Certified Wahls Protocol® Health Practitioner

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Oh, thank you very much, Reed. So, as you said, I’m a professor of medicine here at the University of Iowa. And I certainly had a very conventional approach to patient care. I thought my duty was to diagnose people quickly and then get them on the latest drugs and technology. But, you know, God has an interesting way of teaching me. In 2000 I was, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And that was on the basis of a new problem with my left leg and an abnormal MRI with lesions in my spinal cord, in my brain. I was, as I was being evaluated by the neurology team, they pointed out that 13 years earlier, I had a bout of dim vision in my left eye. And it had a really, 20 years of intermittent trigeminal neuralgia. And so, on that basis, I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting, MS. 

I knew I wanted to treat my disease very aggressively, see the best people in the country. So, I did some research, saw the best people, took the newest drugs and went steadily downhill anyway. So, two years into this, my physician told me about the work of Loren Cordain. I read his books, his papers, and decided his advocacy of the paleo diet made a lot of sense. I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years. So, it was a huge deal to go back to eating meat. I gave up all grains, all legumes, all dairy, but I continued to decline. Next year, I needed the reclined wheelchair. I took mitoxantrone, which is a form of chemotherapy. I continued to decline. Then I took Tysabri, a very potent biologic, but I continued to decline. Then I took another very potent immune suppressing drug. It was very clear that the best drugs, from the best people we’re not stopping my march towards a bedridden, and possibly demented, possibly uncontrolled pain life. 

That’s when I went back to reading the basic science, looking at animal models for MS, for Parkinson’s, for Alzheimer’s, for Lou Gehrig’s disease. I would decide that mitochondria were key. And I would at first experiment with supplements to support my mitochondria. And that was really very helpful. It slowed the speed of my decline, but I was still declining. By the summer of 2007, I was so weak I could not sit up in a standard chair. I was beginning to have trouble with brain fog. My electrical face pain was progressively more severe and much more difficult to turn off. And fortunately for me, that’s when I discovered the Institute for Functional Medicine. I’ve had a great course on neuroprotection, which I took and I had a longer list of supplements. 

And then I had a really big A-Ha moment, like what if I take everything I’ve learned, the basic science from ancestral health, from functional medicine, and I redesign my diet and lifestyle in a very specific way to support my mitochondria and my brain cells. And I got, and I focused on food. And so, I started this new way of eating, still paleo, but now a very structured paleo and it was stunning within three months, my fatigue was gone, my pain was gone, my mental clarity improving, and I was getting stronger. In fact, I could sit up and eat at the table again, and that was huge. I began walking around the hospital with walking sticks and then without walking sticks. And then it was about six months into this I, after an emergency family meeting, by the way, cause I wanted to ride, try riding my bike. And so, my wife told my son to jog on the left, my daughter could jog on the right and she’d follow on the bike, on her bike. In fact, I was able to bike around the block. My son’s crying, my daughter’s crying, my wife’s crying, I’m crying. And it just felt so miraculous because it had been six years since I’ve been on my bike. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Good grief. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

And in another six months I was able to do an 18.5 mile bike ride with my… 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Oh, wow! 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

So, once again, you know, my son’s crying, my daughter’s crying, my wife’s crying, I’m crying. And so, that’s really changes how I think about disease and health. And it changes the way I practice medicine. And it ultimately changes the type of research that I do. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

That’s just a wonderful story, you know and so many people, Terry Wahls, M.D., they come to the health profession, or at least the health coaching part because they overcame their own challenges, you know. But you were a doctor before that and you’re kind of supposed to know everything, but then like you say, God has a very interesting way of teaching us lessons. And, we just have to be astute enough to pay attention. Well thank God you were paying attention and you weren’t accepting the party line, so to speak. Now, you know, I love doctors, lots of doctor friends, and I’ve worked with doctors and I know where the lines are drawn between health coaching and being a physician. 

So, you absolutely needed the oversight, you know, the neurological studies and all the things you did. You know, you said the MRI, the things that showed nodules on your nervous system, and brain, and such. I mean, these are the kinds of things that only a physician can get you, but then you kind of turned into the other backyard a little bit there where paleo diet and let’s, let’s play with that, you know, a little bit of improvement. And then, and so you really have truly integrated, you know, along with the medical, the holistic approach. And I admire you so much for that. Let me ask you how your college took that? You know, like, how’d you get them, were they calling you a wacko? Or how did that go? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

So, that’s an interesting sequence. So, when I first started walking around, you know, people are thrilled to see me walking and very excited. And then of course in my clinic, I’m starting to talk more and more about what are people eating? What are they doing? Their activity level, the stress management, their toxin exposures. I’m talking less and less about drugs. With the residents I’m talking more and more about chemistry and physiology. And so, they think I’m talking about the latest drug. It turns out I’m talking about broccoli. And so, then you know, my residents started starting discovering that we’re having remarkable success at improving blood sugar, blood pressure, using diet and lifestyle. And then I get called into the chief of staff’s office. 

Who says, Terry, what’s going on? People are complaining. What are you doing? Now, fortunately, I had been preparing for this. So, I had brought with me an arm full of scientific papers. And I went through them and explained here’s the science behind what I’m doing and why. And I did win him over. But he said, now Terry, we need to have you meet with the head of the complimentary alternative medicine clinics. You know how to document this in the medical record properly and how to document this when you’re talking to the public, because I need you to pass peer review in case you have someone who’s deeply skeptical of your work. Cause if anyone, because since you have a medical license, any anonymous person could file a complaint and then you’ll have to go through a peer review. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

And, so, I went and met with Dr. Niesley, who reviewed things with me and actually that was incredibly helpful. So, I did shift how I was documenting when I’m speaking with the public and on my website. And I shifted how I was documented in the medical record. And I think that made my colleagues much more comfortable. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yes. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Then the other thing that I did, Reed, is, you know, I’m doing research, they started having clinical trials that are ongoing. And we started having results that I’m presenting every year at our, the College of Medicine research week. And that research was very, very impressive. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. You know, it must have been. And again, I asked you because, I know thing, you know, I’ve been doing this 20 years too. And have seen a lot of that resistance, like you said, your director said, hey, there’s going to be people who are skeptical. They’re more than skeptical. They actually don’t want to hear it, you know, like, it’s not just, I mean, we should all be skeptical. We should all have a, you know, try to get the most objective views as possible. But it’s, there’s blinders on in some of that areas. I’m so glad, I’m so glad that you took it on, because lesser, people with less, I don’t know if it’s integrity or if it’s just wherewithal, but a lot of people would have backed away from that. So, not only have you stepped up to your own challenges, Terry, I really admire you, that you were honest enough to say, you know, here’s what I did and how do you want to document? And they, so they told you, well, there is a specific way. That’s probably actually a weakness of mine. I’ve never cared what anyone else thought, but you were thoughtful enough and in a great position to do it right. And we’re really pleased you did. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

You know, it’s really very helpful. Dr. Paul Rothman, who was the chair of internal medicine saw, you know, saw me come walk in, and he thought I was on a new type therapy. I said, no, no, this is all diet and lifestyle. So, I told him my story, and he said, Terry, this is so remarkable because of your progressive MS. He gave me the clinical job of getting a case report written up. And so, I said like on myself? He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is important. So, we outlined a strategy and I got that written up. Then he called me back and said, now I want you to do a safety and feasibility trial, of testing, can others with progressive MS implement your diet and lifestyle? And if they do is it safe and what happens? 

So, we did that. And it really, I have to give Dr. Rothman a tremendous amount of credit for encourage, cause this was not my area of expertise doing clinical trials. I had a different type of research that I do. So, he got me the mentors, we got our protocol written up that took me about a year to get that written up and through the IRB. And the trial started. And then we just had remarkable success. So, this was back in 2010, with secondary progressive and primary progressive MS. Functions once lost, do not come back. That is unheard of. You in fact, expect a 10 to 25% decline, according to whichever functional measure that you’re looking at. So, if we, if all we did was to just hold people steady for that year, that would have been like an unbelievable home run. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Right. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

We’re able to show that quality of life remarkably improved and the fatigue severity remarkably declined, and that in half of our folks, they had clinically meaningful improvement in their walking ability. Astounding stuff. Just really astounding stuff. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. Amazing. I want to ask you, not to butt in, because it’s a tremendous story, but, you know, that’s kind of the complaint that a lot of people in what used to be just alternative medicine would have against standard medicine was that, well, you’re just managing the symptoms. Cause what you just said is really worth pointing out that we didn’t just get people to stay stable. We got them to improve and most medical approaches weren’t known for that. I think, think that’s what, that’s what functional medicine is getting its arms around. Isn’t it? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

And if you look at, in neurology at the conventional treatments for multiple sclerosis, people are taking drugs costing from 50 to a hundred thousand dollars a year with serious side effects, potentially life threatening. In an effort to prevent future loss. In an effort to prevent future disability. That there may be a stabilization, there may be some improvement, but all of those drugs are really pushed at preventing brain volume loss, lowering the risk of cognitive decline, lowering the risk of fixed disability. None of those have FDA approval for improving function, right. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

So, do you call what you do then functional medicine, do you call it a hybrid? It doesn’t really matter, but I’m just curious if integrative… 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

What I’ve done is I’ve taken evolutionary biology principles, ancestral health principles, some basic science principles, functional medicine, the science of behavior change and addiction medicine, all of that in mind as I created The Wahls Protocol. And when I updated my book, yeah, I was much more intentional about adding more evolutionary medicine principles, adding more behavioral science principles and more addiction medicine. Because the reason, whether you’re a conventional doc, or a functional medicine doc, or a health coach, the reason people can’t, don’t have more success is that it’s very, very difficult to give up today’s pleasure for tomorrow’s benefit. Biologically, we are not wired to do that. Our brain is wired to go up after salt, sugar, you know, sweet, fat, sex of course. And that’s what we do. And for millions of generations that was rewarded with reproductive success. And so, anytime we ask people to forgo those things, that is extremely, extremely difficult for that person to do. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Let’s, let’s break away into that area just for a moment. Cause again, you got a very eager audience. That’s obviously going to come, want to learn more about The Wahls Protocol, but I liked the fact you said in your update, you’ve added in the, we call it mind, body kind of a thing. Like, you know, it’s about the behavior. Cause it’s been easy for me since I started testing, lab testing, all those things 20 years ago, you know, to look at what are the healing opportunities. Healing opportunities ended up being pretty easy to figure out. And even the protocol, lifestyle medicine and all the things you could do that aren’t just managing the symptoms with drugs, but getting someone to, once you create the program to run the program, that can often be, and I think that’s the, that’s the wheelhouse where health coaches could work together with physicians. So, you got, sometimes you need a doctor, they got to run their MRIs, and their CT scans, and their tests. They got to make sure this person isn’t dying, that the downward spiral isn’t so advanced or contracted. And then once they’re out of the woods though, hey, why not do all the, you know, get the health coaches to do the behavior change? So, talk about that. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Correct. You know, this is all about helping the person create healthier physiology to create more health and vitality. But how do we get people to, you know, address those mismatched diseases? And that’s, there’s certainly more recognition you and I, we certainly understand this, that most of our chronic diseases, whether it’s obesity, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmunity, it’s a mismatch between my diet, lifestyle, environment and what my DNA expects. And this is where understanding evolutionary biology can be helpful. So, biologically, what does my DNA expect? What am I wired to do? And so, the more I can make my behavior match what I’m biologically expecting, that will be helpful. 

When I’m asking people to forgo today’s pleasure, I have to help them want to do that work. And so, that’s and I also have to recognize it’s going to be a big ask. I can’t just say, okay, here’s my book, The Wahls Protocol, read it, and go home and implement it. They can’t do that. But they could ask a couple of very thoughtful questions such as, do you know what you want your health for? If you had, if you were a little bit stronger, what were the things that you would like to be able to do again? What, what would really speak to your heart? It might be playing with their grandchildren. 

It might be dancing with their son or their daughter at their wedding. It might be finishing the symphony that they’d been working on. It might be being able to read to the grandchildren again. They have to understand what speaks to them. Cause they’re not going to make these changes for me. It’s going to have to do something that speaks deeply to them. Another question that we use that can be really helpful is, is there someone that you care so deeply about, or perhaps something that you care so deeply about that if I was in this home that is just beginning to have some smoke rolling out of the windows, maybe a flame here or there, but you would run into that building to save that someone or that something, because you, because it matters so much to you. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. It’s incredible. You have to ask.. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

If it’s a parent or grandparent, they’ll go, oh, yes. Or, you know, they’ll do it for their spouse. And now, if I could help them begin to create a connection between that, what they want their health for, or that person and an agreed upon next step in their healing journey. Then it becomes easier. And we talk about the various strategies when I’m thinking about addiction, how to make dealing with addiction easier. And how to break down the behaviors changes into smaller incremental steps. And that’s part of what we’ve done with the Wahls behavior change model. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Fantastic. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

We’ve made a much more robust sort of step by step incremental process to help people experience much more success. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

I think, I think what just say about the incremental is, is really important. I believe in working on a gradient of sorts. But I want to just, you know, like what you just said is so important getting to someone’s why, if you’re a health coach and you don’t know why your client wants to lose 30 pounds, or get rid of their skin condition, or have their hair come back, or anything, if you don’t know why, then you have really not much to motivate them with. You almost have to pray, I hope they follow my program. You’ve got to get to the why. You know, my neighbor recently, I live on… Yeah. Is everything good? Yeah. Your picture’s frozen up, but I’m assuming Terry, that the recording is still going to, it’ll just be a matter of moments before it kicks back in. And there you go. So, you can still hear me. Right. And, very good. 

So, you know, I live actually up on a hill, I’m on a satellite. I live out in the country and our neighbors aren’t very close to us, but I was talking to one the other day and he was talking about using Roundup, like, you know, glyphosate. And I go, what? He goes, yeah, I’m going to spray the bushes over there. And I said, no, man, I go, that stuff’s poisonous. Don’t you watch TV at all? Like, you know, like there’s people die from that stuff. And he says, well, I’m old. This guy is about 80. He says, what do I care? He goes, I’m old, I just don’t want to have any weeds in my backyard. I said, well, man, don’t you have kids and grandkids? Like, don’t you have, I know he’s got 10 grandchildren. He goes, well, yeah, I guess so. I go, well, aren’t you just ruining the world for the next generation? 

And he goes, yeah, you know, I’m going to have to think about that. He goes, I actually don’t like my grandkids very much. He was joking, but you’ve got to get, you got to give people a reason for things that, where it matters and then they might change their behavior. Let me ask you Terry, since you’re, you know, this is your show, we’re getting you to reveal, when you were in the wheelchair degenerating or at best stabilizing on standard medicine, did fear of death enter into the story? Is that also part of what motivated you? How about just not dying in a wheelchair? You know, like, like I’m sure you have loved ones. I know you do, but you know, that could, fear could be another one, I think. What do you think about that? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

So, fear certainly can. Attraction is always more powerful than repelling. We will try and avoid pain. That’s powerful, but doing things out of the basis of love and devotion are incredibly powerful. So, when I was in that reclined wheelchair I still had two very young kids. My son was 10. My daughter was seven. And I knew that, and I’m having to reimagine how I’m going to parent as I’m getting more and more disabled. I had thought because I’m an athlete before a physician that I would teach them about resilience and how to be successful adults, by being an athlete, wilderness travel, doing martial arts. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

But of course, you know, pretty quickly it was apparent that would not be possible. I wanted, you know, I wanted my kids to be successful and ultimately I learned that all I could do would be to model that, yeah, life’s not fair, but you get up, you do the best you can anyway. And then I would do my little, my little workout which kept getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller, as I got more and more disabled. And that if I gave up, I’d be modeling for my kids that when life gets difficult, it’s okay to give up because I know they will face difficult times, difficult choices, and I wanted to model for them that you keep doing the best you can anyway. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

You know, I love what you just said. And I want to talk a little bit more about the Wahls behavior change model. But I want to ask you first about something else that I thought was very exciting about your history and that’s your work with the VA. You know, I know you created a clinic at the veterans administration. Many of us are very devoted to military. I have a son who’s in the coast guard and, you know, like, you know, we serve our country and do things. And a lot of times those people are forgotten. How’d you get involved with the VA, what was your attraction to them? And talk about that program. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

So, I was a staff position at the VA. I was a chief of primary care, then chief of a regional network for awhile. But then as I became more disabled, it couldn’t travel. I was doing research and staffing residents. And then, because I had such remarkable success in my primary care clinic and my traumatic brain injury clinic, the VA asked me to create a clinic that we could run using the principles that I had established around healing. They called it the therapeutic lifestyle clinic, and we had just tremendous success, Reed. In fact, so much success. And I didn’t want people to have to wait excessively long. So, I kept redesigning my clinic so I could let people in who were wanting to come see me. So, we did this as group visits. And what I then learned was if I am trying to change behavior, primarily, doing this through groups is a great way to have peer support and to help people be more effective at changing their behaviors. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Sorry, there’s a slight delay in the audio. That’s why I don’t mean to be interrupting you. Is that how you got your research going? Was a lot of that done at the VA? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

So no, actually the research was always done at the university. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Okay. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

But my clinical care was always at the VA. And so, the other thing that makes me a little bit crazy, Reed, is when people say, well, you can’t do The Wahls Protocol unless you are incredibly wealthy. And I’m like, well, I taught my vets who are living on food stamps, on fixed incomes, who are disabled, who are exhausted, had chronic diseases, on 20 meds, to implement these principles very successfully. And, you know, very consistent we’d see pain improve, energy improve, mood improve, blood pressure come down, blood sugars come down. And the need for prescription meds steadily come down. And that was across many, many different disease states. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

It’s remarkable, you know, and I could just see it’s so funny, kind of a dichotomy or it’s just very interesting that these same folks in charge would sort of complain about, well, that sounds expensive. All that food, good food and supplements. Meanwhile, they’re taking 20 meds and like you said, some of those could be 50 grand, a hundred grand a year. I don’t know who’s paying for that, but it’s just remarkable. I once heard a physician, and again, I don’t talk about physicians, but he said, oh, you’re talking, using supplements. Someone must be making a lot of money on those supplements. Well, buddy, the drug industry dwarfs the supplement business a thousand times over, you know. So, that’s not a very good argument in my book, you know. So, now tell us a little bit more about how you got your research going then at the university. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

You know, so again, it was my chair of medicine who gave me the assignment of doing a safety and feasibility study. So, we wrote up the protocol, then I had to raise about a hundred thousand dollars. And so, it’s like, okay, this is going to be a problem. But I reached out to Ashton Embry and his nonprofit up in Canada. I went up and gave a lecture up there in Calgary, met with his board and they gave us the funding to get started on a small pilot study. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Wow. I’m going to have to get you a decent, you’re going to have to do some talking for us and we’ll raise some money. Do some more research. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Yeah, it’s certainly a huge challenge. And of course it will be, continue to be a challenge to get funding. In general, the way funding works is getting philanthropic support for a very innovative idea that lets you conduct a small pilot study. To get the preliminary data that I can then use for writing grants for much larger studies. And that’s basically how we got the funding to do the study that we’re doing currently by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Hmm. I just wonder looking back, if I did things the hard way, cause I had no funding, no grants. I didn’t even think about it. I just thought I would do this as a business, you know, and that, I could, would have customers, that would pay me. And in a sense, the eight years I spent in the clinic running thousands of labs on thousands of people, you know, my customer support, it was a valuable enough service even 

back then that it was self-funded if you will. I just wonder if I could have cut about, cut that time in half, if I’d had some funding and could have then, you know, supported these clients without them having to pay. I don’t know, which would be better if that would even have worked, you know, but we all get through it and come up with… 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

We get through it. We learn. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah, we learn a lot. Now tell us, I want to talk about a couple more things. I want to find out finally, what is the latest, the greatest thing that you could tell us, but before that, a little bit more about the Wahls behavior change model. Like, cause you mentioned coming from a heart place and not using so much fear and negativity and you better do this or you’re going to die, you know. Like you’ve got to use love, the motivation, the positive side. Is that in your book and what…? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

So, absolutely, in the book. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Hold your book up again. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Here we go. Love this book. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yes ma’am.

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Okay. It’s a real act of love. So, you know, the standard behavior change model, you go from, pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparing to change, change, then sustaining change. So, it’s really five steps. The challenge is that it takes a lot more for people to make these little incremental steps. So, you can have, build on your success and to build on your motivation because, Reed, think about the last time you either created a new habit that was desirable, or extinguished a bad habit that was undesirable. And you never did it because your doctor told you or your spouse told you, or your child told you to do something. We do it because we finally decide, you know what, it’s worth the work it’s going to take to do this. So, and usually it’s a sort of step by step iterative process. 

If I’m going to train my body up to run a marathon, I can’t just decide I’m going to run that marathon tomorrow. I have to do it in a very gradual systematic fashion. So, that’s what I’ve done. We’ve created a 15 step process to help people grow their, grow their motivation and make these little incremental step by step processes that can build a greater success. And things that the patient, or the family, or the health coach, or the physician could use to help that person monitor and track their success more successfully. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

So, you mentioned first five steps, you know, preconception, conception, or… 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Well, that’s the conventional approach. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Oh, okay. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

In mine, one the first. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

You’re contrasting. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Yes. And one of mine, the first step is you have to create the inspiration and the possibility. So, for most of us, we don’t realize that it’s possible for me to recover from my current chronic illness, or my current symptom burden, or my current circumstances. So, I need to be able to be inspired that that possibly exists. And then I need to be able to understand that, the mechanisms in a believable way, using metaphors that I can relate to. So, I teach people how to have a toolbox full of metaphors that are culturally appropriate. You know, in Iowa, it’s a big agricultural community. 

So, farming metaphors are very helpful. We also have a lot of folks that are mechanically oriented, so mechanical metaphors can be helpful or educational metaphors or maybe it’s gardening metaphors. So, we have to have a way of talking about the possibilities. And so, I walk people through this literally step by step in terms of how you interact with your patients, to help them see that it is possible that their life could change. And to understand the mechanisms by which making these behavior changes can have an impact on their health. And then we’ll begin the process of what can we do to grow the motivation, to begin this task of doing the work. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. You know, I love the agricultural metaphor. I know they grow a lot of corn in that area, you know, so people should, people should understand the idea of planting seeds, you know, and then nurturing, and watering, and feeding, and soil being rich in minerals and all the things that would make it good corn, you know, they would get that kind of a thing. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

And they know yellow corn is yellow if it’s too wet or stunted if it’s too dry, or yellow if it’s devoid of certain minerals. So, yes. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Now this is not a trick question, but could that work the opposite way, that the reason you have these habits and you do stuff automatically, like I do the same thing every morning, but I’ve developed some pretty good things to do every morning, you know, but there might be something I need to correct. But doesn’t that come from seeds that were planted a long time ago? Like, why you get up every, you know, if you can’t break a habit, you got to look at what seeds were planted long time ago that you need to sort of replace with new seeds in a sense, you know, like… 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

And it’s much easier to do swap outs to stop something. It’s easier to swap foods than to completely eliminate them. And so, swapping habits with more desirable habits or less troublesome habits, more helpful foods with less and reducing the more troublesome foods by having more helpful foods. So, swaps can be an important strategy. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Do you have, you know, and that’s the, that is the territory of a health coach. Do you have something like for coffee, for instance, with people who just, if they’re drinking four or five cups every morning, do they go to, what’s that teeccino stuff, or can you cook up some bark or something? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

There are quite a variety of beverages that one can use. And one can talk about restricting the time of day with which one is consuming beverages. And one can dilute the beverage so it’s less concentrated. So, there are a number of strategies. But you’ll be glad to know, Reed, depending on your genetics and 

how well you metabolize caffeine that I’m okay with three or four cups of coffee. As long as you are sleeping well at night. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. I’m with you.

Terry Wahls, M.D.

I may have a lot of opinions about what you put in that coffee in terms of, you know, is it sugar or cream or what’s helpful or harmful in the coffee. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Okay, well, we’ll talk about that off the air. No, I actually, I don’t have a real problem, but I do, I love my morning coffee and I don’t think it’s bad for me. I think I’m a very good metabolizer, but you, you know, you just wonder sometimes. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

As long as you sleep well at night, Reed, it’s not a problem. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. I sleep like a baby. Cause I go to bed at 8:30. So, you know, I get a lot of really good sleep before midnight. And then, you know, if you go to bed at 8:30, but you’re getting up at five, that’s not so bad, you know, you’re actually getting some good deep sleep, you know, I’ll get up at four some mornings. 

But, you know, so I think, yeah, thank you for that. That’s very encouraging. And now, because, you know, I don’t want to take up all your time. I do want you to get to some of the things about your Academy. Just if you could sort of tell us at least the format and things. Tell us about your Academy, what the format’s like, you don’t have to go through your whole curriculum or something like that. We know it’s going to be amazing clinical skill sets that you’re teaching there, but tell us a bit about the, you know, what’s it like going through that? 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Well, what’s really nice is that we have a virtual option so that people can go through a module by module skill set afterwards. But after you’ve completed all of the modules, then you’ll have a live in person or should say live virtual. Now that we got COVID, sort of complicates things here. So, to have a live talk, a case review, case discussion about cases and review of the key principles. So, things that I teach, nutrition diagnosis, some of the nutrients in food, of course the various Wahls diet levels. We talk about detox, about lifestyle, about health behaviors. Again, you know, the key concept of how do we help people be much more successful at implementing our diet and lifestyle recommendations. Because the reason people do not become well or the biggest struggle is in terms of why they didn’t have greater success, isn’t because you ordered the wrong supplement or you ordered the wrong diet, it’s that you were not successful at helping them adopt and sustain dietary changes and lifestyle changes. So, that is really key. As I mentioned earlier, what we do is we integrate, as I designed the principles in The Wahls Protocol, and in my behavior change model, I looked at the science of what our DNA is expecting us to do. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

Yeah. And how our modern environment has deviated from that. So, we design interventions, that puts our health behaviors in closer alignment with what our DNA expects. We use our basic science. We’ve updated our, my latest research in these interventions. I’m going to have you come and talk to my particular group, you know, my graduates and trainees and things, about those, you call them what your DNA expects. And I phrase it just as genetic requirements, you know, you genetically require things. That’s what your DNA is expecting, what you’re genetically programmed that would work well, that would probably result in health, you know, all things being equal. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

It will make it a whole lot easier. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

It would make it a whole lot easier, especially in view of all of the counterproductive parts of the environment, the epigenetic program that we just live in is sort of, you know, Dr. Russell Jaffe, he says, we’re marinating in a toxic soup, just cuts right to the chase that guy. And s,o we’ve got a lot of work to do, Terry. I’m so proud to be working together with you to do that. And, final thoughts on the very latest and greatest coming from your clinic. And I’ll let you get back to work 

Terry Wahls, M.D.

Well, actually the very exciting thing that we’re doing is we’re analyzing our data from our most recent study, the Swank diet versus the Wahls diet. And I’m very hopeful that we’ll have that analysis completed. And will be able to wrap that up and submit our reports for publications yet this year. This last final part of every research project, you don’t quite know how long it takes to get your final report completed. But we’re hopeful to do that in the next couple months. 

Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT 

I’m so excited about that. Now, hopefully wink, wink that might happen, you know, before we’re having the health coaching conference and seeing you in October. It’s looking we’re going to go live. You know, we’re all gonna stay hunkered down a little bit longer. And that’s really messing me up as far as the travel I would love to be doing right now, in this otherwise beautiful environment. But you know, let’s just, yeah, let’s keep our fingers crossed that you’ll be able to make some kind of presentation there. Well, Terry, thank you so much. Yeah. We love you. And we’re so proud of you and happy and tickled to hear your story. And everyone is going to get all the information, how to get in touch with you and your book, where to get that. And more importantly, about your Academy, because I know a lot of people are going to line up for that. So, thank you again. And also folks, don’t forget to look in the show notes to buy the VIP pass for all the recordings so you can get them and have them permanently. And that’s it. We’re going to sign out. Thanks again, Terry Wahls, M.D.. 

Terry Wahls, M.D.  

You’re welcome. Reed.