Book Review: The Wahl's Protocol - Terry Wahls

Curing MS and other Autoimmune disorders through diet? Sounds promising - let's see what it's all about.

So a little backstory on the author: Dr Terry Wahls (TW hereafter) is this woman who had(has) progressive degenerative MS, and who was able to reverse some of the progression of her disease through extreme diet change.

Pretty powerful stuff there, since reversing MS symptoms is pretty much unheard of. That's not to say that she's cured, as she still will always have MS - it's just that she's been able to stop the progression of symptoms.

Anyways, as someone who has issues with a couple of autoimmune disorders, the concept of treating em with diet is pretty intriguing to me.

This book can be broken down into 5 distinct sections:

• Introduction

  • TW tells her story and shares testimonials from her clinic

• Fundamental Concepts

  • introduces basic medical terminology and concepts
  • explains autoimmune disease
  • has advice about mindset, tracking of symptoms and diet

• The Wahls protocol diet

  • Introduces the concept of eating for your mitochondrial health
  • goes over what to eat and what not to eat, basically

• Exercise, Stress, and alternative medicine treatments

  • Goes over exercises and alternative medicine.
  • primarily focused on MS impairments and how to help with that.

• Indices

  • Lists of foods, recipes, and nutrition tables.

  The primary idea is that, in general, modern diets (SAD for ex) are lacking in nutrition - particularly when it comes to mitochondrial health. She goes on to quote research studies relating mitochondrial dysfunction to a whole host of disorders, including autoimmune disorders, migraines, mood disorders, high cholesterol.

  TW also advocates eating high amounts of "healthy fats" and eliminating foods that people commonly have allergies to, such as: gluten, dairy, eggs, and legumes (moreso due to antinutrients).

  I'll say that this book is probably one of the more well researched books on diet which I've read. There's a lot of stuff that TW touches on that other diet "gurus" miss, though there was a bit of confirmation bias and pseudoscientific thinking IMO (lookin' at some of the stuff she says on organic produce and the wide sweeping statements made about peoples health and diseases). I'm not even saying I completely disagree with it, but some of it isn't backed up with any clear evidence - and organic produce is kind of a joke here (I could rant, but I won't).

  Overall though, probably one of the more accurately scienced books on diet I've read. She even mentions anti-nutrients and recommends rotating the vegetables you eat due to phytotoxins, which is something many books miss. TW also talks about omega3/omega6 balance, which is something that is a pretty hot topic in the medical research world as well.

  Side note: you can significantly reduce anti-nutrients and lectin concentrations by soaking your foods (especially legumes) in water and baking soda before cooking them (probably not smart to soak and eat raw without researching that it's safe to do so with your particular food) - Also pressure cooking is the best way to cook stuff for maximum nutrient retention and lectin reduction.

  As far as the diet, it's very close to Autoimmune paleo protocol, and is classified as a form of Paleo (though she does include a Vegan variation of her protocol, since she was vegan for many years).

  One of the main points is to eat 9 cups of veggies:

  • 3 cups leafy greens
  • 3 cups sulfer rich veggies
  • 3 cups colorful veggies (or fruits)

Here's a handy dandy infographic pyramid expressing the (mid level/main) diet:

^source

There's a somewhat less restrictive version in the book and a more restrictive, more fats heavy (ie. Keto) version - which is more for people with MS, which has been shown to benefit from Ketogenic diets and TW herself finds better success with.

It's also worth noting that the "no eggs" thing is moreso related to TW having a severe egg allergy than because of any particular science based reason. It's apparently a pretty common food allergy, and TW advocates removing it initially and trying to reintroduce it after you're stable on the diet.

Anyways, I've gotten pretty heavy into the content of the book and feel that I've gone far enough. There's plenty of good nuggets of nutritional advice in this book that are missed elsewhere, so it's worth a read just for that.

TW has clearly spent hundreds of hours researching diet and nutrition to try and improve her health, and she's poured a ton of it into this book. It's not information that's really hidden, but you'd have to sift through a LOT of resources online before you would be able to find a lot of the stuff that's all here in one place.

She's pretty opposed to being completely vegan at this point, due to her research findings and the MS focused perspective. Though she is idealogically sympathetic to it (and includes a vegan version of her diet in the book).

Anyways, there's a lot of information to be gleaned here, and I think it's a pretty solid basis to start an elimination diet from. Most of us could use to eat more veggo's, yeah?

- Guurg

Azon Link to book
Azon Link to cookbook companion
External Link

P.S. I've been doing WP for a little while now, and it definitely makes a difference for me. I had good results doing raw vegan before, but that diet was a lot of work and ended up causing me some other problems indirectly. I may end up settling somewhere in between the two eventually, but for now I'm doing this to try and conquer a candida issue I've been having for a while - and somehow the idea of throwing a candida infection a huge amount of fruit sugar seems silly to me. 😣

P.P.S. Feel free to ask me any other questions regarding the book or my own experience. I've done a fair amount of research on diet/nutrition over the past 8 years or so - Not that I'm a nutritionist.