Hey everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Dr. Terry Walsh. She's an author and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa as well as living proof that you should absolutely let food be a diet medicine.

She was diagnosed with MS and spent four years dependent on a tilt recline wheelchair because she was so devastated by her symptoms.

But instead of giving up, she dove headlong into the research and ultimately created what is now known as the Walsh Protocol. A diet based rehabilitation program that took her from being wheelchair bound to now riding her bike to work every day.

Today, a full 20 years after being diagnosed, she continues to thrive and help countless others with her diet and lifestyle therapies. Dr. Walsh, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you for having me. It is amazing to have you. Your story is insane. And I want to start the thing that I find most profoundly interesting about your story is the way that you responded to being diagnosed with MS.

A lot of people I have to imagine would just sort of fold up and accept that fate. It's pretty daunting. Medical literature is all going to tell you it's the one way street. So how did you get yourself in a proactive state?

Well, yeah, well, that was very straightforward. I had, when I was diagnosed, I had two very young kids, age eight and five. And, you know, when they were really young, I had assumed I was going to teach them how to be successful adults by athletics, wilderness travel, white water, kayaking, cross country skiing, mountain climbing, teaching them martial arts.

But of course, that became very quickly apparent that was not going to be possible. And so I knew they their success was very important to me. So I had to keep reimagining how was I going to teach them how to be resilient.

As I was getting more and more and more disabled. And so ultimately I realized that all I had was that you don't give up. You get up, you go to work, you do the best you can. And then I was like, OK, I have to read everything that I possibly can to slow the decline because I knew recovery was not possible.

I knew that functions once lost were, were completely gone. And so I was doing all this not to recover. I was doing all this to slow my decline. And I had been a vegetarian. I got introduced to Lauren Cardain's work. I went back to eating meat. I gave up all grain, all the gooms, all dairy.

I could still decline. I needed the wheelchair the next year. I'm taking chemotherapy that I'm taking a tigabri. I'm still declining. And then it's like, OK, the best medicine from the best people in the country is not stopping my march towards a bed ridden,

lamented life. I also have tried general neurons, as part of my problem. And so those episodes of pain we're getting steadily more frequent, more severe and more difficult to control. And so I might also be having to come to terms with intractable pain.

I am so, it's like, okay, I'm going to go back to reading the basic science. And I would develop theories that mitochondria were the big driver for disability in MS. So I was focused in on brain nutrition, focused in on mitochondria, focused in on cellular health.

And at first I did supplements. And I had already, I already made a big change in my diet. I didn't do a lot. I added supplements that helped my fatigue a little bit. And I was thrilled in the speed of my decline was slowing. And I was thrilled. But of course I was still declining.

I want to dive into that a little bit more. It is got to be very difficult for people to conceptualize that MS 20 years on is either the person has just completely either they passed away or they have been just failed to manage the symptoms become bedridden, demented, whatever.

So for you to be practicing medicine, for you to be physically active and doing the things you're doing, I don't use the word miracle. But just if I were to juxtapose two things.

It's insane to really contextualize that for people legitimately up until you being sort of this demarcation point, it was a one way street.

So I want to focus on the mindset in that moment. It's super dark. You're researching this paper. Everyone is telling you and you know you even said you used the word no. I knew that there was no coming back from this.

How did you see the evidence when you were so convinced that there was no coming back?

Well, so there wasn't a coming back, but I could slow my decline. And I had this obligation to slow it as much as I could. And besides with my two kids, they're watching me. They watch what I do every day.

And what I do is what they're going to absorb. And so either I'm teaching them that when life gets difficult, really difficult, you give up.

Or when life gets difficult, you keep going on no matter how difficult it gets. And it's certainly what I saw with my parents were farmers that you know life's not not fair. You have good weather, you have bad weather.

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