“How I Reversed Multiple Sclerosis” is a presentation by Palmer Kippola that took place at Silicon Valley Health Institute on December 15, 2016.

2014 marks the 30th year since I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Against the diagnosis and grim outlook provided by my neurologist at age 19, I’m now thriving, symptom and medication-free. But it wasn’t always this way.

The First Day
One day in August 1984, home on summer break after my freshman year at college, I woke up with a creepy tingling in my feet which slowly rose to my chest. Later that day my parents and I sat in a neurologist’s office where she made the dreadful pronouncement: “I’m 99% sure you have multiple sclerosis (MS), and there’s nothing we can do.” At home later that day, my body went numb from the chest down and I had no sense of my body in space. For nearly two months my body remained completely numb. This was a devastating time for me and my family. We had little information about this mysterious MS and no idea what the future would present. We started planning for my life in a wheelchair. By late September the shroud of numbness started to retreat (thank heavens! my mom would say), but it took a full 2 years for it to vanish. And thus began my relapsing-remitting relationship with MS.

The first 15 years were marked by significant episodes of symptoms every 2–4 years, ranging from similar tingling and numbness to profound fatigue and searingly painful optic neuritis that landed me in the hospital 3 times in two weeks. During these last 15 years, I have been on a steadily improving course. Effective stress-reduction techniques definitely helped, as did removing sugar; but my holy grail was giving up gluten and dairy in 2010. Since then I have been completely symptom-free and, finally, medication-free.