Episode 52: Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Naturally with Dr. Terry Wahls

Everybody welcome back to the Whaddupdoc University podcast. This is Dr. Mike and we have another great episode today. Today is really, really good episode and it's Dr. Terry Wahls. We talked about her video from the [inaudible 00:52-53] earlier and I'll put those on the show notes; I posted that up in the Facebook group.
Let me give you a little bit of background on Terry Wahls if you don't know who she is. So, Dr. Terry Wahls she's a clinical professor of Medicine at the University of Iowa. She's the author of The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine and also the cook book The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions. You can learn more about her work from her website www.terrywahls.com. She hosts The Wahls Protocol Seminar every August where anyone can learn how to implement a protocol with ease and success. Do you want to follow her? Follow her on Facebook just look for Terry Wahls MD. She's also on Twitter and her Twitter sign is @terrywahls. In this episode, she's going to go over her story and she's going to talk about all the things that she went through to reverse her condition of multiple sclerosis naturally. So, this is something that you want to take a listen to, maybe once or twice or three times and share this with your friends and family especially those that you know who has something of autoimmune condition. And not necessarily that this is the way that's going to work for them but to give them some sense of hope and to give them another look at the spectrum of health that things like functional medicine, diet, nutritional supplementation all those things can help their body. But not necessarily promising a cure but it is another route. And you know hope can be some of the greatest things we can give. Alright, let's get into this episode.

Dr Okouchi: Welcome to the show Dr. Terry Wahls!

Dr. Wahls: Oh hey, thank you so much! I'm very glad to be here.

Dr Okouchi: Let's jump straight into it. Take us to the moment that you were diagnosed with MS. What was the first thing that was running through your mind?

Dr. Wahls: Oh God, it was awful. I just resigned from the Marshall clinic I was starting at the University of Iowa and I was like, "Oh my God, have I just created a catastrophe for my family? What does this mean? Is this a slow disabling thing? A rapid disabling thing? It was really a terrifying two weeks was going through all the testing sort out what it was that I had that caused the weakness of my left leg.

Dr Okouchi: About how long were you feeling symptoms and all that?

Dr. Wahls: Well, the weakness of my left leg had been sort of building for a couple of weeks which I had not really been aware of until I tried to walk three miles and realized that there was a big problem. Then I went to see my doctor the next day and started getting evaluation. In retrospect, I had been having symptoms probably 20 years with these episodes of pain that had been going on and getting progressively more troublesome. I had an episode of visual dimming 13 years earlier and fortunately for me my physicians had not put together the pain and the visual dimming to raise the possibility of MS which is good because otherwise I wouldn't have had my children so I'm very glad they had not put it together 13 years earlier.
Dr Okouchi: Okay. I read in your book, you said and I quote, "Like most physicians I was always focus on quickly diagnosing my patients and then using drugs and surgical procedures that treat them that is until I became a patient myself conventional medicine was failing me." Why did you have that change in mindset?

Dr. Wahls: Before I was diagnosed I was a conventional academic doc. I thought people were wasting their money on these vitamins and supplements and alternative treatments but you know God works in mysterious ways...

Dr Okouchi: Yeah...

Dr. Wahls: I got to have my MS diagnosis, I knew that I should treat my disease aggressively so I sat up the best center I could find which is the Cleveland Clinic [inaudible 05:34-35] drugs and still within three years my disease had converted to progressive MS. I was getting weaker, I needed to [inaudible 05:44] wheelchair and it looked to me like I was headed towards becoming bedridden possibly demented. My pain was getting more and more difficult to control and so that's when it occurred to me like, well convention medicine is not stopping this. I'm going start reading the basic Science myself.

Originally, when I was first diagnosed and started reading the Science, it was just so upsetting that I quit but now that I knew how bad it was going to be, I went back to reading the Science looking at first for what was the latest new drug I could try but then I had the [inaudible 06:25] like you know I can't get those new drugs, I'd better be reading about things I could access which were vitamins and supplements. So I started reading about other [inaudible 06:37-39] and so [inaudible 06:41] Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Huntington’s, Lugaric disease and I decided that [inaudible 06:46] with the problem then I started reading what I could do to supplement and support my mitochondria.

Dr Okouchi: Okay. For our listeners, let's take a little step back and explain to them because some of them may not understand exactly what is MS.

Dr. Wahls: MS is a disease where the immune cells are attacking the insulation on the wiring between our brain cells. When there is an acute attack that's called a relapse and then we can do some repair work, things function a little bit better that's called a remission. And most people are originally diagnosed with relapse [inaudible 07:26] but overtime the destructive damage continues. If there is enough damage that there's no more spontaneous recovery but there's this slow steady decline and depending on the person you convert to that steady decline earlier or later in the course of your illness. And so my conversion occurred really pretty quickly after diagnosis.

Dr Okouchi: Okay. So now you've done digging your research, what were the first steps that you took to kind of get your health back?

Dr. Wahls: Well, actually the very first thing I did, my [inaudible 08:06] doctors told me about Loren Cordain's work in the Paleo diet, so 2002 after 20 years of being vegetarian I adopted the Paleo diet, gave up all grains, all the legumes, all dairy because the Science seems to make sense. I continued to decline the extra needed chemotherapy and I needed [inaudible 08:25] wheelchair but I stayed with Paleo diet because at least I was doing something then as I get into wheelchair I started reading about vitamins and supplements, I add creatine, crenatine, [inaudible 08:43] and a B vitamin. And after six months, I'm really pretty cranky. I feel like I have wasted my money, I stopped them and then I just can't get out of bed. I am completely exhausted, two days later my wife came in and gave me my supplements and said, "Honey, I think you gotta take these again." I took them, next day I could get up and go to work and so I think wow that was really interesting. Two weeks later I did the same thing, I stopped my supplements, I was completely exhausted, two days later I started them up but I could function again. So I decided that though they aren't enough to recover me, they're clearly doing something. Now I'm very excited that I'm learning stuff that my neurologist and primacare docs don't know to tell me so I'm more excited about reading the basic Science and beginning to slowly experiment on myself with what other things that I can try.

Now at this point, I'm still very focused on a supplement program and I'm very grateful that it's my perception, my supplements are slowing my decline which had been very rapid so that's really good news. My neurologist had make it very clear though that functions once lost when you have progressive MS are gone forever, they're never coming back. You know, I'm still doing my simple little exercises that I can every day, I never miss a day but I can do less and less and less.

By the summer of 2007, I couldn’t sit up anymore, I have a special zero gravity chair at work and one at home so I can lean far back otherwise in bed. I can work very short distances. I began to lose my keys and my phone, the pain was getting more difficult to control, the episodes were more frequent, more severe. My chief of staff pulled me into office to tell me that in six months he is assigning to the traumatic [inaudible 10:49-50] patients without residents. I wanted to tell my wife about this, we both decided it's the VA's way of telling me that we're done redesigning your job, you're going to have to finally take medical disability. And so July of 2007, I thought I knew my future and it was pretty dark and grim.

Dr Okouchi: Yeah, so and at this moment you're still just on the supplements, right?

Dr. Wahls: So, I'm on supplements and I'm still taking my disease modifying drugs, Cellcept and I've gone through the ABCR-drugs, I had taken Tysabri, the new biologic, I had taken [inaudible 11:35-36] Cellcept and these drugs make all make you sick but you take them because it will terrify you becoming bedridden and demented. And so I'm still taking them and I'm thinking, you know I'm going to become bedridden and demented anyway but I want to put it off as long as I can so I keep taking the disease modifying drugs and my vitamins and my supplements. You know I have accounted enough to life that I've learned to take each day one day at a time and I consider to let go off that but [inaudible 12:13-15].

Dr Okouchi: So then what were your next steps after that?

Dr. Wahls: Well, you know it August I got my research packet for the research involvement committee because every month I was reviewing the research protocols and I have been asking to review the stuff related to the brain so there was a protocol that was about logical stimulation of muscles and people who had acute traumatic injury to the spinal cord. And I read that and I thought, well this is really interesting so then I searched for articles on Pubmed [12:53-54] and so I read to those abstracts, there were couple of articles using that for people with strokes and cerebral palsy and I convinced my physical therapist to let me have some test sessions and he said, "Maybe grow more muscles using this electrical current". But he wasn't sure if my brain could talk to the muscles. And so if my brain couldn't talk to these new muscles as he's putting ankle weights on my legs as it's going to make even harder to walk...

Dr Okouchi: Okay...

Dr. Wahls: But we're trying that, I tolerated it okay and so I did this twice a day. I was stuck in my gut for my very simple little work out. At the same time that I made that discovery, I discovered the Institute for Functional Medicine online ad I ordered their course on neuro protection. This was synchronized on your audio synchronized power points. It's like a 48 conference that they had so I was going through all the lectures, I had a big notebook. [Inaudible 14:00-03] my understanding of what I can do for my mitochondria, I have a longer list of supplements that I'm taking. I'm doing my E-stim and I feel like you know maybe I can sit up just a little bit better. And then in December, so I've been doing this about three months, I have a [Inaudible 14:23-24] like what if I take this list of supplements that I'm taking and I figure out where it is in the food supply. So as more research I've this list of food, I'm going to start emphasizing.

In December 26, we started this new way of focused eating. And about three weeks later, I started in the [inaudible 14:50-51] but what I discovered is my energy has improved [inaudible 14:57] has improved. At first, we can [inaudible 15:01] of watching my partner so that sort of by week if your okay it doesn't...I figured I should be able to watch people work and the next week I'm starting to see patients and I can do it...

Dr Okouchi: Wow, that's really quick, right?

Dr. Wahls: It's a stunning; it's a stunning you know.

Dr Okouchi: Yeah.

Dr. Wahls: I'm still in my wheelchair but I was staying up to an exam, sitting down and thinking like you know I can do this. I was really surprised, my wife was surprised. And something like well maybe this is going to work out. At the end of three months, I started to walk with a cane and at six months I was walking around the Veterans Affairs hospital without a cane, I still have a limp but I was walking around without a cane. At nine months, I was able to walk around the block. I have recovered really quite remarkably but as part of having a progressive illness, you let go of having expectations just take each day one day at a time. I don't know what to make of what's happening around me which is really pretty interesting.

Dr Okouchi: Let me ask you, let me stop you there. What's the mindset that you're going through all of this because I know a lot of people that have gone through similar issues and a lot of them just thrown the towel and say, "Hey, this is my [inaudible 6:35] life". What kept you stay in the course?

Dr. Wahls: Well, a couple of things. There's a great book that I love by Victor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning...

Dr Okouchi: Favorite, I love that book...

Dr. Wahls: One of his principles, thesis is that between every event in your life, in your response is a space and in that space you make a choice and that defines our character. So, I have two young kids and so my Mantra to myself is your kids are watching, are you going to show them model giving up or model going on? So I was going to model going on, when I was on the wheel chair one of my partners invited me to write a case for medical students which I did. And then you normally gave a lecture about that disease and I decided instead to give a lecture about being evaluated and being diagnosed with progressive incurable illness and what that experiences like and what it taught me as a physician. That was my giving back to the world in terms of teaching these medical students about life and pain and function. I really think that was a major turning point that I point to in terms of reclaiming my health because that's what I was giving back to society.

Dr Okouchi: Ah, okay.

Dr. Wahls: Then several years later, I discovered functional medicine. I am physically recovering and remarkably so but I'm still in that take every day one day at a time, I don't really know what this means. At nine months, spring was coming, it was Mother's Day and I have been sort of thinking could I ride my bike around the block? And so I got my bike out, my family had a panic attacked. We had a big family meeting, can I ride my bike or not? We decided that my daughter run on the right, my son will run on the left and my wife rides a bike behind me. And I got on the bike in fact, I can bike and I bike around the block. We were all crying. And you know I have tears in my eyes now because that was a miraculous moment when hope came back into my life.

Dr Okouchi: Yeah. A lot of us and I tell these things to my patients, sometimes even simple things like that we take that for granted and to be able to have that back is miraculous [inaudible 19:20] itself, right?
Dr Wahls: Absolutely.

Dr Okouchi: When you started to investigate the food, did you get rid of the supplements or did you continue with the supplements and with the food?

Dr Wahls: I kept with the supplements, I added the food. The magic happens when I add the food and the food plan is now what I call The Wahls Diet. Overtime, I simplified my supplements but I discovered if I try to take them away completely I have more trouble with pain so I think targeted supplements can be very, very helpful. [Inaudible 20:03] you know I love that Paleo Diet; there was certainly not enough to recover me. Supplements were helpful but they weren't enough to recover me, even the complicated regimen that I got from functional medicine...

Dr Okouchi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Wahls: I really had to integrate everything, ramp up the nutrition. I have target supplements. I think the E-stim was very helpful. And quickly in the speed of my recovery and the Paleo eating was helpful. As ill as I was, remember I couldn't sit up anymore so I needed everything to the max to recover.

Dr Okouchi: So what were the key components to The Wahls Diet? What did you put together? And what did you change actually from the Paleo?

Dr. Wahls: So from the Paleo, I had already taken out all the grains, all the dairy, all the legumes. I also...

Dr Okouchi: Now was this by experiment for you?

Dr. Wahls: No, no this was based on having read Loren Cordain's The Plaeo Diet book and having read these papers so I went ahead and did all of that. I also took out eggs because eggs are another common food sensitivity so that was the new thing that I took out. And then I ramped up the vegetables in a very specific way to get the nutrients that Science told me that brain cells needed to really thrive and you know it might be the mitochondria needed. There were 20 nutrients that I was tracking. I now tracked 36 nutrients so, the big picture things were adding where lots of greens for the Vitamin K which we now know very, very important for making [inaudible 21:53]. So far rich vegetables cabbage, onion, mushroom family because that helps you process eliminate trash, helps my brain make gamma aminobutyric acid and [inaudible 22:07-08] and helps my cells make little [inaudible 22:10] which are very important antioxidant.

Our next group of vegetables headed with the deeply pigmented vegetables in the beets, carrots, peppers, and berries because those polyphenols are associated in many studies with a protection of the brain.

 And then I was more attentive to grass fed, well-caught fish meat. I had liver couple of times a week. I started adding up fronted foods into the diet. It was like nine cups of vegetables and probably once I get into this it was probably more like 12 to 15 cups of vegetables. I was just phenomenally craving particularly big salads so as having six cups of greens easily every day.

Dr. Okouchi: Were you cooking this or eating this raw?

Dr. Wahls: A mixture of both. Big salads but I also loved [inaudible 23:19] bacon and greens [inaudible 23:21].

Dr. Okouchi: Okay. About how long after you started implementing the complete picture here that you start seeing improvements?

Dr. Wahls: So brain fog and energy dramatic improvement let's say within six weeks [inaudible 23:41-43] next several years but I could tell within six weeks that my brain fog was improving, my energy was definitely improving. So I can sit up to eat a meal at the table again that was improving in a month's time. At the end of three month's time, I took my first walk in the hallway at the hospital using my cane to get the mail that was a very big day for me. Then at about six months, I felt pretty comfortable walking without a cane. At nine months I did the bike tour. At 12 months I did a 20 mile bike ride with my family. [Inaudible 24:32-34] stimulation of the muscles as part of my routine for about four years. I was seeing physical therapy regularly for four years throughout all of this time.

Dr. Okouchi: Wow. Let me step back with the E-stim, what were you doing with the  E-stim like how were you using it?

Dr. Wahls:  Well, you know I'm an athlete and this is a pretty common thing athletes do to speed recovery after an injury or prevent muscle atrophy with injury so you do isometric contraction of the muscle while you're applying electrical current to that muscle over the motor units. And so it builds muscle mass and if you can do 15 minutes a day everyday to the injured muscle you prevent atrophy, if  you can do 45 minutes to an hour, you can grow a muscle mass. So I was targeting my weakest muscles and I was working on growing a muscle mass and that was helpful. So I was targeting my belly and my back and then muscles that lift my ankle, my feet up at the ankle. So [inaudible 25:47] reflection.

Dr. Okouchi: So, how is that regenerate nerves? What's the physiology there? 
 
Dr. Wahls: What's the physiology there?     
 
Dr. Okouchi: Yeah.

Dr. Wahls: The activation of the motor unit is very helpful. If you don't keep activating the motor unit the muscles begin to deteriorate quickly, the [inaudible 26:11] mitochondria, it’s quite down to [inaudible 26:14] function. When you activate those motor units you also act/develop more mitochondria, a much healthier muscles cell and you'll develop [inaudible 26:26] nerve growth factors locally and you'll release endorphins locally which will get circulated up to the brain. And now the favorable impact on mood and lower inflammation. So one of the things that we observed was when I did E-stim it had a terrific impact on my mood.

Dr. Okouchi: Wow! Interesting, very interesting.  Now within the integrated medicine circles the hot topic with the last couple years is the Microbio. Now, explain to us because not a lot of people actually understand this and people kind of think that they do and they kind of just take you know I need take probiotics to help my microbio and [inaudible 27:14-16] and they're like, Okay I'm great, but explain to us the link between the gut, the brain and then what we need to do enhance the micro bio?

Dr. Wahls: Well our awareness of how the bacteria in yeast and parasites in our bowels help us run the chemistry of life, help us eat our food, digest your food, digest each other’s bi-products and some of their bi-products defuse in to our blood stream will migrate up to our brain and influence our behaviors and our cravings in ways that make wonders and lose yourself of the bacteria that are living in our bowels and so when you eat a lot of sugar we're stimulating yeast and bacteria that create more craving for sugar. When we change our diets really quite radically over the last 300 years and even more the last 50 years with all this extra sugar and white flour fertilizing what we think of a disease promoting bacteria and yeast. [Inaudible 28:20-22] processed foods with the Paleo diet that was helpful but the next really big thing I did was when I ramped up all those vegetables and I was eating probably 12 to 15 cups of vegetables, I was feeding and fertilizing these health promoting bacteria in a very big way so I had probably caused a huge shift to my Microbio. Unlikely [inaudible 28:48-49] a lot of the sugar loving yeast and bacteria that was so harmful. The most powerful thing that we can do in terms of determining whose going to grow on our bowels is what we are feeding, what we're eating ourselves and what we're fertilizing in our gut. If we eat a lot and processed food we're fertilizing a very different kind of food mix of bacteria than if we're eating you know 9 to 12 to 15 servings of vegetables, if we're eating only meat we have a different microbiome, if we're eating only fat we're having a different kind of microbiome. It’s very sensitive to the food that you eat. You know you could have like a thousand trillion microbes in your gut…

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah!

Dr. Wahls: If you take a probiotic capsule that's maybe 5, 10, 15 or even a really big one 50 billion [inaudible 29:41] forming units that's nothing compared to a hundred trillion.

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah, yeah exactly. Now, I gotta get jump back to one thing that I was thinking about is when you started making this recovery, what we're your colleagues saying?                                    
 
 Dr. Wahls: Well, you know they were really stunned; people were very excited to see me walking around.

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah.

 Dr. Wahls: Now, what was very interesting when I changed my practice and I quit using drugs and surgeries and I'm using conversations about diet and lifestyle and meditation and exercise and vegetables and I'm talking about fish oil and I'm talking about vitamins that make people uncomfortable. And so I had to get going to the chief of staff’s office multiple times and they say your people are upset, what's going on? Why is this happening? And I would you know take [inaudible 30:42] papers, explain the science behind what I was doing and my chief of staff also became a huge fan and said you know like if she hurts someone we'll do a pure review but if she is not hurting anyone [inaudible 30:56] is really not a problem folks.

Dr. Okouchi: [Laughter] 

Dr. Wahls: But it's interesting it was very uncomfortable for folks to see how I changed my practice but then fortunately my chief of staff was a huge, fan big supporter, the chair of medicine became the Dean of the College of Medicine. He encouraged me to write a clinical protocol which we got approved and we did a little trial and every year we're putting a posters out with our progress on the clinical trial and plus my clinic my [inaudible 31:34] clinic is just doing amazingly well. The outcomes begin to speak for themselves and our research outcomes begin to speak for themselves. So, and then when we had the before and after videos of the gate changes then people decided that maybe I'm the [inaudible 31:57] visionary as suppose to as you know [inaudible 32:04]. 

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah, yeah. I can see how that happened. It’s just interesting how you know you being in the environment of you know conventional medicine of drug surgery and then shifting it and then how does that you know change the course of things?

Dr. Wahls: Yeah, it’s not really meant [inaudible 32:23] not on the patience but from...  

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah.      

Dr. Wahls:  But from my colleagues who thought I was maybe I was in the quackery but you know I keep speaking physiology, about chemistry, the basic science and then doing these studies and having some very impressive results   

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah, yeah that's awesome. So at the beginning of the book you wrote unless you understand what your body actually needs, you won't know what advice to take and what advice to leave, you won't know what foods to choose, you won't know which diet is the right one for your condition, you won't know how to fuel your own selves for optimal health. How do you recommend or what do you recommend people, [inaudible 33:07] person to get that knowledge, where do they start?

Dr. Wahls: I'm probably the only author with a diet book that also does clinical research, nutrition research. When we did our clinical trial, we had to do menus, recipes, [inaudible 33:27-29] which is me to verify that there was nutritionally adequate because this is seems so crazy to folks. The dietitian who completed that study for us said like she had been doing this dietary research for 30 years and said this was the most nutrient [inaudible 33:44] she had analyzed. Then when I wrote the book and when we were doing the subsequent clinical trials we again created menus, recipes, did detail analysis to verify that the diet rules that I've written out, when you follow them do in fact provide that Science says, our brain cells and mitochondria need. No one else has done that even as much as I love the Paleo diet, some of the single analysis of the Paleo diet has shown that even that still has gaps. And so I think [inaudible 34:26-29] so I have done that work, at least we know that my various diet plans are completely sound. So, I encourage people to pick up the book, begin one of the three diets adapted to your cultural taste.

I think it's really important for people to begin to cook at home which is why I also wrote the cook book because in my lifestyle clinic we saw that so many people have forgotten how to cook or they didn't even learn how, so they just [inaudible 35:06] did not know how to cook with real food and ingredients. So we gave them cooking classes and we got them feeling much more comfortable cooking and then I decided I need to take this to the public and so I wrote the cook book to give people the skills and comfort to begin making simple, enjoyable, fun foods for themselves, their kids and their grand kids.

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah. Guys, if you haven't gotten the book yet go ahead and get the book. I'll put the link to it in the show notes. When I first got the book, like any other book, you look at it. The way I look at books is I look at the size of it and I'm like, wow that's going to be a couple of weeks read but in actuality guys it was such a compelling book that it only took me about a few hours because it was just going. Anyway, it's like me sitting there with you talking to me about your story and what you went through and then saying, "Okay here's what you need to do with your diet and all the [inaudible 36:10-12]." I really like the way you wrote the book.

Dr. Wahls: Yeah I was very happy with how it turned out. I worked really hard in making sure this is very understandable so to make the Science very, very approachable. People understand why we do things the way we do but in a way that it's easy to understand. You don't have to have a PhD to read my books.

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah, yeah. So a couple of questions. What are your thoughts on because this has been circling around in the integrated medicine community, what are your thoughts of putting stuff like hyperbaric chambers, intermittent fasting, all of that stuff for person who's going through a neurodegenerative disease?

Dr. Wahls: The intermittent fasting is absolutely a terrific idea. Fasting, I like to eat once a day so I have a 24 hour fast between eating so I have [inaudible 37:10] key tones and that stimulates the number of mitochondria. [Inaudible 37:15-16] deficiency to mitochondria. I eat lots and lots of vegetables so I still have a healthy microbiome. I occasionally will go one to three days without on a fast and I might do that couple of times a year, again for the same kind of health benefits. Great research that this is a very potent anti-aging and a great way to protect your brain.

A hyperbaric oxygen, some very interesting studies about that that maybe useful but that's a cost and so it's going to be a little more restrictive [inaudible 37:53] to access that as supposed to fasting which you can control.

You know, I also get asked a lot about stem cells [inaudible 38:01-02]. Let me just talk about that.

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah.

Dr. Wahls: Stem cells are great therapy for orthopedic injuries, trauma related injuries. You can often get by with one stem cell infusion and have a really nice response with early or moderate arthritic changes. I have gone to stem cell conferences where the practitioners are very excited about the stem cells that are given frequently. When it's a [inaudible 38:31] stem cell for people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Progressive MS and they can stop to decline and I have to give their infusions every month or couple of months. We stop to decline by changing the diet and the life style and we have marked improvement in function. And I presented that at some stem cell conferences and I had some lively conversations with these folks that if you don't change the root cause of the degenerative disease you have to keep doing stem cells every month or two forever. And so I pushed them to say, imagine what would happen if you did diet and life style. That made these folks won't need the stem cells but there'll be some folks who will [inaudible 39:21] I can't fix everyone but if you did diet and life style and stem cells with people who need it, hyperbaric for the people who need it and we might [inaudible 39:31] to really have able to stop and reverse these processes for nearly everyone then. That's a theory I don't know but I think it's certainly quite possible.

Dr. Okouchi: Yeah, that's a big, big topic. I had a few patients undergo stem cell theraphy for knee replacement and then also for low back stuff and they came out really well and I have been reading some of the research that you were talking about on the [inaudible 40: 02] so that is right over the horizon. I think they're going to come down for that. Couple last questions; what are the implications of diet? I mean who is this actually for like do you actually have to wait until you get some type devastating diagnosis or can the average person just do it?
Dr. Wahls: So, we had a lot of questions when [inaudible 40:29] I'm such a dynamic researcher here and our people are very excited to be in my lab...
Dr. Okouchi: Yeah.
Dr. Wahls: And we have them do the study diet for 2 weeks, keep logs before they work with us and all of these kids who are at the prime of their lives uniformly comeback and tell us how much better they feel, more alert, better moods, migraines are gone, their anxiety is gone, their public pain is gone and so even our young healthy people are experiencing health benefits. In my [inaudible 41:05] clinic that people did very well and the therapy [inaudible 41: 09] clinic will folks with wide variety of adenium problems. People with diabetics, obesity and all these folks had improvement of their you know the bio-markers, reduced need for pains, reduced need for their medication. So, if you're healthy likely you'll discover that you have more energy, a lot better mental clarity and mood. If you have early disease, you'll probably have normalization of your bio-markers need far fewer medications. If you're [inaudible 41:48] new disease it’s going to take longer but we still saw some people to have a reduction pain, normalization of their blood sugar and blood pressures and I study decline in their number of prescription meds that they need. So people generally improved but it’s true the later you're on a disease those improvements will come more slowly. The earlier you are in your disease the more rapid it is. If you don't have any disease [inaudible 42:15-16] damn, I'm just feeling so much better, so much more alive.
Dr. Okouchi: So it's for everybody guys. This is the life style that I believe that everybody should adopt. Now, last question what are the three things that you would leave the listeners with? What can they do right now to make a difference in their health?
Dr. Wahls: You know I think the most important thing that we need to do is begin to eat home cooked meals at home and to teach our children to cook. We're so busy, so fast that we're not teaching our children how to feel comfortable making food. In that put some economic risk and put some at health risks. Now obviously when they're making that food, [inaudible 43:12] lots of vegetables and not have gluten and not have [inaudible 43:16] dairy. But for the health of the country, if we can all as a country and for families start making food at home, make recipes, make a menu, plan [inaudible 43:33-34] better social skills with their kids, better grades for our kids, better health for the nation.

Dr. Okouchi: When I was growing up, we always had at the table. That was a sacred time you know [inaudible 43:53-54] like most societies, right? I mean everybody...

Dr. Wahls: Yeah.

Dr. Okouchi: That's a big thing. You go to Europe and they take like two hours off to have a meal together.

Dr. Wahls: And it's a social bonding time that you eat with friends and family and you talk about life and what's going on in life. It's a big part of why the blue zone communities do well as that social bonding around the meal time.

Dr. Okouchi: Here, cheers I love the blue zones. Well thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and for having the courage to go through this and stick though it and then paved the way for generations to come and to write this book to give other hope and to give others guidance [inaudible 44:43-47]. Any last words you want to leave our listeners?
Dr. Wahls: Well, come check out my website. We have lots of resources [inaudible 44:56] on this journey. It's really important that we not be afraid to be in this radical thing known as vegetables.

Dr. Okouchi: [Laughter] Don't be afraid of vegetables. I love that! What's your website?

Dr. Wahls: Terrywahls.com

Dr. Okouchi: Perfect! I'll put those all on the show notes. Again guys, listen to what was said today. Go back and listen to this a couple of more times and share this with your friends and family. Also, pick up the book and then apply the knowledge [inaudible 45:36] within that.

Alright, thank you so much for your time and your knowledge.

Dr. Wahls: Thank you very much Mike.

Dr. Okouchi: Alright. Have a good day.

Dr. Wahls: Bye-bye.

Dr. Okouchi: What a great interview we had! Lot, lot, lot, lots of information. So go back and take dome notes. Get the book especially it will be in the show notes and follow some of the recipes. Some of the recipes are really, really good. Like I said if you guys have friends or family that are going through stuff like MS or any type of autoimmune disease, you need to be educating yourself in this arena. So this is such a great episode to open the doors. And like I said before in the beginning of the podcast, isn't it not necessarily something that will definitely cure and I don't say guaranteeing it but it is another way, it is another avenue that they can explore and try rather than just relying on the things that they've been given and feeling like they've lost hope because that's one of the biggest things that I said is having hope.

Alright guys, thank you again for listening to this entire episode. And if you found great value in this please go to the iTunes and leave us a five star review, share your thoughts, express your emotion for what we had on this podcast. Let Dr. Terry Wahls know how much you've appreciated her time and actually her mind for pushing through all of these so that she can share this with the entire world. I appreciate of you guys share this with your friends and family and if we can get the word out of the Whaddupdoc University podcast. Get it out to the world so that we can change the lives and impact the lives of thousands of people. But you know what, it has come to the end of this episode, til the next time. We got some more great episodes coming up for you guys so stay tuned make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Again, leave us a five star review. Thank you very much, until the next time. This is Dr. Mike from Whaddupdoc University podcast in Velocity Wellness Center saying, be well and aloha.