Meet Dr. Terry Wahl’s!
Name: Terry Wahls
Age: 58
Location: Iowa City, Iowa
Occupation: Physician
You have a very incredible and inspiring story. Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your work?
In college I practiced Tae Kwon Do, competing in full contact sparring, and won a bronze medal at the 1978 trials for the Pan American games in Washington, D.C.
During medical school I began having episodes of pain across my temple, which often occurred during stressful time periods. After medical school, I did my residency, and the frequency of these episodes increased.
In 1987, my first year of clinical practice, I had an episode of near blindness in my left eye while I was out rollerblading after work on a hot August day. I had an extensive medical evaluation but no clear diagnosis; I was told simply to not train as vigorously. It wasn’t until 2000, when I developed problems with my left leg and was sent to a neurologist, that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
This conclusion was based on a history of visual dimming (now attributed to optic neuritis), new weakness in the left leg, abnormal lesions in the spinal cord and abnormal spinal fluid. I knew that within three years, one-third of people diagnosed with MS will have difficulty walking, needing a cane, walker, or wheelchair, and half will be unable to work due to severe fatigue.
I had two young children and was the main breadwinner for our family, so I sought out the best MS center I could find: the Cleveland Clinic. I saw the best doctors and took the newest medications, but within three years, my disease converted to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.
In that stage of the disease, there would be no more remissions (spontaneous improvements) and I was told functions once lost were gone forever. I took the recommended chemotherapy, got the tilt-recline wheelchair, and even took the ‘miracle drug’ Tysabri, but I continued to slowly decline.
Dr. Wahls in 2007
I learned about the Paleo Diet from Loren Cordain, and after nearly twenty years as a vegetarian, I returned to eating meat and gave up grains, legumes, and dairy, three foods that had been staples of my diet. I continued to decline.
I began reading the scientific literature about multiple sclerosis, studying the experiments done in animal models of MS. Eventually I found studies that used vitamins and supplements to protect the mice. I translated the mouse-sized doses into human-sized doses and began my first self-experimentation. The speed of my decline slowed.
I was greatly buoyed by this change and began reading more. In the summer of 2007, I discovered electrical stimulation of muscles and began adding that to my workouts. At the same time, I found the Institute for Functional Medicine and took their course Neuroprotection: A Functional Medicine Approach to Common and Uncommon Neurologic Syndromes.
I started taking more vitamins and supplements. Then I researched where these nutrients are in the food supply. At the end of the year, I reorganized my diet to maximize the intake of those 31 key nutrients. Three months later, my fatigue was gone and I no longer needed Provigil, which I had taken for fatigue for 5 years.
After six months on my diet and lifestyle protocol, I was able to walk throughout the hospital without a cane and my neurologist agreed that I could taper and discontinue the disease-modifying medications.
Twelve months later, I was able to complete an 18-mile bicycle tour with my family.
The year after that, I did a trail ride in the Canadian Rockies.
In 2010, I succeeded in securing funding for a clinical trial that tested my intervention (modified paleo diet, exercise, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, and stress reduction) in others. We have published the first paper from this study, which shows that others with progressive multiple sclerosis can follow my protocol and experience clinically significant reduction in fatigue severity. We are working on four more papers from the study.
What does being a Girl Gone Strong mean to you? The message of reclaiming our strong bodies and embracing our bodies that Girls Gone Strong emphasizes is so important to our girls and young women. It is an honor to be chosen for a spotlight.
There are many people with health challenges who are trying to train physically to maintain function or to regain lost function.
It has taken much more resolve and dedication for me to keep training in the midst of MS-related fatigue but I knew it was vital to keeping my function as long as possible. Inspiring those who have health challenges to begin or continue to physically train is an important part of my message to the world.
These days, Dr. Wahls is healthy and vibrant.
What role did movement/exercise play in your life before your MS diagnosis? What about now? When I went to college, I missed the family farm and its physical work, so I began running and doing Tae Kwon Do.
When I was diagnosed with MS, I knew that continuing to exercise would be critical to maintaining my walking and functional use of my body for as long as possible. I switched to swimming and weight training.
Now, seven years into my recovery, I stretch and strength train every day for about half an hour. I also have a VibroPro, a vibrating platform for strength training that I use 2 to 3 times a week. And I am very pleased to say that I have recently been able to jog over a mile. My newest goal is to be able to jog two miles. Then I’ll work on my speed.
You’ve done a lot of amazing things in your life. What are the 3 things you’re most proud of?
a. Raising two very competent children who are becoming accomplished adults.
b. Creating a diet and lifestyle protocol to get my life back and sharing it with the world through my TEDx talk, book, and website, allowing millions of others to get their lives back too.
c. Getting my previous employer, The Marshfield Clinic, to build a child care center on site. For twenty years, people had championed this concept without success – and no one thought I’d be able to convince the physician board of directors (at that time 80% male) to approve spending a million dollars to build a child care center. It was approved with full support from the board, which included over 200 doctors.
You follow a very specific nutrition protocol. Can you tell us more about that?
I used science to identify the 31 key vitamins, minerals, essential fats, and antioxidants needed for optimal brain health.
I then used the Paleo diet principles to design an eating plan that maximizes the intake of those key 31 nutrients. The basic Wahls™ Diet looks like this:
1. Three cups of green leafy vegetables, cooked or raw
2. Three cups of deeply pigmented vegetables or fruits
3. Three cups of sulfur-rich vegetables in the cabbage family, onion family, and mushroom family
4. High-quality protein, preferably grass fed meet, organ meats, and seafood
5. Seaweed
6. The food should local, in season, and preferably organic.
That is the basic diet plan. More advanced versions, the Wahls Paleo™ and Wahls Paleo Plus™ diets, include more organ meat, fermented vegetables, and soaked sprouts, nuts, and seeds. The Paleo Plus™ diet adds more fat and reduces the carbohydrates to get people into ketosis.
What is your favorite meal? My favorite is liver and onions with bacon (nitrate- and gluten-free) and dandelion greens; raw beet, carrot, and ginger salad; and a few fresh strawberries topped with full-fat coconut milk. I also like to drink chamomile tea and coconut milk.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to change their eating habits, but finds it very overwhelming and scary? I think we have all become addicted to sugar- and flour-based products because the rapid rise in blood sugar stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. That means if the sugar- and flour-based products are in our environment, we are thinking about those foods all the time.
Therefore, I urge people to treat the habits as an addiction. These harmful foods have a strong power over us, and in order to overcome that, we must remove all the bad foods out of our environment and fill our homes with plenty of the right foods.
Family interventions tend to be more successful than individual interventions, because everyone can work together to stick to good foods and avoid the temptation of bad ones.
What is your favorite way to treat yourself or relax? I like to sit outside in our garden and have a glass of freshly brewed iced tea with friends and family.
What is your favorite quote? ”Between an event in your life and your response is a space, and in that space you decide your response and the response you choose defines your character.” – Victor Frankl
What is your favorite book? My book: The Wahls Protocol. I still love it after all the work I have poured into it and all the work I am doing still to share it with the world.
What inspires and motivates you? When I was steadily declining and thought I’d eventually become bedridden, I thought deeply about what was important to me: that my two children, Zach and Zebby, grow up to be emotionally happy and economically successful adults. That gave me the desire to teach them resilience and perseverance to help them overcome difficult circumstances. I chose to model those traits as I dealt with my decline. I still think about modeling the life I want others to choose.
What does a typical day look like for you? (From waking up to bedtime)
I get up at 5:30 to meditate, exercise, have breakfast, and get to work (usually by bicycle) by 8.
Breakfast is tea with coconut milk, a coconut milk green smoothie, and protein (liver or herring or leftover meat from the night before).
At work, I either see patients in the traumatic brain injury clinic or therapeutic lifestyle clinic or do a study visit for the clinical trial.
I get home between 4 and 5, meditate again, and then make supper. Some evenings I’ll do another workout using the vibrating platform.
On weekends, I jog around the neighborhood and then take a 40-minute sauna.
If you had to choose 3 words to describe yourself, what would they be? Determined, innovative, loyal
What are your top 3 biggest goals in life?
a. I want to create an epidemic of health in the US and across the world using the diet and lifestyle changes that I advocate.
b. Do more research using diet and lifestyle studies to treat more autoimmune conditions and obesity.
c. See my children thrive emotionally, physically, and economically.
What do you want to say to other women about taking charge of their health? We women are often more motivated to care for our family than for ourselves. I am no exception to that, but it is important that we take care of ourselves.
We must be physically, mentally, and emotionally strong to take care of our families. Our children absorb the choices we make. If we do not model taking good care of ourselves, they will not take good care of themselves, nor will they have the mental and emotional resilience that will allow them to thrive.
What would you like to be remembered for? Giving the world the tools to reclaim their lives and once again thrive emotionally, mentally, and physically.