Dr. Terry Wahls reversed the symptoms of multiple sclerosis in herself and, through a clinical study, in others. Her Wahls Protocol includes a ketogenic diet with nutrient-dense animal foods, but it also requires massive loads of vegetables. Yet those on the carnivore diet, typically which also means ketosis (if dairy is restricted), others have also experienced similar improvements of multiple sclerosis symptoms, either reversal or stabilization.
Maybe all those vegetables have been irrelevant. The other two main factors would either be the ketosis or all the animal-based nutrition. There would be an easy way to test this. Do a study with multiple groups: 1) ketogenic omnivores (Wahls Protocol), ketogenic vegans, ketogenic carnivores, and non-ketogenic carnivores (add in enough dairy to remain out of ketosis). Control for all other main factors. Find out the results.
My suspicion is that it’s the combination of both ketosis (ketosis promoting metabolic healing and autophagy) and animal-based nutrition (both nutrient-dense and nutrient-bioavailable), quite likely combined with elimination of oxidative and mutagenic seed oils, food additives and farm chemicals (glutamate, propionate, glyphosate, etc). Any of these alone might show some benefits. Right now, mostly all we have to go by are the many people experimenting. The studies Wahls is doing are useful (she is on her second study), but that research is only preliminary.
As further evidence of the anecdotal variety, Mikhaila Peterson has successfully treated her own autoimmune disorder. It’s not multiple sclerosis, but all autoimmune disorders have some similarities. In going ketogenic, inflammation is being eliminated. And in going carnivore, plant anti-nutrients are being eliminated. These two factors also promote other things as well, but simply what they eliminate might be most key. Inflammation, in particular, is understood in its connection to autoimmune disorders.
All the plant foods Dr. Wahls recommends, by the way, increases the antinutrients that would block absorption of nutrients and potentially cause other problems. Maybe her diet is effective as a treatment of serious disease in spite of, not because of, plant foods. The nutritious animal foods are simply at a high enough level to get beyond this obstacle. But if it is not contributing to the healing, why not eliminate them? Or is she right that all of those non-starchy veggies are helping? Until better research is done, this remains speculation on both sides of the debate.
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2/15/20 – I came across a discussion between Dr. Terry Wahls and the carnivore advocate Dr. Paul Saladino. It’s now added as the first video below.
3/2/20 -Here is a Reddit discussion thread about the Wahls and Saladino’s talk:
Paul Saladino interviews Terry Wahls (She offers to run a carnivore study if funding can be arranged)
posted by r/greyuniwave
YES. I’ve been wanting these 2 worlds to collide for quite awhile now. I have immense respect for Terry Wahls but I got so much worse following her protocol and trying to eat 9 servings of vegetables a day… Even when I eventually gave up on that much veg I still kept coming back to pushing plants, thinking they were incredibly important to eat because of her story.
As a long time (30+yrs,) often debilitating MS’er I followed Dr Wahls protocol for years in the US and did not get significantly better, even after moving to rural France (for the great vegetables and meat as much as the facts that I have citizenship and family here. As soon as I discovered the total carnivore diet some years ago here, taking advantage of all the cheap-ish (pun) local lamb and beef w/no supplements, I GOT BETTER! (100% Remission.) Plants really are poison for me, even the best organic plants on earth from the gardens of lush Provence. Thank you for this interview and to Dr Terry Wahls for accepting this simple WOE for the terrible, misunderstood, and ever fickle “illness” that is MS.
Marmalade 
I was diagnosed with Relapsing Remitting MS in May of 2011, and went on a whole-food plant based (vegan) diet for 8 years, while continuing to experience continuing disability. When I went high-fat carnivore in May of 2021, I experienced greater healing than I have known for the previous 12 years
Thanks for your response. It’s good to here a personal anecdote. I don’t have any autoimmune disorder, as far as I know, and so I can’t speak personally. The issue that resolved for me was severe depression, another health issue that can involve inflammation (for depression, it’s inflammation of the brain). But I also lost weight, which was my original purpose. The disappearance of depression was an unintended side effect.
By the way, my brother has had allergies since childhood and that is an autoimmune condition. Whatever the original cause was, we were raised on a standard American diet with all the crap that entails. But for the last several decades, he has been a vegetarian, although he has improved his diet somewhat by no longer buying snacky junk foods like potato chips, along with beer, and has accordingly lost some excess fat. Still, like my other long-term vegetarian brother, he has a lot of other health issues such as joint problems. And his allergies remain a problem.
It’s possible that an organic whole food vegan diet might in some cases be as a decent temporary elimination diet, specifically in eliminating industrially hyper-processed foods and ingredients (seed oils, high fructose corn syrup, etc). It depends on one’s health condition. But even if it worked for a time, I have doubts that a strict vegan diet allows for sustainable health in the long term. It’s like the morbidly obese individuals who lose weight by fasting for months or, in some examples, for longer than a year — eventually, good nutrition has to be added back in.
One can’t eliminate all nutrient-dense animal foods forever and not have consequences, unless one is carefully supplementing. That is the problem with a vegan diet, in that it simply makes one dependent on non-food nutrients. Is that really a healthy diet when key nutrients are not even found in the food one is eating? If so, then why not just take all nutrients as supplements and not eat food at all? But then what are the environmental, ecological, and moral effects and costs of the industrial production and shipment of supplements. Why would that be better than animal foods, particularly if locally-raised and regeneratively-farmed?
Anyway, all of that is beside the point for the topic of this post. It’s hard to argue with direct personal experience, either one’s own or that of family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. When so many people experience dramatic remission and reversals or even apparent cures of major health conditions, sometimes even debilitating and deadly diseases, after increasing animal foods and/or decreasing plant foods, then why would those people be willing to sacrifice their health and lives for the inhuman moralizing of vegan ideology? This is not an issue that will be resolved through rational public debate but through more people finding out for themselves.