Reversing Multiple Sclerosis with Dr. Terry Wahls: Rational Wellness Podcast 308
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Dr. Terry Wahls discusses how to Reverse Multiple Sclerosis with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
2:00 Dr. Wahls was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 23 years ago, so she went to the best MS center in the country and saw their best physician and took the recommended latest drugs. Three years later she was going downhill and she was in a tilt, recline wheelchair despite taking the newest, disease modifying drugs, including Tysabri and Novantrone. For her, these drugs did not help. She continued to worsen, as did the electrical face pains that she had. She decided to dive deep into the research on her condition and she concluded that the mitochondria are the drivers of disability and she created a supplement cocktail for her mitochondria. She changed her diet from vegan to paleo to provide protein and additional nutrients. She also discovered a study using electrical stimulation of muscles and added that to her physical therapy. She then discovered the Institute of Functional Medicine and took their course on neuroprotection and developed a longer list of supplements. Her condition was improving but she was not where she wanted to be. She then had an aha moment and decided to redesign her paleo diet to be able to get all of these nutrients in the supplements from her food. She did more research and then figured out the Wahls Paleo diet by December. At that point, she was so weak that she could only sit up for about 10 minutes in a regular chair before she had to be either in bed or a zero gravity chair and she could only take a few steps with walking sticks. Her electrical face pain was much worse and she was beginning to have trouble with brain fog. She started eating this way on December 26th. By the end of January, her pain is less, her brain fog is less, and her fatigue is also less. By the end of February, her physical therapist noticed that she was getting stronger, so he advanced her exercise. By the end of March, she was walking with walking sticks. And by the end of April, she wanted to try riding her bike and she had an emergency family meeting with her wife Jackie and her two children. Her 13 year old daughter and her 16 year old son jogged along side on either side of her bike and she rides around the block on her bike and they are all crying. And then every day she rides her bike more and more. And in October, Jackie signs her up for the Courage Ride, 18.5 miles, which she completed. This fundamentally changed how Dr. Wahls thinks about disease and health and it changes the way she practices medicine and it will change the focus of her clinical research. She has now conducted seven clinical trials and is now starting her eighth clinical trial on multiple sclerosis. She’s published over 70 peer reviewed posters, abstracts, scientific papers and nearly 30 of them on multiple sclerosis. And she has really made it her mission to let people know there is so much that we can do that can change the course of this disease.
6:50 Dr. Wahls was able to regain her health using a Functional Medicine approach focused on diet, lifestyle, and physical therapy. Dr. Wahls noted that she is an academic doctor who believes in the best and newest drugs, technology, and devices. And she treated her disease very aggressively because she did not want to become a burden, but she continued to go downhill. When she read the package insert in the drugs she was taking, it said that she had a 2% risk of getting leukemia each time she took the drug. She took Tysabri and it did not help, but her program of diet, targeted supplements, and electrical stimulation of muscles enabled her to achieve a remarkable level of function. With the guidance of her neurologist, she was weaned off the drugs and has been off these disease modifying drugs since the spring of 2008. She has continued to get stronger and she now jogs on her treadmill for 20 minutes a couple of times per week.
8:48 The mitochondria. Dr. Wahls explained that most of her colleagues in the MS world focus on the immune function and the relapses and exacerbations. But the slow, relentless loss of brain volume and loss of spinal cord volume is what drives neurodegeneration. Her interpretation of the basic science literature is that the driver of that disability is probably mitochondria. The mitochondria are not generating enough ATP for the robust energy needs of the axons, of the myelin of the neurons. And that’s driving cognitive decline for dementia, for Alzheimer’s, in Parkinson’s. She figured out that her mitochondrial supplements were making her feel better and when she didn’t take her supplements, she couldn’t get out of bed and go to work. While they were helping her a lot, they weren’t getting her out of her wheelchair. The magic really happened when she redesigned her food around her supplements.
15:05 The most important nutrients. Low vitamin D is associated with more relapses and disability and worse quality of life. Dr. Wahls recommends an ideal vitamin D levels of 60-80 ng/mL. Omega 3 fatty acids important and low omega-3 fatty acids are associated with more relapses and more disease progression. We do also need omega 6 fatty acids and arachidonic acid, but most of us do not get enough omega 3. We should have an omega 6:3 ratio of 4:1 and 3:1 is also good, but 2:1 may be too low. But most Americans are at 20:1 or 30:1 or even 45:1. That level is very inflammatory. We would like to see homocysteine levels between 4 and 7.5 and most people are much higher than that. This is lowered by taking the right forms of B vitamins. With homocysteine above 10 there are higher rates of neurodegeneration as well as higher rates of heart disease. We want to get plenty of carotenoids, including zeaxanthin, meso-zeaxanthin, and lutein that are present in green leafy and colored veggies. There are many beneficial compounds in mushrooms that help to lower rates of anxiety, depression, and cognitive decline. Both greens and beets can raise nitric oxide levels, which is really good both for blood vessel health, for cardiac health, and also for neurologic health. Fermented vegetables like Kimchi and sauerkraut are also beneficial. She also recommends nut milk and coconut milk kefirs.
20:45 Dr. Wahls prefers the paleo diet for neurodegenerative conditions. She explained that while there are many diets out there: vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo, fasting mimicking diet, fasting strategies and there are a variety of clinical trials testing these diets, a consistent finding is when you put people on a intervention diet compared to the usual diet, the dietary intervention always improves. One of the reasons for that is when you have less sugar and less added processed foods, the quality of the diet improves. Dr. Wahls was a vegetarian following a low fat diet for about 20 years prior to her MS diagnosis and for her this was not the right diet. She had her remarkable health transformation following the change to the paleo diet and she has been using the paleo diet in her clinical trials and has been achieving remarkable success. To follow the paleo diet means to try to emulate what our ancestors might have eaten in the region of the world where we live, which means to eat meat, poultry, fish, nuts, seeds, greens, tubers, berries and fruits. It also means not to eat sugar, grains, legumes, and dairy because those foods were foods that humans added eight to 10,000 years ago. While we do not have enough research to prove what the best diet is for humans or for each person, Dr. Wahls recommends to patients to pick a diet that speaks to your heart and give it at least three months. If Dr. Wahls puts a patient on a paleo diet and their cholesterol goes too high, she may make it a lower fat version or she may put them on a Mediterranean diet. If they are developing insulin resistance, then she may lower the carbs or use a ketogenic diet.
25:27 Insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is an important for multiple sclerosis, just as it is with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. If Dr. Wahls has patients with insulin resistance, she may put them on a lower carb diet and she may even put them on a ketogenic diet. She may recommend intermittent fasting and she may use Prolon kits for 5 days per month.
26:31 Protein. The muscles are a vital endocrine organ for maintaining good blood sugar and good blood lipids. It’s really important to maintain muscle mass when facing a neuroimmune condition like MS. You need to do strength training and building muscle requires protein and our protein requirement goes up as you get older. Dr. Wahls said that she is eating more meat and more fish in order to hang onto her muscles. Organ meat, such as heart, liver or tongue, is an incredible source of vitamin A, B vitamins, and minerals and Dr. Wahls recommends eating 4-8 oz. of organ meat per week.
30:00 Toxins. Toxins can play a role in neurological and autoimmune diseases and flouride is one example of that that can play a role in demyelinating nerves. There are 80,000 plus synthetic chemicals that are in our environment, and it would be very difficult for any of us to not have an abundant number of toxins, heavy metals, solvents, plastics, the forever chemicals stored in our fat. The fatty guts of meat are likely to have the most stored toxins, so you should make sure to eat organ meat from an organic animal and not to overdo it. Rather than routinely screening patients for toxins, Dr. Wahls assumes all of her patients are toxic, though she will sometimes test them for mold toxins. To facilitate detoxification, she will recommend eating greens, cabbage family vegetables, and onion family vegetables to stimulate the production of glutathione and she may recommend taking glutathione or NAC and lipoic acid, which are glutathione precursors.
33:31 Dr. Wahls recommends 9 cups of vegetables per day: 3 cups of greens, three cups of sulfur containing vegetables in the cabbage, onion, mushroom family, three cups of deeply pigmented carrots, beets, berries, peppers, tomatoes. This is for men and tall women. If you are smaller, then 6 cups might be appropriate. There is no reason to overeat beyond what your appetite will tolerate. You should not be hungry. If you’re hungry, then eat more protein. If you’re full, as long as you’ve had your 6 to 12 oz of meat and you’ve got proportionately the greens, sulfur and color veggies, then you’re fine.
34:48 Exercise. Strength training is very important for MS and it should be hard enough that you can’t do 3 sets of 12 reps of an exercise. You need to progressively increase the resistance either with more weight or more bands or it is with bodyweight, then doing it slower. You want to rotate which parts of the body you work on on different days. You should also do balance exercises so you decrease the likelihood of falling. Dr. Wahls said that when she showers she will stand on one leg and count to 50 and then do the other leg. If you want to live to 120, then you need to have great balance in your 70s, 80s, and 90s.
37:17 Electrical Stimulation. Dr. Wahls finds that electrical stimulation is very helpful for patients with MS to help regenerate the muscles. It makes recovering your strength easier and it also helped her mood and her mental clarity. We now know from animal model studies and human studies that when you add electrostimulation to exercise, you make more nerve growth factors and muscle growth factors locally for your muscles, but you also make more nerve growth factors in your brain and you make more endorphins in your brain. Dr. Wahls uses a 10 seconds on, 20 seconds off protocol for the electrical stimulation and she co-contracts her muscles at the same time. The muscle contractions need to be really forceful to get results.
42:58 Nutritional Supplements. Dr. Wahls also takes some nutritional supplements and is constantly keeping up with the research and tinkering with different supplements and she reads about 200 scientific papers per week. She takes vitamin D with K, fish oil, a variety of mushroom supplements, and she has recently added urolithin A. She is taking bergamot, which she really likes. She takes lipoic acid, NAC, beet root, and curcumin. She makes a smoothie with phosphatidylcholine, plasmalogen, omega-3s, omega-6s and a cocktail of spices, which she will rotate that may include beet root, inulin, curcumin, and ginger.
46:10 Clinical Research. Dr. Wahls has so far completed 7 clinical trials and these have shown that the diet, exercise, and lifestyle approaches that she recommends are helpful for patients with MS. She is now recruiting volunteers for a new trial that compares a ketogenic diet with a paleo diet and a usual diet. They are looking at changes in fatigue and quality of life, but also at changes in walking function, hand function, vision function, and how well we think. They are also looking at brain volume over time because patients with MS experience brain shrinking at 3 times the rate of other patients. They will also be looking to see if there are reductions in brain fog, anxiety, and depression. participants will need to come to Iowa at month zero, month three, and month 24. She has already recruited 83 people but they still have room for 72 additional volunteers. Dr. Wahl’s team has published about 70 abstracts and posters and 45 peer reviewed scientific papers of which 26 are related to the multiple sclerosis research. Those interested should go to TerryWahls.com/MSStudy.
Dr. Terry Wahls is a clinical professor medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine where she teaches medical residents and does clinical research and she has published over 60 papers. She conducts clinical trials that test the effect of nutrition and lifestyle interventions to treat MS and other progressive health problems. She is the author of The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles and the cookbook The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions.
Dr. Wahls was a patient with relapsing remitting Multiple Sclerosis in 2000 and by 2003 she had progressed to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. She was in a wheelchair because her back muscles were too weak to hold her up. She was taking the standard of care medication, which included chemotherapy, and yet she continued to go downhill until she took matters into her own hands and started researching MS and she looked for vitamins and minerals that might help. She created a list of nutrients for brain health and began taking them, which slowed her decline. In 2007 she discovered the Institute of Functional Medicine and she developed a longer list of nutrients and then she redesigned her diet so that she could get these nutrients from food rather than just from supplements. She also started to use electrical stimulation to help strengthen her muscles. She restored her health and vitality and she now rides her bike to work and teaches and researches at the University of Iowa.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey. This is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.
Hello, Rational Wellness podcasters. Our topic for today is multiple sclerosis with Dr. Terry Wahls. Dr. Wahls is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, where she teaches and does clinical research, and she’s published over 60 papers. She’s currently conducting clinical trials that test the effect of nutrition and lifestyle interventions to treat multiple sclerosis and other progressive health problems. She’s the author of The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine, the Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles, and the cookbook, the Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions. Dr. Wahls herself was a patient with multiple sclerosis, first diagnosed in 2000, and by 2003, she was in a wheelchair and going downhill until she took matters into her own hands and started to employ a functional medicine approach to healing herself. I’ll stop there because I’d like to let Dr. Wahls tell us about her story herself. Dr. Wahls, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Wahls: Hey, thank you, Dr. Ben. It’s a privilege to be here.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. Please tell us about your personal journey.
Dr. Wahls: Yeah. I’ll tell it in real time. 23 years ago, out walking with my wife Jackie, a half mile from home, my left leg grows weak. Dragging it home. I see the neurologist. And while I’m going through the workup for the next three weeks, I think about the 20 years of worsening electrical face pain that I have, and I’m praying secretly for a fatal diagnosis. Now, three weeks later, I hear multiple sclerosis. Being a physician, I do my research, find the best MS center in the country, see their best physician, take the newest drugs. Three years later, I hear the words tilt, recline wheelchair.
Dr. Weitz: Wow.
Dr. Wahls: I take Tysabri, I take Novantrone. None of these drugs help. I continue to worsen. My electrical face pains continue to worsen. My 10 year old daughter hugs me as tears streamed down my face. And that’s when I asked myself am I doing all that I can. I go back to reading the basic science. I’m studying in PubMed night after night. I decide that mitochondria are the driver of disability and I begin creating a supplement cocktail for my mitochondria. I discover a study using electrical stimulation of muscles. I ask my physical therapist can I add that, and we add that to my physical therapy. And then I discovered the Institute for Functional Medicine. I take their course on Neuroprotection. I have a longer list of supplements. I add all of them.
And not a lot’s happened yet. Then I have a really big aha. And actually, Ben, I’m sort of embarrassed now about how long this took me to have this because I’d already been doing a paleo diet for five years. But now I think what if I redesign my paleo diet based on the supplement cocktail. If I get my nutrients from the food as opposed to from supplements. And so that’s more research. And in December, I redesigned my paleo diet. Now, at that time, I am so weak I cannot sit up in a regular chair like I am now. I can only sit up for about 10 minutes. I can take just a couple of steps using two walking sticks. Otherwise, I’m either in bed or in a zero gravity chair with my knees higher than my nose. My electrical face pain is much worse and I’m beginning to have trouble with brain fog.
Start this new way of eating December 26th. By the end of January, it’s clear that my pain is less, my brain fog is less, my fatigue is also less. By the end of February, my physical therapist is saying, “You know what, Terry, you’re definitely stronger.” And he advances my exercise. And by the end of March, I’m beginning to walk with walking sticks. And by the end of April, I’m telling my family I really want to try riding my bike. Now, I haven’t ridden my bike in six years. We have an emergency family meeting because on Mother’s Day, two weeks later, I really want to ride my bike and Jackie tells my son, who’s 6’5″, “Zach, you jog alongside on the left,” my daughter Zeb, who’s 13, “You jog alongside on the right,” and she’ll follow. And we all get in a position, we push off and I bike around the block. And that big 16 year old boy, he’s crying. The 13 year old, she’s crying. Jackie’s crying. And when I talk about that now, I begin crying. And then every day I bike a little bit more. And in October, Jackie signs me up for the Courage Ride, 18.5 miles.
And once again, when I cross that finish line, my family’s crying, Jackie’s crying, and I’m crying. And this fundamentally changes how I think about disease and health and it will change the way I practice medicine and it will change the focus of my clinical research. And now we’ve conducted seven clinical trials. We’re doing our eighth clinical trial. We’ve published over 70 peer reviewed posters, abstracts, scientific papers. Nearly 30 of them in multiple sclerosis. And I’ve really made it my mission to let people know there is so much that we can do that can change the course of our disease.
Dr. Weitz: That’s amazing. Able to regain your health without really drugs, using a functional medicine approach, diet and lifestyle. It’s amazing.
Dr. Wahls: And I’m a academic doc. I certainly believe in the best technology, the best drugs, the newest devices, the newest technologies. And I treated my disease very, very aggressively because I didn’t want to become a burden. And despite that, I continued to go downhill. And I was taking drugs that when I read the package, insert 2% risk of getting acute leukemia each time I took the drug. So I was all in. I treated my disease very aggressively, but it didn’t help. I even took Tysabri. Did not help. And then what was remarkable, I used my diet, targeted supplements, electrical stimulation of muscles, and I recovered a remarkable level of function. And when I walked into my neurologist’s office, he was very excited and I said, “I really would like to go off my disease modifying drug treatment.” He goes, “Yes, I think that’d be fine. We need to taper you off because you have made this dramatic recovery. The toxicity of the drugs are substantial.” And with his blessing then in the spring of 2008, he weaned me off my disease modifying drugs, and I’ve been off disease modifying drugs since. I continue to get stronger and in fact, I now jog on my treadmill 20 minutes a couple times a week.
Dr. Weitz: That’s awesome.
Dr. Wahls: It’s been a journey. Absolutely. A big journey.
Dr. Weitz: So why is the mitochondria so important for understanding autoimmune diseases like MS?
Dr. Wahls: Well, most of my colleagues really focus on the immune function and the relapses and the exacerbations, but you have a relapse and you recover function. Most of it. That slow, relentless loss of brain volume, loss of spinal cord volume is what drives neurodegeneration. My interpretation of the basic science literature is that the driver of that disability is probably mitochondria. The mitochondria are not generating enough ATP for the robust energy needs of the axons, of the myelin of the neurons. And that’s driving cognitive decline for dementia, for Alzheimer’s, in Parkinson’s. And when I was reading the basic science early in my MS journey, I had very few relapses. It really had a degenerative process, and so I was like mitochondria are key. And I did figure out early on with my mitochondrial supplements that I felt a little bit better taking my supplements. When I didn’t take my supplements, I really couldn’t get out of bed and go to work. So they weren’t getting me out of my wheelchair, but clearly they were doing a lot for me. And then it is pretty interesting when I redesigned my food around my supplements, that is when the magic happened.
Dr. Weitz: And do you think that’s because you got additional phytonutrients that maybe we haven’t even figured out what the benefits are that are present in the fruits and vegetables that-
Dr. Wahls: Absolutely.
Dr. Weitz: Aren’t necessarily present in the capsules?
Dr. Wahls: I think if you focus just on what’s in the capsules … And it’s a great way to do animal model studies. It’s a great way to do basic science and to move our understanding forward. So they’re very helpful. But food is very, very complex. We have easily 80,000 food molecules that are really important to our health, probably many more than that. And so all of those molecules have a role to play in my chemistry, in your chemistry. And so I think it’s very hard to create a molecule by molecule nutrient program that’s good for us. But our ancestors over the 200,000 years that we’ve been homo sapiens and over the 150,000 years that we’ve been out of Africa, humans have been eating a wide variety of food stuffs as we go into all these different ecological spaces. So anyone says there’s only one food that is correct or one nutrient that is correct is wrong. Our evolutionary history would say there are a lot of foods that work, there are a lot of different foods that work, and so there’s only one food that we know is really terrible for us and that’s the standard Westernized diet.
Dr. Weitz: Correct. And then we are certainly not going on the right path when it comes to pharmaceuticals for treating these neurodegenerative diseases. I’m sure you’ve probably seen the recent research that came out, I think last week, that the leading drugs that shrink the amyloid plaque for Alzheimer’s actually lead to a shrinkage of the brain. So not only are-
Dr. Wahls: I saw that.
Dr. Weitz: They not making people better, they’re making them worse.
Dr. Wahls: Correct. An amyloid is sort of like the sticky fly paper. So I think there’s some protection for amyloid and I’m not sure that we’re going to find these dementia treating drugs in the end to be very useful.
Dr. Weitz: It may be, and Dr. Bredesen has mentioned, is that maybe if we do all the functional medicine stuff first, if you eliminate the reasons why the brain is laying down the amyloid plaque and you get rid of the inflammation, the toxins, you balance the nutrients, you do all the other things to improve the health of the brain, maybe at that point if you were to remove the amyloid, it might be beneficial, but not until you’ve done all that.
Dr. Wahls: Correct. And we don’t know. We don’t know. And I have variations of this debate for MS. We have 20 different drugs that are really great and they have to be great at reducing the number of enhancing lesions, therefore also they often reduce the number of relapses and that’s how you get FDA approval. So they’re very good at that, but they’re not at all good at slowing the rate of brain volume loss. They aren’t really good at reducing anxiety, depression or fatigue. And I think that yes, we absolutely want people to stop having the enhancing lesions, the relapses, I agree, but you have to do all of the diet and lifestyle stuff so you can address brain volume loss, address anxiety, address depression, address fatigue. And that’s what our programs have been very good at.
Dr. Weitz: So what do you think are some of the most important nutrients, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients for brain and nervous system health?
Dr. Wahls: I think the research is really excellent. When we do network meta-analysis in terms of combining multiple studies, we see consistently that low vitamin D is associated with more relapses, more disability, worse quality of life. So making sure your vitamin D is certainly above 40, and in my clinical practice, I want to see that in the top half of the reference range.
Dr. Weitz: So you’re talking about 50 to 100? Is there an ideal target?
Dr. Wahls: 50 to a 100 and 60 to 80 would be my ideal.
Dr. Weitz: 60 to 80. Okay.
Dr. Wahls: But 50 to 100 I think is certainly acceptable. Below 30, that’s definitely a big problem. And below 20, that’s a severe problem. Then the next nutrient that I’m thinking a lot about is the omega-3 fatty acids. Again, low omega-3 fatty acids are associated with more relapses, more disease progression. And people want a badmouth arachidonic acid and omega-6 fatty acids. However, if your arachidonic acid and omega-6 acids are low, that’s a problem too because we also have a lot of arachidonic acid and omega-6 fatty acids in our brain as well. They are also important in myelin formation. So you need both omega-3 and omega-6, but you want them in about the same ratio, or I should say a ratio of four to one. Four omega-6 to one omega-3. Three to one is okay, two to one is getting a little bit low. But many of us, because we have so much fast food that is deep fried-
Dr. Weitz: We’re at 20 to one or 30 to one.
Dr. Wahls: 20 to one, 30 to one, 40 to one, 45 to one. That is definitely very inflammatory.
Dr. Weitz: Do you like to see a higher DHA omega-3 for neurological?
Dr. Wahls: Yeah, I’d rather see a little higher DHA. Although interestingly, some of my psychiatrists would rather see more EPA. So it may depend on what conditions you’re trying to treat.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Wahls: Then I’m thinking about homocysteine levels and I’d like to see that homocysteine between four and 7.5.
Dr. Weitz: Wow, that’s really low.
Dr. Wahls: Yeah. I’d rather have it in that range. Now, some people may go up to nine, may go up to 10. Ten’s, I think, high. Certainly above 10, you’re going to have higher rates of neurodegeneration, higher rates of heart disease. And I want to have plenty of carotenoids, total carotenoids. Zeaxanthin, meso-zeaxanthin, lutein. These are the greens in green leafy vegetables. And we know in my retina, those are the compounds that protect me from the ultraviolet light that is coming into my eyes when I’m out in daylight. And it turns out that those same compounds are really good at protecting me from cognitive decline. So green leafy vegetables, really good. Then there’s all these compounds in culinary mushrooms and those are the mushrooms we can eat without being poisoned by eating poisonous mushrooms. So those things we’re beginning to understand a little bit more what are some of these molecules. From a epidemiologic basis, we know the more mushrooms you eat, the lower the rates of anxiety, depression, cognitive decline.
Dr. Weitz: I picked up some lion’s mane mushroom just today at the co-op to add to my eggs tomorrow.
Dr. Wahls: Oh my God, they are so tasty. And then having more greens, having more beets. We’re beginning to realize that that stimulates my nitric oxide, which is really great for blood vessel health. We’ve known that is really good for blood vessel health, cardiac health. Now we’re beginning to realize that nitric oxide is very important for neurologic health as well. So I think that’s another reason why greens and beets are so good for us. Fermented vegetables. Kimchi, sauerkraut. We’ve known for some time that if you eat more fermented vegetables, you have less influenza, you have less pneumonia, you have fewer colds, and you’re less likely to be hospitalized during this coronavirus pandemic. So I like to have people eat fermented vegetables, and I also encourage fermented keifers and yogurts, preferably nut milk and coconut milk keifers and yogurts.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. So you like the paleo diet for neurodegenerative diseases. Why the paleo diet? Some would say why not the vegan diet?
Dr. Wahls: Oh, yeah. There are many diets out there, vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo, fasting mimicking diet, fasting strategies, and there are a variety of clinical trials testing all of these diets in a wide variety of clinical studies. I think a very consistent finding is that when you put people on a intervention diet compared to the usual diet, the dietary intervention always improves. I think some of the reasons for that is when you have less sugar, less added processed foods, the quality of the diet improves. Historically, I have my own personal health transformation using the paleo diet. I’d been a vegetarian 20 years. I followed a low fat diet for that, and so this would’ve been considered a really phenomenally great diet. For me, it obviously was not good for me. I had a remarkable transformation. It’s the diet I’ve used in my clinical trials and we’ve had remarkable success.
From an evolutionary standpoint what the paleo diet does is it says, given your locale where you are in the world, we want you to try and emulate what our ancestors would’ve been eating in your region. So eat meat. Poultry, fish, nuts, seeds, greens, tubers, berries and fruit that’s in your area. Don’t eat sugar, grains, legumes, and dairy because those foods were foods that humans added eight to 10,000 years ago. And from our evolutionary history when we separated from primates six million years ago, when we became a distinct species 250,000 years ago, and when we got out of Africa about 150,000 years ago, those were the kinds of foods that we ate. We didn’t start adding grain, legumes or dairy until recently. Now, I think there are many, many versions of the paleo diet that you can find in Europe, Scandinavia, in Asia, in Africa, in the US, that will all be a little bit different because hopefully we’re all adapting that to our local region.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I guess one of the typical arguments I hear against the paleo diet is even though that’s the way humans ate for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best diet for long-term health.
Dr. Wahls: Well, that’s true, and we have no idea what is the best diet, and nor do we have any idea what’s the best diet for Ben Weitz or for Terry Wahls. What I counsel everyone to do is pick a diet that speaks to your heart, paleo diet, vegan diet, vegetarian diet, a ketogenic diet, and try it out and see how you feel. If you feel like your health is improving, that’s fine. Stay with it. If your health is not improving, then I invite you to give it at least three months, but do it really well. Then talk to your physician, talk to your family, and decide, okay, I tried the paleo diet, it’s not really working for me. I want to try a ketogenic diet, or I want to try a Mediterranean diet. Then go ahead and try that. There will not be one diet that is great for everyone. In my clinical practice sometimes I will recommend a paleo diet. Their cholesterol is going up too high. We make modifications to make it a lower fat diet, and I may make further changes. So I may even put them on a Mediterranean diet in response to what I see happening to their lab values if I’m not pleased. Or I may put them on a ketogenic diet because I’m worried about them developing insulin resistance. You want to have a starting point, assess their response, follow the labs, and make adjustments.
Dr. Weitz: I know how important insulin resistance is for working with patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. How about for MS?
Dr. Wahls: It’s very important. People with MS and other neuroimmune conditions, we have higher rates of insulin resistance than the general public at the same weight. And so is that part of the same disease processes? Likely yes. And so I want all of my MS patients to have a blood sugar and an insulin level, so I can see are they developing insulin resistance? If they are, I put them on a lower carb diet and we continue to monitor things. And I may in fact put them on a ketogenic diet. I may put them on a program of intermittent fasting. I may even use Prolon kits, one kit every month to try and improve their insulin sensitivity.
Dr. Weitz: How important is it to have high quality sources of protein like animal protein and organ meats for maintaining and regenerating neurological tissue?
Dr. Wahls: Well, let me come back a couple things. My muscles are really a vital endocrine organ for maintaining good blood sugar and good blood lipids. And so it’s really important to maintain muscle mass. So please do strength training even if you have MS or a neuroimmune condition to maintain those muscles. And the more strength training you do and the more male you are, the more protein you’re going to need in your diet than a female who’s not strength training or a petite individual. As you get older, and you see I have some gray hair, I’m now over 65, my protein requirement has gone up, and so I’m eating more meat and more fish, because I really want to hang on to my muscles. I’m spending more time strength training. I mentioned earlier that I’m jogging just twice a week because I’m strength training more because I so value those muscles.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. And how about organ meat?
Dr. Wahls: Organ meat. Our ancestors valued organ meat as the highest, much more valuable than the steaks and the muscle meat. Brains were the most valuable, then bone marrow, then heart, liver, testicles, kidneys, lungs, and then muscles. So if there was a lot of meat around, a lot of carcasses, they would take the organs and leave the muscle meat behind. And they’d take the long bones. So traditionally, about a third of the animal carcass is what we’d consider organ meat. And when we do an analysis of the nutrients of the B vitamins, the minerals, its highest in the heart, liver and organ meat, higher than in the muscle meat. Having said that, as much as I love liver, I think it’s a delicious meat, I still want you to have only, me, about six ounces of liver a week. You can have about eight ounces a week. A petite person would be maybe four ounces a week. Because it has so much vitamin A in it. Super good for you. Heart, tongue, also super good for you and super, super delicious. Brains used to be a delicacy that was tremendously valued. I have my great-grandmother’s Compendium of Cookery and Modern Book of Knowledge from 1889, and she’s got recipes in there for brains and eggs that look like that would’ve been really quite delicious. But I can’t tolerate eggs because it triggers my face pain. And of course, no one’s going to feel comfortable eating brains anymore because of some of the prion diseases in brains.
Dr. Weitz: Jakob Creutzfeldt’s disease. Mad Cow disease. So a liver contains a lot of toxins, and we know toxins can play a role in neurological and autoimmune diseases. Dr. Perlmutter had a dentist on, and he was mentioning how fluoride can actually play a role in demyelinating neurons, and demyelinating nerves. And-
Dr. Wahls: Yeah, fluoride is not good.
Dr. Weitz: So I’m sure there’s got to be a lot of toxins in everyday life that are playing a role.
Dr. Wahls: There are 80,000 plus synthetic chemicals that are in our environment, and it would be very difficult for any of us to not have an abundant number of toxins, heavy metals, solvents, plastics, the forever chemicals stored in our fat. And I want to correct something. Your liver processes through phase one, phase two reactions, the synthetic chemicals that we have, and then excretes it into the bile. It goes into the gallbladder. And then as we eat fat, the gallbladder releases bile into the small intestine. We absorb, digest the fat and recycle the bile. So eating liver isn’t going to give you a higher toxin load. Eating your bacon, however, might because the fat is in the bacon and if you fry things in lard and duck fat, the toxins are really in the fat much more so than in the liver.
Dr. Weitz: I see. So good to eat liver from a healthy animal, not-
Dr. Wahls: From a healthy animal.
Dr. Weitz: Maybe to eat a liver from a standard American diet eating person with fatty liver.
Dr. Wahls: Correct. So I certainly want you to have liver from an organic animal. I don’t think you have to be afraid of liver. Six to eight ounces is okay. The fatty cuts of meat, the bacon, it’s the fat that has the toxins. So you have to be worried about the fat.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Do you screen patients for toxins?
Dr. Wahls: Well, I assume everyone is toxic. So in my VA clinics, we assumed everybody was toxic. I put them all on a protocol to reduce their toxin exposure and to make it easier to excrete their toxins. In my clinics, again, I assume everyone is toxic and we do the same. Now, depending on their clinical circumstances, I may screen them for mold toxins, for-
Dr. Weitz: Heavy metals.
Dr. Wahls: Heavy metals. And we may have a more specific program for them.
Dr. Weitz: What about incorporating glutathione to help with detoxification?
Dr. Wahls: Well, certainly you would like to make sure they have plenty of sulfur containing amino acids, such as NAC, N acetyl-cysteine, lipoic acid. You may give them some glutathione. You could also stimulate the production of glutathione by eating these radical things known as the greens, the cabbage family vegetables, the onion family vegetables, because those foods will up-regulate my glutathione synthetase.
Dr. Weitz: Now your recommendations for diet, I believe include nine cups of vegetables a day.
Dr. Wahls: Nine cups of vegetables a day. So it’s three cups of greens, three cups of sulfur containing vegetables in the cabbage, onion, mushroom family, three cups of deeply pigmented carrots, beets, berries, peppers, tomatoes. And the way you can think about that is if you take your dinner plate and you cover it so you can’t see the bottom, that’s three cups of vegetables.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. And that’s for the average weight person?
Dr. Wahls: And you might think about that. That’s for men, tall women. I’m six foot tall. If you’re a petite woman or a petite man, then maybe six cups would be appropriate. There’s no need to over consume beyond what your appetite will tolerate so I just want to be sure that you’re not hungry. If you’re hungry, eat more protein in those greens, sulfur and colors. And if you’re full, as long as you’ve had your six to 12 ounces of meat and you’ve got proportionately the greens, sulfur and color, then you’re fine.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. So which forms of exercise are most beneficial? You mentioned strength training and there’s particular recommendations, parameters for strength training?
Dr. Wahls: So ideally you want to have things be hard. Hard enough so that you can’t do three sets of 12 of that exercise times three. If you could do that, then you could advance the rigor of that exercise. Either more resistant bands, more weights, slower version if it’s a body weight exercise. And you want to do your arms, your core, and your walking muscles. And ideally I rotate so I’m doing arms one day, core one day, legs another day so that I’m getting my whole body trained. I’m also doing balance exercise. Because as we age, our balance declines. And so I don’t want to fall. So I’m doing exercises and I teach people how to maintain balance. And you might start, get my hands out there, so that your feet are wide apart and you gradually get them closer and closer. Then you gradually get so you’re standing on one foot and toes down, then eventually just on one foot. And when you can do that, then you turn your head side to side. And then when you can do that, then you can close your eyes. In that way you can gradually improve your balance. So routinely when I shower, I’ll do standing on one leg counting to 50, and then I do the other leg counting to 50, and I take turns drip drying so I can maintain my balance. Because falling becomes increasing hazard the older we become. And my goal is to be 120 and thriving so I want to have great balance in my 70s, 80s, 90s, and 100 plus.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Great job of multitasking, getting your shower in, your balance training. Put the cold water on, you can get your cold water immersion at the same time.
Dr. Wahls: Absolutely.
Dr. Weitz: So how important is electrical stimulation? It sounds like it was very important for you to help regenerate some of those muscles.
Dr. Wahls: It was super helpful. Fortunately, I had gone to a physical therapist who had an athletic practice and physical therapists who treat athletes have been using electrical stimulation for decades to help their athletes recover from injury more quickly. And at that time, remember, I could not sit up more than 10 minutes. I could do just a 10 minute very basic mat exercise program. We added electrostimulation to my mat exercise program and gradually increase that and that let me grow muscles more quickly. We now know from animal model studies and human studies that when you add electrostimulation to exercise, you make more nerve growth factors and muscle growth factors locally for your muscles, but you also make more nerve growth factors in your brain and you make more endorphins in your brain. And I could certainly tell very early on that the electro stimulation did great things for my mood and my mental clarity, and it I’m sure accelerated my recovery. It’s not a requirement. It’s simply a way of accelerating the speed of recovery, particularly for people who have severe disability. So people who need a cane, a walker or walking sticks, or in my case, the tilt, recline wheelchair.
Dr. Weitz: Now I’m very familiar with the electrical stimulation. As a sports chiropractor, we use electrical stimulation in the care of the patients. Specifically for neurological diseases like MS, can you talk about particulars? What is the protocol? How many seconds of contraction? How many seconds of rest? How many reps? Do you use contraction by moving the joint at the same time?
Dr. Wahls: So when you’re using electrical simulation, one of the things that it will do is you’re going to get current going through the pads into the motor nerve, into the muscle driving contraction. And it was used originally for people with spinal cord injury who were never going to walk. And it was a great tool to reduce the harm of inactivity. To improve blood sugar control and blood lipid metabolism. And then we did it on me and my athletic physical therapist said, “Terry, we don’t know if your brain’s going to be able to talk to this muscle so you have really got to build this connection. When that current is going, you contract your muscle as hard as you can. It’s going to be 10 seconds on, 20 seconds off. You got a two second ramp up and ramp down and dial it up to as much pain as you can tolerate.” I’m a former athlete. By God, I was going to leave nothing on the table, so I would dial it up. I would be in a sweat from the intensity of the current.
And I was doing all this, Ben, not to get better because I knew I couldn’t get better. I knew I had progressive MS, that functions once lost were never coming back. I was doing all this to slow my decline. But I was getting stronger. And they said, “Okay, 10 minutes, twice a day. 15 minutes, twice a day, 20 minutes twice a day, 30 minutes twice a day.” And then he goes, “Well, Terry, it’s 45 minutes a day to build stronger muscle. You’ve got a lot of weak muscles. How much time you have in the day, go ahead and stimulate.”
Dr. Weitz: So 10 seconds contraction, 10 seconds rest you said?
Dr. Wahls: No, 10 contraction, 20-
Dr. Weitz: 20 rest. Okay. And then for what? 10 reps?
Dr. Wahls: Well, I can’t remember. He gave me a set of exercises to do. It was 10 minutes. And I don’t remember what we started with at that time because I did belly, then I did back and butt. So there was three sets of muscles that I did at first. And so it was probably just 10 reps at first. And then it was 10 reps times two, then 10 reps times three. And then I am like, okay, if I’m going to get my electrodes here and here, so I had a two channel machine, I’m going to do isometrics for 30 minutes. So 10 second isometric on, 20 second off. And so I’d have my machine with me at work and I’d have 10 seconds of … Okay, I can work now for 20 seconds. 10 seconds of …
Dr. Weitz: Hard to record a podcast like that.
Dr. Wahls: And so if I was staffing residents, I had to dial the current back so I could have a conversation and no one would know that I was stimming. But if I wasn’t staffing residents, then I could dial it all the way up.
Dr. Weitz: Cool. Now, I know you’ve tried to get everything you can from food, but do you still employ some nutritional supplements?
Dr. Wahls: Yeah. Actually I take a bunch of supplements. I feel better when I’m taking my supplements. And then I continue to read the basic science and I tinker. I see a new interesting study and I’m like, okay, what would that do? And plus, it’s interesting, I probably go through about 200 different papers every week, maybe 250 to scan, see what looks interesting to try out.
Dr. Weitz: So what nutritional supplements are you taking right now?
Dr. Wahls: Well, I’m certainly taking vitamin D, fish oil.
Dr. Weitz: You take D with K?
Dr. Wahls: Yeah. I always take D plus K. I’m taking a variety of mushroom supplements. I’ve recently added urolithin A. That’s been very interesting. And then I-
Dr. Weitz: Are you doing NR or NMN?
Dr. Wahls: I am not.
Dr. Weitz: You chose not to or?
Dr. Wahls: It’s not hit the top of my list yet of things to try.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. Okay.
Dr. Wahls: I’m taking bergamot. I like that a lot. I like lipoic acid.
Dr. Weitz: NAC?
Dr. Wahls: Oh, we take lots of NAC.
Dr. Weitz: Tocotrienols?
Dr. Wahls: I have in the past. I’m not currently.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. Other antioxidants, polyphenols?
Dr. Wahls: Well, I certainly am taking beet root. I’m taking a variety of mushroom products. I am taking curcumin and I take a-
Dr. Weitz: What’s your favorite form of curcumin? Because that constantly changes. Which one is best or the latest?
Dr. Wahls: Well, what I do is I’ll make a phosphatidylcholine, plasmalogen, and a omega-3, omega-6 fatty acid smoothie. Then I’m adding curcumin in a cocktail of my favorite spices and I just rotate through which spices I’m adding. I’ll add beet root and some inulin, curcumin, ginger, and I’ll make that into a smoothie. Then I’ll add chia seed, and I will have that in a quart jar. And I will have that once a day. And I eat every other day. I’ll have my PC smoothie blend every day. And I’m not calculating how many calories are in that. And then-
Dr. Weitz: What’s the PC smoothie?
Dr. Wahls: Oh, that’s the phosphatidylcholine, plasmalogen, essential fatty acids. The various spice blend, curcumin, ginger. I’ll put together.
Dr. Weitz: Can you tell us about some of the ongoing research you’re doing about MS?
Dr. Wahls: Okay. We’ve done seven clinical trials and so far they’ve all consistently show that people can implement the diet and the study protocols that we use. That if you’re overweight, you lose weight generally without being hungry, getting back to a healthy weight. Fatigue is reduced. Quality of life is improved in 75 to 80% of the individuals. Now think about that. That is really remarkably effective. Even the very best drugs for everything, including infections, generally don’t have 70 to 80% rates of helping people. We have a new study that I’m super excited about. The efficacy of diet on quality of life. We’ll be comparing a ketogenic diet, a paleo diet to usual diet. And we’ll look at changes in fatigue, quality of life. And those are our primary outcomes. But we’re also looking at changes in walking function, hand function, vision function, and how well we think. And what I think will be the most interesting part of this study, Ben, is we’re looking at brain volume over time. Because people with MS, our brains as a group are shrinking three times as fast as what happens in healthy aging. So it’s about 1% per year, which is why we have much higher rates of anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, early frailty, early need to quit our jobs, go to assisted living and nursing home care. Even as very young people.
And because clinically we’re so effective at reducing brain fog, reducing anxiety, depression, I’m very optimistic that we’ll be able to get a significant number of our folks back into the healthy rates of brain aging. And although it’s not the primary outcome, so it’ll be one of those other manuscripts that we add, but I predict it’ll be groundbreaking. It’ll be very, very exciting. Because while disease-modifying drug therapies have to show that they can reduce the number of new enhancing lesions compared to control, and therefore they often reduce relapses compared to control. And so they’re very good at inflammation, but they don’t address neurodegeneration. They don’t address mitochondria. And therefore they don’t have much impact on anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, or brain fog.
So I don’t know what we’ll find, but I am super excited. People need to come to Iowa at month zero, month three, and month 24. We have 83 people that we’ve consented and are in the process. That means I have room for 72 more. And I expect that we’ll finish that recruitment in the next 12 months. And so really it’s three more years of steady activities to get all this stuff going. And so it’s ’23, that means in 2026, we’ll be wrapping things up at the end of the year. In 2027, we’ll be analyzing the data and presenting it at the MS Scientific meetings. And then the papers will start coming out. Now, in the meantime, my team has published about 70 abstracts, posters. We have 45 peer reviewed scientific papers of which 26 are related to the multiple sclerosis research.
And I’m really a unique, Ben, because I do the research to change the standard of care, but I know what it’s like to be facing terrible prognosis, terrible disability, and I am committed to at the same time that I’m doing the research to change the standard of care, to teach other clinicians how to think the way I think, and to teach other patients like me that there’s a whole lot you can do that can change your disease course. And yes, talk to your physician about how disease-modifying drugs fit into your care plan. But whatever you decide, we should all be working to improve our diet, asking for physical therapy, asking for stress reducing practice, making sure we’re sleeping well and being connected with our friends and family.
Dr. Weitz: And what’s even more remarkable is that the disease modifying drugs that are available don’t reverse the condition, don’t actually make people better. At best, people get worse at a slower rate.
Dr. Wahls: Exactly. At best, all they need to show is they have fewer lesions in the MRI. They don’t really have to show any change on anxiety, depression, mood, clinical function. And it’s wonderful that they’ve done this. They’ve taken the time from diagnosis to wheelchair and have moved it out five years. And for everyone with MS, those five years … It’s great to get five more years away from the wheelchair. But wouldn’t it be even better to never have to need the wheelchair? Wouldn’t it be even better to have no anxiety, no depression, no cognitive decline? I can now jog on my treadmill.
Dr. Weitz: Right. That’s one of the amazing things is none of these disease modifying drugs can actually give you any hope of going from a wheelchair to not being in a wheelchair and yet the functional medicine approach that you’re pioneering has that potential.
Dr. Wahls: And so we see people. I think it’s really important to stop the decline, use the functional medicine approach to stop the decline, and then find a practitioner who has a very close relationship with a rehab center, rehab minded physical therapist who will work on that rehab potential. I have close relationships with folks who are big champions of electrical stimulation of muscles. They treat our patients like athletes, recovering athletes. We work hard, we have big goals, and we realize this is going to be a several year process for those people who are like me, profoundly disabled and wheelchair dependent. But we have other wonderful stories. It’s not just me getting out of the wheelchair. But the people who are most successful are the former athletes and the people who are willing to say, “I’ll treat this athletic training. That I realize this is a long row that I’m going to be hoeing and I’ll be doing it the rest of my life. And I am down for that journey.”
Dr. Weitz: That’s awesome. And so how do they contact you to find out about the getting involved with the study?
Dr. Wahls: The simplest way to do this is go to terrywahls, that’s T-E-R-R-Y, Wahls, W-A-H-L-S.com/msstudy. There’ll be more information about the study, a short little video. There’ll be a yellow box. Click there to take the survey. You’ll put in your contact information, answer a few questions, and then we will begin the process of confirming your diagnosis, putting you in our patient registry. Because we’ll have more studies that we want everyone to hear about. And then for those who are eligible for the study, we will contact you and begin the process of confirming the diagnosis, telling you in more detail what’s involved in the study in getting you enrolled. So 72 folks. We’d love to help get you in the study and help transform your life.
Dr. Weitz: And I understand that all your studies are privately funded. You’ve yet to have the National Institute of Health provide funding.
Dr. Wahls: Correct. We’ve been funded by individuals, by family foundations, the MS Society, which is a nonprofit. They have funded us. And so we’re very grateful for them. A grateful patient whose life we transformed is funding the really big study, the Carter Chapman Shreve Family Foundation. And my university, which at first thought I was a bit eccentric, a bit odd, now they’re like, “Dr. Wahls is a rockstar.” Because I’m getting funded through the grateful patients at a level that is really quite extraordinary.
Dr. Weitz: That’s awesome. Thank you for the work you’re doing, Dr. Wahls.
Dr. Wahls: Well, I am so grateful. In 2007, I had such a terrible future. Bedridden, demented, in continuous electrical pain. That was the future that I thought I was facing. Now I’m pain free. I consider my trigeminal neuralgia a gift because I know if my brain’s inflamed moment to moment. I don’t have fatigue, I don’t have mental clarity. I’m traveling the world. And I just am so grateful that I have this amazing future.
Dr. Weitz: That’s awesome. And others can potentially have that future too, if they make the right diet, lifestyle changes as well as doing the standard of care.
Dr. Wahls: Correct. Correct. So we’re not anti-drug. That’s a great conversation to have with your treating specialist. We just want to be sure that you have support to do all that you can of the things that we control. Our actions, our diet, our self-care routine.
Dr. Weitz: Do you have training programs available for practitioners who want to-
Dr. Wahls: Yeah, we certainly do. We train physicians, chiropractors, physical therapists, registered dieticians, health coaches. Anyone with a health related license or certificate. The training is online. We also have sessions via Zoom. Once you’re trained, it’s about 20 hours worth of training, there’s a test that you’ll have to pass. And then we have monthly calls with me discussing cases. Sometimes I bring in a guest lecturer as well. And we have people, I believe, in 24 different countries around the world. And because we do this online, my mission, we want to train as many clinicians as I can so we can make this way of taking care of people more readily available around the world.
Dr. Weitz: And do we go to terrywahls.com to find that practitioner training?
Dr. Wahls: To find that you go to terrywahls.com/certification.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. That’s great. Thank you so much, Dr. Wahls.
Dr. Wahls: And thank you for all that you are doing.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would certainly appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review. That way more people will discover the Rational Wellness Podcast. And I wanted to let everybody know that I do have some openings for new patients so I can see you for a functional medicine consultation for specific health issues like gut problems, autoimmune diseases, cardio metabolic conditions, or for an executive health screen and to help you promote longevity and take a deeper dive into some of those factors that can lead to chronic diseases along the way. And that usually means we’re going to do some more detailed lab work, stool testing, sometimes urine testing, and we’re going to look at a lot more details to get a better picture of your overall health from a preventative functional medicine perspective. So if you’re interested, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111, and we can set you up for a new consultation for functional medicine. I’ll talk to everybody next week.
