I do, and I do it on almost everyone now. People with autoimmune diseases, you’re right, both egg whites and egg yolks and most forms of dairy are mischievous to particularly the people that you and I are most interested in.
Dr. Terry Wahls – They’ll do certainly much, much better without them.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Now, after their gut is healed, their autoimmune systems are quiet, at some point in the future, be able to tolerate these foods. We find that the answer is sometimes yes.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yes.
Dr. Terry Wahls – So I recommend they take them out for six months. In my practice at the VA, I propose six months and I negotiate with the vet. And sometimes all we could get was two weeks. Like, “Okay, if that’s all you can do, start there.” And they take ’em out two weeks. Said, but when you reintroduce the foods, do it one ingredient at a time. So if you feel bad, you know which ingredient it was. And often in two weeks taking the food out and then eat it again, and realizing how terrible they now felt after having their breakfast, bacon, eggs, and toast, like, “Oh, my god, I do feel terrible.” And they take it back out. For many, we have to experience that pain to know like, okay, it really is worth giving up this immediate pleasure of how tasty these foods are. And I acknowledge that yes, the grains are tasty. Yes, cheese is tasty. Yes, bacon, eggs on toast, very tasty. I agree, I love those. But the principal investigator of your life, take them out for the length of time that you’re willing to take them out and then retest and eat them and see how you feel. And many of my vets would come back and we’d do group visits. So the vet would have their experiment, reintroduce the food that they loved and missed, come back and would tell their buddies like, “Oh my God, you know, I had my eggs and toast and like, oh my god, I felt so terrible. My joints hurt so much. I’m taking ’em back out. Doc is right, these are not good foods, they’re not good for me.” Vet telling the other vets sitting around the room was far more powerful than Dr. Wahls saying that this food is not gonna work well for you guys.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, no, that’s true. Early on, I had a patient come back for the second appointment, I said, “Hey, you know, how you doing?” He says, “You know, feeling well never tasted so good.” And I thought that was a great description ’cause you know, we’re asking people to give up a lot of their favorite foods.
Dr. Terry Wahls – And it is hard, you know, biologically our brains, we so value immediate pleasure so much more than future benefit. And so we have to acknowledge that we’re asking people to do something that is biologically really, really hard. Giving them the permission. Sometimes it’s very helpful to like, okay, run the experiment. Take it out for as long as you’re willing to take it out, and then put it back and see how you feel. And then I have to pray that I hope they feel really bad. So now it becomes more believable to them. ‘Cause if they don’t feel bad, they’re like, “Okay, this is just not gonna work, they’re not ready to forego that pleasure.
Dr. Steven Gundry – I actually just saw that this week, a young woman with recent onset Crohn’s and she failed biologics and ended up in my clinic. And good news was her bloody diarrhea and bloody bowel movements and 20 bowel movements a day subsided, became normal. This went on for about six months. She literally last week, sent me some pictures of her toilet and with blood in it. And she said, “This has started all of a sudden, what’s going on?” And I said, “Well, you know, get in here.” she lives nearby. And I said, “You know, you’ve been great. Was there anything happening in the last couple weeks that you did differently?’ “No, not a thing.” I said, “Are you sure? Think back.” And she said, and her mother was actually with her, and she said, “Well wait a minute, on Christmas Eve we celebrated and you had a goat cheese quesadilla.” And she said, “Oh, you’re right, I did.” And I said, “So when did this start?” She said, “Day after Christmas.” And I said, “Make any connection?” And she said, “Yeah, now I do.” And I said, “Well, what did you do that for?” And she said, “Well, it was Christmas.” And I said, “Well, you just did a great experiment.” Now she’s fine now, but.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yeah. It is so helpful when people have pain, that is easier for them.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah.
Dr. Terry Wahls – If they have a sensory disturbance. So my optic neuritis patients, it’s easier for them. People who have motor problems, they’re falling, can’t use their hand, that’s easier. If it’s mood, anxiety or depression, that’s much harder. Those can be more subtle.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yep.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Anxiety is easier for people to recognize. Depression is harder to recognize ’cause it may show up as irritability. And so you’re pissed off at the world you think it’s all their fault and that can be the hardest.
Dr. Steven Gundry – I wanna talk about how do you, what do you tell patients or our listeners, as particularly as a female, how do you advocate for yourself in the current medical system?
Dr. Terry Wahls – Well, I let people know that I want them to continue to work with their conventional team.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yep.
Dr. Terry Wahls – And their primary care team because as they implement the concepts that I teach, their need for prescriptive meds will probably decline. If you’re on psych meds, and we don’t adjust them down, you may become manic and make really bad decisions. If you’re on high blood pressure, blood sugar meds, those meds may need to come down. If you’re on immune suppressing drugs, that’s a more nuanced conversation. And I remind people that I want you to have a great clinical response, and we don’t know, does that mean you have to have a 12 month or a 36 month response before you begin transitioning to a less potent disease modifying drug with fewer side effects? And I remind them that they are the one who consents to putting drugs into their body. So if you’ve had a great clinical response and your specialist says, “Yep, you’re doing great, you can decide.” and my preference is that you go two years before you start transitioning to a less potent drugs. Although my many of my patients are like, they’re ready to go at 12 months, they can advocate, say, “Look, I’m not going to agree to that drug, I will agree to a less potent drug with fewer side effects, so I’m happy to transition.” But we are the ones who give consent to take these drugs. We can say, “We’re not giving consent anymore, we want a different drug.” The physician may say, “I can’t take care of you anymore if you won’t take the drugs I want you to take.” And that’s the physician’s, right, then you may have to go find another physician. But I work hard to let my patients know that we don’t have to take drugs that we can choose to insist on a drug with a fewer, a lower side effect profile.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Great advice. Yeah. In the end it is, your body that we’re talking about.
Dr. Terry Wahls – It’s your body, now the physician can say, “I can’t take care of you if you won’t follow my advice.” That’s the physician’s prior if and then, so you may have to go find another practitioner. Most physicians are willing to work with the patient, say, “Okay, we’ll find an alternative drug that is somewhat less effective, safer, and we can begin that process of seeing how far we can go.”
Dr. Steven Gundry – If you can’t find the physician who will do that, then you need to look for another physician.
Dr. Terry Wahls – Yep, you may have to go find another one.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Terry Wahls – And you know, the thing that’s very exciting, more and more, at least in the neurology world, more and more physicians will say, “You know what? Diet and lifestyle really do matter and we can get people to less potent drugs.” You know, a lot of my integrative neurologists, they’ll transition people onto Copaxone, they may feel uneasy about having them off DMTs entirely, so they’ll try to get them to stay on Copaxone. But if people continue to do really well, they are like, “Well, I guess we’ll let you go off your Copaxone now and just keep getting your surveillance and MRIs.” Which I do endorse.
– If you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast, you are definitely gonna want to see this one. The lower your Omega-3 index, the more shrunken your brain is and the smaller the areas of memory. So when mom said fish was brain food, she was right.
