Food & Lifestyle Strategies for Multiple Sclerosis + Other Autoimmune Conditions

Do profound health transformations inspire and motivate you? Then you’ll want to listen to this conversation with Dr. Terry Wahls, who went from being in a wheelchair to living life as an active, busy professional. Dr. Wahls is living proof that you can change debilitating conditions like multiple sclerosis (MS) with diet and lifestyle changes.

Dr. Wahls – a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, clinical researcher, and author of several books including The Wahls Protocol® – was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2000. In December 2007, she began the Wahls Protocol®. The results were stunning: Within a year, Dr. Wahls could walk without a cane. She even completed an 18-mile bicycle tour!

Here, you’ll learn about Dr. Wahls’ TEDx talk that changed everything, her big a-ha moment that helped redesign the paleo diet, and the moment that changed everything for Dr. Wahls (and left her family in tears). Plus, you’ll hear about why the Wahls Protocol® is ideal for any autoimmune condition (not just MS) and the one simple dietary strategy EVERYONE should do.

JJ and Dr. Wahl also talk about the most inflammatory foods (and the best anti-inflammatory options), how The Virgin Diet and the Wahls’ Protocol® overlap, the groundbreaking research Dr. Wahls is doing to challenge the conversation about MS and other autoimmune conditions, and where to start if you’re just beginning the Wahls Protocol®.

Whether you have MS or another autoimmune condition, or you need a big hit of inspiration, you won’t want to miss this information-packed conversation where Dr. Wahl proves that with the right diet, lifestyle, and mindset, anything is possible. As a thank you for listening, you’ll get Dr. Wahls’ five-step process that she uses in her clinics to help patients improve their health behaviors.

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ATHE_Transcript_Ep 425_Dr. Terry Wahls
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Today, we are talking about auto immune disease and what you can do with diet and lifestyle. We verse it to not just slow it down, but actually reverse it. And I will tell you that when I wrote the Virgin diet which is a modified elimination diet, very similar to what we're going to be talking about today.
I had people who had autoimmune disease, all of a sudden coming to me saying, oh, I've been using your diet for auto immune disease on my car. Then I met Dr. Terry Wahls and you may know Dr. Terry Wahls from her amazing TEDx talk minding your mitochondria or from her book, the Wahls protocol, a radical new way to treat all.
Auto-immune conditions using paleo principles. And also she has a cookbook as well. That's fantastic. But I met her and I was like, holy smokes. This is a woman who was in a wheelchair. And is now out, you know, biking, et cetera. The stuff she's had to go through to show people [00:01:00] how diet can change. MS.
Change auto-immune and change. A whole lot of other stuff has been crazy. She is one brave courageous. Practitioner. And so I am super excited to be going through some dietary interventions with her today, talking about her research. If you have anyone in your family who thought of immune disease, if you would like to not to not get auto-immune disease, if you would like to be living your best health, you really want to pay attention to this interview with Dr.
Terry Wahls. She's a professor at the university of Iowa. She's been doing a lot of clinical trials on testing. The efficacy of. And lifestyle to treat MS. She has been getting crazy, amazing results and really changing the process. The thought process out there where, when she started, people were like, you can't do that.
That's dangerous and risky. It's like diet and lifestyle tonow people realize in this really has to be the foundational approach. So I am [00:02:00] really honored to have Dr. Terry Wahls with me today. And I'll be right back with her. Stay with me.
all right. Welcome back to the show. You're a, crowd-pleaser Dr. Terry Wells. I'm so happy you're here.
Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, I'm thrilled to be here with you again, JJ.
JJ Virgin: Now, how many people have seen your TEDx talk? Minding your mitochondria. You know,
Dr. Terry Wahls: last time I checked as a 3.99. It's
JJ Virgin: just crazy, isn't it? And if you haven't heard the story, I'd love you just to start there with cuz
now you are just a preeminent expert in auto-immune disease and especially MS. How, how to get
Dr. Terry Wahls: here. Well we'll take you back, you know, it was 20 years ago out walking with Jackie, my left leg goes Dragging, had to hobble home. The next day, I see the neurologist who says, you know, it could be bad or really, really bad.[00:03:00]
And then for the next three weeks, I'm going through the workups. And I'm thinking about the trigeminal neuralgia. That's been plaguing me for 20 years. And so actually, JJ, I'm praying for a fatal diagnosis because I don't, I don't want to be disabled. Three weeks later I hear it's MS. I, you know, I see the best people take the news.
But my face pain is getting more severe. I'm getting weaker. We move on to . We move on to Tysabri. in 9 months in I'm in a wheelchair and that's what I decide I have to do everything that I can I go back to reading the basic science. And I developed theories that mitochondria are driving my illness.
So I again, based on the basic science, I start at a supplement cocktail. I have adopted the paleo diet. That's the auto-immune intervention protocol, VIP diet, and I'm still getting worse, although it's slower. So I'm grateful for that. By 2007, I cannot sit up. [00:04:00] I began to have brainfog. I t's clear, I'm headed to becoming bedridden, demented, probably intractable pain.
That's why I discovered the Institute for functional medicine. I take the course on neuroprotection. I discovered electrical stimulation of muscles. I convinced my physical therapist to let me have a test session, which hurts really bad by the way. But I feel great at the end and I feel like. You know, my, my therapist says it's probably the endorphins.
So we began doing that three times a week. Then it gets me a home going device and I do it every day. Then I have this really big aha, which will resonate with you is what if I take my list of supplements and I go and figure out where they are in the food. And I redesign my paleo diet based on that.
So December 26th, 2007 we started. I, and in the next month I realized that my fatigue is less, my pain is less and my physical therapist says, you know, you're getting [00:05:00] stronger. I'm going to advance your exercises. I, and a couple of months after that, I do this radical thing. I mail a letter walking down the hall, stunning everyone.
Cause they haven't seen me walking in the hall for four years and then on. Mother's day in 2008. We have this emergency family meeting because I want to ride my bike, which I haven't done in six years. I, and so Jack decides that my son will run alongside on the left. My daughter will run on the right and she'll follow behind and I push off it.
I actually bike around the block. My son is crying, you know, speak 60. Big cuz Zach is 6'5″. So he's really big. So he's crying. My daughter's crying, Jackie's crying and I'm crying. Then in three months after that we do an 18.5 mile bike ride with the family. Once again, everybody's crying. And so this fundamentally changes how we think about disease and health.
It [00:06:00] changes the focus of how I practice medicine, which by the way, gets people really upset. I have to go have this big meetings with the chair of medicine and the chief of staff to defend what I'm doing and why. But fortunately they ultimately win them over and they support what I do. Chairman at the university wants me to get a case report written up, which I do then a case series, which I do.
And then he says, you know, Terry, we need to have you do a safety and feasibility study to see can other people do what you've done. Is it safe?
JJ Virgin: Is it safe to change your diet, and eat more healthy
Dr. Terry Wahls: foods, right. And to add meditation to add exercise
JJ Virgin: really getting out there and just to be clear, You know, you got diagnosed with MS.
First of all, you'd had this trigeminal neuralgia for 20 years. I think you told me about before. Like people tend to have a high suicide rate because the pain is so bad. The pain
Dr. Terry Wahls: is so bad. So the way to really think about this, JJ is you get a [00:07:00] jolt of electricity, either here or here that radiates down your face.
And you want to, when it first began, it was little twinges, you know, unpleasant for a few days, then unpleasant for a few weeks. And then over the years became more and more electrical. And by 2007, when it would turn on a sound would trigger it light would trigger it speaking would trigger it. Swallowing would trigger it.
So I wouldn't swallow. So I just drool I go into pain clinic get injections then I'd take IB Solu-Medrol and so I, I come to terMS with, I'm going to be bed ridden. I'm going to be demented. If my pain turns on permanently, I changed my living will my durable power of attorney so that if my pain turns on and I choose to stop swallowing.
There's no feeding tube and no IV fluids. And, you know, that gave me actually a lot of peace to know that I would not have to endure that electrical [00:08:00] pain indefinitly.
JJ Virgin: And there's really nothing except trying to manage the pain for that, correct? Correct. Correct. And then for the MS, I mean, people have MS.
It's just. Slow deteriorating disease for most people. Right. And, you know,
Dr. Terry Wahls: we had these really great drugs that turn off the relapses very well. And what they've done is they've taken the time to wheelchair on air, you know, severe gait disability, wheelchair Walker from 10 years to 20 years. So they've slowed it down, but they haven't stopped the neurodegeneration you now, and you and I are not surprised because they haven't addressed.
Nutrition, hormonal imbalance, toxic loads, mitochondrial infection, mitochondrial processes. So they can turn off one part of the immune system very effectively to stop the acute relapses, but they haven't figured [00:09:00] out how to make the microglia calm. you and I know that's a diet and lifestyle proposition.
Well, an
JJ Virgin: even bigger, like, so, so you just described two things that were going on with you that are progressive diseases. They don't stop and they don't reverse,
Dr. Terry Wahls: correct? Correct.
JJ Virgin: And then you go through and you use diet and lifestyle. Dietary interventions, supplements and lifestyle modifications. And you don't just slow it down.
You stop it and reverse it. And yet there is this resistance about what you're doing as, as to whether it's
Dr. Terry Wahls: safe. Oh yeah. Oh my God. Enormous resistance. What,
JJ Virgin: why? I mean, this, you hear this and it's like, It's so insane that it's hard to wrap my brain around.
Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, you know, [00:10:00] when your understanding of the world changes people, we deny that deny that, deny that until the evidence is overwhelming.
Yeah. And I'm really blessed that the chair of medicine was a rheumatologist. Who you know when I walked in for the first time, you know, in four years he was thrilled. He thought, sure it was the Tysabri. And I explained that no I went through everything and said, actually I was off all disease modifying drugs by then.
And he said he saw the importance of that. And when we get the case support then the case series and said it's so important to a small clinical trial to see if other people can do that. And so he helped me get the mentors to write that trial and get it going. So I really have to thank Paul Rothman for you know, having the vision and he supported me now and he was criticized.
I was criticized. There were a lot of people, very uncomfortable. For
JJ Virgin: what? For, for, for what? Like, what were you criticized? And here's the thing, you're an MD, you're a researcher, you're a professor like you know, it's not like [00:11:00] you're.
Dr. Terry Wahls: But it was very different. It was a different kind of research because what the NIH funds is a molecular pathway by molecular pathway.
So people thought I should do research, but I should pick one supplement one little intervention. So if it helped. We would know. And fortunately Paul Rothman said, no, the question is, could people do the complicated thing that you did Terry And do you hurt anyone? And then what is the effect size? And we can begin to break it down later.
And of course we're able to show is we could get people to radically change their diet, to begin meditating, to begin exercising and to begin doing this now and in the circuMStance where you anticipate a 10 to 20%, worsening every year, once you hit the progressive phase as a group, we stopped the decline in terMS of their walking and hand function.
And half of those folks had clinically meaningful. In walking in hand function, and we [00:12:00] had a really dramatic reduction in fatigue, severity improvement in quality of life improvement in verbal reasoning and nonverbal reasoning. And so that was just so, so striking and, you know, JJ, the biggest problem side effect was if you were overweight, You lost weight and got back to a healthy weight.
So I had to, I had to do safety reports every three months because people were losing so much weight. So
JJ Virgin: the safer, I mean, it sounds so crazy, but it's one of those great things is when you start to, to give people, you know, drugs have these side effects. And diet lifestyle, all these side benefits. Yes.
Yes. You know, and you might not need the medications you had anymore. You might not need.
Dr. Terry Wahls: I certainly see that clinically when we started using these concepts in my, in the clinics at the VA. [00:13:00] Blood pressures were improving. Blood sugars are improving people, reducing prescription med after prescription med we're eliminating drugs.
We had much less pain. We had better weight of course better blood pressures, better hemoglobin A1C. So, yeah, unfortunately I, I never found that economist to help me analyze the change in costs. But it was certainly because we were reducing prescription drugs over time. That would have been a tremendous cost savings as well.
JJ Virgin: Well, it seemed like you'd have cost savings on prescription drugs and then the, also the impact of the change in quality of life
Dr. Terry Wahls: Quality of life. And I'm sure the consumption of services over time. You know, when I retired from the VA in 2016, so I could expand my research teach these concepts to the public and to practitioners.
And the VA has incorporated some of what I've taught in their whole [00:14:00] health clinics. The, the Iowa city VA added. And there was so much demand that they now teach classes using these concepts. We're having a wonderful impact. I
JJ Virgin: want to dig into the research. And then also some of the things that some of the parts of the protocol we're going to take a quick break, we'll be right back and dig into that.
All right. So let's dig into this research, but it's how much now, because I know the first thing you had to do was start to prove that the diet lifestyle, things that, that meditation and eating healthier foods was safe. So, you know, let's walk through, you did the first trial, how many trials have you done?
And now what's the latest that you've been
Dr. Terry Wahls: doing published. Probably 15 papers out of those four published trials. Two trials that are actually three trials are going on right now. So, in the usual sequence is you do a single arm safety trial. We did that. Then you do small pilot studies [00:15:00] again that are randomized.
And this time we did just diet a modified paleo diet versus a weight loss control. And again, improved quality of life reduced pain, fatigue and better motor function. Then we did a much larger trial funded by the MS society where we had an observation period for 12 weeks. Then you get randomized to a low saturated, fat diet, or the modified paleo diet, basically the wall's diet.
And we, we did the Wahls elimination diets. We took nightshades, lots of vegetables six to 12 ounces of meat. The low saturated fat diet. We actually improved. We had four servings of whole grain, four servings of vegetables in limited fat to 15 graMS of saturated fat. They got five calls with the dietician.
Then they repeated their assessments, then they came back 12 weeks later we let the Wahls elimination group reintroduce the night shades one group at a time so they can figure out which night shade if any, were [00:16:00] troublesome to them, have repeated the assessments. What we saw is that the, of course, quality of life fatigue was stable during the observation period.
So no surprise after the intervention. The fatigue, quality of life, walking endurance, thinking improved in both groups. Now for some, for some of the measures of quality of life walking endurance Wahls was definitely better than the swank group. Interestingly fatigue severity was the same in both groups improved over observation, the more sensitive measure, modified fatigue impact.
Was significantly better in the Wahls group in walking endurance at 24 weeks, significantly better in the Wahls group. So then you, my interpretation from that is the standard American diet is, is bad. You, and I know that then it's going to lead to continued worsening of the MS. SymptoMS, improving the diet.
It's going to be [00:17:00] helpful. It'll reduce fatigue, improve quality of life. And the Swank diet is certainly much, much better than the standard American diet. And when we analyzed the quality of the diet, the Swank diet did improve from a usual observation period The Wahls diet had more improvement in more of the micronutrients than the Swank diet.
So perhaps it's not surprising that the wall's group did better in several of those. I I'm really excited to say that we're, we're doing, we're now recruiting for a study. That will be two years that will compare a Q JAG diet the modified paleo elimination, diet and dietary guidelines diet, and it will include MRIs, blood biomarkers, something called ceremonial filaments clinical measures and patient reported outcome.
And we'll have much longer duration. So that will be probably the longest largest MS. Study with [00:18:00] the most interesting biomarkers. So very, very exciting stuff. And
JJ Virgin: here's what, you know, what's interesting. Terry is, you know, you talked about, and you said, all right, it helped with all of these things with MS.
And they lost weight. Their blood pressure went down, their blood sugar stabilized. Like there were all these amazing things are happening. So, you know, beyond MS. What else is this diet? What else could someone be using this diet for?
Dr. Terry Wahls: So, in my clinics at the VA, we've used this for people with all sorts of autoimmune conditions, rheumatoid arthritis psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis Anxiety depression, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, diabetes pre-diabetes.
And we know by the way, people with auto immune conditions are much more likely to have all those comorbid probleMS, mental health issues. They're more likely to develop high blood pressure obesity. So it's helpful [00:19:00] that this approach, diet, stress reduction more movement. It's helpful. Not only for the autoimmune condition, but for all of those comorbid probleMS and the people we see in our clinics and literally the thousands and millions that we have following my work, you know?
Are they contact us JJ and say they have a condition that I've often have never heard of that their treating physician couldn't help anymore. They had discovered my book began implementing it and they now have hope that they could stabilize their genetic problem more often greatly improve their quality of life, even though it's a genetic disorder, or even though it's a serious autoimmune disorder that was progressing despite the best conventional disease modifying treatments, that when they added diet and lifestyle, their cells could work better.
And so [00:20:00] you have people with muscular dystrophy. Who who follow me and our tremendous devotees, this is a genetic disorder. If they swear, like they can tell they are so much better by following the Wahls protocol. And the
JJ Virgin: Wahls protocol is a book. Just if you're listening, this is a book that you want to get, because I think one of the big takeaways here is this book is for everyone.
You know, yes, someone with MS is highly motivated and will make the shift. But imagine if we just all ate this way, lived this way, how much would change? You know? It would be incredible. Now it's for a lot of people, it takes that, that scariness of a disease to make that lifestyle change. But what if we could get that done sooner?
You're listening right now going, so this never happens. You look at auto immune diseases and they are the biggest thing [00:21:00] happening to our health right now.
Dr. Terry Wahls: We probably have 25 million with on autoimmune disease. And then another 75 million that have the autoimmune protocol headaches, fatigue pain infertility migraines that don't have a clear diagnosis.
They may have auto antibodies there may even be pre auto antibodies. If we follow them another five to 10 years, those folks are very high rate for developing a systemic autoimmune. If during that pre diagnosis phase, I can get to them and get them stirred on the Wahls protocol. We can regress the damage, resolve the headache, the infertility the migraines the brain fog, the mental health symptoMS, and they never develop the inflammatory bowel disease or rheumatoid arthritis or MS.
That. On the track to [00:22:00] development. Now,
JJ Virgin: one of the things I love that you do is travel with your cabbage. Yes. It's just, I mean, this is when I think of Dr. Terry Wahls, I think of you walking into an event with your cabbage and I'm like, this is just so great. So can you walk us through, I know you're going to give us a nice one-page summary that everyone can get.
And download of your program and you of course, want to watch the Ted talk and get the book, but can you walk us through some of the dietary changes, like some of the key elements of the protocol?
Dr. Terry Wahls: So. More vegetables. We're talking green leafy vegetables one group, the cabbage onion, mushroom family, another group.
I call that sulfur rich. And then the third group deeply colored beets, carrots, berries and then we'll have sufficient protein. You can do it as a meat eater or as a vegetarian. If that's your spiritual, a belief and then if you want to advance. Levels that you can take a bit [00:23:00] deeper with level two, level three in the elimination diet.
And I want people to start where they and their family can succeed. So the first thing add in all those vegetables, then I want you to remove the three inflammatory foods, gluten, dairy, and eggs. It also wants you to get rid of the added sugar.
JJ Virgin: Amen. Hallelujah on that one. And I'm just want to add one thing is before you keep going, you said something so key that I think we don't stress enough is add before you take.
Yes. You know, add before you take away, all you thought first was like, let's add in some of these non starchy vegetables and we'll start crowding out the other stuff. So step one, add before you take away. Next one. When you talked about gluten dairy eggs, you know how much that warMS my heart and lowering the sugar?
Can you just talk briefly because I know one of the biggest questions I get asked was like eggs. What about eggs? Why eggs?
Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, so eggs are a great food if you tolerate them, but you will never know [00:24:00] if they're a promblem for you until you take them out. So, I want people at the very least take out gluten, gluten, dairy, and eggs preferably for six months.
Sometimes people can't do that and they'll just do three months or even a month. The protein and egg whites can because the abnormal immune response activate your innate immune system active, which can lead to irritated microglia, which lead to mental health issues and can lead to achiness, fatigue, that protocol that I've, that I've mentioned.
We've had many folks who take out the gluten dairy and eggs, and they're like, you know, I can do it. I can only do it for, it actually people, my students who volunteer in my lab, I have them follow the study deck for two weeks just so they can see what it's like. And then they're like, great I can go back and have pizza and beer.
And then they feel like, oh my God, a semi just ran over them. And they're like, oh, I guess I do have a problem with these foods.
JJ Virgin: You know, it's, it's so interesting. Like the [00:25:00] thousands of people I've pulled off gluten. My take on it is, it is so rare for someone to go. I actually feel great when I eat that.
I think the only time that I ever hear that is when they really didn't get it out. You know, you just never here. I pulled this all out of my diet and then I went back and ate the pizza and felt fabulous. Never once
Dr. Terry Wahls: it just does not happen. I, now I, I tell people if you can do it six months, Typically for the eggs, you'll have the best chance that you can reintroduce them and tolerate them.
Well, if you pull it out for a short time, the memory cells aren't gone and you're more likely to have an abnormal immune response. So it's always a conversation with folks. How long are they willing to try this experiment? The other thing that I stress is this is an experiment you're the principal investigator, and you want to do your science accurately.
So, you know, you have good results. Take the food out. We can [00:26:00] decide when you start your experiment, how long you want it to be. And while I recommend six months, you can decide that all you can manage is two weeks or a month. You pick out how, how long it is, but actually take it out, be a hundred percent, be meticulous.
And then you can, when reintroduce it preferably do one ingredient at a time. So when you feel terrible, you know which one to blame. But sometime the vets would take, you know, gluten dairy, eggs out for two weeks, then start them all up, feel really terrible and come back and say, You made me a believer.
I, they are still out and I mean, all those vegetables, it is
JJ Virgin: fun. I have found, you know, in the Virgin diet, I'll, I'll start with the week and then I'll go, okay, we're going to do three weeks. And I'm like, can we agree? We could do anything for three weeks. And we just, because I know that the longer you get them starting to feel good, I think most people have no idea what feeling good feels like absolutly, you know?
Right. And then they start to [00:27:00] go, oh my gosh. They don't their idea of what normal and I hate to ever use new normal. I'm so tired of that, but like what we've adapted to as normal of living in this, like gassy, bloated, achy, you know, brain foggy state from this, you know, ultra processed food is not normal.
Dr. Terry Wahls: And you know unfortunately what I observed is people have forgotten how to cook. They don't know how to shop. They don't know how to meal. And so we have to go through a process of teaching those skills so they could learn how to plan their, their meals, the grocery. So they consume all the food they buy.
So you aren't, you don't have waste and how to shop. So in the VA we separately would have classes for all of that. In my prograMS that we run for our. We have classes for those skills. Yeah. I teach my practitioners that that is key to your [00:28:00] success. Is finding ways to teach your clients and your patients, those skills?
Well,
JJ Virgin: all they really have to do is follow your social media because you have awesome. I mean, you're in your garden, you're showing your food that you're making. It's fantastic. So highly recommend following Dr. Terry Wahls, social on your Instagram. So someone hearing this and again if you go to JJvirgin.com/wahls. That is Dr. Terry Wahls, w a H L S. So JJvirgin.com/Wahls. You'll be able to get the summary of the process. And we'll also put the links for the book and her TEDx talk, but someone says, okay, I need in on this, how would they work with you and your team?
Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, so if you go to go to our website, we'll see that we have a wide variety of options.
We have just started seeing patients again. So people who need intensive support, we'd love, love to see you. We [00:29:00] also have an online course, the auto-immune intervention mastery course. That is really great, great support. And you can get that with seven weeks of coaching and then we have the radical health upgrade.
Which again is all online and virtual, which is 12 weeks of a much smaller, more intimate group support with me and with individual support with my health coach. And so we have levels of support from the online. To very intensive one-on-one patient contact. You're also training
JJ Virgin: other practitioners, correct?
Yes.
Dr. Terry Wahls: Yes. We trained practitioners. As a matter of fact, we just did our case series this morning. So we have people with health licenses, physicians, nurses, movement, nutrition professionals. We have health coaches people with a health-related license or certificate. Is eligible and we are, I have this spring enrollment happening.
JJ Virgin: Awesome. This is so [00:30:00] fantastic. It's crazy to me, what you've had to do to get this happening, to get this research going and to get, you know, diet and lifestyle accepted as safe and effective
Dr. Terry Wahls: in that diet and lifestyle should be part of the treatment plan for people with MS. We've made so much progress.
You. When my Ted talk first went viral, I was interviewed. A wide variety of neurology folks who in the end would condemn me for creating false hope. It was wild interviews. What are we
JJ Virgin: without
Dr. Terry Wahls: hope? Because I was creating false hope, because I was just telling my story and say, you know, this is the research that we've got going.
And that was very upsetting. But you know, I, I did my interviews. I kept doing my research in that time period. Our publications are being cited, cited, cited. I've joined the MS. Society, nutrition subcommittee and we [00:31:00] are, our group has analyzed the dietary intervention studies in MS. We'll be publishing that.
And JJ, all of those studies are happening because of that Ted talk, because we led the way in doing dietary interventions. And of course they're there they're all little tiny pilot studies like our initials were,, but no, I I'm so excited that now at the consortium of MS centers, there are more clinicians saying, you know, Diet does matter that we can't just rely on the drugs that we gotta be talking about diet and lifestyle with our patients.
JJ Virgin: Well, you did that. And you know, it takes a brave hero to do that.
Dr. Terry Wahls: You have to have a lot of perseverance. You have to realize this is a marathon and. Gradually steadily grind away.
JJ Virgin: So thank you for grinding it's you are making the big dent in in healthcare [00:32:00] worldwide, and it is amazing. And again, I want to remind everybody listening.
This is not just a diet for MS. You heard all of the side benefits for this. This is a foundational approach to health. And so grab it at jjvirgin.com/Wahls. That's w a h l s. I'm going to put. Dr. Terry Wahls website, the book link and the Ted talk and everything that you need to look at. And again bless you for giving people hope, because without hope we have nothing.
So,
Dr. Terry Wahls: and JJ, let me throw in one more thing. One more link. We should give you. We're recruiting for a new clinical trial, comparing ketogenic diet wall's diet and dietary guidelines. For two years, we expect all three groups to improve. The exciting thing is we're gonna follow. For two years and that you have to have relapsed to remain MS.
And live within 500 miles of Iowa city.
JJ Virgin: Cool. All right. We will get that out there too. And I just so appreciate you and your time [00:33:00] and your courage and your perseverance and everything about you.
Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, I love everything that you're doing. JJ. You have such a huge impact in the health and wellness space, too.
It is so marvelous
JJ Virgin: mutual admiration society.
For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, JJvirgin.com. And don't forget to subscribe to my show. So you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojj.com. Thanks again for being with me this week. .

 

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