That’s why I was excited to chat with functional medicine doctor Terry Wahls, M.D., who has a pretty incredible personal health story: After becoming wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis, she figured out the diet and lifestyle changes that would restore her health and allow her to walk (and run!) again. Here’s exactly what Wahls swears by for not just preventing but reversing autoimmune disease. If you’re interested in an integrative approach to combat a chronic condition, you might want to give these eight tips a try: She makes sure to get at least 9 cups of veggies, even when traveling. In fact, Wahls tries to incorporate more vegetables into her diet on days when she’s traveling, in order to support better detoxification. “I have a head of cabbage always packed in my luggage,” she tells me. “I slice it into rounds, and my luggage is always stopped and searched. But that extra sulfur from cabbage helps me detoxify.” It only makes sense that Wahls has a pretty standard fasting regimen. While she believes structuring an intermittent fast to your personal daily schedule is best, just the reduction of calories itself is enough to reap the benefits. That said, Wahls typically eats one meal a day in the evening while drinking tea and water all day long before then. “It includes some omega-3 fats, like hemp oil or flax oil, and then a bunch of inulin powder, and then I’ll add chia seed and a probiotic capsule. I’ll make it in the morning, and I’ll let it ferment on the counter all day, and I’ll eat it in the evening,” she says. Talk about a functional dessert! And on the weekends, she still makes sure to get in some movement. “I can do 20-mile bike rides with my family,” she says. In terms of the best ways to practice recovery, Wahls says there is no one “right” way to rest. It looks different for everyone: “It might be hunting, fishing, time in the garden, yoga, or tai chi. For each person, it’s going to be a unique story of the most oppressive stress that they have,” she explains. In other words, try to find the practice that is the most meaningful for you. “The quality of my sleep is vastly better on the days that I take my ice bath,” Wahls says. Rather, a supplement protocol can vary from person to person, and Wahls takes that into account when treating patients: “I’ll personalize supplements based on a person’s family history and their issues in order to be sure their detox pathways are at maximum capacity.” What she means is that reversing autoimmune disease with diet and lifestyle requires an unwavering commitment to the experiment. You can’t change just one factor and expect to be completely disease-free. Wahls’ advice is to try it carefully for a period of time before determining if these lifestyle changes are right for you. “If you want to stop your underlying disease with diet and lifestyle, run the experiment like a real scientist and actually do it meticulously for 100 days. Then at the end, you can draw your own conclusions,” she says. If you want to see if Wahls’ protocol might work for you, take her advice and commit to these eight tips. You have the power to take control of your own health!
