Dr. Terry Wahls’ Big Hairy Audacious Goal

Personal recovery and early publication 0:00

I have a big, hairy, audacious goal, and my goal is that I want to change the standard of care so that every massive neuro immune patient, is told that diet and lifestyle are critical to having the best outcomes. And now, to do that, we need to have peer reviewed, published research and to do that research that I really think needs to happen. Has, required philanthropic support. And so this talk is to tell you the story of my journey and how, my work has impacted, changing the standard of care. So, as you know, I had my, severe decline and recovery, during the year of 2008.

Building evidence and changing practice 0:58

Now, my chief of medicine at the University of Iowa encouraged me to get a case report, working with my treating medical team, published in peer reviewed literature. And that got published finally in 2009. Now, if you look at this graph, you see that before that time there is very little published, peer reviewed, research about diet and lifestyle. And so it was really a heavy lift for me to find a science, based, guidance for what to do. That were the things that were under my control that could improve my outcome.

But since that first publication, there has been this dramatic uptick. Now, how did that happen? It was because of people like you that were demanding it. You see, I had my recovery. I changed my clinical practice. I began talking about diet and lifestyle to my patients. The traumatic brain injury clinic. And in the primary care clinic where I was staff residents,

Public speaking, TEDx, and book impact 2:06

I spoke, where I was invited. I got banned as a speaker, by some organizations because my message, they thought was dangerous. Spoken, churches, college, community centers. I had an opportunity to speak at a Ted talks. That talk went viral. Which then led to a book deal. That was published, with, Avery, originally, self-published my new I mitochondria. Then I had, the book deal with Avery and Penguin. And was then able to publish the walls protocol, which I revised in 2020. The walls protocol. Cooking for life.

I continue to teach for the Institute for Functional Medicine and for the American Academy of Anti-Aging and other integrative medicine conferences. And in 2018, I was given an award by the Institute for Functional Medicine for my contributions, to research and patient advocacy. And the public got totally energized. And it was you, the public, that drove a lot of the change.

Public demand and growing attention 3:18

And let me explain. You see, when my I published my new my mitochondria in 2010, and was solely, you know, getting that word out through all of my lectures. The TEDx talk led to the book deal. And that came out March 14th of 2014. And it was controversial because I had this message that there were things that we could do that could improve our clinical outcomes and our quality of life in the national society. Monitor social media to understand what their constituents and their donors are talking about.

And after my book came out there was this dramatic uptick in social media mentions about diet exercise. There's another,