Another step forward in MS research

Terry Wahls knows first-hand what the right diet can do for a person’s health and well-being. It’s been 10 years since she created the Wahls Protocol, a diet that helps her combat the fatigue and physical symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). Wahls, a University of Iowa professor of internal medicine, was confined to a wheelchair before she began following the diet she created to treat herself.

Terry Wahls

The Wahls Protocol—a diet and supplement regimen based on a Paleolithic diet—led to a dramatic improvement in her mobility.

“In three months the fatigue was gone,” Wahls says. “In six months I was walking without a cane, and after nine months I was biking around the block. A year after I started, I did a 20-mile bike ride.”

Hers wasn’t the first diet designed to minimize the physical symptoms of MS; Roy Swank began studying MS in 1948 and created the saturated fat–minimizing Swank Diet around 1950.

Now, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS) has awarded Wahls a $1 million grant to compare the two diets’ effects on multiple sclerosis–related fatigue, a disabling symptom that can significantly interfere with a person’s ability to function at home and work.  

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