Marla Miller: 0:35

Welcome back to Open Minded Healing. My guest today, Adrienne Charlie, has some powerful information to share for anyone battling multiple sclerosis. Adrienne herself suffered from the debilitating symptoms of MS before she forged her own path to healing. She's now an integrative health coach who helps others recover without the use of medications and continues to prove that you can heal from MS. So welcome, Adrienne. How are you? Yeah, good. Thank you for having me.

Adrienne Scharli: 1:09

This would be fun.

Marla Miller: 1:11

Yes. Well, interestingly, or I don't know if it's interesting, but I know of people with MS, and one actually that was more recently diagnosed. So I am really interested in hearing how, and I'm sure people listening will be very interested to hear how you can heal from this. And as I stated in the intro, you experienced this firsthand going through the symptoms and trying to figure out a diagnosis. So let's start there. What symptoms were showing up for you initially? And then how long did it take to get a diagnosis of MS?

Adrienne Scharli: 1:58

Yeah. So my my first symptom was when I woke up, I was about 28 years old, and I was living with a roommate at the time. I woke up, I was numb from the chest down, and my hands were numb and my feet were like pins and needles. So when I walked around, it's kind of like that feeling when your foot falls asleep, right? And then you walk on it.

Marla Miller: 2:23

Yeah.

Adrienne Scharli: 2:23

Well, it was like that for a while. So that was very uncomfortable. Yeah.

Marla Miller: 2:28

That must have been very scary. I can't imagine. At 28, especially.

Adrienne Scharli: 2:35

Yeah, I had no idea what to think. And so what I did is I called my mother. She was an ex-nurse. And I said, Mom, this is what's happening. What do I do? And so she said, Well, I want you to see a neurologist. And then I did that. And he gave me a bunch of just physical tests in the office. Like he had me walk a straight line and he had me, you know, stretch my arms out and then touch my nose with my fingertips and kind of like these eye tests. He had me follow his pencil with my eyes, you know, that kind of thing. And he sat me down later and he said, Well, you want me to tell you what I think you have? And I said, Yes, please. What's going on? And he said, Well, if I could bet on it, you most likely have MS.

Marla Miller: 3:22

Oh, so a neurologist is the one that diagnosed you.

Adrienne Scharli: 3:26

Well, he said that. He said if he could bet on it, he was pretty sure I had it. Um, but then I went home, called my mom, and my mother at that time, if you remember back then, this was 98. And our insurance was different at that time. If you were diagnosed with something like MS, you couldn't change insurance companies. And then sometimes when you were diagnosed with this, your rates would skyrocket.

Marla Miller: 3:53

So you're talking about like when they had the pre-existing conditions.

Adrienne Scharli: 3:56

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 3:57

You couldn't switch. Yeah.

Adrienne Scharli: 3:58

Yeah. Yeah. So my mother said, Well, honey, we don't know you have MS for sure. Let's just go day by day and and see what happens and you know, try to live your best life for now. And that's what I did for a while.

Marla Miller: 4:13

So I'm curious, when you said you woke up and you were numb, your whole body was numb, you were still able to walk around. Yeah.

Adrienne Scharli: 4:22

I can still walk. I can still walk and talk and do all the things, but it was a weird feeling, you know. Like if you go to the doctor and you get a shot to numb something, that's what it felt like. I couldn't feel my skin if I touched it. Yeah, it was just numb.

Marla Miller: 4:39

Wow. Yeah. What a strange feeling. So worrisome. So this neurologist kind of gives you an indication what it could be. And then you don't see any doctors after that. You just kind of are thinking maybe it'll go away.

Adrienne Scharli: 4:57

I did a lot of praying, right? Um, I don't think I changed my diet much, but I just thought, okay, well, I'm gonna try to live my best life and be happy and and just hope that this goes away. And, you know, magically it did. I didn't know what I did back then, what I did, but I know now it was my change in attitude. I mean, it was my positive attitude that really helped me get through that. And then it, like I said, it dissipated after about 30 days. So I was very lucky, but then I didn't have any other symptom until 17 years after that.

Marla Miller: 5:38

So, how did it show up the second time? What were the symptoms?

Adrienne Scharli: 5:42

Yeah, the second time in between got married, got a career, was a stepmom, was really happy. And I turned 45 years old. And about three days after I turned 45, I woke up and another symptom came up. So I had a blind spot in my left eye. I didn't know what it was. It seemed odd to me. And you know, some fluky things happen with their body and just might happen for an hour or a day, but then, you know, it goes back to normal, right? I think that happens to most of us. But I thought, you know, this isn't going away. I mean, after three days, I still had this blind spot. And so I was telling my husband about it, and I said, you know, I have this blind spot in my eyes, it's so odd. And he goes, Well, go to the eye doctor and see if you can figure it out or he can help you heal this. And so that's what I did.

Marla Miller: 6:39

So you go to the eye doctor, and did he recognize what it was right away, or what did he say?

Adrienne Scharli: 6:46

The optometrist. And so, you know, when you get an eye test and they have you look through these boxes sometimes, and there's that test where you get like a little handheld button, and you're looking in this dark box, and these little squiggly lines come up. At least that's what it was for me. If you see the squiggly line pop up, it's like a light, you're supposed to hit the button, right? And well, obviously, I failed the test in my left eye, and he sat me down and he goes, Yep, you definitely have a blind spot in your left eye. And I said, Well, what do you think it is? And he said, Well, it could be A, B, or C. And A and B were different eye conditions, and C, he said it could be multiple sclerosis. Oh, and I thought, oh my god, here we go again. So what he did was he sent me to the ophthalmologist, a different kind of eye doctor, just to verify. And then that doctor referred me to my regular physician, went in there, and then that physician told me to go to a neurologist. So there I was back in the neurologist's office. Then when I went to the neurologist, she said, let's get an MRI and some blood work so we can rule some things out, right? And I said, Okay, you know, I felt fine, you know, it was only my eye. And I thought, really? An MRI? Because back then I had no idea that, and it's called optic neuritis, right? When you have something happen to your eye, and people with MS can go blind too. That's not uncommon, or have eye issues, blind spots, right? Or discolorations. So, anyway, got those tests done, went back to the office, and she said, I hate to tell you this, but you've got lesions all over your brain. You have MS. And she said, Your blood work came back and you're severely low in vitamin D. So that's something that's very common with MS.

Marla Miller: 9:03

Yeah, that's very common with autoimmune. Yeah, yeah. The vitamin D and the B vitamins are two of the things that stand out usually. Well, that's very interesting. So did this person sort of, well, I guess you can tell me what happened next, but or were they the ones guiding you through this? Or who did you turn to once you had this diagnosis?

Adrienne Scharli: 9:27

Yeah. So I was very distraught, very upset, you know, went home and cried, told my husband. I mean, it was very disturbing. I went to the gym, I thought I ate healthy. I'm like, what's going on? Right. So this neurologist said, There's some brochures. Uh, one brochure was a little bit on diet, but the rest were like three different drugs I can choose from, right? It's like, we'll go out and we'll make an appointment. In the meantime, I want you to get a steroid drip. And this should help the inflammation behind your left eye heal, right? I mean, that's the whole reason for steroids. They're supposed to help inflammation. So I got a three-day, it was three or four days, I can't remember, but I sat there in a chair in a room with other people. I was getting a drip through my veins, right? And it took about an hour. And three to four days after that, I developed a major, I had a major migraine headache after that. And it was so severe, I didn't know what was going on. I thought, well, maybe I have a sinus infection. Uh and I'd never had one of those. So I went to all these other doctors. I'm like, this is what's going on. I have this major migraine headache, and I'm taking aspirin, I'm taking Tylenol, nothing's helping. And of course, both doctors give me these antibiotics, and then I get a rash all over my body. And then I get all these other symptoms, and I I know now that all these other symptoms came from that steroid drip. So I started getting brain fog, and then I started getting severe fatigue. I just wanted to sleep all day long, and I developed Hermitis sign, and that's something that people don't know. Yeah, it and how you spell it is Hermites sign. L H E R M I T T E S Hermites. So it's the name of the doctor who came up with this condition. So when you tilt your head forward, you feel the sensation of like an electric shock that goes through your body. It's a very odd, uncomfortable feeling. So I had that. And then the numbness came back in my legs and in my hands. So here I am in bed with a washcloth over my head. I have brain fog. I just I'm severely tired. I have numbness. And my husband comes in and checks on me during the day. I can't work. I was a realtor. Thank God he was a realtor too. He had to like pick up the slack for me and take care of my clients because I couldn't. I couldn't even like answer an email. That's how bad it was. So it was awful. It was like that for about a month.

Marla Miller: 12:23

Well, yeah, I want to ask how it was affecting your life, just so people understand these kind of symptoms. Like, how does it affect your family and what you were able to do before versus now, you know, what you're not able to do? It was awful. Maybe give some examples of like different ways this can impact your life on a big scale.

Adrienne Scharli: 12:48

Yeah. So other people that have MMS, I mean, we all have different symptoms. It's all your motor skills, essentially, right? It's your vision, it's your walking, your coordination, your hearing, your taste, your sense of smell. It's all of your coordinating, you know, uh bodily functions that you use on a daily basis. Some people have pain. Some people experience an MS hug. Like it feels like somebody's hugging you really tightly. And I was very sensitive to the heat. This happened in the summer. So people with MS, when it's like 80 degrees outside, it feels like it's 120. So it's very draining for people with MS. Like you feel like you're in an oven. And many people end up in a wheelchair, you know, and those were my thoughts. It was very scary. I thought, oh my God, is this what my life is gonna be? I mean, this was not my life plan, but I want people to know that they can heal all this. And so this is really important. I want people to know that everything is healable. And I didn't know this at the time. And so my doctor, you know, after I had that steroid drip, she had me come back in and she wanted to put me on this new drug that had not been FDA approved yet. And the reason she wanted to do that is because my health insurance at the time did not cover any major MS or any major drugs, especially MS drugs. And so she wanted to get me on this FDA, hopefully, kind of to be approved new drug. So I wouldn't know if I was gonna take a placebo or not.

Marla Miller: 14:35

So be part of a trial for this new drug.

Adrienne Scharli: 14:37

Exactly, it'd be part of a trial. And I took home this paperwork and it was in my lab. My husband was driving. I'm like, is this what my life has come down to? This is like shocking to me. I can't believe I am in this position. And then after a couple weeks, when I was still lying in bed in pain with that migraine headache and all my other symptoms, my husband said, You know, Adrian, we got to tell the kids. And I'm like, Oh god, I know.

Marla Miller: 15:03

How old were your kids at this point?

Adrienne Scharli: 15:05

So they well, they were out of the house at that time, so they were all living in different places, but they all lived like pretty close by. So it was the weekend, they all came over and they were all on the patio, and I was in home at bed, and my husband told all of them, and this is what changed things for me. My oldest son, he had his girlfriend there. And at the time, she had just graduated from Colorado State University, and she just got her degree in dietetics. And so after Todd told all the kids and her about you know what I was diagnosed with, she walked up to Todd later and she said, You know, Todd, I learned that people with MS can manage their MS through diet.

Marla Miller: 15:55

Wow, that's very synchronistic that she was there.

Adrienne Scharli: 15:59

And I right, it was a godsend. And so he told me what she told him. And I thought, huh, that's interesting. I've never heard about that before. So I started doing all this research on my laptop in bed, and I came across Dr. Terry Wall's TED Talk. Have you heard of her? I haven't, no. Oh my gosh. So she's very popular in the multiple sclerosis world. And I'll tell you her story really quick. She is a doctor and she developed MS, and her MS was so bad that she had four stage. She ended up in a wheelchair, and she was during her rounds as a doctor in a wheelchair. And she's going to all the best doctors, taking all the best MS drugs, she thought, until she got a tip from somebody that said, you know, you might want to look into food or supplements to help your condition. And she started taking supplements and started learning really what our brain and what our bodies need, like what vitamins and minerals and nutrition we need, right? So she started doing a kind of a trial on herself. And she started taking supplements. And then she started thinking, you know, I'm gonna start eating the foods that have all the vitamins and minerals my body needs. I'm gonna see if that works. So after about three months, she was able to get out of a wheelchair to use a cane, and then three months after that, she got on her bike and biked around the neighborhood with her family. And that was like a major milestone with her. That's incredible. It is incredible. This is what her TED talk is about. She tells her story. And Marla, after I saw that, I thought, oh my god, I can heal myself. How come we're not educated on this? We should all know how to do this. We should have learned this, right? We don't learn this in school. We don't really, well, most of us don't learn it in college. My now daughter-in-law Sarah, she had learned it back then because that was her degree. That's what she was studying, right? Nutrition and diet.

Marla Miller: 18:22

Well, like they say, even doctors at medical school, that's not um if they cover it at all.

Adrienne Scharli: 18:28

It's very brief and it's very minimal if they get it at all, you know, and that has to change. So, anyway, I saw her TED Talk. So that day that I saw the TED talk, I screamed to the grocery store in my car. I'm sure I was going like 100 miles an hour, and I I bought all these like fruits and vegetables and quality meats, and I brought them home and I just started eating like this, although it was not easy, right? Because we're used to eating the sad diet, right? The standard American diet.

Marla Miller: 19:02

And I well, it does take that motivation, which you certainly had a lot of motivation. I mean, when you go through the experience of those types of symptoms you had, you're willing to do a lot at that point to get your life back.

Adrienne Scharli: 19:20

Yeah, I still had all those symptoms. And I am like, oh my God, I'm gonna heal my body. Like, if she can heal herself out of a wheelchair, I can definitely heal everything I've got going on, right? That was my thought.

Marla Miller: 19:33

Yeah, and I think it also shows when you're shown that someone could do it, you know, like they say the four-minute mile, no one could do it until finally someone did, and then everyone was doing it. Absolutely like you just need to know, you have to have that hope or know it's possible and tell your brain that. And then you start looking for those solutions and finding them.

Adrienne Scharli: 19:56

It's your belief system, right? Most of us are kind of going through life, believing the doctor, because the doctor is supposed to be the know-all person, right? But they're not always we can all heal through diet and lifestyle, and most people don't know this.

Marla Miller: 20:14

Yeah, I think when it comes to mindset, there's also that part that if you're open to finding answers, you're going to hear them and see them. Like if you had not been open when your son came with his girlfriend, you may have totally dismissed that and not even looked into diet.

Adrienne Scharli: 20:36

Yeah, if that did not happen, I would not have found that TED talk and I could be miserable today. So I'm trying to get this word out to people. So, long story short, I started eating this way. It wasn't easy, but I got rid of all dairy, I got rid of all sugar and gluten. Those are the three things I got rid of. I bought her book and I followed it to a T. She's got three different diets in it. And within 12 weeks, you know, within actually about six to eight weeks, most of my symptoms went away. Most were gone after 12 weeks. The only symptom that took longer to heal was the blind spot in my left eye. That took about four to five months.

Marla Miller: 21:22

Well, I want to say about the six weeks, whatever it was, what you know, four to eight weeks. When you think about it, that time goes by so quickly. Like, even though it may be difficult to completely revamp your diet, that's certainly worth the discomfort for you to say six weeks to get your life back to try it. And then I will say also, like after you make that drastic change in your diet, it gets easier. It's not always like painful and a big struggle because your body is so grateful for getting what it needs, then it starts responding differently, right? You may not have the intense cravings that you had before for the sugar or processed foods or whatever.

Adrienne Scharli: 22:10

Right. It took about six weeks to get off of sugar. And maybe you've done this, Marla, but your taste buds change. Yeah. So after you kick sugar and then you eat a cookie, for example, you hate it. Like it tastes like poison to me now.

Marla Miller: 22:28

I don't know if I reached that point, but I but I will say, yes, when I cut out sugar, I cut it out completely for three months, way back when I was healing. Yeah. And I mean, even fruit I wasn't having, which I wouldn't say you have to do that. I just did that at the time. But I found broccoli tasted so sweet, it was so interesting. So yeah, my taste buds really changed during that time.

Adrienne Scharli: 22:57

Yeah, sugar, anything with you know, conventional sugar tastes really sweet, like I don't know, three times the sweetness at least to me. So it was really easy for me after that to not, but as I was going through it, oh my God, because I did go back to work at the time. It was a realtor, and so we had a copy machine in a break room, and so you'd always walk by like all this junk food, candy and cake. It was always somebody's birthday, right? And before it was had a slice, but during that time, I'm like, oh my god, this is so hard. But then afterwards, I don't even crave it anymore. I'm so glad that I don't because well, sugar causes weight gain too. It's all bad news, but I healed, I healed everything to help that. I yeah, go ahead.

Marla Miller: 23:51

Oh, go ahead.

Adrienne Scharli: 23:52

Because of that, what I wrote a cookbook, I wanted to show people that healthy food can be really delicious.

Marla Miller: 24:01

That is very true. When you cut out the sugar and things taste better, there's so many different things you can do with your food to make them interesting or have something different. You don't have to have the same vegetable cooked in the same way every single night. There's so many different varieties, different ways you can create an enticing meal. So it's great though that you offer that in a cookbook because some people are into experimenting with the food and you know, enjoy that, but other people don't. So that's great that you provide a handy tool for people with the cookbook.

Adrienne Scharli: 24:39

Yeah, I did it because I struggled the first year, you know, because I had to teach myself how to make vegetables taste good. Because I didn't while I was healing, because healing was like number one for me. I I did everything that it took, right? I'm like, I don't care if I don't like spinach, I'm gonna eat it because I just wanted to heal. But then afterwards, I'm like, oh, I can make it taste good.

Marla Miller: 25:03

Yeah, that's great. So you talked about you're healing all these symptoms in the six to eight weeks, but that the eye took longer. So, how did you go about resolving the eye issue?

Adrienne Scharli: 25:15

I just kept eating the way that Dr. Walls had in her book. And I actually didn't at the time, I didn't think I could heal it. I just thought, okay, this is something I'm just gonna have to deal with. You know, healing is such a gradual process. Like people that go through my program, for example, I'm a health coach, they take a symptoms questionnaire in my program, and each symptom has a score. Like if you have a severe headache, you get them a lot, you have a score of a five. So you have all these symptoms and you add them all up, but then at the end of my course, they take it again. And when they take it again, they're like, Oh, I had some pain in my back and now it's gone. Or I had some numbness in my left hand and it's gone. Healing is such a gradual process that we don't realize how bad we felt when we're on this healing journey and we know what to do. And then when we go back, we're like, oh, I healed that.

Marla Miller: 26:24

I agree with you totally on that. That you either need to journal as you're going along and write down your symptoms, what you're experiencing, so you can look back and see how far you've come. And it's also helpful to have people around you sort of reflect back to you what they've noticed because you may not notice it so much like you said, but other people around you will they'll notice you getting better or remember something you used to do that now you're not doing. You would think that you wouldn't forget the impact of all the symptoms and the pain, but you do, as you start to feel better, you you dismiss that and you tend to forget a lot of stuff that was bothering you.

Adrienne Scharli: 27:05

There's one more thing I want to talk about, if it's okay with you, and this is our mental health. And I did not realize, you know, I actually healed all my symptoms with diets, but I feel like I was so excited about my healing journey. Like after watching Terry Wall's TED Talk, like, oh god, I know I can heal. There's no question in my mind. So you have to believe it. We talked about that. But the other thing is later on, I found out because I've done some research on this, that 80% of women get autoimmune diseases. Why is this? And Mel Robbins, she has a podcast and she had a doctor come on. And this doctor talked about why that is. And she said, Well, women give too much. We don't receive, right? We're givers, we're mothers, we're nurturers, we give too much. We don't give ourselves enough self-care and we don't receive enough. And she also went through she called it ACE, and I'm trying to remember what it stands for, but these are questions that have to do with any past childhood traumas. And I didn't realize I actually had a childhood trauma, and that's one reason I know why I got MS, not just because of my diet. I grew up and lived with a mother who was a narcissist, and even though I healed most of my symptoms with diet, I knew I still had to heal that. And that took some time, you know. This is all mental. So I had to forgive my mother, still love her. I haven't had a relationship with her in about six years. I mean, it's actually her idea to quit our relationship, not mine. But it's actually been so much better for me. I've been able to just not deal with her narcissistic, which I've had my whole life.

Marla Miller: 29:23

I know Dr. Gabor Matei, he speaks on that as well, how trauma can influence your health like that, and also about how women take on a lot.

Adrienne Scharli: 29:36

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 29:37

It reminds me of this woman I ran into that was in tears. She said, I gave so much to, you know, my children, my husband, family. And I always thought, I'll have time for myself later. And she's like, and now I have stage four cancer. And she had this terminal diagnosis. But I think that is a lot more common than we think when it comes to women, that nurturing, overgiving, and thinking it's almost like bad to receive when in reality that giving receiving is just energy exchanging. Yeah, you know, it's not like good or bad, it should flow. It should flow in both directions.

Adrienne Scharli: 30:20

It's not just childhood trauma, it can be sexual trauma. You know, there's a lot of women who've been raped. It could be religious trauma, you know, where you decide to leave a certain religion and then your family. Disowned you, right? It can be religion, um, relationship trauma where you went through a divorce. Maybe it was a hard divorce, maybe it was maybe not that hard. It depends on the person on how they take it. So there's military trauma. Not many females are in the military. Um, but I mean, all these different, if you're bullied, you know, as a child, that's trauma. So there's so many different traumas that women can experience, and we take it personally. And so it ends up getting stuck in our body, and it can transition into a disease. So we have to learn how to, number one, maybe for forgive a person who was traumatic to us, and we have to forgive ourselves too. So there's a there's a lot to mental trauma.

Marla Miller: 31:28

Well, and I think women aren't haven't in the past, now that's changing, haven't been as vocal. Yeah. You know, they were kind of taught to be quieter and in the background, and now that's changing, which is good because you need to process these things, you need to vocalize them, and um we're getting our power back, yeah. Yeah.

Adrienne Scharli: 31:53

Mm-hmm.

Marla Miller: 31:54

It's a good point. Well, so your eyesight came back. Is it a hundred percent now? Yeah. Back back to normal. That's great.

Adrienne Scharli: 32:05

This this happened, by the way, this happened over 10 years ago. So I was diagnosed in the summer of 2015, and I healed most of my symptoms. Like from the time I was diagnosed, you know, it took me a while to figure out, okay, a month and a half went by or so before I figured out, oh my God, I can heal myself, right? Um, so then those symptoms went away three months after that. And then, of course, you know, I think it was November or December, when I figured out, oh, the blind spot in my eye is gone. So what I had to do was just wiggle my fingers next to my left eye because I couldn't see them. And then one day I'm like, oh my God, I can see my fingers. My blind spot is gone.

Marla Miller: 32:55

What an exciting day that must have been.

Adrienne Scharli: 32:57

It was, it was. And I thought, I didn't know I had that capability.

Marla Miller: 33:04

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Adrienne Scharli: 33:06

Everything this has taught me so much, so much.

Marla Miller: 33:09

Yeah, so empowering. Well, I have three questions I like to ask people who have healed. So the first one is, what was the biggest obstacle you experienced in your healing journey?

Adrienne Scharli: 33:22

Well, the biggest obstacle was probably figuring out, well, eating, eating the right foods and making them taste good. That was probably my biggest obstacle. And in the beginning, you know, I had to learn a lot in a short amount of time. So to figure out what kind of foods I needed to eat to heal myself.

Marla Miller: 33:45

Yeah. Well, and what was the biggest lesson you learned throughout that time?

Adrienne Scharli: 33:51

That any of us can heal anything when we have to believe. Number one, you have to believe it and you have to take action.

Marla Miller: 34:00

Yeah, that's such a big one to believe it and to look for those solutions. Well, what was the biggest kindness someone showed to you during that time as well?

Adrienne Scharli: 34:11

Oh gosh. So my my daughter-in-law, right? She's the one that helped me realize that I can. She said manage my symptoms through MS. She she probably didn't learn that she can heal MS in her program, but I healed it, you know?

Marla Miller: 34:31

Yeah.

Adrienne Scharli: 34:31

Um, food is so powerful. Food is medicine. That's number one. Number one. And then you've got mental health. And then I teach people in my program about exercise, right? That's important. Body movement, and then self-care. We gotta learn how to take care of yourself and do the things you love, right? Like if you hate a job you hate, get one that you love.

Marla Miller: 34:57

Yeah. So the exercise, what type of exercise?

Adrienne Scharli: 35:01

I tell people, you don't have to go to the gym if you don't want to. Like, walk for half an hour, walk around the block. I mean, you know, people that have MS, they're in different stages, right? Like I didn't have any walking issues, thank God. But some people are in a wheelchair and they can start doing chair yoga, you know, if they're in a wheelchair. People can start lifting weights or doing, you know, exercises at at home if they can't walk yet. But there's a million ways you can move your body, right? And if you can do something for half an hour, get your heart rate up a little bit, move your muscles, and then like every other day, I just walk a mile, and then in between I go to the gym, and that's just me, you know, and I do some weights here and there, but it doesn't take a lot. Yeah, you just need to move your body some every day.

Marla Miller: 35:56

Yeah, the exercise is important. And I do want to get back to the mental health, and like you said, recovering from the issues with your mother. What were the ways that you addressed that?

Adrienne Scharli: 36:10

Uh, you know, a lot of journaling. A lot of journaling. Um, I wrote down things that were hurtful to me growing up, different situations that were hurtful. But then I wrote down I forgive her. I know she didn't mean to hurt me. And then, you know, there were some major things that she said to me or did to me that were hurtful. And I wrote them out on a piece of paper, and then I took the piece of paper, crimpled it up right into a ball for trash, lit it on fire, and threw it away. I mean, there's lots of tactics you can use, but forgiveness is number one, and then forgiving yourself is number two, and just really appreciating where you're at with your health. You know, after I healed myself, I was so grateful that I healed everything, and just being grateful for my husband and my family and all the friends that I love and the trips I get to take. You know, gratitude is a big deal too. Being thankful for a lot of things, and a lot of people don't think about that, but that's very, very healing as well.

Marla Miller: 37:31

Definitely, for sure. And you do appreciate things so much when they're taken away, and then you get them back.

Adrienne Scharli: 37:38

Yeah, you appreciate it, you eat them more, yeah.

Marla Miller: 37:42

Yeah, I remember being on crutches and looking at people walking by on the sidewalk and just thinking, well, they are so fortunate. You know, something you take for granted, just walking.

Adrienne Scharli: 37:53

Yes, so true. Yeah.

Marla Miller: 37:56

And I want to say regarding the mental health, I think the journaling is a great idea, like you just described. And also there's so many other ways, so many other modalities becoming available. You know, like talk therapy is kind of an older version of things at this point. I feel like like now it's good to combine it with other things. I know some people use EMTR or like the emotion code body code work. There's meditation. Meditation is great. Yeah, I think that's a great way to heal a lot of things. And also, like you said, forgiving yourself.

Adrienne Scharli: 38:35

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 38:35

And by the way, there's no shame in getting help with a therapist, you know, so yeah, I just think that's a typical thing people do, which is very helpful. Yeah. But now there's additional things to even bring it to a deeper cellular level or a subconscious level. Yep.

Adrienne Scharli: 39:00

That I think is meditation, there's acupuncture, there's massage therapy, you know, cupping.

Marla Miller: 39:09

Like things, ways that are helpful for people who may have a hard time talking it out to a therapist. Oh, sure. Like there are still ways that can help you heal these things. Yep. If it's too painful to even open up to someone, your body can help facilitate it in a way. Maybe you can share with people where they can find you, what your latest ventures are, and how they might work with you.

Adrienne Scharli: 39:37

Sure. Thank you. My website is nourishyourway.com. And I also have have a podcast. It's called Reverse Multiple Sclerosis. And I also have a Facebook group. It's called MS Support Heal and Nourish MS. And I've written a cookbook. Um, everything's on my website, really. I've also written a paperback book called The Path to Reverse Multiple Sclerosis. Naturally, my big thing too is, you know, you don't have to take drugs. Drugs usually give you side effects and don't heal you. They for sure don't heal you. Many times they do more damage. But anyway, yeah, just reach out to me on my website, nurtureway.com. I've got a newsletter that I put out once a week, and I've got a health coaching program. So I help a lot of people that have MS get back to health. And so that is what I love to do. It's my jam. It just gives me so much pleasure to help people know number one, they can heal and that they can do it. And it's so fun and so gratifying for me and my client after my 12-week program. My last gal healed 80% of her symptoms. And so now she goes, Adrian, I'm so thrilled, you know, that I found you. And now I can move on. And now I'm in the driver's seat with my health and I can do the rest on my own. And I told her, I'm like, I'm so proud of you. I tell my past students or clients to check in with me because I want to know, you know, when they've healed 100%, because everybody, everybody can.

Marla Miller: 41:27

That's so awesome. So, do you have a last story you want to share, like a success story? How someone's life changed after they worked with you and they were able to heal symptoms.

Adrienne Scharli: 41:38

Oh, sure. Um, Myesha, she lives in Maryland and um wonderful lady. She wanted to work with me and she did my program, and she had a hard time getting out of bed. She had numbness, she had brain fog, she had arthritis, she had trouble walking around her block. And after doing my program, she got her energy back. She told me 80% of her arthritis went away, her numbness went away. She gets in her 10,000 steps a day now. She goes, I can walk no problem now, Adrian. She was a mother and she had a job, and so she was struggling to do just daily activities because she was so tired. And after learning everything that she did with me, she's like a new person again. She's back to her healthy self. And it's so gratifying. So yeah.

Marla Miller: 42:35

That's fantastic. Well, I think the work you're doing, especially since you lived this yourself and now sharing it with all the people out there with the MS diagnosis is really fantastic. And to let people know they don't have to suffer needlessly. Like there are answers. So I'm so glad to have you on here sharing your story. Yeah.

Adrienne Scharli: 43:01

So thank you for helping me on, Marla.

Marla Miller: 43:03

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on and sharing, sharing your wisdom here. That's awesome. You bet.