Reversing MS With Diet & Lifestyle: Terry Wahls on Mitochondria & Chronic Disease Recovery

In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, Francesca Donner joins. She is the founder and editor of The Persistent — a women-run media company that’s covering women for a change.  The Persistent is a digital journalism platform centering women's voices and stories. Francesca's two-decade career spans GQ, Forbes, Quartz, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, where she founded the gender vertical In Her Words. We discuss the persistent gap in how women's stories are told — and who tells them — why women are quoted as sources only 25% of the time, what it takes to leave a prestigious institution to build something new, and three micro skills for centering women's voices in your own life and work. If you enjoy the show subscribe on YouTube 📺 @resaelewissmd and forward to a friend today!

Watch The Visible Voices Podcast conversation Resa has with  Dr. Terry Wahls. Terry is a clinical professor of medicine, researcher, and author of The Wahls Protocol. In 2007, facing secondary progressive MS and dependent on a tilt recline wheelchair, Dr. Wahls redesigned her diet using functional medicine and the medical literature — and within a year was riding a bicycle. We discuss the science of mitochondria and why food is medicine, the difference between the Wahls Protocol and a standard paleo diet, what it takes to drive behavior change in patients and families, and how Dr. Wahls went from being a banned speaker for the National MS Society to receiving a 1.5 million dollar grant from them.  Dr. Wahls also shares practical micro skills for anyone living with a chronic autoimmune condition, long COVID, or simply looking to optimize their health.  If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating on Apple and subscribe on 📺 YouTube @resaelewissmd  Subscribe to the Website and forward to a friend.

Dr. Roy Perlis, editor-in-chief of JAMA AI and psychiatrist-researcher at Mass General Brigham, joins to explore the evolving intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare. Drawing on his deep experience and expertise working in neural networks, genetics, and electronic health records, Roy outlines where AI is genuinely delivering — like ambient scribes and clinical decision support — while urging clinicians to stay skeptical, look for clinically meaningful outcomes, and resist the de-skilling that comes with over-reliance on automation. We also discuss mental health stigma among physicians, the promise and peril of AI chatbots in psychiatric care, and the looming psychiatry workforce crisis, leaving listeners with one essential question: will AI actually make things better? Wish to help the show? Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

In this episode of The Visible Voices Podcast, Dr. Sharon Bergquist — physician, author of the Plantology cookbook, host of The Whole Health Cure podcast, and lifestyle medicine expert at Emory University School of Medicine — joins for an episode on food as medicine and chronobiology. Dr. Bergquist unpacks the science of when we eat, not just what we eat, explaining how meal timing shapes our circadian biology, metabolic health, and disease risk; she makes the case for front-loading calories earlier in the day, and rethinking "healthy" foods like farmed salmon, avocado, and eggs with more nuance. The conversation covers soil quality and dietary diversity, the gut microbiome, protein needs across the lifespan, the community and mindfulness dimensions of eating, and practical take-homes for anyone looking to leverage food as one of our most powerful tools for prevention and longevity. Follow Dr. Bergquist on Instagram at @drsharonbergquist and drsharonbergquist.com Wish to help the show? Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

Dr. Michael Greger, physician, bestselling author of How Not to Die and How Not to Age, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, joins the Visible Voices Podcast to share why what we eat is the single most important decision we make for our health. Drawing on decades of research and over 13,000 scientific citations, Dr. Greger breaks down how a whole food, plant-based diet can prevent, arrest, and even reverse chronic disease, slow the visible signs of aging, reduce systemic inflammation, and add years — even decades — to your life. 00:00 Introduction and Background 03:19 The Transformational Power of Lifestyle Medicine 06:23 Skin Health and the Importance of Sun Protection 10:58 Addressing Social Determinants of Health 14:27 Telomeres and Aging: Can We Reverse the Clock? 23:16 OuttroVVP.mp3 23:53 NEWCHAPTER 23:58 NEWCHAPTER_2 Wish to help the show? Click 👍🏻 on YouTube Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. William Li — internal medicine physician, vascular biologist, and founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation — to talk about something we were never really taught in medical school: how specific foods work at a molecular level to prevent and even fight disease. We get into the science behind everyday foods like black coffee, soy, eggs, and oats — cutting through the myths and the fear-based messaging that has, frankly, done a lot of harm. Will walks us through why soy does not cause breast cancer (and may actually protect against it), why egg quality matters more than cholesterol fear, and what his lab's recent research on oats and wound healing reveals about the untapped potential of whole foods.  00:00 Introduction to Dr. William Li and Angiogenesis 01:06 The Role of Food in Health and Disease 02:36 Debunking Myths: Soy and Breast Cancer 07:30 The Importance of Nutrition Education in Medicine 09:58 The Truth About Eggs and Their Health Benefits 13:21 Recent Discoveries: Oats and Their Bioactive Properties 15:29 Innovative Wound Healing with Avananthramide 17:10 The Role of Diet in Cancer Treatment 17:56 Communicating Science to the Public 21:53 Empowering Patients Through Knowledge 24:00 Exploring Everyday Remedies: Coffee and Wound Healing 25:45 OuttroVVP.mp3 26:22 NEWCHAPTER Wish to help the show? Click 👍🏻 on YouTube Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

In this episode of Visible Voices, host Dr. Resa E. Lewiss sits down with sleep medicine physician and circadian rhythm expert Dr. Katie Sharkey — inaugural director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Rhythms at Wake Forest University School of Medicine — to break down the science of sleep health, insomnia treatment, and women's sleep across the lifespan. They cover why alcohol disrupts sleep quality and worsens sleep apnea, how circadian rhythms regulate mood and mental health, the truth about naps and melatonin, perimenopause and sleep disturbances, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and digital CBT-I apps, wearables like the Oura Ring and the risk of orthosomnia, the glymphatic system's role in brain detox during sleep, AI-powered sleep scoring, and the perinatal sleep crisis driving maternal morbidity. Dr. Sharkey closes with three actionable microskills: keeping a sleep diary, maximizing daytime light exposure, and practicing self-compassion around sleep variability. Wish to help the show? Click 👍🏻 on YouTube Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, I'm in conversation with Graham Walker MD — emergency physician, healthcare AI thought leader and co-founder of Off Call. Originally released as an audio episode in 2024, we are re-releasing the conversationas an audio and video episode as OffCall is on a mission is to dramatically reverse burnout by improving the wealth and wellbeing of physicians. We talk about why 71,000 physicians left medicine in 2021–2022, the corporatization of healthcare, and what Off Call is doing to restore transparency and value to physician careers. Graham is the creator of MDCalc, used by roughly two-thirds of U.S. doctors, and theNNT.com — two free tools born from his conviction that physicians deserve better instruments to practice safer, evidence-based medicine. We trace the full arc of his story: growing up in a psychiatry household in suburban Kansas City, studying social policy at Northwestern, coding websites on the side to pay the bills, and arriving at Stanford med school where inefficiency got under his skin enough to build MDCalc.  Sign up for OffCall Listen to How I Doctor podcast Wish to help the show? Click 👍🏻 on YouTube Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

Prescribing Music: Why Melodies Work When Medicine Fails. Dr. Melanie Ambler is a physician and cellist who founded "Musical Rounds," a program dedicated to integrating music into patient care. In this episode, Melanie reveals her journey into playing cello on hospital rounds during her medical student rotations at Stanford School of Medicine. We explore the science into how music accesses the brain's "backdoor" to treat neurodegenerative diseases and discuss the preliminary findings of her Musical Rounds research study. Wish to help the show?  Click 👍🏻 on YouTube Leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Subscribe here and send it to a friend.

In this episode I speak with emergency medicine physician and medical educator Anand 'Swami' Swaminathan MD MPH.  We explore how humility, vulnerability, and effective communication drive better medical education, knowledge translation, and professional growth. Swami shares his journey from singing acapella to shaping emergency medicine education, emphasizing the importance of reaching broader audiences and embracing uncertainty. Swami is a known and visible voices for RebelEM — a free open-access medical education platform,  EM:RAP a premium emergency medicine education podcast and YouTube channel and his own Instagram — Sharing quick videos and insights.  If you enjoy the show, please click 👍🏻 like on YouTube.and leave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple. Share the podcast and Website with a friend.