Movement Is Medicine. How Are You Moving?

Introduction and Trevoru2019s Background 0:00

Trevor, thank you so much for agreeing to be part of the M.S. and Neuroimmune Summit. I love what you do and it's such an important message. So what I'd like to have you do, Trevor, is introduce yourself, explain why you have this expertize. Then we'll just get into our conversation. All right. Thank you, Dr. Wahls. It's a it's an honor and a privilege to be a part of this summit and also to team up with awesome practitioners like you to you know, really serve this community. So I've been a medical fitness practitioner since I was 18 years old, and I really found a strong draw to people with chronic illnesses.

And when I had the when I had my first few opportunities to work with people with AMS, they just struck me in such a profound way because there was not only did the way that I was working with them, I was about 24. So about five or six years into practice with me. So not only the way that I was training them and the way that I was teaching them movement, movement therapies, movement, movement, skill sets, movement, reeducation that was working really well with their bodies. But what I found is that people with me really wanted to understand what was going on with them and understand why this was happening.

They not only want to understand, like the pathology of MSM, why this why this happened, but they also kind of wanted to know, you know, where was this going, where was the progression happening, what things could they do to slow down the progression and best manage their symptoms so that they could maintain their quality of life? And at that time, I had you know, I was working with people with M.S. and neuro conditions. And then I also had Division one athletes and Olympians that I was training in performance stuff.

And I hit this I hit this epiphany point and kind of got this realization point where I was finding so much more value out of working with these group of five women that just wanted to be better moms and wives and serve their communities and their churches and be employees and all that. Then I found working with these high level athletes, either trying to attain a medal or an NFL contract or something like that. And I just I just looked at these women and like, this is who I want to work with. And so I really started to specialize in working with neurologic conditions over the next GS like 15 years and from that, that initial group of five women with MMS, I got to work with hundreds of people with Parkinson's and brain injuries and Lyme disease and all that in my brick and mortar practices over the next 15 years.

And about ten years ago, I got diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease and my body was falling apart. I went from two months early, months before my diagnosis, going and running a half marathon up in the hills here in Colorado on an obstacle race called Tough Mudder. And two months later, I was in dead. My feet didn't work. My bladder was out of control. My hands didn't work. My eyesight was starting to go. And it took about another six months for them to fully diagnose me. And then it took about another two years of me using movement training to get my function back.

And from that journey is where I was like, I need I need to get to more people. There's so many people that need help and they need to understand that movement is medicine and I had so many of my in-person clients come to me and be like, I wish you could work with my sister in Texas. I wish you could work my sister in England. I wish you could work with my brother in Canada. And I just had this this deep urge inside me to be like, I got to take this online because it's not just hundreds of people that need help.

It's thousands. So from from that struggle and from that journey birthed the vision for the MSC gym, which is where we wanted to be, a place where we could teach movement, we could work on mindset, and we could fully educate our people that we worked with, on understanding what's going on in their bodies, understanding that there is ways to manage those symptoms and how they implement that and apply that to their life in a way that's doable and not super overwhelming. Okay, Trevor, I'm going to stop you for a moment now.

Everyone who's listening here to the summit, oh, you have M.S. or a autoimmune condition that has led to some neurologic symptoms pain, numbness, tingling, poor coordination, or or psychological symptoms, anxiety, depression. I want you to hear what Trevor just shared. He had, like me, his own personal transformation.

Why Movement Helps Neuroimmune Conditions 4:41

That is very informative. We learn a lot when we have a profound illness, and Trevor was able to use movement as a big part of his healing journey. And I'm just so proud of you and grateful, Trevor, that you have reached out and created this virtual place. So let's talk about the matchup a little more with what it is and can people with a neuro immune problem, maybe not yet diagnosed with Hamas, could they be part of this, too? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, for me, like like I don't have M.S. I do have some lesions on my brain stem that came about from Lyme.

But a lot of the things that I do is very, almost synergistically applicable to people. With M.S., we've also applied the same movement therapy to and movement training methodologies to people with ALS, with Parkinson's, with cerebellar dysfunctions. And it's really caused profound results. And it's also created this sense of like gratitude and community with people, because a lot of times those with undiagnosed or diagnosed neurologic conditions or autoimmune conditions or anxiety or depression, because I suffer with both anxiety and depression, because of this and Lyme was exacerbating those symptoms feel so isolated, alienated, alone and really kind of scared sometimes because like, I don't know what to do and and nobody really understands me.

And so the me, Jim was created initially for me because I had I honestly, I had to pick something. And of course, I was working with so many people with M.S. at the time the MSC Jim was created. I'm like my wife looked at me and I was having this struggle because I'm like, there's so many other conditions that I can help that I want to help, that I want to be with. And she looked at me and she's like, Let's just start with one. Let's just pick a community. You have, you know, you have Vicky and you have Shauna and you have the rain and you have Suzy and your Julie right now.

Like, they're your inspiration. They're the ones that you get fired up about talking about every single time you work with them, every day you come home. Let's start there. And so we initially started out the medium focusing on people with me, but what's been amazing is that our community is so fired up about the results they're getting and also the support community that they're getting, that they're sharing it with other groups on Instagram and Facebook and and in in their in-person support groups that now we're getting other people coming in and sharing these stories of I don't have M.S., but I do have Parkinson's or I do have a brain injury or I do have spinal cord ataxia or scar six, k six or something like that.

And they're like, I'm finding freedom again. I can walk again, I can play with my kids again, I can dance with my husband again. So what's cool about brain based training and Eurocentric training is like everybody has a central nervous system, right? Everybody every human body has similar parts that we've been given. They just may not function the same or be arrange the same, and they may be affected differently a little bit by some of these different neurologic conditions. But at the end of the day, if we can find and we can settle down that central nervous system and upregulate the parasympathetic to balance off that fight or flight response that we get from being afraid and not knowing what's going on in our body and having spasticity, then it really creates a very common ground of of doing something and healing that people can really apply to their lives.

Okay. So clearly applicable if you've got a brain that's not working as well as you would like, then let's talk a little bit about what the experience is like. So I with people who are listening, thousands and thousands who are listening, they're like, Oh my goodness, this sounds like it would be interesting. Potentially useful. Mm hmm. What is? But I can't come to Colorado to work with Trevor. I live in England or Australia, Canada or here in Iowa. What is it like. First of all, go out, guys. Yeah. Oh, thank you.

My mom's whole family is from Iowa, so I spent like every other summer in Iowa. So I feel you. So, yeah. So what it is, it's an online community and you know, there's a number of different options that people use. Like our goal is to meet people where they're at and give them what they can handle or what they can integrate in their lives and meet them at baby steps. You know, we have a ton of free stuff on the Internet. I think we have over like 1700 videos or something like that out in on the interwebs, right, that are all free, whether it's Instagram or YouTube or our free Facebook group.

So I have a lot of free resources. So, so if you're just kind of toying around with getting into exercise, a good place to start is if those free resources go check some stuff out, try it on your body, see how it feels. And because my goal with that free content is really to be like, I just want to show you that movement is doable and you are capable of, of performing that stuff. Even if it's 5 minutes a day, that's 5 minutes of movement training that gets your brain focused on something else other than your symptoms.

From there, we also have some one off kind of smaller programs that are like like a 4 to 6 week kind of shorter program that people can do. So if I hang on, people could sign up for a four week program. It's a daily thing. A weekly thing.

How the Online Program Works 10:20

Yeah, it would be a daily. It's kind of what fits into your life. I mean, I recommend if you're not doing any exercise, then this could become your daily routine. If you're doing something else like physical therapy or pilates or yoga or walking or swimming, this could be integrated into your fitness program or your therapy program as well. Okay. And then from there, we do have a membership program where people you know, what that looks like is that you get your own access. You come in, you sign into the gym, you go to your program.

That was either myself or one of my other team has kind of walked me through. And we also have a lot of videos that kind of help you decide and help you help guide you towards your starting point. Press play and go and all you do is I workout with you, I walk through it with you. I'm coaching and telling you things to focus on, avoid, make sure you're doing with you and it's that easy. You just press play and every single session is anywhere between about 25 and 30 minutes in that full membership.

So there's really a we've really tried to make it a large spectrum of availability to meet people where they're at so you don't get overwhelmed by this. Like, what do you mean? I don't even have enough energy to last 10 minutes walking. How am I supposed to do a 30 minute program? I don't want you to feel like that. So small steps and habit forming is really the central ethos of kind of our programing. So of how we get started. Then I could, after I've done that, introductory program, so I'm feeling a little better, like, okay, I'm doing some exercise and now I'd like to do something a little more thorough.

I could join your membership and then select I want to do yoga or I want to do Taichi or I want to do water exercises or I want to do dancing. Salsa dancing. Is that what you're describing? Yeah. So what in our program, we do a lot of so we'll do mobility training, we'll have spasticity reduction training. We have I'm very big on strength training and the different types of strength training. I mean, I'm a big fan of body weight control, motor control, learning how to use your body and then also resistance band training because of the what's called accommodating resistance, meaning that it's easier on your joints.

The resistance gets harder as you push a rubber band or a resistance band further from you or pull it closer to you or whatever that might be. And then it integrated into that. Programing is a lot of sensory training. So we will work on your visual field because that's directly correlated with balance. We'll work on your vestibular or your vestibular control centers because that's directly tied to balance and spinal cord function and limb control. We'll work a lot on breathing, so I incorporate a lot of neurologic training concepts into quote unquote traditional strength and conditioning or corrective exercises so that it creates a very comprehensive program.

Now you can take that program and then you can integrate it or complement it with what you were saying. Dr. Walz Which would be your tai chi, your bike riding, the salsa dancing, which I love. Right. Or all of your all of your pool training in it. So you get the Arabic, you get the the fun stuff, the application of movement combined with the actual concentrated training of movement and movement, skill acquisition to help all the things that you love to do in your life go better and be be more symptom free or or or symptom reduced.

Now let's sort of help people work through the sequence. So I come check out the free stuff. I'm like, okay, this is sort of interesting. I take the little baby stuff, the short, very easy way to ease an exercise. And for those of you who may be scooter dependent, wheelchair dependent, like I'm close to being bedridden. I want to encourage you to still check this out and beginning to move. Whatever amount you can move is so beneficial. So you're moving more. Now we're beginning to think about a membership, and in the membership we you have a way to sort of select what parts of the movement training that you think would be most valuable to you.

And Trevor there's some guidance strategy so far. I'm new to this. I don't know a darn thing about which movements I should be thinking about adding how would I get some help in sorting that out? Yeah. So just to echo and kind of add on to what you said. So I have made it so because I've been doing this for so long, like this has been my entire life. Like I'm 43 years old right now and I've been doing this since I was 18. I've seen a lot of bodies and I've worked with a lot of nervous systems. And so it's allowed me and I've been blessed to actually have that capability to see so many different types of people that, like you said, whether you're whether you're bedridden or you're in the middle of a relapse and you can hardly move, or whether you kind of are pretty asymptomatic and pretty highly mobile and your symptoms kind of throw up your life.

We have a full spectrum in here. And so I really it was really important to me when we did this programing cannon to make it available for that entire spectrum of people with arms. Because you don't ever want to come in and be like, Oh, I can't find anything for me. Like, nobody gets me, nobody understands me. So I just want to echo that, yes, we have a program for everyone. And when you get into the major membership, there's an entire member orientation section where I give you an intro and then we go through and we show videos of how to select what program is best for you.

And there's qualifiers that I lay out and I say, You know, if you're this mobility level and these are kind of your general symptoms or this is kind of your general mobility, then this is probably the best program for you. Now I am. I'm pretty conservative. Like, I'd rather people think things are too easy, but do them very well rather than come in and try to blow someone out and them get very frustrated being like, Yeah, this just isn't going to work for me. This is just another one of those programs.

It's not going to work because what I found from my own training and I'm an ex athlete, I just want to go, go, go, go. Like all the time I've been very humbled by having a nervous system that is disrupted. And so it's caused me to really step back and appreciate and value mastering the basics and the fundamentals, because those fundamentals are what skill acquisition and improvement are built upon. So that is a big deal to me too. Is that in there? My goal is for you to find success. And if you don't find success, I don't find success.

And so there's a very extensive orientation process for you to go through. And we also have a whole team of moderators that are people with GMs or neurologic conditions that have gone through the program that are set up there to help guide you as liaisons and resource directors and answer your questions and getting started. You know, again, for anyone who's listening,

Guidance, Accessibility, and Support 17:20

I think this is really sounds just so superb that Trevor has recognized it's very important to start with small, actionable things that you can really do, be successful with these new movement patterns, these new skills, and then have a chance to, with some guidance, think through what your next step in your movement journey will look like. And so I am so grateful that you're part of this summit. I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. And, you know, I am grateful that you, like me, had to learn through experience with get in your Lyme disease and becoming seriously ill and then finding your way back.

Yeah. And that I'm so grateful, Trevor, that you want to keep paying it forward now to help as many people as you can. Is there any limit to where people can join from? How do you mean? Well, you know, so I'm assuming we're going to have people from all over the globe one summer in a I want to clarify that people from all over the globe, as long as they have an Internet and the same resources that are required to participate in the summit would let them participate in the. MASCIA Yeah. First of all, saying thank you for saying what you said.

You started to get all emotional. I'm like, Don't cry on camera, dude, because you get it. I mean, unless you you can't have victory without defeat and you can't truly understand that victory until you've kind of been in the bottom. And to watch people tenaciously fight back from something that seems out of control and seems like I don't even know how this is going to happen is one of my great joys. And I know it's one of your great joys, too, which is why we've committed our entire livelihood and careers and passions and hearts and everything to this.

So I appreciate you so much and I honor you as well. So, yeah, you can if you have an Internet signal, you you're good. I mean, you're in we're in 40 plus countries now. I mean, I have people that I can tell when that's a Google translate thing. I have people communicating from us to us, from the Middle East, from India, from Russia, from a lot of places where health care that the help that they're getting like they don't have a lot of accessibility to alternative solutions. Right. It's kind of like, well, you have EMS, this is the protocol.

Good luck. Yeah. So it's accessible from anywhere on the globe as long as you have an Internet signal. And again, to everyone who's listening, the overwhelming message that I think you've been hearing from me and from all of our speakers is that there are things under our control that will impact our disease course. Now, I still want you to talk to your specialists regarding what the role of medication is for you, and you'll make your decision in terms of what is right for you. Unfortunately, your practitioner may not be as knowledgeable about the fact that whatever you decide about the disease modifying treatments, your diet and self-care routine will have a profound impact on how quickly you can get control of your symptoms and whether your symptoms will lead to progression in worsening disability, worsening fatigue, and worsening anxiety, depression and cognitive decline.

Exercise and movement helps us make more nerve growth factors in our brain, helps us have better control of our blood sugar and our lipids, better moods, more joy and a more successful social interactions, intimate interactions with the people that matter to us. It is just so, so important to keep moving your body even if you have become profoundly disabled. Trevor has giving you hope in tools to begin rediscovering your body in what is possible. Do you have any great success stories that you could share?

Because people who are severely disabled may be feeling like, you know, I it's too late for me, but what kind of stories do you have? Yeah, just even when you say that I get I just kind of get choked up because there's been so many people that have come in and been like, I just don't have any hope. Like, I don't believe in this. I don't I think I'm too far gone. And on our website, which I'll talk about in a little bit, like we actually have a whole testimonial page

Success Stories and Hope 22:50

of like well over a thousand testimonials. And honestly, like when I kind of have a rough day, I mean, everybody hits life. I mean, even even without some kind of, you know, chronic condition or something like that, like we're human, right? Like being on this planet. It's hard. Relationships are hard. Like existing in this kind of fallen crazy world is hard. And and you guys that have neurologic conditions like it just it just exacerbates the problem because you don't have the energy to fight some days. Right.

And I go to that, too. I'm Dr. Wells. I'm sure you have days to where you just like are, you know. And so I go in and read these testimonials and I'm like, it just feeds me and brings life back and it stokes those flames of like, this is why I do this. So I'll give you two. One lady named Claire, uh, she was in a power chair for 14 years, and she came in and she was. She was a mess. I mean, her hands hurt her disability level, and her hands was pretty, pretty significant. A lot of bladder issues.

She was having a ton of low back pain because she sat all day, her feet didn't work. She had neuropathy in her feet, neck pain like her jaw and all that kind of stuff were messed up. So she she was one of our founding members for the MSC gym and she just went after it. I mean, every day that I you know, every day that I came on because at the beginning I was doing a lot of like every day video type things, which is now what you were getting in the membership. So once she started, she started when we were just in those starting phases, join the membership when we initially launched it.

And she was all in. I mean, she was like seven days a week, let's go. And she was only doing like maybe 45 minutes to an hour a day. She would do our stuff for a half hour, then she would do some stretching. And, you know, she she did clean up her diet. She was hydrating. She really focused on stress reduction. She really focused on sleep. She was getting good sunlight, all the things like she was all in. And within nine months of using our program, she was walking completely unassisted out of a powered chair for 14 years and she got remarried.

She's with this awesome guy now. She she posts and she's an artist. So for her not to have use of her hands was a it was her livelihood. And so now she go to her Facebook page and she's doing she's doing those type of art where there's a bunch of nails on there and she would use thread and go throughout and create these beautiful works of art with thread and twine wrapped around these nails, on these wood planks. And then she used said she was working with metal. So it's metal. You have to grip it and move it and shape it and form it.

Like she got her creative outlet back through and through movement and through an entire lifestyle, a lifestyle overhaul. And she was using you know, she was using medication as well. But how she puts it, I felt like at the beginning it was a big assistive device for me. And then as I got better, I could reduce some of that medication. And then my my lifestyle took over and supported that. So what you just said was really important, Doctor, was it's it's not an either or. It's it's kind of an and sometimes, you know, a second lady that I had was, what like the worst case of EMS that I've ever seen.

She was she came in in a wheelchair. She was about five foot one. And she came in just completely slumped over. I mean, when she talked to me, it was like barely lifting her head. She had no energy. She couldn't drive her. She was completely dependent on her husband. She had diabetes. She had neuropathy, she had fibromyalgia. She had chronic pain. So, I mean, it was an entire cocktail of symptoms. And we started so slow with her. I mean, I would put my one finger on her fingers and make her just like lift a finger against the resistance of me.

And then a second, like our sessions for a while, was just working on hands and feet and just maybe a little bit of pelvic movement and jaw movement because they're so important for balance. Then we got into actually doing some visual training and some just some many little vestibular work of turning that cerebellum in her brain stem. And that was her movement. So it was very short sessions. Her blood sugar would spike up all over the place because it was so unregulated. So we had to watch that.

I had a glucose monitor on her. I had a blood pressure cuff on her. I was watching her kind of go out when she would come to see me. But what she said is that as she used the mass gym, she she was only able to see me once a week just because of finances. So she was doing the most you have six other days a week. And she found that by sitting there listening to me, even if she couldn't look at the screen, just listening to me and helping, you know, following me to move her shoulder or to move her head left and right or to move her jaw left and right, or to just watch me and move her eyes.

She started to feel stronger. She felt herself starting to sit more upright, and within a year of working with us, she was out of her wheelchair. Her blood glucose was something that like to 80 is where she would spike up to 8300. She was down to managing it at like 140, which still isn't great, but to 80 to 1, 40 is a 50% improvement. She ended up being able to. I remember one of the last time I saw her because they moved away. I was in my office and I'm just doing paperwork and all of a sudden I saw her car pull up and I was like, What are they doing here?

Like they don't have a session. And I started to panic, like, Oh, did I forget something? She comes up or they come up and I see the door open, but I don't see her husband Raj, get out of the car. All I see is her at the top of her head because she's like five foot tall and I'm like, is she driving? Like, what? What? She comes in here, it comes into my facility and she's like, I just look at her. I'm like, I pointed to the car and she's like, I just there's a surprise for you. Like, I've been working on trying to drive, and I just did it.

Like, this is all I love to drive. I love to go driving the mountains, whatever else. She's like, I don't know if I'm ready for that without Raj yet, but she's like, I have so much freedom right now. And we just sat there and just cried together like happy tears and I completely attested to her will number one. But also just that point that she was out, she's like, There's no other way for me to go but up, right? There's no other place for me to go but up. Like I'm at the bottom and but she she incrementally small tiny doses because that's all her nervous system would allow for that movement and fed healthy habits into her life that this slow little tiny what seem like turtle speed increment incremental building of her nervous rebuilding of her nervous system allowed her to finally have that dignity as a human being, to get in a car as a grown adult and go where she wanted to go.

She was completely free of the prison. That was that was prognosis for her. I don't even know if that's a word, but right now. Everyone is listening where we are in this journey with your multiple sclerosis or your neuro immune disease, the current understanding of these diseases, all of them, is that they're progressive. The disease modifying drugs are very good at stopping acute new lesions from us and new new worsening episodes for the other systemic autoimmune diseases. They're very good. That's how they get their FDA approval.

None of them are are good at completely stopping that progressive phase, which is why whatever you decide about your disease modifying treatments, Trevor and I are trying to tell you there is a huge payoff for learning how to address your movement, your diet, your sleep, your relationships with yourself and with others. And to do this at a step by step pace that you can manage whatever that is, this has been amazing. Trevor, I am so grateful that you were part of the summit. I'm so grateful for the work that you were doing.

I wish for everyone who is part of this summit to go check you out and begin working on your movement. So, Trevor, what is what is the one message

Final Message and Where to Find the Program 31:20

that you have for everyone? Oh, one message. Well, my, my thing I always talk about and it's it's all over the place like movement is medicine. It's part of your medicine. But you know, what we always say in the DMS, Jim, is you can live a life by design and not by diagnosis. Like you are a human being. You are not your disease, you are not your condition, whatever however you want to phrase it, that is not who you are as part of your story, but it's not who you are. And like Dr. Walter said, that the relationship with yourself is where this starts.

Like you're worthy of healing and you need to have compassion on yourself. Like this isn't necessarily your this isn't your fault, this is your circumstances. And I don't know, there's a lot of speculation of how like lifestyle can get you here and all this. But if it did get you there, then why wouldn't you reverse it? Go the opposite direction. That's what's in your control. That's what's in your control. And and you need to know that you are capable and you are loved and you are worthy of stealing.

And you didn't do anything to deserve this in the people that have left you or diminished who you are or made you less than they just didn't understand you. So please don't hold that resentment against them and don't hold a resentment against yourself. Because like, if you love yourself first and love yourself enough to take that first step to healing, and then another. And then another. If you can take three steps, you can take 30. If you can take 30, you can take 300 to 3000 to 300,000. It's absolutely possible your body was designed to move.

It feeds off movement. It feeds off good nutrition. It's fueled by good thoughts. And that's the power behind healing is the first. It comes from self-belief. And then it takes consistent action, discipline and continued belief in a supportive community like Dr. Walls and I both participate in in order to continue on that healing journey and truly design the end of your story and not have it dictated to you. Okay, Ken, Trevor. Ken's what? Ken's my buddy, and the other. Half of me, I don't know, is like a yellow confused who I'm talking to you guys.

So where do people find them, Jim? To tell us how they find you? Yeah. The easiest way is just to go to our website. It's just WW dot the message gem dot com. From there you can read stories, you can read testimonials, you can read about me. There's an option for some free resource resources on there just to get you started and then up on the tabs on the top, there's link trees to pretty much everything we do. I want that to be a hub. That's where I send people. Mostly when I go in to present at different medical schools and neurology departments, I'm like, Just go here because this is where we try to encapsulate everything about us and then just let the let the website guide you.

Okay. Well, this has been amazing that I could talk for hours more. Yeah, we could geek out. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Ken, for the and Trevor for this Trevor amazing work that both of you do and the message. Jim Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, it's been an honor to be here and great to meet you in person. So thank you, Dr. Walz, for doing all this and for being such a pioneer in this in this community. And we just got to keep going and unite and help our people out. Absolutely. Now, much love to you and your team and to everyone who's listening to the summit.

Yeah. Thank you. You guys keep moving. We'll talk to you later.