Beth Schultz
All right. So I am Beth Schultz and I am a Wahls warrior. I was diagnosed with MS eighteen years ago. Forgive me, I’m already getting kind of choked up, so you know, it was hard. 18 years ago, I was a single mom and a five-year-old child. I was the bartender that was on my feet, running around. A lot of stuff to remember. And out of the blue, I lost partial eyesight in one eye. I thought I had a migraine. I went to urgent care about five days after because a migraine had never lasted that long for me, and my eyesight still had not returned in the one eye. And after they gave me medication for a MS so shot , for migraine a shot, and it did not do anything. So they sent me right up to ophthalmology and they said, “I think you have an MS of Optic neuritis.” I did not know what MS was, but I thought wheelchair. And I thought that is crazy. I’m walking just fine. I just can not see well, how would I have a MS? And I had an MRI the next day. I got to meet with the neurologist the next day and I only had that one lesion. So they can not diagnose with the MS. And he said, hopefully, you know, this is an isolated incident. Nothing ever will happen again. If it does, call us back and two months later, my eyesight returned. I was sure I would be fine. And three days later, I lost partial eyesight in the other eye. The next MRI showed then two lesions in both eye nerves and one on my brain and I was diagnosed with MS. I followed the standard of care. I tried Avonex which is an injectable. That was horrible.
It was nine months of, I could not get out of bed for two days a week or two days a week. And as a single mom and a bartender, you can not spend two days in bed a week. I finally got off Avonex about nine months later because my symptoms were not slowing down either. I was still having a new flare every two months at that time that I had lost feeling in the left side of my body. The brain fog got very bad, fatigued. Eyesight just kept going one eye to the other. I probably had up at least 20 cases of optic neuritis. I tried Copaxone, which is another injectable. I did not have any horrible side effects on that, so I stayed on that for a few years. But still, my symptoms did not seem like they were slowing down or stopping. At one time, the doctor told me that I should try the low-fat diet, that it might slow my progression a little bit. So I think I followed the diet for about five days and it just did not seem worth it to me because it might help a little bit. There was no explanation of how it would help, or why it would help. So I did not do that. And then one day I was scrolling through Facebook, and this is about nine years into my journey. And me and my mom were going through Facebook and a TEDTalk pops up. The doctor gets out on the wheelchair with MS. I pressed play and I got up and we just stopped. And I said, “That’s it. I’m going to do it and it’s going to work.” And I did. And at that time, I was kind of getting into alternative medicine. And I did have a belief that your body could heal.
I was, my practitioner put me on a vegan diet, and I was feeling a little bit better. I had been a vegan in the past, and I do not do well as a vegan. So when I saw your TED talk and I saw nine cups of vegetables and some healthy meat that really spoke to me at the time, I had not had meat in about nine months, and I had a steak in Brussels sprouts the very next day. And I started reading up on your protocol. And I have never eaten gluten in my life since that day, and that was ten years ago. And I have been in remission for nine years. The last time I had an eye exam, the ophthalmologist said that he could not tell that I had ever had a case of optic neuritis and was shocked of how healthy my eye nerves were. So I said, I give you all of these when I had my life back.
Terry Wahls, MD
You lost a little bit of weight, but you lost all weight, too, didn’t you?
Beth Schultz
I did. I lost 100 pounds when I started the protocol.
Terry Wahls, MD
And you never were hungry?
Beth Schultz
No, not at all. No. Nine cups of vegetables. That is a lot of food.
Terry Wahls, MD
And then you transformed your profession and you have since become a health coach. So why? Why did you do that?
Beth Schultz
I just did not want anybody to ever feel as bad as I felt for so long, knowing that there is so much hope and there is so much that we can do and so much that we can control about our health. I just had to share that with the world.
Terry Wahls, MD
And you know, Beth, you are certainly a big part of our clinical practice and our coaching programs. Let us sort of talk through what role a health coach has for our patients in either my programs or in my clinical practice. What do you do with these folks?
Beth Schultz
You know, for me, it is all about them and all about them as an individual. Everybody is different. Everybody kind of works differently, needs different motivations. So my first step is really getting to know them, getting to know their goals, how they work, how they function. I want to meet them where they are at.
Terry Wahls, MD
And so you are helping clarify their goals, their next actionable steps, and sometimes helping them, I know, make their goals a little bit smaller. So the next actionable step they are going to be successful with. And then hopefully you mean with people when they are in to set these goals. Is this like daily or what kind of frequency are you doing this?
Beth Schultz
It depends on the person and their time and what they have. Sometimes for some of our programs, we meet every week. Another program we meet every other week for the first three months, and then we do once a month after that. I think frequency with the health coach is better. I think at least once a month that minimum and preferably once every two weeks.
Terry Wahls, MD
So again, everyone who is listening, we know that a sports teams use coaches, business folks and entrepreneurs use coaches. It makes sense to me that more integrative functional medicine physicians are using health coaches to help people set goals, to have someone to check in with each other agreed-upon frequency, and to let them know how I’m doing with that agreed-upon next step. And the progress that I’m making then to help me identify my useful next goal. Now another thing that we do is that we train other health professionals, chiropractors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, physicians, social workers, people with a health related license or certificate so they can use the Wahls Protocol in their clinical practice to support patients in their health and wellness journey. So Beth, what I would like to have you do is talk a little bit about our certification program and your role with that.
Beth Schultz
I am the coordinator for the certification program, so if you already have a like you said, a license or a certificate in a health-related field, I personally went to the Nutritional Therapy Association program. I consider I am your health coach and you apply to be in the program. You need to send me your credentials and fill out an application. We review them. If you have everything you need, you get started. Right now we have 17 modules. They are incredible. They talk all about diet, lifestyle, behavioral coaching, and because really, you know, your book tells everybody how to do everything. Your diet is laid out very well. But it is how do you do it is a very hard part. Our mindset is so important and as a health coach, I feel like that is what I, you know, I help people get there. And if you do not have a license or a certificate in a health-related field if you are thinking of being a health coach, reach out to me and I can help you find some programs that would be right for you. There are a lot of really great health coaching programs that people can do in less than a year’s time.
Terry Wahls, MD
Correct. And the people once they apply the for the program, they enroll. Then these are online modules so that works out really well. Now for all the public folks who are listening to this summit thinking like, “Man, I would like to see a Wahls-trained person who is either a physical therapist, talk therapist, a physician, or chiropractor. We have them all over the world. How do they find them on our website?
Beth Schultz
On the very front of the website, you will see a place to click on the Wahls Protocol Health Practitioner Directory. You can search by state, country by city, or virtual. That is the virtual option is a very important thing. If there is nobody in your area, look for a virtual person and they can work on Zoom or any other video platform that they use. And then you can also go into advanced search and you can search by specialty and conditions that people have. It is a really great directory.
Terry Wahls, MD
You know, and we sort of had a number of people who have been professions; accountants, lawyers, engineers who lose their professions because of their M.S. or other neuroimmune problem. And then discover my work and work with their practitioner, with their physician, and get their health back. And now they are ready to work again but they do not feel like being an engineer. They do not feel like being a lawyer because that does not speak to them anymore. But what speaks to them and we have had folks go back and take science and go be a dietician or, you know, bless them.
They go back and want to go be a physician assistant or be a chiropractor or now go be a social worker or people decide what they want to do what Beth did, is perhaps they go to one of the nutrition certificate programs or be a health coach and then come back, reach out and get certified. So, Beth, for anyone who is listening here, what is the one message you would like to give them? You know, thinking about where you were at, how, how, how low life got for you and how rich your life is now, what message do you have for everyone who’s listening?
Beth Schultz
Believe that you can get better, believe that life can get better. I really believe that what we think matters a lot and know there is so much you can do. You, you are in control of your health and you, there is so much you can do for yourself.
Terry Wahls, MD
Okay. So thank you, Beth. This has been wonderful. And again, thank you for being part of the M.S. and NeuroImmune Summit.
Beth Schultz
Thank you, Dr. Wahls.
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