Today I have a special treat for you. Dr. Terry Wahls offered to come on my MS podcast to share her story and her latest research. She even answered some of your burning questions, like how do I decide on a treatment plan when I'm newly diagnosed? And how do I start the protocol when it feels so overwhelming? When I was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2016, Dr. Wahls' book was one of the very first books that I read to create my wellness journey with MS. And I became so passionate about her work that I got certified as a Wahls Protocol health practitioner and dedicated my nutrition coaching practice to helping individuals adopt the Wahls Protocol. And we see it time and time again.

Food can, in fact, help us to live a better life with multiple sclerosis and autoimmune disease. So let's dive into this very special episode and hear directly from Dr. Terry Wahls. And my fellow MS sisters, if you want a more personalized approach to creating your MS diet and lifestyle, check out my private coaching program. It includes a comprehensive assessment, personalized strategies, and lifestyle support. Each month, I only accept three new clients. So if you're interested, apply now at Alenebrennan. com/coach. Now onto today's episode. There are 1 million people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the US. So, that makes you one in a million. And you have a special purpose in this world that no diagnosis can take away from you.

So if you are ready to reclaim your body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis, welcome to my MS podcast. I'm your host, Alene Brennan. Hello, Dr. Wahls. Welcome to my MS podcast. Hey, thank you for having me. I am thrilled that you are here. You have played such a big role in my journey with managing MS and your story is profound. So I'm thrilled to have you on today and talk a little bit more about your story, your research, all of it. And if somebody is listening who is not familiar, this is Dr. Terry Wahls. She is a conventionally trained doctor who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2008, or excuse me, 2,000, and tried all the conventional methods. Ultimately found her healing through diet and lifestyle. Dr.

Wahls, I had the opportunity to meet with you literally weeks after my diagnosis at the Wahls Conference. And again, you certainly paved the road, not only for my healing journey, but for so many others in the MS and the autoimmune community as a whole. So I would love if you could kick us off just by telling us a little bit more about your story and some of the research that you are working on now. Sure. So again, I'm an internal medicine physician. I had developed some stumbling issues and saw my neurologist in 2000. And at that time, you said, you know, Terry, this could be bad or really, really bad. And so for the next three weeks, I go through the workup.

And while I'm going through that, I'm thinking about the fact I've already had 20 years of worsening electrical face pain. So I actually am secretly praying for a fatal diagnosis because I don't want to become disabled. Three weeks later, I hear multiple sclerosis. I do my research. I find the best MS center in the country. I see the newest, the best physicians take the newest drugs. Three years later, I hear tilt, recline, wheelchair. I take mitoxantrone, a form of chemotherapy. I take Tysabri, the newest biologic drug. It does not help. I continue to relentlessly worsen. And then I'm asking myself, am I really doing all that I can? And I start reading the basic science for Alzheimer's, dementia, ALS, Huntington's, and MS. And I decide that mitochondrial dysfunction is what's driving disability.

So I create a supplement cocktail to support my mitochondria. The speed of my decline slows. I'm very grateful, but I'm still declining. By the summer of 2007, I cannot sit up anymore. I'm in a zero-gravity chair with my knees higher than my nose. I'm beginning to have brain fog. My face pain is relentlessly worse. I discover a study using electrical stimulation of muscles in people who are paralyzed. I ask my physical therapist to try that. And he gives me a test session. It hurts really bad. But when it's over, I feel great. And so we add the E-STEM to my physical therapy. Then I discover the Institute for Functional Medicine. I take their course on neuroprotection. I have a longer list of supplements that I'm adding. And then I have this big 'aha'.

What if I redesign my paleo diet that I've been following for five years based on this long list of supplements? So I start this new way of eating December of 2007. Now at that time, again, I'm so weak I cannot sit up. I can take just a couple of steps using two walking sticks. I'm beginning to have brain fog. My trigeminal neurology is definitely more and more severe. A month after this new way of eating, I realize that my fatigue is less, my mental clarity is improving, and my physical therapist says, Terry, you're getting stronger. He advances my exercise, and I'm now doing the E-STEM and the exercise twice a day, first 10 minutes twice a day, then 15, then 20, then 30 minutes twice a day.

And he tells me I could do as much electrical STEM and exercise as I could tolerate. And I begin walking. First with two walking sticks, then with one, and then with none. And then on Mother's Day, I tell Jackie I want to try riding my bike, which I've not done in six years. We have an emergency family meeting. She tells my 6 '5", 16-year-old boy, Zach, Zach, you run alongside on the left. She tells my daughter, Zebby, who's 13, you run alongside on the right. And she'll follow. We get into position. She tells me I can start. And I bike around the block. Now that big 16-year-old boy, he is crying. My 13-year-old daughter, she is crying. Jackie's crying.

And when I relive that moment, tears come back because that was the moment where Who knows how much recovery might be possible? And so I keep biking a little bit more. Then in October, Jackie says, honey, I've signed us up for the Courage Ride. It's 18. 5 miles. However far you go will be a triumph. And I have to take a couple of rests, but I do cross the finish line. And once again, my children are crying, Jackie's crying, I'm crying. And this fundamentally changes the way I think about disease and health, and it will change the way I practice medicine. That's incredible. That's incredible. And all because at the beginning of your diagnosis, you looked at this and you said, 'there's got to be something that I can do.' There's got to be a different way to look at this.

There's stuff I can do. And I think that's my message that's become my mission in life, is to change the standard of care that, yes, we may have FDA-approved drugs that lower the number of new enhancing lesions.' But everyone, everyone, regardless of what you decide about the drugs, there's so much that we can do to address diet and the modifiable lifestyle factors. That will impact disease course, that will impact quality of life. And I think that's such an important message because I think right now, because there's so much excitement around how effective diet and lifestyle can be, it's very enticing, but it also can create a little stress for somebody who's newly diagnosed. We just wrapped up a season in the podcast here for those individuals, individuals newly diagnosed.

And I'm talking to so many people, I hear them say like, they want to go the diet and lifestyle route, but they feel pressure from their doctor to go one way. I think one, there's definitely the message of like, either way you go include food like that should not be. Right. It's a clinical decision. You have to weigh your risk of disease progression, disability, the severity of symptoms you had at the beginning, and your comfort level with the list of potential side effects from the drugs. And this is a very personal decision. I was willing to take very toxic drugs because I didn't want to become more disabled. And again, it's very personal what your risk tolerance is for the drugs. Your risk tolerance is for progression.

And my message in 2008 was, you know, eat these radical things known as vegetables, improve your diet, exercise, take care of your sleep. And that was seen as false hope. I was condemned. You know, people said terrible, terrible things about me. So I kept going where I was invited, giving my lectures. Then I started writing case reports, case series. Then we started doing clinical trials. And now, 15 years later, the research is continuing to validate my point of view that diet really matters, that exercise really matters, that stress management really matters, and that everyone should be addressing what are known as the modifiable lifestyle factors. And you can have a conversation with your medical team about your comfort level with taking disease-modifying drugs and your preference for that.

And your medical team will be very skilled at telling you about the pros and cons of these drugs. They may not have much skill or knowledge about diet. They may not have much skill or knowledge about stress reduction or about exercise. Look for people who can help you. Your primary care person should be excited about diet and lifestyle factors. There are health coaches. There are nutrition professionals who want to help you with that. And the good news is more neurologists are saying, 'Yes, I want you to take DMTs,' and they're always going to say that. But more are also saying, and it's just as important to address diet and lifestyle. And can you share, again, Dr. Wahls, you had at the beginning of this part of our conversation here, what factors somebody should be considering when they're starting their first treatment plan?

Yeah. So your neurologist, your specialist will probably want to think about where the lesions are in your brain, in your spinal cord. The more lesions in the spinal cord, the greater the risk of disability, of converting to the progressive phase of the illness, of needing a cane, walker, or wheelchair. So your neurologist will probably be much more enthusiastic for you to take a disease-modifying drug treatment. They'll also probably look at how many lesions are visible in the brain, in the spinal cord, and the volume of the lesions. So again, the number of lesions. And the volume of the lesions with a higher number, higher volume, increasing the risk of converting to the progressive phase of needing a cane, walker, or wheelchair.

And so certainly if you're 10 or more or spinal cord lesions, much higher risk of being in the progressive phase. And some neurologists would say if it's five or more, much higher risk. And the severity of disability, the severity of impairment at baseline increases the risk. What about age? Does that play a factor? Well, we know the younger you are, the more robust the immune system. So under the age of 40, we're more likely to still be having relapses, where symptoms get worse, and then we recover, where symptoms remit. Once we hit 40, our immune cells begin to age. The big word for that is immunosenescence. And then at the age of 45, we have a little more aging.

And sometimes between age 45 and 55, we're more likely to stop having relapses and instead just have this slow, steady worsening of function, worsening of fatigue, worsening of mental brain fog. Worsening of worse gait tolerance, more difficulty standing for a long time, more difficulty walking very fast. And by the time we're 60, many neurologists are thinking that the side effects of the disease-modifying drug treatments are beginning to outweigh the benefit. And if you look at my hair, it's turning white. So I'm in my 60s. And so many would say, in your 60s, the benefits are steadily diminishing. There's a lot of debate, however. If we take people off, are they at risk of having that decline accelerate? And we don't know. There are a couple of studies that are going on.

Where people are randomized to stay on their drug or stop starting at age 55 and age 60. And what was so unfortunate in these studies is they never used diet or lifestyle. We wrote grants, and we're still writing grants, proposing that you put everyone on diet and lifestyle, and then you take half off and you leave half on the DMTs, and we see what happens. It's my theory that if I put people on a good diet and lifestyle, then they'll do very well coming off the DMTs. But I couldn't get anyone to fund that study, so we haven't been able to do that study. But we're still writing grants. We're still trying. And your message has always been, if you are already on a disease-modifying therapy, stay on it.

Add diet and lifestyle, let everything stabilize, and then you're in a better position to talk with your neurologist about safely getting off of that if that's your desire. Correct. And we don't know how long you need to have a great response. Is it three years? Is it two years? Is it one year? And I'm very upfront. I don't know. My preference is you have three years of a great response. And then we transition you from whatever. High, whatever potency of your disease-modifying drug treatment, we could transition you to a drug that perhaps is less potent but has fewer side effects. And then if you do that, that transition goes well and you're stable for a year, then perhaps we could transition to a less frequent dose of medication or perhaps even no medication at all.

But you do this very gradually so we can see that you're doing well, doing well, doing well. Because if you stop abruptly disease-modifying drug treatments that are working well, we know that the person's at great risk to have a severe rebound. That is a severe worsening of their symptoms. A hundred percent. So your position or your kind of message is when someone's newly diagnosed, there's a lot of factors, including the number of lesions, the placement of lesions and the severity of their symptoms. Talk with your doctor, create a plan that feels best for both of you. Either way, keep diet in there. Absolutely. Either way, diet and lifestyle. And it is a big decision because You're balancing your fear of progression versus your fear of the drug. Neither one of those are good things.

Progression's pretty terrible. The drugs do have some significant risk. It is not straightforward. Listen to your heart, talk to your family, talk to your doc, and realize that you're going to pick a choice and then pay attention to how it goes. Yep. Commit to whatever your decision is and then track the results and have follow-up appointments with your doctor to discuss if adjustments need to be made in either direction. Correct. Dr. Wahls, thank you so much. Yeah, go ahead. Have a good diet. Eating the standard American diet full of sugar, processed food increases the risk of disease progression. So Dr. Wahls, what diet would you recommend? Well, the first thing I want people to do is make these changes as a family. Whatever we're going to do, if we do it as a family, it is much easier.

And so I talk with my patients about what are the foods to add, what are the foods to reduce and eliminate. And if we look at the research, the diets with the highest efficacy – that is the largest reduction in fatigue, largest improvement in quality of life. It's the modified paleo diet, also known as the Wahls diet. A Mediterranean diet is also very good. A low-saturated fat diet, the SWANK diet, also good. Those three diets are helpful for fatigue, with the Wahls diet being about 50% more effective than Mediterranean or the SWANK diet, low-fat diet. For quality of life, the modified paleo diet was twice as effective as the Mediterranean diet. However, I also look at the medical comorbidities. Is the person severely overweight? Do they have diabetes, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance?

I might recommend a ketogenic diet. I might recommend intermittent fasting. But most importantly, we have a conversation about what diet plans are they interested in, what they think they and their family could do. And then, you know, we talk about the other modifiable lifestyle factors. And some people are ready. You know, they get my book. They're ready to do everything all at once. They're all in. They can do a lot of things. Others are like, and so what I like to do with my patients is ask, 'What did you learn?' And what are you going to do?' And what they taught me was I have to speak a little more plainly. So I've gotten much better at that. And that some people are ready for a big, complicated plan.

And others are like, 'That's too hard.' But what I could do is instead of having three Cokes a day, I'll have one. And so we sort out how big is the next step that they could take. And for some, it's a very small next step because I want them to be successful. And this is where a conversation with your family, 'What are the foods we're going to add? What are we going to reduce?' What are we going to eliminate together as a family? And I acknowledge that if Joe or Jane is the patient, and they've decided that they want to exclude these foods. But the other rest members of the family want to keep eating some foods. You can agree that we won't do it in front of Jane.

We'll go out with some friends to have the pizza and beer and the chocolate cake while Jane is having her friends in for the kind of meal that she wants to have. So you can still eat what you want and enjoy, but you'll do it in a way that is supportive. For the person who's perhaps decided to do the paleo diet, or maybe decided to do the keto diet, or maybe decided to do an intermittent fasting diet. So there are several diets that you could consider. But again, if you can do this as a family, you'll be much more successful. It makes all the difference in the world. It shouldn't be a showstopper if they're not willing to be on board. Still do your thing.

However, if you can get everybody on board, it does make it so much easier. It makes it so much easier. You know, occasionally we end up having to send people to family counseling because it's hard for them to talk about this. And having a neutral third party to negotiate like, okay, I love you, Eileen, but I really like my pizza and beer. So, we have to figure out a way that you can help yourself, but I get to have my pizza and beer at the frequency that matters to me. Usually adults can sort that out. Sometimes we need to have a family counselor help with that conversation. And sometimes when that doesn't work, what's really going on is that Aileen and I are so pissed off at each other that we have to fix the relationship first.

We need some family counseling so that I can forgive Aileen for whatever it is I had to forgive her. And Aileen can forgive me for whatever it is she has to forgive me. And then now we can come up with a solution that works for both of us. And occasionally, that happens, that there's some deep wounds that have to get resolved. Before we can make that forward progress. And I also appreciate your comment about it's okay if you have to start gradually. It's perfectly fine. And this is where intermittent fasting sometimes is the way to go because you know what? I can't give up the favorite foods, but I could give up the favorite foods, but I could do a two days a week a severe calorie restriction, two days a week, I could do that.

And that would be, for some people, a much easier intervention than following a paleo diet or a Mediterranean diet because everyone gets to keep eating what they want. I just have to agree to be hungry two days a week, which by the way, you know, is okay for a while. That being hungry. It's something that we all deeply biologically resist. So over time, that does get to be harder. Tell us what that means. What does that look like practically when you're talking about the two days a week? So let's say on Tuesday and Friday, I'm going to have a salad with perhaps salmon one day and a salad with chicken the other day. And that's all I'm going to eat, one meal. With my big salad. So that's about 500 calories, 700 calories.

You could make it a little deeper calorie restriction. That would be even better. So, a smaller salad where it's only about 300 to 400 calories, you're really going to be quite hungry. You could also do a 24-hour fast one day a week. That does a bunch of really favorable things to how we run the chemistry of life. And again, the beauty of that is you get to keep eating whatever else the family's eating. So that's another baby step. Well, not the smallest baby step, but it's still an option. I love you're giving options is basically what it comes down to, to get somebody started. It's a way to get started. You could decide that what you want to do is less sugar sweetened beverages. Kind of how many that you're doing now, whatever that is.

And like, okay, I'll cut it by one. That's what I'll do this week. Then maybe the next week I'll cut it by another one. And you keep working at reducing that until there's no sugar sweetened beverages. Yeah. And we certainly know that reducing or eliminating sugar is beneficial overall to your health. For many, many different health conditions. Yeah, for sure. And then just going back quickly to intermittent fasting that you were talking about, is there a simpler way or how could you simplify the description of what benefits you're feeling or experiencing physically from that? Well, if you do the intermittent fasting, it will improve your blood sugar control. It will improve your blood sugar. It will reduce the inflammation called cytokines, these inflammation molecules in your bloodstream.

It will also improve the efficiency of your mitochondria. And your mitochondria are what drive energy. So it does a bunch of very helpful biochemical processes for you. Yeah, wonderful. And then can you tell us a little bit, this might be a nice segue here, of a little bit more about what's going on with your current research and the message that you'd like to share or invite to our community on the podcast here. So we have a study that we're doing, efficacy of diet on quality of life. It's comparing a ketogenic diet, the modified paleo diet that, that many of you hear as the Walsh diet, to usual diet. People with relapsing, remitting multiple sclerosis between the ages of 18 and 70 will come to Iowa, get baseline assessments, then we'll randomize you into one of these three diets, and we'll bring you back in three months, and then again in 24 months.

What we'll do is we'll measure your energy levels, your quality of life. Your walking hand vision function short-term memory and we'll get a no-contrast MRI of the brain at baseline and at 24 months. This will have 156 people in the study. This will be one of the largest longest diet studies that have been done in the setting of multiple sclerosis. We are very excited. We have room for another 30 people in the study. And so, Aileen, I'm hoping you can help me get those last 30. We'd be thrilled. I'll get you a copy of the QRs code. If you go to terryWahls. com forward slash MS study, that's our recruitment page. There's a little video about the study.

And you'll see there's a survey I need you to complete that will, you'll answer a few questions that will let us know if you're eligible for the study or not. If you're not eligible for the study, you'll be in our database for other studies that we'll be doing, because we do several studies a year, some of which are survey-only based. Again, we're looking for people in the United States, Canada, or Mexico, randomized, willing to be randomized to a keto diet, paleo diet, or usual diet. Okay. So they have to be willing to accept whichever category they're in and follow it for two years, you said, correct? Correct. You know, let's say you're already on a keto diet. That's fine. You can still come in.

You have to be willing to be randomized so that if you're on a keto diet, and you're randomized to the paleo diet, you're like, okay, I guess I'm going to liberalize my diet a bit more and do a paleo diet. If you're in the usual diet arm, you get to follow the usual diet arm, and that's fine. If you're on, if you're a vegetarian diet, you have to be willing that if you're randomized to the paleo diet, you're going to be eating meat and fish. And so if you are on a low-fat diet, You have to be willing that if you're randomized to the keto diet, you'll eat the keto diet for us. Okay. Good to know. Well, I will definitely include that link in our show notes as well so they can go directly there.

We can also go to the show notes to get anything that Dr. Wahls is mentioning here. So if you're interested in that. One more thing. I'm going to include our QR code, so it's a little JPEG that you'll have, Aileen. And for everyone listening, please put this QR code on your Facebook, on social media, and tell people to please screenshot so they can be part of our study. It's very handy because they could use the camera in your phone. It'll take them straight to our survey, and then you could complete the survey on your phone. And that will really help us get more people screening. Dr. Wahls, the size of this study is really exciting. It is huge. I don’t know that people realize how big of a study that is.

I was just looking at one the other week, and it was more from the low-fat perspective. I think it might have been like 30 people. Yeah, I think it was 36. I’m sorry? I think it was 36. 36, yeah. I mean, so the comparison is significant. And it’s very expensive, you know, doing studies – 156 that’s a lot of people, two years, that’s a long time. That’s a multimillion-dollar budget. Wow. And you would not be getting that funding if there weren’t people behind you believing in this work that you’re doing. We have grateful patients that have been funding our pilot studies, the MS study. funded the Swank versus Wahl diet study. And again, it was a grateful family that's funding this study because.

They believe in the work. They've seen the impact of diet and lifestyle on their lives. Yeah, it's tremendous. And it brings so much hope for those of us diagnosed with MS and autoimmune disease to know that the worst-case scenarios that we tend to see online when we do that first Google search after a diagnosis does not have to be our story. It does not have to be, not by any means. What I want all of you to know is that it's very possible to thrive and do just so well. My symptoms began in 1980 with pain. So I've had neurologic symptoms now for 43 years. I'm still hiking. I'm biking. I'm swimming. I'm jogging. I'm writing books. I'm doing research. And I'm not the exception.

We've had people who have been wheelchair dependent, who we've worked with closely. They had to do a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to recover when you have that level of disability. But they're walking again. They are getting their lives back. So absolutely, it is possible to rehabilitate yourself. Absolutely. And you're emphasizing that it's not just the fatigue and brain fog, that an improvement in mobility is possible. We just published a paper. We did something called a secondary data analysis of data from our Swank versus Wahls diet study. And we looked at The 25-foot walk test, the nine-hole pegboard, and the simple digit modalities. So those are a measure of walking speed, of hand coordination, and of working memory. It's like the RAM in your computer.

We were able to show that compared to the observation period where things, of course, did not get better, and then they got randomized to Swank or Wahls, that the walking speed did not change, but hand coordination improved and working memory improved. This was the first time we were able to show that by changing the diet, we could reduce measured functional disability. That is, we could improve hand function and working memory. And we also saw, when we looked at that data, that in the WALS group, walking endurance, that is how far they could walk in six minutes, also significantly improved. Wow. Imagine what happens if you improve your diet and you also exercise. I'm so glad you said that's actually just exactly where I was going to go of how it can start with changing the food on your plate.

And that can help to give you a little bit more energy that in you know, into sharing your story, that helped you to better perform in physical therapy, and then performing better in physical therapy, just further, it just continues to grow and grow and grow. Yeah, it's a You know, I exercise every day. I'm committed to strength training three days a week. Today was my strength training day. Tomorrow I'll either swim or I'll do Nordic walking. And, again, work on your modifiable lifestyle factors at the pace that you and your family can manage. And those factors being exercise, sleep, stress, what do you consider those to be? You know, get outside, get out some daylight. We're tuned in to vitamin D to be very, very beneficial.

But interestingly enough, if you take supplements, that's not as effective as we anticipated. In my clinical practice, I tell people: take vitamin D plus vitamin K; plus get a tan. Go outside, don't get a sunburn, but get a tan. And preferably go out in the morning so you can get daylight in the morning because that'll help you sleep better at night. Try and get seven to nine hours of sleep at night. Move every day. Walking is really great. If you can jog or Nordic track or bike or swim, that is good. When you can start doing vertical jumps or vibration plate therapy, that is super good for your skeleton. And then cognitive training. Learn stuff. Read books. Do puzzles. Learn new motor skills. It could be crocheting. macrame, knitting.

It could be playing chess. It could be learning a new language. It could be telling stories, recalling and telling family stories. There are so many things that we can be doing to enrich our lives and rebuilding those connections in our brain. Absolutely. And in the process of doing them, you're also reducing stress because you're doing something that brings you joy. And then if you do it with someone else, you're getting the social connection as well. Absolutely. This summer and fall, Jackie and I started going to ballroom dancing. It's like, oh my goodness, that was so much fun. And we're learning these new dance moves. You go from partner to partner. It's a nice moderate intensity aerobic exercise. And for me at times, high intensity is because I'm like, okay, this is.

Hard enough that I really can't be talking to my partners. So that makes it a high intensity exercise. This was great. Oh my goodness. So much fun. You're feeling better. You're enjoying life more. You're spending time with your loved ones. Like it's incredible. It's incredible. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, thank you so much. I do have a few just final questions. And then certainly if there's anything else that you wanted to share, I wanted to see if you could just set the record straight on a few questions that tend to come up from our community. They're all simple ones, but we want to hear directly from you. The first one I know you'll smile at because you get it all the time. The nine cups. Dr. Wahls, please set the record straight.

Are they measured, cooked, or raw? I've heard you answer this before. You answer it directly, and then you say, but you're also kind of missing the point. So please share. The whole reason that we had nine cups is I didn't want people to be hungry. Because if you're hungry, you make a bad choice. So I want you to have plenty of protein. So for the protein, look at my hand. You should have two palm-sized servings of meat, fish, or poultry. Or if you're a vegetarian, then it's going to be, you know, beans and rice. And then greens, sulfur in the cabbage, onion, mushroom, family vegetables and color. Equally between the greens, the sulfur and the color. Three platefuls. So if you're a big guy and mostly had vets, they were big men.

I want them to have three plates of vegetables plus their meat before they ate anything else. And they were like three plates. Is that per month? Or per week. And I don't know if that's per day. And they'd get a big chuckle out of that. Now, Alene, you're much smaller than I am. You're probably not going to be able to get nine cups in. So maybe it's four to six cups for you. And so I have some very petite people. It's going to be four cups. The goal is non-starchy vegetables, green, sulfur color. Don't stuff yourself. Eat two palm-sized servings of meat. And I didn't want you to be hungry. That's why I had the nine cups in.

Plus, I needed a message that people could remember when I only got to have them with my VA clinical practice to two to five minutes. So I have a very fast, easily digested message. So don't obsess over the measuring cups. Get the balance on the plate and eat till you're feeling full, not stuffed, but don't obsess. Yeah, don't obsess. Then I worry about people and I think, oh my God, you are being an accountant with your food. This is going to end up with an eating disorder. No, no, no. That was never the intent. Wonderful. And then the other question that can come up often is the concern around saturated fat with the coconut oil or coconut milk. I know this is a common one you address as well. Yeah.

So if you're using coconut milk and coconut fat, you may be increasing your cholesterol. So I want everyone to get their cholesterol checked. And if your cholesterol is quite high, then I don't want you using a lot of saturated fat. I don't want you using a lot of coconut oil. And if you want to follow a low-saturated-fat diet, by all means do so. You can still have chicken, poultry, lean, grass-fed, grass-finished meats. You could boil, bake, broil, simmer in broth. And pour lots of olive oil over your food afterwards. And we have plenty of people in my clinical practice that we put on a low-saturated-fat diet. You can certainly do that. And we have some folks who really, and I love the taste of coconut milk and making coconut curries.

But if I do that every day, my cholesterol is going to go up. So I'll do that occasionally. And I use lots of olive oil and pasta. After I've cooked my meat and my vegetables. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm extra hungry now hearing that. Well, you certainly have given us such a wealth of knowledge beyond everything that you've already shared in your books. I appreciate all the detail that you have gone into today. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you wanted to share with our audience here? Yeah, a couple more things to tell people. Please go to my website, TerryWahls . com. Sign up for my email. So you can get my weekly email updates. Those are fabulous. Follow me on Instagram, Dr.

Terry Wahls, D-R-T-E-R-R-Y-W-A-H-L-S, because then you get to see what I'm eating and doing. I think that's pretty inspiring. And please share information about our study as widely as possible to your friends, your family, your physicians. And help us get those 30 people so we can change the world. Fantastic. Fantastic. It is so exciting to be part of this journey with you. I know I, as I said, I'm incredibly grateful for the work that you have done and the leader that you have been for our community here. So, yeah, I thank you for paving the road that you did when all of this was just you on your own. Hearing a lot of kind of backlash there, you continued on.

And we get to benefit from the courage that you had. And it's inspiring to each of us to have courage in our own lives and to, you know, really pursue our passions and make sure that we are standing up and standing firm for what we believe in. So thank you for all that you did then. And thank you for all that you continue to do now. I really, I deeply appreciate it. And I know all of our listeners do as well. Thank you for all that you're doing as well, Eileen. Wonderful. Well, we hope to talk to you again soon. But in the meantime, we'll head on over to your website and Instagram and we'll be able to connect with you further there. Thank you for being our first guest on my MS podcast. Thank you. Well, my friend, we've reached the end of this episode. Pick one lesson from today's discussion and put it into action now. It's time to reclaim your body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis. And for more resources, events, and programs, head over to alenebrennan. com. See you on the next episode of my MS podcast.