autoimmune disease

The Secrets to Healthy Aging

Dr. Trevor Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I am Dr. Trevor Cates. Today we are talking about dietary and lifestyle approaches to treating autoimmune disease. My guest has a phenomenal personal story that has led her to not only offer hope for people with chronic debilitating diseases but also diet and lifestyle changes that provide real solutions that she has done quite a bit of research on. My guest is Dr. Terry Wahls who is an Institute for functional medicine certified practitioner and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa where she conducts clinical trials. In 2018 she was awarded the Institute for functional medicine’s Linus Pauling award for her contributions and research clinical care and patient advocacy. She’s also a patient herself with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, which confined her to a tilt, recline wheelchair for four years. Dr. Wahls restored her health using a diet and lifestyle program. she designed specifically for her brain and now peddles her bike to work each day.

Dr. Trevor Cates: She is the author of the Wahls protocol, how I beat progressive MS using paleo principles and functional medicine and the Wahls protocol, a radical new way to treat all chronic autoimmune conditions using paleo principles and a cookbook, the Wahls protocol for cooking for life. She conducts clinical trials that test the effects of nutrition and lifestyle interventions to treat MS and other progressive health problems. She also teaches the public and medical community about the healing power of diet and therapeutic lifestyle changes that restore health and vitality. So her protocol is not only great for people with MS, but many other health issues and also just to help optimize overall health. In today’s interview, Dr. Wahls comes back on the podcast to share her story. She has been on the podcast before, but it was one of my very first podcast episodes and it was audio only, so I’m excited to have her back on. She also shares the exciting research that she has been working on and specific diet and lifestyle tips to help people with autoimmune conditions including psoriasis and new developments in the Wahls protocol. So a lot of really great information that she shares a lot of inspiration and hope and real practical advice. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Terry, it is so great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, thanks for having me.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes. You have been on the podcast before and shared your story and your journey and what you are up to. And it has been awhile since you have been on and you have been busy and you have some updates. So before you tell us kind what’s new and what’s going on with you, for the people who didn’t catch your podcast before, can you tell everyone about your journey and what led you to specialize in what you do?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So I have a progressive multiple sclerosis and had went relentlessly downhill for seven years, despite taking thousands of dollars worth of drugs every month, seeing the best people in the country. But fortunately I had been reading the basic science, ancestral health principles and then discovered functional medicine and integrated all those things. I created a diet and lifestyle protocol designed specifically for my brain. And to my amazement, it got me out of my wheelchair. It stopped my trigeminal neuralgia, stopped the brain fog and really got me remarkably better. My chief of staff, And my chairman of Madison, told me to get a case report written up, which we did. Then they called me back and said, change your research program. We want you to do a safety and feasibility trial. So I did that, and now we have done four trials. We will soon be starting our fifth, and so it certainly has changed the way I practice medicine and of course the type of research that I now do.

Dr. Trevor Cates: And, how has it changed the type of medicine that you do?

Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, you know, I was a conventional internal medicine doc. I believed in the best science, which I still believe in, by the way. And I heavily used pharmaceuticals, technologies. I was deeply skeptical of special diets and supplements, complimentary alternative medicine. But, it is my own experience and discovering that the best conventional medicine was not able to stop my slide towards a bedridden, possibly demented, possibly intractable pain future. That got me to read the basic science. I would eventually get me to experiment it on myself. And then, you know, to my amazement, I am able to create this protocol that transforms my health. And then I began talking to my patients about the power of food, in diet and lifestyle. And I become actually very effective at getting them to make these big shifts in diet and lifestyle. And we saw people with diabetes, obesity, begin to lose weight and get better. And then I saw people with rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, psoriasis and sometimes a bowel disease, get better in clinic. Now of course our clinical trials, we saw the same kind of thing that people with MS were finally able to stabilize their disease as well.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes. And it is amazing that the work that you’re doing, I hear all the time that this misunderstanding, misbelief that natural medicine and diets don’t really have any real research and science behind them. And so when people say that to you, what do you say? What is your response?

Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, you know, it is fascinating. Oh, when I first began talking about all this stuff, they were very adamant that there was no research that, well; you clearly couldn’t have had MS, because people with progressive MS don’t recover. So your physicians must have been incompetent. And so my response is, okay, so let’s assume that my physicians in Wisconsin at the Cleveland Clinic, and University of Iowa, somehow we are all uniformly incompetent. Then we have to figure out how to address the fact that I have done now four clinical trials and I have consistently found favorable results. In prospective studies where other people other than me, agree that they have Multiple Sclerosis. And so, you know my response is this, you can decide that I don’t really matter. It is the fact that I have taken the time to do clinical trials and I publish my results in peer reviewed scientific publications and that we have gotten external funding. Now by the MS society millions of dollars to do my work. So the good news is because we have influenced public opinion and it has shifted the MS society to make dietary and research studies, a priority. Now there are more people studying dietary interventions. In fact, last time I looked, there are 13 dietary intervention studies that have either been conducted or are in the process of being conducted. Of those 13 studies, I am involved in five of them, and I was principal investigator in four of them. So it is happening, people, the neurology community is finally agreeing that yes, diet quality matters a great deal.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes. And it is not cheap to do a clinical trial. So how do you get the funding for this? How do you get support?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So, in the beginning, we mentioned we do this by a philanthropic support from a group in Canada. And then a PhD student worked in our lab. We used our data for her dissertation. Then we have undergraduate students that helped us get those first couple of small part studies going. And then once you have pilot data, then you can write for clinical trials, grant proposals that are much more compelling, which is how we got the millions of dollars from the MS society. And now we have a track record and have funding, and we can continue to grow and expand our research program. That is part of why we are in the process of getting approval for our fifth clinical trial. And this one is going to be so exciting Trevor, because in this trial we will finally begin to answer the question that I care most deeply about is diet and lifestyle. No drugs, Bruce’s standard of care. Eat what you want, but take the drug. So on that study we will be comparing, measures of walking, thinking, vision and biomarkers, including MRI and we will follow people for a year and we will see what happens. So that will be a hugely important study. It will take us several years to get the enrollment and then the follow-up. So it will probably be three years before we have the answer to that study. So exciting.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes, that is so exciting. Thank you for all the work you do in this. So, Terry, you have MS, but you also help people with other chronic illnesses. They focus on autoimmune disease. Right? So what do you feel like are kind of the causes behind why people develop these issues? Because I am sure that that is a big part of the dietary approach is addressing what is really going on behind that.

Dr. Terry Wahls: You know there is always a complicated interaction between the genes that you have to increase your risk ever so slightly and a lifetime of dietary choices. The microbes that you have living on your skin in your gut, and throughout your body. Your toxins to which you have been exposed, your balance of stress hormones and your sex hormones and your thyroid hormones and the self-talk, your social environment. All of those things interact. Now we cannot do much about our genes. We can change our diet and our lifestyle and that will influence which genes are on and off. Of course, we can reduce our exposures and we can change what we’re eating. So to make sure we have the nutrients that we need. And what we are seeing is big shifts clinically and we are seeing big shifts in our clinical trials. And now that the basic science is catching up to understand more about the epigenetics and the micro biome. More of my neuroscientists, colleagues and my neurology colleagues are embracing that. Yes, even if you are taking drugs, it is so important that you improve the quality of your diet and begin a meditative program and begin an exercise program.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Okay. Well I definitely want to dive into each of these. So what are some of the main aspects of a diet do you find are crucial for helping?

Dr. Terry Wahls: I want people to cut out the added sugars. I would get rid of the processed foods and begin eating vegetables. So we ramp up the greens, the sulfur rich vegetables in the cabbage, onion, mushroom family, and the deeply colored, pigmented, beets, carrots, berries. And we have protein, a sufficient amount, not a high protein, but a sufficient amount of protein. And we want to have plenty of fat. Our brain is 70% fat; so we need to have cholesterol, need to have a mega three fat, a mega six fat. So grass fed meat, wild fish. If your budget can afford that. Flax oil, hemp oil, Walnut oil, fish oil. And then we also want to remove the most inflammatory foods. So sugar processed foods, we want to replace that with vegetables. And we want to remove gluten, gluten-containing grains. So wheat, rye, barley in many ancient grains. And we want to remove casein, because those two proteins can be very inflammatory. Particularly if you have the DQ2 and the DQ8 alleles.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes, and of course now those are kind of across the board because some people will say, Oh, I don’t have an allergy. I don’t have celiac disease. I should be okay with eating gluten. So what are your thoughts? Do you think that everyone should be off of gluten?

Dr. Terry Wahls: Everyone should, should remove gluten and remove casein and also remove eggs, for three months. And then if they want to re-experiment and bring in one ingredient at a time. So, bring eggs back in on Sunday. Have several eggs, and see how it goes. If it goes well, fine. Then you can have eggs. The next thing I would bring back would be Dairy and see if you tolerate dairy. And if you do well, then have it on Sunday and see how the week goes, be sure that you and your spouse and family all agree that you had a good week. Because sometimes if you become irritable, you don’t have any insight that you just became so irritable, but your family will give you feedback. And then on the third week, then you try gluten. And there will be a few folks who may discover that they can tolerate the gluten and the casein. But if they go back to a lot of sugar, a lot of processed foods, they will shift their micro biome and their genes back in an unfavorable way and they will slowly develop the symptoms. Now, the people who find it, the easiest will be those who have acute symptoms within a few hours or a couple of days. If the symptoms come back gradually, that then of course it’s much more challenging to keep your diet pure.

Dr. Trevor Cates: So explain why eggs are a problem for people. I think that is one that surprises a lot of people. I certainly see it as one of the big trigger foods for skin issues. I talk about it in my book. I tell people to avoid eggs as well.

Dr. Terry Wahls: So eggs have a lot of great nutrition, particularly the yolk. So a lot of really wonderful nutrition in that yolk. But the albumin, the egg protein, then again act as an inflammatory trigger, activating the innate immune cell activity, increasing inflammatory cytokines, increasing palms with inflammatory policies, problems with the skin and problems with the brain. It is the third most common inflammatory, big protein source. So for that reason I tell people you have to take it entirely out of your diet for three months and then reintroduce it. And I would start with yolks alone because that is the one that you most likely benefit from. And most likely tolerate. And then add in the whites and see if you tolerate them and you might. But the only way to know is to remove the egg. We don’t have a blood test yet that specifically answers; do you have an innate response or an adaptive immune response to the egg protein?

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes it is true. I know that there are tests, a food intolerance testing, food allergy testing. There are all kinds of tests, but they’re not perfect. Right? They don’t show all the possible reactions to a food. Right?

Dr. Terry Wahls: They are not perfect. None of our tests are perfect. I mean, I have to stress that the test that is perfect is the elimination diet. You take it all the way out, then you meticulously, you know, I like to do the medical symptoms questionnaire. You do that on Sunday. You eat the food that you are testing. You and your family rate your symptoms that you’re most concerned about. And then you at the end of the week, after seven days, you rate your symptoms, you take the list of symptoms questionnaire and you and your family agree that you had a great week. That’s not a problem. Or you had less than a great week and it might be a problem. Well, unfortunately for me, I have trigeminal neuralgia. And so when my inflammation revs up, my trigeminal neuralgia revs up. And so I have these horrific electrical face pains that I cannot ignore. I have a very easy monitor, and if I begin to have little subtle sensory disturbance on my face, I am like, okay, what happened in my environment? Things are going haywire. I need to improve my environment, figure out what my trigger is. Because if I don’t get on top of this, my face pain will turn back on and I will be incapacitated by pain.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes. It is kind of a blessing and a curse to have that kind of symptom. Right?

Dr. Terry Wahls: It was very difficult for 27 years, relentless worsening. But now I understand that it is also a gift because it is this tremendous biosensor of the inflammation levels in my brain and spinal cord. And if my sensation on my face is a little bit off, then okay, what can I improve so I can get everything fully calmed down again.

Dr. Trevor Cates: It is true. So often we ignore symptoms or try and suppress them. And certainly skin is one of the reasons why I love to focus on skin. It is oftentimes one of the first warning signs the body gives us. And the tendency is just to suppress that symptom rather than look at why is it showing up? So I think what you talk about in a symptom checklist. I cannot stress that enough. In my 20 years as a Naturopathic doctor, I always go through that. The symptom checklists. I have it in my book. I think it is so important because people do not make these connections because it’s not the way conventional medicine talks about the way the body works and paying attention to symptoms. It is just like, it’s annoying. So take an Advil and then it will go away. Right?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So some people often go for very expensive lab tests, you know, hundreds thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, and fail the test. If we could teach them to tune in to their symptoms, these subtle symptoms of dysfunction and work to steadily improve those, then people get can get much closer to immediate feedback. I acknowledge that it’s what we’re asking people to do. Change diet, give up food that gives us a lot of pleasure, and start eating new foods that we don’t yet know how they fit into our life or family’s life. That is a really big ask. I find that I am much more successful if I can help them tune into their biosensors, figure out what symptoms are most useful for them to monitor as a prelude for, in my case, my trigeminal neuralgia, that I can monitor and adjust my environment to take care of all those biosensors symptoms. That has been a game changer for my patients as I teach them how to really hone in on the sole biosensors symptoms.

Dr. Trevor Cates: I wanted to go back to talking about cholesterol. Because I think this is something that still confuses people. Eating fats, that it might raise their cholesterol levels and their doctor is checking their cholesterol levels. They are telling them they need to cut back on the fat because their cholesterol levels are high. How do you feel about that and what do you think about cholesterol levels and food playing a role in that?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So we monitor lipids in my clinical trials. We were able to show as people implemented the Wahls Diet, their trans fat intake went markedly down their carbohydrates went down. The Omega three to Omega six fat intakes went up, the total cholesterol stayed flat or went down slightly. Triglycerides dropped markedly and the good cholesterol HDL went up markedly.

Dr. Terry Wahls: So, great profile changes. In the study that I am doing right now, I won’t know those results until probably the summer when everyone is done with the study and we are analyzing our data. My observation when I read the literature, the most important number for brain health, heart health is your HDL cholesterol. That doesn’t really respond very well to pharmaceutical drugs. So they just don’t talk much about it. It does respond to following a paleo diet to following a low carb diet, to getting rid of added sugar, to exercise, to having more polyphenols to taking more fish oil. So there is a lot we can do that will improve your good cholesterol and you want to be sure that you have your triglycerides fallen. I prefer to have cholesterol between 200 and 250. Depending on the clinical situations, I understand if someone’s had a heart attack, had a stroke, then they may want their total cholesterol, lower 250 and then they want it fewer than 200. But the vast majority, 200 to 250 is perfectly fine. And in my read of the research, that number between 200 and 250, has the best brain outcomes. The lowest risk of stroke, lowest risk of dementia, and the lowest risk of mental health problems. And if you drive your cholesterol too low, let’s say you get it down to 150, your cardiologist might be thrilled, but then you can’t make your estrogen. You can’t make your testosterone. That’s terrible for your brain. And you can’t make vitamin D also terrible, terrible for your brain and terrible for your cancer risk and your autoimmune risk and your infection risk.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes, absolutely. Thank you for clarifying that. Okay, so you’re talking about meditation. You mentioned the importance of meditation, being a big part of a treatment approach. So what are the things that you’ve noticed in your research, in your own personal experience?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So we saw that for most people as they came in and we were going through their history, particularly in the two years before they had their initial diagnosis. There was often a major life stressor. It might have been a financial stressor, a, relationship stressor, a work stressor that was severe and sustained. And that is a very consistent finding. As I relate that back to my patients, I say it’s not the sole reason why you developed your disease, but it surely was an accelerant. And so part of your healing needs to be adopting a stress reducing practice and might do it with mindfulness, with meditation, with Epsom salts, with self massage, with a peer support group with a gratitude journal, Tai Chi, yoga. So there are many different ways that they can do this. It is a matter of finding it. That approach that works for them and their family. We practice; we talk about a variety of meditative practices. I help the person identify which one is most appealing for them. And then we practice in clinic, in the clinical trial visits. So the person becomes comfortable and skilled with incorporating this into their life.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes. And so important that consistency on this is a really important fight. To be doing this as a regular practice, not just on the weekends, when you have a little extra time.

Dr. Terry Wahls: We will get a lot more benefit if you do it every day. Absolutely.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Right. And then also a mindset too is a big part of this as well, right?

Dr. Terry Wahls: What we believe will happen is much more likely to happen. So if we can’t imagine a different future, a more positive future, that’s going to be much more successful. I tell my patients that we create everything often three times. First, we imagine it then we might write about it or draw about it. And then through our actions we actually correct it. But the very first step is imagining the possibility.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Sometimes it is hard to imagine that. Right? I’m sure. You were there. When you were in a wheelchair.

Dr. Terry Wahls: Part of my adaptation, to be so ill, and having a relentless decline, well, its letting go the future and accepting that. Okay, I’ll just take each day as it unfolds one day at a time. And so as I began to recover, I was still taking one day at a time. And so I’m up walking around, I’m still taking it one day at a time, until the day I got on my bike. And I biked around the block, you know, my wife’s crying, my kids are crying, I’m crying. And if I talk about it much longer, I’ll start crying now because, and it just felt so miraculous. It just was so more active. Because I knew that I would never be able to bike again. And if I could bike around the block and I hadn’t done it in six years, that the accrued understanding of progressive multiple sclerosis was incorrect, it was incomplete. And then, you know, six months later I do an18.5 mile bike ride with my family. And of course by then I am changing our practice. And my outlook on everything is radically different.

Dr. Trevor Cates: You provide so much hope for people.

Dr. Terry Wahls: Absolutely. If I can come back from having brain fog, I could not sit up as I am now. It was a struggle to walk 10 feet. And I was having increasingly severe and horrific trigeminal neuralgia. So if I could come back from that nice edge of profound disability and pain to a rich and full life, doing research, traveling the world, and changing the course of how MS cure is being delivered. Then absolutely. There is hope for everyone.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes. So the movement that you’re talking about, like walking, biking, what do you tell people as far as getting exercise in moving their bodies?

Dr. Terry Wahls: Ah, so the secret is to grow more muscles. You want to damage them ever so slightly. So immune cells have to come in, fix the damage, and build a slightly stronger muscle cell. So it should be a little bit hard, but not too hard. If it doesn’t hurt at all, then you’re not going to build a stronger muscle cell. But if it’s too hard such that there’s more damage than what your cells can repair overnight, you went too far. So my suggestion here is you want to feel a little bit challenging. You want to be able to tomorrow have been able to do the same workout and today you want to be able to do function well for the rest of the day. If you can’t function the rest of the day, you’ve done too much. If can’t do the same workout tomorrow. You have done too much. If it wasn’t hard at all, then you have got to step it up a little bit. So depending on where people are at, I see some really, really sick folks. And so doing a two-minute gentle stretching exercise might be all that they could possibly do. But I also see some folks who are just out of the military and they can do a seven-minute high intensity interval workout and it is not hard enough, then that is okay. Let’s try a 20-minute high intensity interval workout because we need you to have to actually break a sweat and work hard. So, it should be a little hard. You should be able to function the rest of your day and function the next day.

Dr. Trevor Cates: So what about other types of therapies that you can add in? I mean a lot of what we talked about is like general lifestyle things, but what about supplements, detoxification, those sorts of tools?

Dr. Terry Wahls: Okay. So we talk about detox. There are many ways to detox. And so deep breathing, dry brushing, mud bath, mud soaks, Epsom salt soaks, if you can tolerate heat, saunas, steam rooms. So all of those are very, very helpful. Supplements. I think supplements are a little tricky and you want to work with a practitioner who can help guide you and support you because all of our nutrients, even water have a U shaped curve. So at low levels, if not enough of that nutrient, you’re going to have health consequences. At really high levels of that nutrient. You will have health consequences. So for water, we don’t have enough water, we could die of dehydration. If we have too much water, then we could have water intoxication and we could have a stroke and serious brain damage as a result. And they are like, oh my God, I didn’t realize. Even water has a U shaped curve; everything that we eat has a U shaped curve. Therefore, when you’re taking a supplement, now you have to be mindful that you want someone to help you sort out so that you stay in the healthy range. So I would rather talk about what are the blood levels, some key things that you should monitor and then work with your practitioner to make sure your supplements to be in the in the good range. Vitamin D, great example. We want people in the top half of the reference range. If it gets too high, we are going to have to worry about vitamin D intoxication, too low, then your vitamin D deficient. Homocysteine is a great marker for vitamin D pathways. So when I have the Homocysteine between four and seven ideally, and then depending on the person’s history and disease state, there will be other nutrients that I am assessing either based on the physical exam. And I love the skin because it gives me so many clues and I love the nails and the mouth and the lips. So I get lots of clues about nutritional insufficiencies, that I can address and I can monitor simply by following those skin clues or again, depending on their history, there may be additional minerals that I want to monitor. A fatty acid levels, or vitamin levels. It is tricky when I see people coming in who are already taking a high dose fish oil. They can create problems for themselves. I have seen folks who come in with high dose vitamin D and made themselves vitamin D intoxicated. So supplements, can be very, very helpful. But please work with your personal physician to help guide you to be sure that you’re in that healthy range.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Do you have any tips on guiding people to find the right practitioner to work with?

Dr. Terry Wahls: The first one, so many of the primary care docs should feel very excited that you want to eat more vegetables, meditate and exercise, and if they aren’t, I start shopping around and find someone who is. So that’s sort of the minimum bar. If they aren’t excited about more vegetables, meditation and exercise, you need a new practice. Then I would look for someone who has had additional training. The Institute for functional medicine. And the A4M are two great organizations that I’m very familiar with. Andy Weil’s group, with the, integrative functional medicine fellowship is another third group that can be very helpful. Now that functional medicine integrated medicine has become more popular, there are more people saying, I’m doing functional medicine, but they’ve not received any training. So I would look for what is the additional training that practitioners had? It is you know, that they are knowledgeable.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Right. It is tricky. I am in the same thing with Naturopathic physicians that when somebody sees a ND physician, you want to make sure that they attended one of the accredited Naturopathic Medical Schools, is a four year program, in-person program, not a correspondence online kind of program. Because there are people out there calling themselves Naturopathic or nature paths that don’t actual have that experience.

Dr. Terry Wahls: It is nice to see that people find functional medicine, naturopathic physicians so compelling that they’re now trying to copy and cash in. But it does mean that the public has to be vigilant, in looking at the qualifications of the person you’re seeing.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes, absolutely. Okay, I am sure there is people listening that say I already have Terry’s book and it is fantastic. I love it. You have a new version. So what is the latest, in your new version of your book?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So, first one is I spent a lot more time growing internal motivation. The science of behavior change, food addictions. How we grow that internal motivation. Great information. There. A lot more information on fasting and the many ways we can get into ketosis, that go beyond coconut milk. So we talk about an olive oil version of a ketogenic diet. I talk about intermittent fasting time restricted feeding, periodic fasting, and how I monitor people when I put them in ketosis, which I put in ketosis and I talk about metabolic resiliency. Why there are only a very small number of people I leave in ketosis a long-term. For most people, I am looking for that metabolic resiliency, that where I flipped them between ketosis, bringing more protein or bringing more carbs. So that’s much more nuance. There is a lot more information about oxalates histamines, FODMAPs, and how to sort out why those might be an issue for you if they are, how to personalize. We talked about the elimination diet, which is the most restrictive of my diets that might benefit from my elimination diet. And how long do you need to be on that? Let’s talk about STEM cells. What does the research say about doing STEM cells? How you can access STEM cells and how you can get more of your own STEM cells, yourself. Ketogenic is very, very exciting. And then, the other thing that I am so pleased to tell people about is more about the research that we’ve done that we’ve published, and is getting ready to get started. And how much has changed in the last six years. The community, they were very unhappy when my book came out. Now I have been heralded much more as a brilliant visionary. And that even the Neurologist are saying, yes, I want you on drugs, but even if you are on drugs, you have got to address your diet. You have to address stress and you need to move and you have to address your environment. And it’s like they read the Wahls protocol and they are willing to say yes, and if you will do the Wahls protocol, it is as good in my practice as taking these drugs. We have more and more Neurologists that are telling their patients, if you want to for go the drugs and do the Wahls protocol all in, we will watch you with MRI’s. And as long as the MRI stay good stay off the drugs and just keep doing the Wahls protocol. So we’ve made so much progress and that progress has been made possible because of people like you and the public that have driven the excitement and the demand, an expectation that diet and lifestyle matters.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes, definitely. I cannot believe it’s been that long since I had you on The Spa Dr. podcast. You were one, maybe my first podcast guest. And so there has been a lot since then. So again, thank you so much for your work and everything that you’ve been doing and being such an inspiration for people. Was there something else you wanted to share?

Dr. Terry Wahls: Well, I just wanted to let people know if they wanted to see our research papers, they could go to TerryWahls.com/research papers. You get access to our research papers and the gate videos. That show the transformation of how people could walk at the beginning of the trial and how their gait improved by the end of the year. It is very inspirational.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Oh, that’s fantastic. I’ll definitely check that out too. And where can people find a copy of your book?

Dr. Terry Wahls: So everywhere where books are sold, or if you go to my website, terrywahls.com we will have links there as well.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Again, thank you again Terry for coming on and all the work that you do. Keep up the great job.

Dr. Terry Wahls: Thank you.

Dr. Trevor Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Terry Walls. To learn more about her, you can go to TheSpaDr.com, Go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there I invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information and you can always hop over to iTunes and leave a review. We always love to get your feedback and if you haven’t taken The skin quiz as we talked about during the interview, it’s important to look at the messages that your skin or other health issues might be trying to tell you about what’s going on internally. And you can go to theskinquiz.com and take my free online skin quiz to find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your overall health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, I invite you to join us on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest during the conversation at the spa doctor, and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. podcast.