Dr. Terry Wahls - MS recovery plan

[Sasha]

Speaking of evidence, I'm looking for corroboration of the protein content of vegetable juices, given on the Reset website. I have been unable to find anything. If anybody finds a good source of information, I'd love to look at it.

I'm still taking fish/animal protein as per the Wahls diet so presumably am covered for protein but there used to be a debate about whether you could get "complete" protein from plants alone - has that been resolved? It's decades since I skim-read about that!

 

[Valentijn]

Thanks, Valentijn, that's good news (the bad news being that I will have to read my DVD player's manual!).

It's legal to change it, but it won't be in the manual. You just have to find the hack for your specific DVD player on google, and use the remote control to change it.

 

[Purple]

Hi anniekim - my interpretation of her book is:

100g each of red, yellow/orange, blue/black
300g leafy greens/cruciferous veg, cabbage, broccoli etc
300g your choice fruit/veg, but to include alliums/mushrooms

She specifies 1 cup = 100g.

Thank you, Sasha. This certainly seems manageable. Now to add to my poor, overworked carer's work: ask to weigh my fruits/veggies for a while so that I get an idea how much things weigh...

 

[Sasha]

It's legal to change it, but it won't be in the manual. You just have to find the hack for your specific DVD player on google, and use the remote control to change it.

Wow - it's another world (the world of the technologically competent!)

 

[Sasha]

Thank you, Sasha. This certainly seems manageable. Now to add to my poor, overworked carer's work: ask to weigh my fruits/veggies for a while so that I get an idea how much things weigh...

I think it is manageable, spread across several meals. An eating apple weighs about 130g and I expect other solid fruit/veg has a similar density so you can probably judge it by eye. I weigh the leafy stuff, though (or just go by the weight on the packaging).

 

[xchocoholic]

Her video is good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc&feature=share

Thanks for posting this. I just watched the whole thing yesterday. I haven't seen or heard dr wahls
refer to having any functional medicine tests yet. I've not researched this thoroughly yet tho. Does anyone know if she did ? I heard in this video that
she found their info but that was it. I'm curious as to whether she had Dysbiosis aka too much bad bacteria, antibodies to gluten, casein, soy, etc, parasites, candida, or other digestive markers that we see in me.

Btw. Theglutenfile has info on ms. I found a site called direct ms there that contains massive amounts
of data on diet and ms. So this isn't new info just not well known. Hopefully, dr wahls story will help that.

On the veggie counting, I couldn't possibly eat this much food so I was using her data to give me
percentages. Leafy greens need to be eaten the most, then colorful veggies and fruits, then meats. I just
switched to this abouta week ago.

Fwiw. I've been 99% paleo for 3 -4 years now and I was eating a serving of meat that was close to the size of my palm at each meal, but cut back to a piece the size of my thumb. This
helped me not feel so heavy after a meal that I couldn't even sit up.

After a few days of this tho, I found that I need a LITTLE more meat protein tho. I'm prone to seizures and meat seems to stop my pre seizure feelings.

I fast at night. I eat dinner around 6 or 7 at the latest and don't eat again till 7 or 8 in the morning. My body is too weakto go without food during the day. If I eat too late I won't sleep as well either.

Thanks for all the info here.

I'm finally done with my h pylori treatment so i'm hoping to get back
to my normal soon. I've been nauseas every afternoon since starting
the antibiotics so hopefully that's over. Not to mention the other not so fun parts of this.

Tc .. X

 

[Chris]

Hi, Sasha; there is pretty strong evidence, that can be found stated all over the place, that almost any combo of grain and legume (rice and beans...) will give a complete protein profile. Of course with the Paleo attack on just these two categories that is put into the melting pot again.... and the definition of "complete" is a bit vague--one may still be a bit short of those sulfur bearing ones like Methionine and Cysteine--or at least that is what some claim, who point to a phenomenon they call "failure to thrive," for which I have yet to see very hard evidence, but which may indeed come into play if you go vegan without enough onions, cabbage, broccoli... This whole issue is still rather up in the air as far as I am concerned, but interesting and potentially important. Chris

 

[Dreambirdie]

There are non-gluten grains such as oats etc. She gives recipes for making almond milk and the like but all that is very effortful so I just eat almonds! I think she recommends hemp milk as well (in the UK, Tesco and Waitrose sell this). I wouldn't drink hemp milk for pleasure but it's palatable enough if it's doing me good!

She says you can only have the starchy stuff if you've already had your portions of the other stuff (3 leafy greens, 3 of each of the colours, 3 of any of those).

I regard this stringent period of being on the diet as a test period and not forever. Even if the diet helps, I don't see that it's necessary to follow it 100% to get most of the benefit.

Hi Sasha--

Thanks a lot for your efforts at summarizing the main points of the book.

I have been on a modified version of the paleo diet for a while, but I find that I need to add some healthy carbos to give me energy for physical activity. For that I use rice, jewel yams and red or yukon gold potatoes.

I had already been eating the foods Terry Wahls recommends, and am now attempting to increase the amounts of vegies. YIKES! It is a challenge for sure.

As for seafood and sea vegies... this is a BIG problem for me. Fish cannot be "organically" raised, and I have had some hideously toxic reactions from eating various fish: salmon, sardines, steelheads. The ocean unfortunately has become a toxic waste dump (ESPECIALLY AFTER FUKUSHIMA!) It is a crap shoot to know if the fish has been swimming through toxins. Sometimes I have been fine with the fish I've eaten, and other times I have gotten very sick with a toxic reaction that lasted up to 4 days. SO no thank you to the fish. Unless sometimes knows a source that is certified organic and raised in a tank with RO filtered water.

 

[Dreambirdie]

Benfotiamine-- a lipid-soluble form of thiamine (vitamin B-1).

Somebody here mentioned this....? but I can't find the post. Please tell me how it helped your nerves. Thanks.

 

[Sasha]

I found this recipe for Joe Cross's Mean Green juice (presumably the main one he used?) on this site, which has several for green juices:

6 Kale Leaves
1 Cucumber
4 Celery Stalks
2 Green Apples
1/2 Lemon
1 piece of ginger

NOTES FOR MAKING JUICE
peel or slice off lemon rind leaving some of the white pith
to juice small leaves such as parsley and cilantro, roll them up into a ball to compact the leaves
wash all vegetables and fruits before making juice
buy organic if possible

I just made this and it makes about a pint! Yikes. I thought my juicer was going to blow out when I added the kale - it had already been running for a few minutes doing the other stuff. Maybe I need a better juicer. Tastes nice, though!

 

[anniekim]

Hi anniekim - my interpretation of her book is:

100g each of red, yellow/orange, blue/black
300g leafy greens/cruciferous veg, cabbage, broccoli and kale etc
300g your choice fruit/veg, but to include alliums/mushrooms

She specifies 1 cup = 100g.

Thanks Sasha, really appreciate you sharing all this info. That sounds fairly manageable to me

Edit:

I just watched her Ted talk again. If have understood it correctly she suggests daily:

3 cups/300g leafy greens, such as kale
3 cups/300g of sulphur rich veggies which includes cabbage, broccoli, onions, mushrooms
3 cups/300g of brightly coloured fruit and veg, preferably a mix of blue/black, orange and red

So slightly different from what you gleaned from the book Insofar as must have 300g leafy greens... Hope I've understood it correctly. What do you think Sasha?

 

[Sasha]

Hi anniekim - that's interesting that her TED talk gives that breakdown. It was a real slog in the book to try to get clear exactly what she was recommending. There's a chart at the back (p. 179) that gives goals: 3 cups cruciferous veg/greens (kale and broccoli etc. are on the list); 1 cup onion/mushroom group; 1 cup red, 1cup orange/yellow, 1 cup blue/black. Elsewhere in the book (p. 29) she says to have 9 cups fruit/veg a day, including 3 dark green/cruciferous; 3 intensely coloured (the three colour groups); and three from others, with no specific mention of onions/mushrooms.

There's a lot of that sort of almost-matching-but-not-quite repetition with slight discrepancies throughout the book. I really wish she had just produced a checklist on p. 1 and stuck to it! She mentions kale as being sulphur-rich so maybe all those leafy greens are, as well as the cruciferae. She eats 600-700g of kale a day!

I think that even an approximation of what she's doing will be helpful. I hope so, because without a carer, I've got no chance of doing the sort of food prep involved in getting 700g of kale down my neck, let alone anything else! I used to have about 70g of broccoli every other day at best so my intake of greens has absolutely rocketed (no pun intended).

 

[anniekim]

Thanks Sasha, it is a bit confusing but as you rightly say I think as long as one gets it approximately right it must be helping

She does mention that kale is sulphur rich too. If she is eating more than 600g kale a day then that is already more than the 3 cups of leafy greens she recommends, although it would then come in the sulphur rich category, of course

Does her book include advice on supplements too? Many thanks

 

[anne_likes_red]

Just thought I'd mention that kale and kelp together seem to provide a complete protein profile. (I've never juiced kelp though Chris. And I'm not sure that my juicer would forgive me if I did!)

I've made kale chips sometimes for my children, also "massaged kale" for all my family which seems to make it reasonably digestible - however you need oil for the dressing...which I'm supposing makes it off Dr Wahls menu??

Dreambirdie, this isn't an answer to your specific question but I thought I'd mention that I take that form of B2. The information I had was that it helps with a particular step in carbohydrate metabolism and also that it can help with arsenic detoxification. Was it Sally who mentioned taking it??

Anne.

 

[Sasha]

Does her book include advice on supplements too? Many thanks

Hi anniekim - yes, she does discuss supplements but it's quite lengthy and complex and not something I could summarise. Also, it's not clear to me how much of the supplements stuff would be MS-specific. I'm ignoring the supplements (not necessarily a good decision but I wanted to try the diet alone, first).

Here are my full notes on her book (which I didn't intend to fully summarise for myself - I've been a bit selective in not including supplements and maybe some other stuff):

Gradually increase number of servings per day to reach the target.

Daily:
3 cups dark leafy greens (e.g. spinach, lettuce, kale) or cruciferae (cabbage, broccoli); Wahls eats 6 cups of leafy greens/day.
3 cups brightly coloured veg or fruits (e.g. beets, red cabbage, carrots, berries, oranges), one each of:
o blue/purple
o red
o yellow/orange
3 cups your choice of veg (include onions/garlic, mushrooms)
Omega 3 source:
o cold-water fish
o grass-fed meat
o eggs from chickens fed flax or grass
o flax or hemp seeds
Mushrooms, nutritional yeast (Wahls takes 1-2 tbsp/day) and nuts or seeds
Minerals source: seaweed, dried kelp, brewers yeast. Seaweed has iodine, esp. kelp. Wahls rotates different algae (Klamath blue green, spirulina and chlorella) helps detox heavy metals, daily in smoothies. Takes 1tsp algae + 1-2 tsp kelp.
Cup of bone broth once a day or before each meal (magnesium, collagen, glucosamine etc. for bone health).
Clay footbath (detox). NB: clay removes medication from the bloodstream so dont take it if need meds.

Weekly:
organ meats (for B vitamins)

Also:
Turmeric (curcumin) in cooking, teas and smoothies helps produce GABA (& hence glutathione)
Matcha green tea, several cups/day, neuroprotective, improves concentration, mood, binds toxins
Potent antioxidants: green tea, cocoa, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom


White potatoes, corn, rice or grains dont count in the nine cups of vegetables and fruit. Can have them, but only if have eaten the nine cups.

May get bloating when start on Omega-3-rich foods at first; can use probiotic for several weeks.

Wahls uses flax oil instead of olive oil in salads because its higher in Omega 3.
​

 

[Sasha]

I've made kale chips sometimes for my children, also "massaged kale" for all my family which seems to make it reasonably digestible - however you need oil for the dressing...which I'm supposing makes it off Dr Wahls menu??

No, oil is fine - she just prefers flax oil because it's high in Omega 3.

 

[Dreambirdie]

Dreambirdie, this isn't an answer to your specific question but I thought I'd mention that I take that form of B2. The information I had was that it helps with a particular step in carbohydrate metabolism and also that it can help with arsenic detoxification. Was it Sally who mentioned taking it??

Anne.

Thanks Anne. THis is really good to know as I have had high arsenic levels in my hair analyses for several years. I have NO IDEA where that comes from, as I have eaten organically for 30+ years and drink only RO filtered water.

 

[Dreambirdie]

Hi anniekim - yes, she does discuss supplements but it's quite lengthy and complex and not something I could summarise. Also, it's not clear to me how much of the supplements stuff would be MS-specific. I'm ignoring the supplements (not necessarily a good decision but I wanted to try the diet alone, first).

Here are my full notes on her book (which I didn't intend to fully summarise for myself - I've been a bit selective in not including supplements and maybe some other stuff):

Hey Sasha, I really want to give you a BIG THANK YOU for the DIET summary.

I am so burnt out on reading countless books about health and nutrition, and for once there is a book that I actually don't have to read, (YAY!) thanks to you.

 

[Chris]

I second that BIG THANKYOU to Sasha for that outline of the programme! I had a bit of beef liver today--first time for a long time.

And thanks, Ann_likes_red, for that note on kale and kelp--I do eat a bit of kelp, and plan to up my intake of seaweeds, though frankly doubt I will eat enough to really match the kale intake, and don't think I will ask my juicer to participate--I like chewing the stuff, or putting it into soups. Coming from the Campbell/ Esselstyn camp as I do, it is going to take a while before I am comfortable with all that Dr. Wahls proposes--in fact, suspect I never will. But it is a remarkable and powerful story--three cheers for her persistence and intelligent follow-through. Let's hope there is something in it for us too.
Chris

 

[Sasha]

You're all welcome for the diet summary! I wish she'd done a one-page summary!