Wahls Protocol ◆ The Science Behind 9 Cups of Vegetables a Day

Okay, confession time! Health and wellness have been passions of mine for years (you can read why that is here), and so has the idea of starting a blog. In fact, I did start a blog in 2013 and told exactly zero people about it. I called it Apples from the Mainland (dot com), a name that I based on an obscure line from my favorite Leonard Cohen (RIP) poem, “Dusko’s Taverna 1967”. It was an artistic and romantic name for a blog (I thought), seemed to fit well with the health theme (apples) and paid homage to a creative legend. There were three problems with it though: 1) I live in Hong Kong and any reference to food sourced from “the mainland” (aka China) won’t go over well with those concerned with organic, non-GMO nutrition, 2) Nobody would get the intended Leonard Cohen reference, and 3) I was insecure.

But that didn’t stop me from asking my husband to film my first wellness video with my iPhone in our tiny Hong Kong kitchen as I explained The Wahls Protocol for mitochondrial health, a practice involving the large and diverse consumption of vegetables and fruit that I continue to this day. I edited the video myself (with zero video editing experience), which will explain the terrible stock music, and posted it on Youtube. And again, told exactly zero people about it (okay, maybe a couple friends I swore to secrecy).

Mysteriously, the video gained a little steam on its own and as of this writing, nearly 30,000 very kind people have viewed it, and nearly 200 patient people have subscribed to the corresponding Apples from the Mainland Youtube channel. A channel that will unfortunately be a one-hit wonder. Why? Because The Wildery is a much better name and I’ve learned a lot more over the past few years via the trial-by-fire method (again, my story is here).

But none of this makes the content I shared on the video any less relevant or valuable, so I’d like to share the concepts with you here.

The Wahls Protocol

So what is The Wahls Protocol? Pulled directly from Dr. Terry Wahls‘ website, it’s:

An integrative approach to healing chronic auto-immune conditions by a doctor, researcher, and sufferer of progressive multiple sclerosis whose TEDx talk is already a web sensation.

Like many physicians, Dr. Terry Wahls focused on treating her patients’ ailments with drugs or surgical procedures—until she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000. Within three years, her back and stomach muscles had weakened to the point where she needed a tilt-recline wheelchair. Conventional medical treatments were failing her, and she feared that she would be bedridden for the rest of her life.

Dr. Wahls began studying the latest research on autoimmune disease and brain biology, and decided to get her vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and essential fatty acids from the food she ate rather than pills and supplements. Dr. Wahls adopted the nutrient-rich paleo diet, gradually refining and integrating it into a regimen of neuromuscular stimulation. First, she walked slowly, then steadily, and then she biked eighteen miles in a single day. In November 2011, Dr. Wahls shared her remarkable recovery in a TEDx talk that immediately went viral. Now, in The Wahls Protocol, she shares the details of the protocol that allowed her to reverse many of her symptoms, get back to her life, and embark on a new mission: to share the Wahls Protocol with others suffering from the ravages of multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune conditions.

If you’d like to explore the Wahl’s Protocol even more, these books are a great place to start.

• The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles
• The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions

9 Cups Challenge

Dr. Wahls’ insights on wellness extend far beyond her suggestions on mitochondrial healing through vegetable and fruit consumption (emphasis on the vegetables). However, a key takeaway for us all is the idea that more is in fact more when it comes to plant foods, and she has specifically found that 9 Cups of varied vegetables a day, plus a smaller amount of fruit, can be overwhelmingly therapeutic. I summarize her suggestions in the video below.

The Wildery Channel

Subscribe to The Wildery Channel for forthcoming video content. I promise the background music will be better here.