Fatigue is the number one reason people with MS leave the workforce. It is also a top complaint in my traumatic brain injury and therapeutic lifestyle clinics. By using conventional treatments for MS-related fatigue, people may experience very modest reduction in fatigue severity.
Most MS neurologists push their patients to take disease-modifying drugs, but few talk to their patients about how to use diet and health behavior (i.e. lifestyle) changes to reduce MS-related fatigue and improve quality of life. That is because most neurologists have received little or no education on nutrition or on the health behaviors that are strongly associated with improving quality of life and reducing the need for medications for chronic disease symptoms.
Diet and lifestyle interventions are my area of expertise. I am a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa where I teach medical students and residents.
I am also a patient with progressive MS and experienced 7 years of progressive decline despite seeing the top MS neurologists at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic. However, based upon my review of the research, I created a dietary and lifestyle program that took me from a tilt-recline wheelchair (that I needed for four years) to being able to bike 18 miles with family in less than 12 months. It also resolved my fatigue completely in less than six months.
As a result of my own dramatic response to diet and lifestyle interventions, how I understood health and disease was transformed. I also changed the way I practice medicine. Now I teach people how to create more health in their lives. As they adopt the diet and lifestyle changes we teach, pain diminishes, mood stabilizes, and energy begins to soar.
In short, they begin getting their lives back as their chronic disease symptoms fade and the need for medications slowly declines, sometimes to none at all, even for those with autoimmune diseases.
When people in my clinics complain of fatigue, the focus is on improving the quality of their diet and increasing their physical activity level. That’s a two stop process…
Firstly, I instruct patients to increase the vegetables and berries in their diet to 6 to 9 cups per day, divided between leafy green, sulfur-rich, and deeply colored categories. In addition, patients are encouraged to exclude gluten-containing grains and casein (which is dairy protein).
Secondly, I encourage each patient to visit a physical therapist who can help design an exercise program specific to that person’s issues with motor function. The program should include stretching, balance training, and strength training.
I am also committed to teaching the public about dietary and lifestyle changes they can make to improve their health, increase their energy, stabilize mood, improve motor function, and reduce pain.
We use this approach of examining and then improving the entire human ecosystem to treat autoimmune conditions, mental health problems, and medical problems in the Therapeutic Lifestyle Clinic at the University of Iowa, often with tremendous success at restoring health and regressing disability.
If you would like to learn more about my work, visit www.terrywahls.com. If you are ready to begin the diet and lifestyle changes I study in my clinical trials, check out my new book, and begin your journey back to health.
