Multiple Sclerosis Wellness Research Podcast: Episode #1
Dr. Terry Wahls interviews Garrett Salpeter, founder of NeuFit, about the NeuFit methodology and its electrical stimulation device, the Neubie. Garrett explains the importance of task-specific training and neuroplasticity in rehabilitation, emphasizing the need for specific stimulation on nerve pathways. He shares success stories of patients with MS, stroke, and neuropathies who have improved function and quality of life using NeuFit. Garrett highlights the significance of balancing work and recovery, the role of the vagus nerve in parasympathetic activation, and the benefits of electrical stimulation for cognitive function and metabolic health. He also discusses the NeuFit boot camps and the importance of professional guidance in using the Neubie effectively.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Key Takeaways:
- Introduction and Overview of NeuFit Methodology
- Neuroplasticity and Its Importance
- The Role of NeuFit in Neuroplasticity
- The Importance of Professional Guidance
- Success Stories and Clinical Evidence
- Addressing Fatigue and Cognitive Issues
- The Role of Electrical Stimulation in Rehabilitation
- The NeuFit Boot Camp Experience
- Continuing the Journey with NeuFit
Links mentioned in this video:
- Multiple Sclerosis Case Series Link
- Neuropathy Study Link
- Explore the new fit website at www.neu.fit/wahls to learn more about the technology and methodology.
- Consider attending an upcoming new fit MS boot camp, with the next one scheduled for October in Austin, TX.
- Discuss the NeuFit approach with a local NeuFit certified practitioner to see if it could be a good fit for your rehabilitation needs.
Sponsors of this video:
- Neufit and the Neubie
- The Wahls Protocol® Supplements, use code WAHLS10 to save 10% off your first order! SHOP NOW
About Garrett
Garrett Salpeter used his training in Engineering and Neuroscience to create NeuFit and the patented Neubie device. He and his team have trained thousands of doctors, therapists, and other professionals in the NeuFit methodology, and these practitioners have used NeuFit to help their patients recover faster from injuries, reverse chronic pain, restore function lost due to neurological injuries or diseases, and achieve improvements in fitness and performance. His work is also used by dozens of professional sports teams and universities and is the subject of multiple ongoing trials evaluating the effectiveness of NeuFit technology in areas like post-operative recovery, muscle hypertrophy, and functional recovery from MS, stroke, and neuropathy. Garrett is the host of the NeuFit Undercurrent Podcast and bestselling author of the book, The NeuFit Method.
Read the transcript here:
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Welcome to another episode of the Multiple Sclerosis Wellness Research Podcast, and so welcome all these Wahls Warriors™ and these interviews, again, are where we explore the science and strategies beyond achieving optimal health and well being.
I'm your host, Dr Terry Wahls, and I am doing these podcasts, these interviews to help you know there's so much that we can do to restore our health and vitality. I sit down with our leading experts, scientists, researchers, practitioners, and bring you the latest insights in functional medicine, nutrition, lifestyle optimization, how we can best take care of ourselves so that we can thrive into our 70s, 80s, 90s, 100 and beyond. Now today's interview is being brought to you by New fit, their electrical stimulation device, the newbie, along with the NeuFit methodology, empowers you with a targeted approach to healing by identifying your specific needs, helping reset your body's natural mechanisms and facilitating breakthroughs on your journey to enhanced health and thriving.
I'm thrilled to be joined by Garrett Salpeter, the owner of NeuFit and the founder of the NeuFit method. Garrett used his training engineering in neuroscience to create the NeuFit and patented his electrical therapy device. The Neubie. He and his team have trained 1000s of physicians, therapists and other professionals in NeuFit methodology, and these practitioners have used NeuFit and this methodology to help their patients recover faster from injury. So these are the professional athletes that they take care of, reverse chronic pain and restore function loss to neurologic injuries and diseases. He is also used by dozens of professional sports teams and universities as the subject of multiple ongoing trials evaluating the effectiveness NeuFit technology in areas like post operative recovery, muscle hypertrophy, functional recovery, and this is what's really important, functional recovery for people with MS stroke and other neuropathies. Garrett is the host of the NeuFit Undercurrent Podcast and the best selling book, The NeuFit Method.
Okay, let's dive in. This is going to be a really great interview. You know, I always love our conversations. Garrett, I think it's so important for people understand the power that the combination of like what you've designed in the Neubie with the correct exercise, task specific training. So let's talk about how using the newbie with this task specific training, how that interacts with the nervous system.
Garrett Salpeter:
So the idea is that neurological adaptation has a strong specificity component, the often called the said principle specific adaptation to imposed demand, SA, ID. And so if you are attempting to restore function or improve your ability to perform a task, you have to be working at the specific components of that task. So for example, if you're trying to work on walking gait, you know, doing a lot of hand dexterity work isn't necessarily going to translate at some point. You actually have to use, you know, your feet and ankles, your your thighs, your hips. You have to use the balance and coordination and movement patterns of that walking gait, for example. So there's the task specific nature of rehabilitation and training is very important, and what the other, the other piece that we need in order to actually drive adaptation is that we need to have enough stimulation on those specific nerve pathways. And that means that, you know, oftentimes it can take 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of repetitions to drive change, drive neuroplasticity, neuroplastic adaptations.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Let me stop for a moment. When I went to medical school a few years ago, you know where we were taught that, you know, the brainy dad as a child, but we got to be an adult if there was damage to your brain or spinal cord, you're just shit out of luck that you couldn't really repair that. All the work of building our brain and spinal cord happened in our youth, and we got to have gray hair like me if there's any damage. Which it couldn't recover. And now we have much more awareness that the brain and spinal cord and cranial nerves, by the way, are continually remodeling themselves in response to our environment, and that's that neuroplastic thing. So you just mentioned that neuroplasticity. I Why don't we take just a moment for you to talk more about the neuroplasticity that occurs in the brain, the spinal cord and out the motor nerves involved in the nerves that are talking to our feet that help us pick our ankle, our foot up so we aren't stumbling due to foot drop.
Garrett Salpeter:
It's a really wonderful topic, and there's so many, so many parts to this. So neuroplasticity, as you described, just at a high level, is the ability of the nervous system to change and adapt. And one of my change and adapt in response to experience environmental inputs, and so some of that is just taking in the inputs from the environment around us. So for example, a child who grows up here in the United States is going to hear a lot of English or perhaps Spanish being spoken, and they're going to to understand the intonations and the sounds inflections of that language, whereas a child, you know, born in China, is going to their brain is going to mold and adapt so that they speak and hear the intonations of that Mandarin or Cantonese language.
So so a lot of it, just at a high level, is adaptation to inputs to the environment. And like you said, Dr Wahls, it's the ability to change that so much greater than what we originally thought. So there's a few parts to this here. One is neuroplasticity, by itself, is not necessarily positive. The changes can happen in a negative direction too. So it's, it's not, it's not just all this rosy, wonderful thing, because there is also a dark side to it. So we'll talk about that. But overall, the changes in the nervous system are such that it's either structural remodeling, sometimes it's repairing and rebuilding nerve pathways.
Sometimes it's rebuilding connections, or making new connections between nerves, especially in the brain, where each neuron can have 1000 or so connections with other neurons. So a lot of the function is really in the network and the connections. So sometimes it's remodeling connections. Sometimes it's actually rebuilding or remodeling nerves themselves. And generally, of course, we're attempting to leverage that harness the power of neuroplasticity to restore function. So it's about creating improvements there. And so that's where it takes, you know, a significant number of repetitions in order to in order to help the body understand that, hey, it is worth investing the energy and resources it takes a lot just to keep the lights on, so to speak, just to, just to do basic survival tasks. So to invest additional energy and resources to rebuild these nervous system pathways you need, you need a lot of input so the body gets the point that it's worth investing.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
You know, our brain, our nervous system, is so expensive to maintain, anything that we are not using will be reallocated to other parts of our bodies and brain and nervous system that are being used. So you know, if you ever had a cast on, your muscles atrophied very quickly because they weren't being used, our brain and nervous system will will redirect from parts of our brain nervous system that are not being used very much to parts that are still being used. And so how does the Neubie help us out with that?
Garrett Salpeter:
That gets us back into this notion of specificity, if we want to, if we want to stimulate certain pathways that are related to certain functions that we're looking to improve, we need to get these repetitions, get those stimulation, get those inputs on those specific pathways. And if we're talking about walking, for example, you know, let's imagine you're sitting here listening to this conversation, and you hear us talking about needing 1000s of repetitions of walking, and yet you might be in a wheelchair and you're thinking, Well, I can't take one step. How am I supposed to take 1000s and 1000s of steps? And the answer is that you you have to build up to that by getting the component parts, which means getting the stimulation on the nervous system pathways that control the component actions of gait, of that control, knee extension and ankle dorsiflexion, ankle plantar flexion. Like you asked Dr Wahls about if someone had foot drop, for example, and how we would regenerate, or how we would restore, help to to improve that function, restore that function. So of course, there's, there's multiple. Things that need to happen the brain in the motor cortex has to be able to send a signal down. Of course, basal ganglia, cerebellum are going to be involved in that. And then from the brain, it's going down to the spinal cord. And then from the spinal cord out the peripheral nerves that travel down to the leg control the muscles of the foot, ankle and lower leg. And what we want to do is stimulate, essentially provide sensory inputs from that area so that one the brain can can find that area more clearly, because if it hasn't been moving recently, the brains not getting as much information from that area. So that's the first step.
And like, like you said, Dr. Wahls, if, if a if the brain is not getting information from that area, it will actually start to pay less attention to it, start to reallocate some of those resources to other parts of the brain that actually control and communicate with other parts of the body. So part of it is re establishing that connection in the first place, and then it's sending the signals over and over again as if the movement is happening, even if you're even if, even if you listen to this, aren't able to do that movement, yet you can send the signal as if you're doing it. So you start to stimulate those underlying nerve pathways as if you were doing the movement. And so you can start to literally program in that pattern. There are lot of you know, it's, I think it's a wonderful metaphor to think of the nervous system like you're programming software in a computer. You start to send that signal over and over again. You build up the underlying nervous system control pathways, and then eventually, as those strengthen, they're able to send enough signal to reach that threshold, assuming, assuming you know you have enough bandwidth to adapt, start to send that signal, eventually it reaches that threshold. Reaches that threshold where it can create movement.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
So what we're describing is very different than the devices that are simply assisting, as opposed to re educating the nervous system, because I know there's some devices that people can wear that assist picking up the forefoot to treat foot drop, but what you're describing is a re education of the nervous system. Can you give us a little more detail about that difference?
Garrett Salpeter:
That's a that's a great point Dr. Wahls, and I think this really speaks to one of the biggest differences in the paradigm that we're talking about. So so you may have, you know, listen this, you may have experienced one of these devices that, as Dr. Wahls described, you know, you walk, and it triggers your tibialis anterior Shin muscle to help lift the foot at the right time during walking gait, and that you know certainly has value, right that can be very helpful and useful. It can improve quality of life, improve ability to walk. There is one limitation, which is that you're not getting as much of a training effect to train your own ability to perform that movement without that device on. So so it's a bit of a crutch that you will have to continue to rely on. And if you're okay with that, you know, that's fine. That adds value. What we're talking about here is a different paradigm where neuromuscular re education is the goal. In other words, we are working to provide that input to train your nervous system to be able to more effectively do that movement on your own, even when you're not using the machine. So it's about building that skill, building your own internal ability to control that movement, to initiate and control that movement, so that you become less reliant on the external device over time.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Now what? What the error that I see many people in the community make is that I'm going to go look for an electrical therapy device. I will be on there a variety of devices you can buy. I'll buy it on my own. I'll start putting the electrodes on. And I'm not working with anyone on how to design the exercise and do the education of my nervous system. I and so people are are pretty quickly disappointed in the level of response that they get from their device that they got over the counter. So what I'd like you to talk about is, if you're doing electrical stimulation of the muscles, the importance of the physical therapy, the designing the exercise, designing the task, specific stuff that gets that as part of this training, because I don't think the public understands that very well.
Garrett Salpeter:
That's a great point and a great topic. Dr. Wahls, and for you listening to this the there's really two components to this discussion. One is. The technology itself, the type of device that you might be using, the type of current, like we talk a lot about the difference between alternating current and direct current, I'll come back to that in terms of Dr wall's point about the methodology, the overall construction of the program, guidance from a physical therapist or other qualified professional, there's a lot of value in that.
Remember, we talked about the importance of specificity, for example, so being sure that you're you're doing, you know, we also talked about how neuroplasticity can have a dark side, right? And we can adapt in in a negative or less desirable direction, too. So we want to make sure that, that if you're going to spend the time and effort, and quite frankly, the money to do anything you know rehabilitative you want to make sure that's directed as effectively as possible. So the specificity of where you put the pads, what movements you do, how high you turn it up, that all matters, because it one, it's the signal that you send. I really encourage you to think of think of rehabilitation, think of exercise, think of movement, like a drug. Think about it. You need to have the right drug for the right purpose, and you need to have the right dose and the right amount taken at the right frequency. And if you're if you're doing that, you know if you're taking the right drug, it can have profoundly positive effects and doing it dosed correctly. But if you do the wrong drug or the wrong dose, it can have, you know, significant adverse events, right? So, so that's that's part of it. And then there's also, in addition to, you know, getting the right drug is like the equivalent of getting the right signal at the right places and doing the right activities that are going to help you build towards your functional goals. And then there's also the component of dosing, which is how high you're turning up the machine, how often you're doing it.
And here, especially with MS, I mean this, this is, you know, this is important for everybody, to balance work and effort with fatigue and recovery, so that you you get the right amount. Because if you do too little, if you're too sedentary, there's no impetus to make a positive change, but if you do too much, that can be just as bad, or sometimes even worse, and so so a lot of times, it's balancing the dose. It's having that guidance and that outside perspective to understand, okay, we want to turn up to this power level, see how we respond when we do this much work, and then based on that response, we titrate up, titrate down, keep it the same, and adapt that over time. So it's really valuable to have that type of coaching to help understand what to look for, what to look for in terms of how high you're getting up on the machine, as a signal for how effectively you're recovering and adapting, looking at all other things like, like, you know, sleep, heart rate variability, looking at your appetite, looking at other things like bowel function, looking at, subjectively, your levels of energy, all these, all these other things that play into it. So there's a lot of variables that go into it. And you know if, if you have MS or some neurodegenerative condition, you likely have the experience of being more more sensitive to fatigue and and overwork and things like that so striking that balance is even more important for you.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Now for our listeners, I hear many folks saying, "You know, Dr. Wahls, you have this amazing story, amazing recovery. But like, who else has recovered from profound disability? I think it's just you." And "Maybe your doctor screwed up. Maybe you didn't really have MS, you know," I'm still hearing that, that craziness, so I think it'll be super helpful for the listeners to hear what have you guys seen in the MS, you know, what kind of improvement and like, how Long might this journey to improve function take?
Garrett Salpeter:
We've seen some really inspiring stories and examples of success. I'll mention one just published study. We have a case series that was published in 2020 23 or 24 a case series looking at seven MS patients and functional recovery, seeing improvements in spasticity and strength and walking distances and walking speeds and things like that. So, you know, some good published data there. We also had…
Dr. Terry Wahls:
..Another hang on for the listeners. We're talking published in peer reviewed scientific journals. So I want to make that very clear, peer reviewed scientific journals followed patients prospectively with these interventions. That's a really big deal. Now back to you.
Garrett Salpeter:
Yes, thank you for emphasizing that. Dr. Wahls and we had another, another published in early 2025 this was a randomized control trial with 150 diabetic neuropathy patients, polyneuropathy patients, peripheral neuropathy patients, and so a slightly different population, but similar mechanism in terms of there is some degeneration of nervous system tissue, of axons and myelin. And we saw using the direct current of the Neubie, actually, this was cool. It's a little bit of an aside, but this was the first study that that we're aware of that compared head to head, the effects of alternating current and direct current in humans. So as 150 patients, 75 got more traditional alternating current, like 10s units, and what they got is what most people expected, which is a little bit of reduction in pain, right? Some symptom management. And that's that's good. There's value there. With the direct current of the Neubie, the NeuFit product, neuro bioelectric stimulator, with that direct current, the other 75 patients, not only did they get as much or more pain relief, but they got improvements in sensation, improved function, ability to perform activities of daily living. They also saw increases in EMG amplitude and nerve conduction velocity, which means there's, there is actual, objectively measured regeneration of axons and nerve and myelin in their peripheral nerves. So there is some there.
So I start here because, as you mentioned, Dr. Wahls. It is, it is important and valuable to see peer reviewed scientific articles. So, so there's a couple there. And then, in terms of the stories, you know that we've seen, the examples of success, you know, it's so inspiring in in my book, and in another interview you and I have done before, I've told the story of a woman named Wendy who had MS for nearly 30 years. She heard about us actually through through Dr. Wahls, and she flew down from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit us in Austin, Texas, and had this amazing experience where, in the first she was she was here for us, with us for an intensive so she did five days, two treatments a day. And at the end of the first day, she was able to extend her knee, so if she's, you know, she was sitting in a wheelchair, and she couldn't for the last few years, she couldn't, you know, engage her quad, to straighten her leg, to lift her her foot and ankle up. And at the end of the first day, she was able to do that for the first time in a few years. At the end of the second day, she was able, for the first time, again in one or two years, to bend down and tie, put on her own shoes and socks, because she had so much spasticity and lack of control that she couldn't actually bend at the hips and spine to get down that low. And then at the end of the week, you know, she had told us at the beginning of the week how her Her goal was to be able to walk, you know, a few steps holding her husband's hand. Her stretch goal was to be able to walk her son down the aisle at his wedding. And at the end of that five days, she actually took a couple steps with holding her husband's hand. And it was like, you know, we're literally in tears, like watching this.
This happened in the clinic, and she made so much progress over the first five days that, you know, she wouldn't dream of stopping. So she actually brought a device home with her. Worked with our team remotely, like like you were talking about earlier, Dr Wahls setting up a program we're going to optimize it. And she did four days a week, of intense work, and then a couple other lighter days of more recovery oriented work for the next two years, and continued to make progress, and did reach her stretch goal of walking her son down the aisle at his wedding. And then a couple more years later, oh…
Dr. Terry Wahls:
…Hang on, I want to point out at the wedding so it's beautiful, beautiful video, and there's a video of her doing the Mother Son dance. Now, of course, you wouldn't have been able to dance alone, but, oh my goodness, it brought tears to my eyes.
Garrett Salpeter:
Yeah, yeah. So you're not, you're not the only one who's had really just a transformational, you know, recovery experience there. So, so another, another couple years later, you know she is. She's hiking, she's dancing solo.
Her husband actually sent me a video recently of her dancing at a rock concert, and he said, "Thank you for giving me my wife back." It was this just really amazing story. She also, along the way, regained her driver's license, which she had lost. She went back to start volunteering at the school where she used to teach, but had to quit because of her disability. So, you know, a really inspiring story. And there's, there's several others.
There's, you know, a gentleman that we work with here locally in Austin, who's actually an announcer for football, for soccer, for Telemundo. So he's got it, you got a great voice, and, you know, great personality. And he was only able to walk because of Ms, by the time he came in to see us, he was only able to walk for about 10 to 20 steps. So he was wheelchair bound. He had to get pushed around into the soccer stadium. And his stretch goal was to be able to walk from his car to the press box and walk around within the soccer stadium. And he was able to do that he went up to being able to walk for 15 to 20 minutes. And this made, made huge progress, this gentleman, Jorge, and you know, there's another woman who's whose story I love, who was a a high level concert pianist playing the piano.
And she was actually going, in her early 20s, to Juilliard. Or the, you know, famous music school, and had to withdraw because she noticed, started to notice some deficits in function, got diagnosed with MS and lost the dexterity that she needed to play the piano at a high level. And fast forward in her late 30s, you know, 15 to 1617, years later, she came to one of our MS boot camps, and started working with the Neubie on her hand dexterity. Started seeing some improvements, and about six weeks later, she sent us a video of her with the electric glove on, so the direct current is actually connected to this these gloves that she's wearing. She was doing her hand dexterity exercises, and then with the gloves on, she was playing her scales on the piano, and it was just this amazingly beautiful, amazingly beautiful, you know, sound and experience.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
So for the listeners, it is possible. We need the idea, the inspiration, the stretch goal, and then I think the electrical therapy device is incredibly powerful with the team that can help you design your training program. Now, I know fatigue is another big problem, the longer people have, MS, the more likely it is that fatigue becomes disabling. And as actually the leading reason that people leave the workforce are fatigue, depression, anxiety, brain fog, those four things, and does this device have anything to offer for people who don't have any fixed disability yet, other than the worsening fatigue and or cognitive issues?
Garrett Salpeter:
So yes, it definitely does. I would if it's okay with you. Dr. Wahls, like to just go back and make one more comment on, oh, sure, some of these stories. So there, there often is this pattern, like with Wendy, the woman who came down from Wisconsin, you know, I mentioned that she made a lot of progress in the first intensive period of several days, but then she continued on, you know, for a couple years, and then continued beyond that, to continue to make progress. So it often is the case that people come to our intensives.
We have this, this MS Boot Camp. That's a long weekend where, where, you know, you come work with us for two sessions a day for three days. And we have other activities and learnings and serve well as compliant meals and and some people make progress and start to see like, surprisingly, you know, surprisingly significant improvements. You know, spasticity reduced, and they are they sleep better, or they can do new movements in the span of three days. And it's like, gosh, how did someone, How did someone make progress that quickly? So there's, there's sort of two stages in this journey. The first is this quick initial stage where, like we talked a little bit about the dark side of neuroplasticity, about use it or lose it. So our brains and nervous system overall, their first priority is to protect us, to ensure survival. And so a lot of what our brains do is actually limit us. Right? Our brain doesn't want us to do too much and expend too much energy in case there's a famine tomorrow, or it doesn't want us to stretch too far and move too fast in case we get injured, because those are all threats, literally, to our survival. So a lot of what our brains do is hold us back. It's sort of like, you know, there's these studies that say that the number one fear, even greater than the fear of death, is the fear of public speaking. Why is that? It's because our brains hold us back from not wanting to get embarrassed and lose our sense of belonging and get kicked out of our community and have to fend for ourselves, because that could be a threat to survival.
So, so when someone makes these quick improvements, it often is tapping into function that they already had. It was just their brains were blocking them from expressing it. So it's this software program reprogramming or this re education effect to show the brain that, hey, yes, it is actually safe to allow this function, allow that, allow you to tap into this reservoir of function that was already there, was just dormant, not able to be expressed. And then once you get back to that true baseline, then from there. It's a matter of applying all these principles of neuroplasticity to help remodel the nervous system, rebuild nervous system pathways and improve function over there. So there can be sort of a quick blip of improvement, and then it's sort of a slow and steady thinking like an athlete who's trying to make progress over a full Olympic cycle, or really work on your career, it's sort of that longer, longer slower growth, more sustainable rate of growth, too. So there's sort of two stages in that. I just want to clarify that, because, you know, not, not necessarily, everyone has huge progress right away, but there often is this staged approach,
Dr. Terry Wahls:
You know, in the people who are. I've worked with who've been the most successful can tap into their athletic experience sometime in their life, and it might be reaching all the way back to when they were in elementary school or high school, or perhaps a college athlete, someone who who worked with a coach and worked with a team, really, they have an edge that helps them be a bit more successful. We may have to help the person who doesn't have an athletic experience to begin to think about this in a more athletic way and to see themselves as part of a team working closely with a coach in developing this training program.
Garrett Salpeter:
And I promise I'll get back to your question, Dr. Wahls on fatigue and brain fog, just to piggyback on that point about, you know, having the mindset of an athlete, you know, I believe you know, if you have a body you're an athlete, and think about, what are the what are the biggest lessons that people learn through athletic experience? Well, one of them is delayed gratification. You have to train now. Sacrifice now, go to bed on time, eat the right meals. Work hard, push yourself in training, go through that discomfort in order to to, you know, win a competition, win a medal, or just see your times improve, or see your ability improve over time. There's, there's this strong component of delayed gratification, which, of course, serves, serves us many times in life, and then learning to overcome adversity. You know, if you don't always, you don't always win. You don't always get a call from the referees. You don't right things. Things don't always happen in your favor or the way that you wish, and you have to yet continue on. So there's all these wonderful lessons that we can apply to recovering from something like Ms. So So definitely, I encourage everyone to identify as an athlete, adopt that mindset of of understanding that you know what I do today, the the effort I put in the way to both to my my training, my rehabilitation and to my recovery, that affects me being a portion of a percent better tomorrow, and if I do that the next day and the next day, eventually that accumulates to something really wonderful over time. So so
Dr. Terry Wahls:
When I first started my journey on using an electrical therapy device. I fortunately had started working with a physical therapist who was primarily treating athletes, and he used electrical stimulation for his athletes in he and I, he knew that I'd been a former athlete in martial arts. I and I, I'm sure that's why I was so successful, because I really viewed this as athletic training. I had already had some experience with electrical stimulation in my athletic life, and so it is super, super helpful to be thinking about this in a more athletic way. Even if you've never been an athlete, have the Neubie team can help you begin to visualize as athletes do training for that big goal in your life?
Garrett Salpeter:
Yeah, absolutely, that's that's beautifully said, and I hope it's all right. Dr. Wahls, if I turn the table on you, I'd like to ask you a question. I know. I know. Okay, role reversal here, but you know, in your book, you talk about, in the early 2000's your experience using electrical stimulation for hours and hours a day and oh yeah, part of your recovery. So that was, of course, before we had the Neubie, before you and I met in 2017, or 18, and you start using it. So can you compare, you know, your, oh yeah, electro stimulation.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
So, you know, I was using Russian protocol, and all of my devices, and I tried a variety of devices, they were alternating current. And, you know, my research team was really nervous, because I knew how many, how much time I was doing. They said, "No, Terry, there's no there's no data on the safety." They were very concerned that I was harming myself. And I would intermittently try to reduce the amount of time, but I could tell cognitively I did not like that. Super interesting. So at work, I would do isometrics while I was getting my current so I was gradually increasing amount of time, the amount of isometrics. And my physical therapist, I never told him how much current I was doing, because I was afraid he'd take my device away, and I'm sure he would have, but he was like, "Wow, you are making just amazing progress."
So intermittently, I would try to reduce my current time. And I could tell my mental clarity was not as good, my mood was not as good, so I just go back to the amount of time I and, you know, fast forward, you and I met we, I had some experience with the Neubie, the direct current. And it's, it's different subjectively from the alternating current. It's certainly more comfortable. And it's, I so I want people to know I don't have any foot drop. I, you know, I can bike for hours. I can jog, but I still do electrical stimulation, probably an hour or an hour or two a day as part of my strength training program. And if I miss, if I don't have my electrical current, I can tell subjectively that my mood and my mental clarity is not quite as sharp. Now, as I read the research about what's happening when you do electrical stimulation, some of the stuff that happens is we get more nerve growth factors in the brain. We get more BDNF in the brain, and we get more nerve growth factors locally in our muscles.
My theory is that my brain really likes having plenty of nerve growth factors around and that, you know, I have enough awareness that I can tell the difference between days I have current and days I don't have current. And so and Garrett and I intermittently joke that, you know, maybe I should work towards a goal of crafting my, you know, more time on strength training and body building and try to be a, you know, Miss Universe Iowa, in the you know, old fart category. And that could be sort of a fun, a fun next athletic endeavor.
Garrett Salpeter:
It'll be the Wahls Protocol® Plus, yeah, a new a new book. Yeah. So I appreciate you sharing that, and I think that's a good segue. Finally, getting back to your, you know, prior question on, on fatigue too. So, you know, when you think, you think about brain fog, this neural or cognitive energy also, you know, there's, of course, energy and ATP, but there's also the perception that we have of mental clarity and mental energy, which comes from neurotransmitters and brain activity, and a lot of that is influenced by enhanced by physical exercise and physical movement, right, using the body has a strong, profound effect on the brain. You know, credible neuroscientists have said that the main reason we have such a complex brain is to literally, to control our bodily movement and the complexity different movements, you know, we can we can move, you know, we can throw, we can run, we can crawl, we can climb, we can do all these different movements that, you know, other animals can do some of, but none quite with the diversity of movement capabilities that we have. And, of course, the complexity of social interactions as well.
But the the amount of amount of brain activity that happens when we move our bodies, especially when we move through greater ranges of motion, or at greater speeds or with different movement variety and diversity, that creates a lot of sensory input up into the brain to increase brain activity, which triggers, as you said, Dr Wahls, all of these, you know, release of of nerve growth factors, of endothelial, vascular, endothelial growth factors, which help with blood supply and and all these different things. And so there's the the effects on cognition short term, and we believe also long term, you know, preserving cognitive function over over time, over years, over decades. And then there's also this notion of, you know, yes, that activity does activate and improve function brain, but you can also take that too far, and, you know, over overdo it and get fatigue, right? So it is. It's always about balancing. You don't want to do too little, but you don't want to do too much.
And so it's very important that we have the ability to recharge, and that's where this discussion of the sympathetic and parasympathetic size of the nervous system come in. So you likely know what those terms mean. But just to simplify it, it's the fight or flight and the rest and digest side, the fight or flight side is when we mobilize energy. We have adrenaline or cortisol that give us energy to meet a challenge, and then the rest and digest is when we come back down from that challenge. When we we digest our food, we break down that food to and use amino acids from proteins, for example, to rebuild the structures of our body and and use fats and carbohydrates to replenish our energy stores. And so it's vitally important that we spend enough. Time in that parasympathetic, parasympathetic state, and you've likely heard of the vagus nerve, not not like Las Vegas, but V, A, G, U, S, the vagus nerve, which is the primary nerve through which the parasympathetic nervous system acts on the body and it slows down the heart rate and it enhances and controls and stimulates digestion and waste elimination and also reproductive function, and, you know, these longer term growth and repair projects, it also has a direct negative feedback impact on inflammation in the body. So when the vagus nerve is active, it actually quells inflammation, which, if someone has, you know, an autoimmune condition, you can imagine that that getting more parasympathetic activation to calm down the immune system can be vitally important and so so if, if you're dealing with MS related fatigue, it's vitally important that you have some sort of practice that can help you get reliably and repeatedly into that parasympathetic rest and digest or feed and breed state that side of your nervous system. And so doing things like meditation and diaphragmatic breathing are incredibly valuable. I highly encourage you to explore those and to find something that works and do it more frequently.
And then we also have a protocol that we call the Master Reset, which our version of sometimes we call it the quote, unquote, electric meditation, where you actually put pads on the base of your skull, back of the neck, so vagus nerve area all the way down to the bottoms of the feet, and you get this direct current field flowing through the whole body. So you get local and global effects. The net result of that is an increase in parasympathetic activation. So we measured, you've likely heard of heart rate variability, if not, you know, it basically has to do with how the heart actually speeds up and slows down a little bit speed with with the breath speeds up. If things are working well in your nervous system, your heart should actually speed up a little bit as you breathe in, should slow down a little bit as you breathe out, and that essentially tells you how much bandwidth you have to respond to subtle changes in your internal environment.
So if you're just so overwhelmed with everything going on in the world, you don't have bandwidth to respond to some of those subtle changes. But if you can handle everything else well enough, and you have, you do have that bandwidth to respond to these subtle changes. So I think that's a good way to think about it. And we see, you know, in some studies that we've done, and this, again, is something that we intend to publish in the next year or two and subsequent scientifically, you know, peer reviewed journals, but we've seen that if you do diaphragmatic breathing, heart rate variability will increase, and that's a that's a proxy for parasympathetic nervous system activity. And if you do it with the master reset, oftentimes we see that increase anywhere from two to five times more significant. So the the breathing that you can do on your own at zero cost is wonderful. And then you can add something like this, and it will just amplify that benefit, too. So it's an opportunity to recharge your batteries, you know, at night, before sleep, or during the day, if you're starting to feel fatigued after a bout of physical or mental work, this can be a good way to recharge the batteries for the next phase of the day.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
You know, and again, repair happens when we're in the parasympathetic state, because ourselves, when we're in the sympathetic state, and that fight or flight, or you're feeling stressed because of turmoil in your personal life, your financial life, your work life, the political life, there are all sorts of ways that we can feel stressed and upset about the world, and that interferes with your ability to repair finding time to do 478, breath work. You know, inhale to count of four, hold the count of seven. Exhale to the count of eight. Diaphragmatic breathing, breathing, where you feel your hands on your belly, and your hands go out as you inhale, so you're inhaling through your diaphragm. That will be helpful. And then the master reset can be very helpful. But the Master Reset, in my simplistic thinking, only works with direct current.
Garrett Salpeter:
I believe. So, you know, I mentioned we've done, we did this head to head study with peripheral neuropathy patients, where we were actually comparing very objectively, looking very closely at the effects there. We haven't done such a rigorous study that I can point to but anecdotally, it sure seems to be a lot more powerful with the direct current. Yeah…
Dr. Terry Wahls:
It seemed to make sense. That's going to be much more vigorous there. Now we've talked a bit about the the MS Boot Camps. I know Wendy came, I believe early, or before they were officially set up. Now you have more. Structured boot camps. Tell the listeners who may be thinking like, Well, this sounds intriguing, maybe they'd like to check out the boot camp experience. How would they do that?
Garrett Salpeter:
That's a great question. Thank you. Dr Wahls, and the boot camp that we've put together now was inspired in part by that experience with Wendy, where she, you know, flew in from out of state and did this intensive bout of treatments. And so now we do that, you know, approximately every quarter. We're starting to do it more frequently, too, in different locations.
So we have one coming up, for example, in June in Rochester, Minnesota, in the shadows of the Mayo Clinic at a physical therapy clinic that we've worked with there, with whom we're actually doing another study in combination with them and mayo on chronic pain. So that'll be cool. That's that's a little bit of an aside there. But the the if you're listening to this and thinking, you know, it would be interesting to try out, you know, there's opportunities. You know, now that there's hundreds and hundreds of clinics around North America that have the Nubian are certified in the NeuFit method. There's different places you can try it out. And this boot camp experience is often a great way to get started or a great way to bolster your experience, because you can, you can come for a long weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, do two treatments per day with a credentialed physical therapist, and there's also other individuals with MS present.
So there's really cool opportunities, like I every time they're in Austin, go and have lunch with the attendees. And we have these wonderful conversations, and people share experiences and and other days at lunch, we have different learning experience. You know, one of the physical therapists, for example, might do teaching on a certain might do teaching on a certain topic, like, like, we just talked about the autonomic nervous system, this sympathetic and parasympathetic. So there's different teachings on certain, you know, specific relevant topics, plus these sessions and that the sessions give us an opportunity, one, to, you know, begin to make some early progress, and two, to get a sense of how you respond, so that we can tailor a customized program for you to help you know this process of making sustainable, long term progress, whether you, you know, work with us remotely, whether you work with a local physical therapist or other professional, you know, whatever, whatever you might be doing this, it's also a Great opportunity to get to for you and for us, to get that sense of how you respond, and start to gage What's that optimal dose for you, what's too little, what's too much, what's just right. So there's really, and as I mentioned earlier, we've had, you know, at this point, dozens and dozens of people who have had really tangible, meaningful progress, even in that weekend too. So it's been inspiring oftentimes, if it's been, you know, if you're in that situation where it's been months or years and you really haven't been able to make much progress, I mean, it does, first of all, it does take some work just to maintain but aside from that, you know, to make progress takes, takes even more powerful interventions, oftentimes. And so it's been really inspiring to see people begin to catch glimpses of progress just in that first weekend. And in terms of the boot camp, I'll just mention you know, from the time we're having this conversation, the two coming up, June 13, 14th and 15th in Rochester, Minnesota, and then October 24 25th and 26th at our NeuFit home office in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
So what kind of so people come to the Boot Camp, and then they have the option then, like, Okay, I'm going to continue training. How do they do that?
Garrett Salpeter:
There's a few ways to do it. One is, you know, if you are listening this, we can share our website link, and you can look up our directory of certified practitioners if you find someone near you. You know, going and working with them is a great choice. And we've, we've now, you know, heard of and know about literally 1000s of MS patients who have worked with their local NeuFit certified provider. And we've heard, heard, you know, dozens or hundreds of, you know, amazing results and stories come out of that. And then some people decide, either because there isn't someone who's convenient for them, or because they know they want to do some work every day and it's more time or cost efficient to have a device at home, there's an opportunity to rent or buy a device from, you know, from us at NeuFit and work with one of our physical therapists to go through that process that we've already talked about, of creating a custom program finding out what is the right amount, the right dose. You know, the right, the right, the right. Like you made this analogy of the movement and the pad placement, sort of being like the drug, and then the amount that you do being like the dose, you know, finding that right prescription, so to speak, for you individually. And that's something that we can continue to tailor, you know, every every month, every quarter, as things adapt to.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Yeah, yeah. I really want to stress. I. That, yes, you can get a variety of electrical therapy devices. This is the device that matches the nervous system because it has direct current. You need to pair the device with the expertise to evaluate what's working well for you, what's not working so well? What are the task specific trainings that will need to be utilized to get your neuroplastic changes to be happening in the correct way so your balance can improve, your strength can improve.
And I predict your mood, and you'll likely experience favorable changes in mood and exercise in your mood and mental clarity. And if you have insulin resistance, you may discover that as you have more muscles and more exercise that your insulin levels come down and your blood sugar metabolism is improving.
Garrett Salpeter:
Yeah, that's a great that's a great point there, and that's one that, if you are, you know, wheelchair bound or have a more significant level of disability, you know, you hear about all these wonderful benefits of exercise, and then you think, well, shoot, how do I exercise? You know, being able to use technology like the Neubie can help you get as much muscular work as if you were lifting weights or doing resistance training, but in certainly a safer, more accessible way, and start to get a lot of those benefits, all of those benefits on cognition, on metabolic health, you can get a boost in your metabolic rate, you know, your insulin sensitivity, as Dr Wahls mentioned. So it's a good, a good, safe, accessible way to start to capture the multitude of benefits of exercise.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
There is, again, for the listeners, there is a, a slowly growing body of research using electrically driven exercise for people who are wheelchair bound or who are limited to walking with a walker. So they call it the much more severely disabled folks and expanded disability score of 6.5 to seven to eight, so severely disabled who are getting electrically driven exercise, and these individuals are having improvements in quality of life, improvements in their metabolic that is their blood glucose and their cholesterol management. So, and I've been talking about that, you know since 2009 that this is hugely beneficial, and I know the folks who are paralyzed have also leaned into the use of electorate driven exercise to reduce the harms of inactivity.
So again, for the listeners, if you are like, well, it's too late. I'm wheelchair bound. I need a cane. I need a walker. There is a growing body of evidence that electrically driven exercise, it does fabulously, fabulously good things for you. So I encourage you to look for a practitioner who can help you use electrical therapy to begin exercising. So electrically driven exercise. So what do you wish that the listeners should know that we haven't already covered, Garrett?
Garrett Salpeter:
I think the one thing that we we've talked about peripherally, you know, perhaps indirectly, is, you know, like, like, for example, we talked about heart rate variability and how that's a proxy for the nervous system. I would highly encourage people to play detective, to see what measurables, what measurements we can get, whether it be functional, in terms of what your ability to do certain activities, whether it be something like a whoop strap or an oura ring, something that tracks sleep. You know, I encourage people to start to get data that they can use for feedback. So if you're if you're able to track your sleep or track your activity, then you can see how your lifestyle, day to day in real time, is affecting you, and getting that getting that check in every day or every week, can be far more valuable than getting an appointment with your neurologist to check up once a year, because there's this difference between leading indicators and lagging indicators. You know, if you wait a full year and you. You've gone in the wrong direction.
By the time you get that bad news, it's too late to do anything. But if you actually see data points along the way, you can make adjustments so that you have a much better you know, if you see every week, you have 52 opportunities to improve, so you're much more likely to have a more positive result that at that annual checkup with your neurologist, for example. So being able to do things to track more regularly, I think, is wonderful. And you know, I already encourage you to adopt that mindset of identifying as an athlete. And that's I think, that that's one I just want to shout from the rooftops. And then there's another. We're going to go back and forth here. It's like a multiple personality thing. We also want to play detective along the way.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Yeah, you know, I love that. I think, like an athlete you're training, have a stretch goal. I love it when people tell me I want to walk my son or daughter down the aisle at their wedding, like that. That's really a big deal. Sometimes it's like, I want to build a play with my children again, on the floor. I want to play with my grandchildren on the floor. You know, I I'm a grandmother now, and so I had been really focused on aerobic training. Now I'm really much more focused again on strength training, because I'm like, well, he's, you know, 25 pounds. I got to be sure that I can lift more than him. So, you know, I'm walking around carrying 60 pounds, because I want to stay ahead of how strong I need to carry my grandson. Have stretch goals that speak to your heart, because then you're going to do them. If it's a stretch goal that speaks to Garrett's heart, but not mine, it's like, okay, I'm too busy. I'm not going to get it done. But if it speaks to your heart, then I think you will be very, very successful. One One more time. How do people find you, and how would they find a prac, NeuFit practitioner that's near them?
Garrett Salpeter:
The two best places to interact with us. One is the website, www.neu.fit That's n, e, u, dot fit. And there's a special landing page with specific information for you listening to this www.neu.fit/Wahls everyone knows that. And then on Instagram is and Facebook, we're most active on those platforms. Those platforms. Our handle is NeuFit RFP for rehab, fitness and performance. And I'm also have a personal Instagram page. My first name, dot, last name, Garrett.saltpeter. So would love to DM interact with you on there as well.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, well, this has been super, super fun, super exciting. I love my Neubie. It's definitely a part of my regular routine. And we'll see. Maybe I, maybe I will, you know, continue to make progress on my muscle building. And who knows, maybe I will try to be Miss Universe Iowa. That would be pretty fun.
Garrett Salpeter:
You know, that's your stretch goal. This speaks to your heart. Now, that's good.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
You know what? When I, when I was running marathons, I was like, I wanted to be the white haired grandmother passing the young whippersnappers. Unfortunately, that did that come to pass. But this could be another really fun, fun goal, yes,
Garrett Salpeter:
Happy to happy to support you along the way. Dr Wahls.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, one more time. How do people find you?
Garrett Salpeter:
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, this is wonderful. Thank you so much, Garrett.
Garrett Salpeter:
Thank you, Dr. Wahls, and thank you for tuning in.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, that brings us to the end of today's conversation. I want to thank Garrett for his wonderful insights and expertise. Now, if you want to learn more about the Neubie, the NeuFit methodology, you'll find links to these resources and articles in the show notes, and if you're looking to wrap up your rehabilitation and even just your everyday routine, the NeuFit may be the tool that really helps you reach the next phase of your recovery.
Again, we've had athletes, we've had patients have remarkable success, even people with profound disabilities. So if you found today's conversation helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening, and look forward to seeing you next time you.