Terry Wahls, M.D.

Author and Professor of Medicine

Dr. Terry Wahls is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner and board-certified internal medicine physician. She conducts clinical trials, testing the efficacy of diet and lifestyle changes in the setting of autoimmunity.

In 2018 she was awarded the Institute for Functional Medicine’s Linus Pauling Award for her contributions in research, clinical care and patient advocacy. In addition, Dr. Wahls has secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, which confined her to a tilt-recline wheelchair for four years. Dr. Wahls restored her health using a diet and lifestyle program she designed specifically for her brain and now pedals her bike to work each day.

She is the author of The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine, The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles (paperback), and the cookbook The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions. Learn more about the current study Efficacy of Diet on Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis. Pick up a one-page handout for the Wahls™ Diet. Follow her on Instagram @drterrywahls, and on Facebook/Twitter at @TerryWahls. Sign up to receive her weekly research updates.

connect with Terry Wahls, M.D.

Q&A

What's your wellness philosophy?

I teach people how a lifetime of diet choices, lifestyle choices, and environmental exposures create the health that we have or do not have. I inspire them to create hope and curiosity, to believe that they have far more power and can create a healthier lives for themselves and their families.

What brought you into wellness?

I became severely disabled due to progressive MS, so disabled that it was a struggle to sit up. I was exhausted by 10 a.m. and could walk 10 feet using two walking sticks—all despite using the newest drugs, seeing the best MS doctors in the country. I studied the basic science and would begin experimenting upon myself and would in due time, create a diet and lifestyle program that restored my health. I now bike to work 5 miles each way. I have changed my clinical practice and the focus of my research. I have made it my mission to teach the public, my clinical colleagues and conduct the research into how diet and lifestyle choices create health, reduce symptoms and improve the quality of our lives.

What renews you?

Creating an epidemic of health is my mission, but it requires a community to be effective. It takes all of us, telling our stories, teaching one another, inspiring each other, learning from another to create a healthier future.