90: Healing Multiple Sclerosis: A Testimonial with Bob Cafaro.

[00:00:00] Chazmith: Hey. Hey, good day friends. Welcome to Our Power Is Within Podcast. I'm your host Chazmith, and my mission for this podcast is to inspire people to take their power back and to realize that you are the healer that you have been looking for all along. 

This week's challenge is going to be to play simple, right?

Yeah. All you gotta do is think of something that you enjoy doing just for the fun of it, and then set aside some time this week to do it. And of course, have fun doing it cuz that's what play's all about, right? This week's guest, you guys, I am so excited to share with you. 

Today's episode, Bob Cafaro is going to be sharing a wonderfully inspiring story with us today. I had the best time chatting with him. He is just an amazing human. He's an inspiration in so many ways, and he has this awesome energy. You're gonna hear it in just a minute. His voice, his energy, the way he just comes across, he's just, he's an honest pleasure and I had the best time chatting with him and literally just getting to hear his story of how he was able to overcome severe multiple sclerosis known often as MS is so inspiring.

He tells us all about his story and what he's up to these days and how he now maintains his health and wellbeing and. Yeah, it's pretty powerful. Our bodies are absolute gifts and amazing when given the right environment to heal. And Bob's a testament to that today. I think that you guys are gonna love this story and I'm just going to get right into it and introduce Bob to the show.

Bob, thank you so much for being here and today with me and everybody who will be tuned in to listen. 

[00:02:09] Bob: My pleasure, Chaz, thank you for the invitation. 

[00:02:12] Chazmith: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm really excited to get just to hear more and learn more about you and your story and what you've been through and what you've overcome.

So honestly, I'd like to just start out by opening the floor for you to share a little bit about your story and just what you've been through and give us a brief on what you've been through, what you've gone, through in your healing recovery journey and where you're at today.

[00:02:35] Bob: Okay. I think the best thing may be to go give a little history chronologically speaking, and going back to this would've been December of 1998 I experienced first symptoMS that were MS obviously unknown to me at the time, but it was numbness in the right leg. I started the numbness got worse and I started limping.

And at one point my right leg actually collapsed under me and I almost fell down. And at this point I saw a specialist, an orthopedic surgeon, and he surmised it was just a pinched nerve, nothing to worry about. And then my family doctor, I saw him and I had started reading in the Mayo Health Clinic book about these symptoMS, and they said it was possible.

I asked him, could it be MS? He says, no, my wife has MS. It's definitely not MS. It was great. And somehow the numbness in the legs subsided. And it seemed to return to normal. And then two months later, in February of 1999, I started losing peripheral vision in my left eye, which is optic neuritis, which I had never experienced.

And hopefully people will never experience that. It's when fields of vision actually start disappearing from view and you lose peripheral vision in places. At this point, I tried to get an appointment with a neurologist and everybody was booked. After one week I was able to see a neurosurgeon and I could tell from the way he looked at me that it was, he thought it was MS.

Even though he didn't say that, he sent me to the first neurologist I had ever seen in my life. So we're in February of 1999. I had waited a week before I saw this guy and he. Did an MRI in my brain, it was clean. There were no lesions. And he said, you have MS. And this was to me a death sentence because I'm a cellist.

I play the cello in the Philadelphia orchestra since 1985. And my only knowledge of MS is the great British cellist, Jacqueline Duprey, who stopped playing at the age of 25 due to MS. And she died from complications of the disease at age 42. So to be told, I have MS was basically a death sentence for me.

And I remember when he said that, I just couldn't believe it. And I walked that outta that office thinking, this guy's crazy because I had no lesions on my brain. He's an epilepsy specialist, therefore it's a misdiagnosis. So I contacted my brother-in-law who worked for. The NIH at the time, national Institutes of Health, and he said, don't panic on a first opinion.

And he set up an appointment with he got in touch with what was his name at the time? Henry McFarland, who was the head of MS at the Institutes of national Institutes of Health. He set up an appointment with Dr. Fred Lublin, who is considered one of the three most prominent specialists in the country.

And he was at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia and now he's director of MS at Mount Sinai in New York. So I saw Fred Lublin. And he had some doubts and he sent me to a rheumatologist and I went through the gauntlet of tests tested from everything, heavy metal toxicity, Lyme disease aids. You think of it, I was tested for it.

I was tested for every rheumatoid disease in the book as well. And he thought that it might have been vasculitis, which the only other thing I've seen about that was in Dr. Roy Swank's book, the MS Diet book, which was at the time really one of the only books available that I knew of. And I have these unexplained blisters on my toes.

And Dr. Swank makes reference to that in his book that it's one of the symptoMS. But Fred Lublin thought this was a sign of vasculitis. He sends me to a rheumatologist. Every rheumatoid disease comes back negative. I go back to Fred Lublin and he says, you have MS. This is a definitive case, and I keep pestering him.

How certain are you? He says I'm 95% sure that you have MS, so I still didn't want to believe this. I'm, hanging onto this hope that somehow it's a misdiagnosis and I'm in that small percentage of people that's misdiagnosed. Here we go. He starts me on Avonex. He sends me to a also sends me to a neuro-ophthalmologist at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia.

Dr. Robert Sergo, who's now head of neuro-ophthalmology at the hospital, very prominent and very skilled, very respected, and he starts me on Avonex. Which is the intramuscular injection of interferon. So I ask Fred Lublin, what is basically what's the risk of taking this drug? He says, there's absolutely no risk at all, and you should be on it.

So I start this drug and it's absolutely brutal for anybody that's taken this drug. You inject the drug the night before, you have to take ibuprofen to basically counter the effects of the drug, and then the next day you have a case of the flu so bad that your hair hurts. So you do this once a week and it's, oh, it was just awful.

So let's move on now. 

[00:08:38] Chazmith: Can I stop and ask you a question? Okay. At this point, after all this, trial and error and going to the doctors and having all these tests done, and still just like wanting to believe that you weren't actually like that you didn't have MS were you still just only dealing with the the two symptoms?

You mentioned that point, cuz you said the numbness got better, but then you had the peripheral vision issues and then the blisters on the feet. But was that it? Or were you starting to progress? 

[00:09:06] Bob: So here we go. So the blisters on the feet had subside. They left minor scars for a while.

The vision in my left eye never recovered to this day. So I did lose some peripheral vision in the left eye. Moving on I was on this quest to prove that I had been misdiagnosed. And I started exercising like a fiend. And I'm prove I'm basically, other than the vision of my left eye, I'm asymptomatic at this point.

[00:09:37] Chazmith: I just wanted to know why did they feel so confident that you had MS when you had like virtually no symptoms and you had no lesions? 

[00:09:47] Bob: Oh, okay. So I forgot to say two things. So let's backtrack in February of 1999, this is Robert Sperling. He was the neuro, the first neurologist I saw, even though I had no lesions.

He said, when you have numbness in one leg and peripheral vision loss in one eye, that's a textbook case of MS, which I didn't want to believe. Then I went to Fred Lublin and it was one of the fellows at his practice, she felt my neck and said, I think your issues are coming from your neck. And they did MRIs in the neck and three small lesions showed up in the spinal cord.

Oh, okay. At that point, yeah, I forgot to tell you this. At that point, Fred Lublin deemed this a definitive case of MS. So everything else ruled out three lesions in the spinal cord. At this point, that was when I pestered him about the definitive diagnosis, and he said he was 95% certain it was.

[00:10:41] Chazmith: Okay. 

[00:10:41] Bob: Thank you. I failed to disclose that, so that makes more sense for me. Thank you. So here we go. I'm asymptomatic, and now the summer of 1999 comes and I'm on this quest to prove I'm misdiagnosed. I'm Iron Man. I'm doing these 30 mile bike rides in a brutal heat wave upstate New York, and it's 95 degrees, and I'm with these guys doing 30 mile bike rides, which is, in retrospect, this is something of a imprudent move to say the least.

I s all of a sudden I start losing peripheral vision in my right eye. So this is scary because the left eye never recovered completely. So I'm upstate New York teaching at a summer music festival. I hightail it back home, go see Dr. Robert Sergott, and he puts me on intravenous steroids for the second time now.

So I've failed to disclose this as well. February of 1999, I had three days of intravenous steroids. That's a thousand milligrams of methylprednisolone dripped into your veins for three days. So I get on another cycle, three days of intravenous steroids, followed by the oral steroids when you basically you wean off of it with oral steroids, starting with a hundred milligrams of prednisone and you taper down to 10.

So things stabilized for about a week, okay? And then I started getting a stomach bug and I started vomiting. And a stomach bug goes away in a day or two, right? This one didn't go away, and it kept at me and I was like, approaching six, seven days now vomiting. And I'm not able to keep that any food or water.

And I wind up hospitalized for severe dehydration. So I'm in the hospital for four days and they can't do anything for me, and I'm on Avonex this whole time. So they finally give me an anti motion sickness drug. I get out of the hospital, I am so bad, I can't move my hands. I can't even hold a telephone.

I can't feel anything with my hands. Both eyes are so bad. I'm like legally blind. I can see silhouettes of people and that's it. I can hardly walk. I'm in incontinent. I like, can't hold my urine. I can't feel when I have to defecate, everything's gone. My body feels like I'm getting electric current it's awful.

So at this point I go see, I'm trying to get ahold of Fred Lublin and I don't realize he is in the process of moving to New York. So he gets back to me after three days and I couldn't even get into see him. So I managed to get a new appointment with a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Clyde Markowitz, very esteemed neurologist.

So I go to see Clyde Markowitz and I'm basically in a wheelchair now. It's so bad. He does an MRI of my brain and spinal cord, and I have over 50 lesions in my brain. And my spinal cord has a lesion that's measures three and a half centimeters in length, and it takes up the entire spinal cord.

[00:14:00] Chazmith: He puts, he, and this was in a time, a very short time span from the first, right?

[00:14:04] Bob: This is August of 1999.

[00:14:09] Chazmith: Now you're talking about six, seven months total, right? Yeah. That you went from three very small lesions in your spinal cord to over 50 in your brain, being on medicine the whole time. 

[00:14:19] Bob: The whole time, yeah. So he does an MRI and he sees this and he puts me on intravenous steroids for 10 days, which is a thousand milligrams of breath methylprednisolone, and followed by six weeks of oral steroids.

And, I start experiencing only these immunosuppressant complications you name it, bad nightmares. I get this bad infection in my left elbow that comes outta nowhere. And at this point I go to see Robert Sergott again at the At Wills Eye Hospital and I sit down and he gives me a basic vision test.

I can't even see the largest letters on the chart. And then he gives me a visual field test, where you hold the clicker in your hand and you click every time you see a light flash in the periphery. And I sit there just poker face, stone cold, not clicking once, cuz I can't see anything. He stops the test and he says to me, okay, he says I'll write you a note for permanent disability.

And you talk about a death sentence. Here I am, in eight months I'm going from the successful cellist in the Philadelphia orchestra. Someone who's gonna be on permanent disability for the rest of my life.

[00:15:35] Chazmith: Were you still playing at the time that, for those eight months or?

[00:15:39] Bob: No, I was playing up until a few weeks before, but now, my, my hands were so shot. So he tells me, I'll write you note for permanent disability. And this was like, I write this in my book. I say that this is like a, Ebenezer, Scrooge being shown the ghost of Christmas present, where he's at his own grave.

And I told him, I said, you can take that note and you can use it as a suppository. I said, because I'm going back to work at six weeks when the orchestra season starts in mid-September. And he looks at me, he says, how are you gonna do that? And I said, at this point I started crying. And I said I said, I'm gonna go back.

And he said I'm gonna be honest. He says, I've seen people in your situation a year from now, they're still in a wheelchair. And a year from now I've seen other people you wouldn't know anything's wrong with them. And I said, I'm gonna be one of those people you won't know anything's wrong with me in a year.

So I go home and I take the cello out of the case. And I, here I am just out of the hospital here. I haven't touched cello in a while, and I try to play and it's completely hopeless. Everything's gone. It's like trying to explain to a three year old how to play the cello and they have no idea what you're talking about.

My hands are just completely disconnected from my brain and everything I had was just gone. So at this point I decided I'm gonna go back to work in six weeks and I start my own research. At this point, I have this big giant computer screen where I enlarge these letters and I start all my own research because western medicine is not helping at all.

So the first thing I find a a website called The Water Cure, written by an Iranian doctor who's been written off as a quack by Western Medicine. And he does a study in a, an Iranian prison where he gives the prisoners half their body weight in ounces of water a day.

Meaning me, I'm 160 pounds, that means 80 ounces of water a day. So I start doing this and I noticed my first sign of improvement, I started to feel a little better and I was like, wow, I may be onto something here. Just to backtrack, at this time, Lance Armstrong, do you remember him?

Yeah I read his book too, and I followed him and he was my hero up until we found out a little more about him. But yeah, still I still have a lot of respect for what he did as far as beating his cancer that should have killed him. So I wanted to be like him. And here I was, pretty avid cyclist and I got back on my bike, but I couldn't see anything.

And I had my two young children in front of me cuz I could see their silhouettes. And that was it. And I remember I lowered the seat all the way down. I put on, those protective elbow things, gloves, a helmet, everything. And I could still balance on two wheels. It was amazing. I could hardly walk, but I could balance on a bicycle.

So I'm like, okay, couple of things happen. I start to feel better and I can balance on a bike. I'm gonna get my body back. I start doing all my own research and I start looking at world rates of MS. And I see that, your poorest nations have one third, the rates of MS as your wealthy, industrialized nations.

So what's going on here? I start looking at Japan, and I've been to Japan many times with the Philadelphia orchestra on tour. Japan has very low rates of MS. Even though they have, severe overcrowding, they have severe pollution, they've got all kinds of issues, but their MS rates are a fraction of ours.

What are they doing differently? And I'm realizing there's gotta be something with the diet. And then I start looking at the Okinawa centenarian study. Okinawa is a prefecture in Japan. And if you look at the ocs, the study, they studied over 900 people over the age of 100. And they were all in perfect health.

And in this study, the women didn't screen for breast, ovarian, cervical cancers. The men don't have the heart disease. The, they don't have diabetes, they don't have all these ill illnesses that are so common in the west. So I decide I'm onto something here and instead of, following western medicine here, I'm gonna look what do these people who live to be over 100 imperfect health do?

So I basically started coming up with my own diet. And just to give you an idea, Dr. Terry Walls, right? Anybody who's listening that knows MS. Will know her very well. Okay. I was diagnosed in 1999. She was diagnosed in 2000 in her book The Wall's Protocol, which is considered a Bible for MS. sufferers. That book wasn't published until 2014. So here we are, we're in 1999, and I have nothing to guide me other than the MS Diet book by Roy Swank. So I start looking at my own, my own research here, and I start modeling a diet after this Okinawa centenarian study. And if you look at what they do, it's a very low calorie, plant-based diet.

If they do eat meat, chicken, or fish, it's the size of a deck of cards and no more. And they stop eating when they're 80% full and 67% of their diet is organic sweet potatoes. So let's try this. So I start really reducing my caloric content and also, I had stumbled on some success without understanding what I was doing.

So here, when I started drinking, half my body weight in ounces, I started to feel better and So I started drinking two quarts of water every morning before I did anything. And this is filtered water. I have a reverse osmosis filtered. So here what's happening is there's no room in my stomach for food until I feel hungry, which is probably mid-afternoon.

So what happens without realizing I'm intermittently fasting every day for a period of about 12 to 16 hours. So let's move on. I start, maybe half of my diet is organic sweet potatoes. I cut out everything. I cut out junk food, I cut out alcohol, I cut out. There's no recreational drugs in my life.

Then I cut  sugar. I start cutting out salt, I start cutting out everything, and I start living on this, hunter gatherer diet, very low calorie, plain diet. And what I'm doing, essentially, without realizing this, and this is what Robert Sergott, the doctorate Wills eye Hospital, said that I'm changing the microbiome in my gut and therefore affecting my immune system.

And it's basically transforming the immune system. So I start doing all this, and then I start the diet, I start the water, and I'm starting to feel better. I'm cycling every day and my vision's returning. And, I'm back to work for the Philadelphia Orchestra and I still can't move my hands, but I'm back there and I'm basically miming it.

I'm sitting in the back of the section with the music enlarged and. I tell everybody it's a misdiagnosis, but I can't move my hands and I'm just going through the motions. I'm unable to play. So I'm laughing about this, but it wasn't funny at the time. 

[00:23:32] Chazmith: So did they know, did your boss know that you play No, actually playing.

[00:23:34] Bob: No, I was just faking, I was basically like, cause there were how many? 11 other cellos in the orchestra. So I'm basically just going through the motions and, not making any sound. I'm doing air cello as they say. Okay. So anyway, I'm starting to cycle and I'm starting to, my body's starting to rebuild very gradually now.

And I start looking at other things as well. And one of the things that happened, I'm on this drug, Avonex, and one of those rainy days, you start, that packet insert that comes with the drug, you  unfold it and it goes down to the floor. So I'm looking at this thing and I start looking at the clinical trial results on it.

And what really got me was after two years on the drug in the study, the success rate between the drug group and the placebo group were nearly identical. And for the listeners unfamiliar with the placebo it's basically a sugar pill, a water injection, it's a fake drug. And they're telling people here's a drug that's gonna make you better.

And it's, it does nothing. But yet in every clinical trial, you get people in the placebo groups that get better. And this is written off as an anomaly by science and medicine. But when I read this stopped me in my tracks. How could you have a study with an identical result in the placebo group and the drug group?

So I started looking at clinical trials and I started looking at why MS is one of the more difficult diseases to come up with effective medication for. And the reason is that you have a disproportionately high success rate in the placebo groups of clinical trials. So I decided I'm gonna learn the placebo group as a, I'm gonna learn the placebo effect as a skill rather.

So I found this book called you Are the Healer about the Silver Method, and it's about training the brain. So I came up with my own meditation and I started meditating and I started with a small, maybe five minutes a day, and I built up to two 30 minute sessions a day where I sat and I repeated commands that my MS is going into remission. The use of my hands is returning. My brain is finding new pathways to the muscles plasticity. The optic nerves are regenerating. My body is coming back, it is getting strong. And I sit there repeating these commands to myself in a very quiet environment for two 30 minute sessions a day.

[00:26:05] Chazmith: Were you doing this like self-guided or were you listening to a guided one? 

[00:26:08] Bob:  I never sought help from anyone. I never went to an MS support group. I, this was all on my own.

[00:26:16] Chazmith: Oh, sorry. I  just met the meditations, were they guided?

[00:26:19] Bob: No, I came up with my own little mantras and sayings. 

Yeah. And I did this and also repeating those commands I envisioned I could -actually like a video where I watched the lesions disappearing. So that was one of the other things I really started actively doing. And then I started using experiences in my life, books I had read. A lot of people may be interested, or they may remember the book alive about the plane crash in the Andes Mountains in 1972 where the plane crashed up above the tree line at 11,500 feet.

And 72 days later, they found the survivors had lived up there in, really in, just in inhospitable conditions. Wow. And I had looked at Lance ArMStrong, someone that beat cancer that should have killed him. He, the doctors told him he had a 50% chance of survival, but privately confided a 20% chance of survival.

I studied Bobby Fisher, who was insane, but he was, probably one of the greatest chess players that ever lived. But he beat, he took the title from the Soviet Union in 1972, and he did this on his own. And, just by sheer determination. And another one was Nolan Ryan the great baseball pitcher who pitched, over a hundred miles an hour for 27 seasons.

And he pitched seven no hitters. And, he accomplished records that will probably never be equaled. And, if you look at all these people I write about them in my book and I title this, people who accomplished the impossible. So basically, I set out to discover the mindset of these people.

It's it's this kind of, this determination that sheer will, that they will overcome anything. And I set out to be one of these people. That was another thing that I did, the whole mindset, there's that saying that your altitude is your attitude is your altitude.

I got that backwards for a minute, but basically mindset was a lot of it. So l let's fast forward here. And what happens is the cells of the human body are constantly dying and being replaced. And in seven years, every cell in your body is replaced with a new one. Your bones are the slowest to regenerate.

And it took me about three and a half years, I would say, to rebuild my body. So what happened was, here I am I'm cycling like to work. I'm like, exercising like a fiend. I'm in remission now for. How many years now this is going back and I stopped taking the Avonex after four and a half years because all it was doing was making me sick.

And I didn't go to a doctor for 11 years. It didn't go back to my neurologist. I didn't see anybody for 11 years. 

[00:29:32] Chazmith: And I'm surprised you even took the Avonex for 4.5 years because you still decided to continue taking it even after realizing that the placebo had just as great of an impact. 

[00:29:42] Bob:Yeah, I did. But what happened was I, kept doing more and more research and then I found that the drug slowed the progression of MS down with 38% of the people that took it. And here I was not only slowing down the progression, but I was reversing the disease. So I made the decision without consulting medical professionals that this drug was not helping me at all, and all it was doing was making me so sick once a week that I had to take drugs to counter the side effects of the drugs.

And for those who the listeners who know Dr. Terry Wahls  her mindset is if a drug makes you so sick that you need to take drugs to counter the side effects, how is that gonna help the cells of your body heal and rebuild? Yeah. So here I am now, I'm afraid to go back to a neurologist now, and we're in 2003 now.

So we're I think this is 11 years. What year is this? No, so 1999, we're in 2013. Okay, we're fast forwarding. I'm in incredible physical condition. I'm doing, I'm lifting weights. I'm following Nolan Ryan's exercise guide with his yoga based exercise, lifting weights. I had devised this whole MS exercise regimen for myself based on yoga, including weightlifting.

So in 2013, there was a speaker series at the Kimmel Center where the Philadelphia Orchestra Place, and I looked up and I saw Nando Parrado, the guy who survived the 1972 plane crash was speaking. And I was like, whoa, this is too good to be true because, I considered this guy one of my guides.

And if you look at what Nando Parrado did when the plane crashed up at 11,500 feet, he was thrown from row nine into the bulkhead. His skull was fractured in four places. They thought he was dead and they put him in the cold with the bodies. And after three days this guy miraculously awakes from a coma and they can't believe this guy's alive.

72 days after the crash, Nando shows up in the foothills and he got help. And this guy who had never seen snow, he had no survival training, he had no equipment, he had no food. The only source of food was the bodies of the people perished in the crash. He went 37 and a half miles through one of the most difficult mountain ranges in the world.

And what this guy did was not humanly possible. And if you look at mountain climbing teams reconstructed his route and they said what this guy did was insane and I went to his lecture in 2013, and then, I worked at the Kimmel Center, so I went backstage afterward, and I met him and, I told him I always wanted to meet you, you were my guide when I was up on the mountain.

And he gave me a hug. And it was so strange because at this point he gave me a hug and I knew I had cured myself even though I had never seen a doctor. So I go back to my neurologist after I hadn't seen him for 11 years, and he tells me to get a whole other set of MRIs, and I didn't want to do this.

And he says, why not? And I said I didn't wanna subject my body to any more tests. And the real reason was I was really afraid of what would show up in those MRIs. So he finally convinces me. He says, if you're gonna write a book, You can't just say you're cured.

You have to have definitive proof. So I go through the MRIs, brain and spinal cord. I go back to see him a couple of weeks later when the results are in, and he looks at the images and he says, you did the impossible. And there are no lesions in my brain or spinal cord. Wow. And at this point, he like gets outta pen and a pen and he says, tell me what you're doing.

And, and he starts writing stuff down. And then he says, okay. He says let me just give you the, the basic test. And he starts testing, my cognitive functions. He's testing, the you know my legs. He's testing it. And he says, okay, let me see you. Walk across the room. He says, come back.

He says, do it on your heels. Come back. He says, wow, that looks so much better than it did. And I said, watch this. And I put my hands on the floor and I went up into a handstand. Wow. And he says, wait here for a minute. He comes back with five other neurologists, and he says, do that again. And I got down on the floor, put my hands, and I did a handstand in the middle of the floor.

And, he was just amazed at what I did. So basically I've stuck with what I've done now for 23 years, and I've been completely asymptomatic and the only residual effects I've had now, my left peripheral vision never recovered. And I have a sensory loss in my hands that feels slightly like my hands are asleep, but, It's somehow on the surface of my skin up above, like the way the analogy would be, you know how gasoline doesn't burn?

It's the vapors burn. If you ever see up close, like how gasoline is burning, the liquid's not burning. It's like this very small distance up above where the flames are. That's the way my hands feel asleep. So I've been completely asymptomatic for 23 years, other than those two issues.

And I still fast for about 16 hours every day. I still live on an organic plant-based diet. I don't eat meat, I don't eat chicken. And, I basically, my only junk food is sushi. Okay. Because of the reduced rates of MS in Japan. To summarize here, I must be doing something right.

And I still, I'm very serious about my water intake. So basically that's about where we are. 

[00:36:02] Chazmith: Wow. And so it's interesting because, so you're still playing the cello? 

[00:36:07] Bob: Yeah. And everything came back completely. And actually I'm playing a cello concerto this Sunday with a youth orchestra.

[00:36:15] Chazmith:  Awesome. Yeah. And you still play for the orchestra facility? 

[00:36:18] Bob: I still play for the use of my hands came back.

[00:36:22] Chazmith: And so even though there's this very mild asleep like feeling, you have full function of them. 

[00:36:27] Bob: And I have full feeling with my hands, even though I've learned to work around this.

[00:36:33] Chazmith: so it's like you have feeling, but they have this very mild asleep feeling. 

[00:36:38] Bob: Yeah. That never went away. And it's I could say an analogy would be like something like if you get a scratch on the lens of your eyeglasses, it's annoying at first, but you get used to it. And that's exactly what this is.

I don't even notice it anymore if I think about it. Oh yeah. It's still there.

[00:36:56] Chazmith: Do they have any like kind of hypothesis as to how you have no actual, like you have no sign, like you have no MS left, there's no lesions, there's nothing. You are literally cured and recovered from MS.

But you have these two kind of lingering symptoms, do they have any hypothesis as to why? 

[00:37:17] Bob: Yeah, that's permanent nerve damage because I was hit so hard. This thing took me out like a freight train and it was so brutal. And it just, to have that lesion in my spinal cord that's for Dr.

Robert Sergott, he says, that explained the use of the loss of my hands. And, my, the, the shakiness on my feet, the incontinence, everything. Was from that lesion in the spinal cord. But basically after I published my book, he was the featured speaker at one of my book signings. And it was very interesting to hear his take on how I changed my immune system because he said he never saw anybody come back from where I was.

[00:38:02] Chazmith: So you had what they would consider a rather progressive and “bad” case. 

[00:38:07] Bob: Yeah. Yeah. It was awful. And so he said, if I could just go into this quickly, he said, number one, changing the diet to an organic plant-based diet changed the microbiome in my gut, which changed the immune system. And also I was doing a lot of cycling to rebuild my body, and.I wanted to be the Lance Armstrong come back from the abyss, and I was cycling constantly to work. I was doing the what was it, the 11 point some miles into Philadelphia. I was biking at night with lights. I was, constantly on the bike. And he said that because I'm cycling outside, I'm getting a lot of sunlight and I'm getting high levels of vitamin D from the sun.

And he basically talked about the correlation between low levels of D and high levels of MS. So really that, I reflected pretty much on what he said, and I thought about microbiome in the gut, vitamin D, but there were also other things I did here. I was cycling outside in really cold weather, and I was so worried about overheating my body in really cold weather. I had an absolute minimum of clothing on. And the idea was to have my body generate its own heat and I'm cycling, even if it's like 33, 34 degrees, I have a windbreaker and a t-shirt on and, tights, just keeping my skin covered, but no insulation. So also, I'm so worried about overheating my body.

I'm taking cold showers every day. Any of the listeners familiar with, do you know Wim Hof, the Iceman? Okay. My son who's a professional, MMA fighter, he actually studied with Wim. He went to his seminar and my son does ice bath every day. He submerges his body in ice water for about 10 minutes every day.

So if you look at the human body was designed for adaptation, we were designed to basically adapt to different temperatures, different climates, but everything we do now is 75 degrees of comfort. The car, the house, work, shopping, everywhere we go, we have one constant temperature. And what happens is the human body loses its ability for adaptation and therefore we compromise the immune system.

This is all theory, but I happen to agree with this wholeheartedly. And if you look at, when you expose your body to cold, you are reawakening the ability for adaptation. And what that does is that awakens the immune system as well. It changes your immune system and it basically turbocharges it, it strengthens it.

So that's another factor that I think was a key part of my recovery and reversal of the disease. The other thing was fasting. And when you fast, when you have no food in your system for a period of 16 hours, you are basically what's happened is ketosis sets in at that point. And after 16 hours is when the cells of your body will start to heal and rebuild.

And, just a quick summary of what happens here. When you eat food, your body produces insulin and that insulin changes the, the sugar, the glucose into energy. And what's not used is stored in your fat cells. And that's a reserve. And the human body was designed to go for days at a time without food.

The problem is we eat three big meals a day. Now, not because we're hungry, but because we're conditioned to. And what happens is we never tap into those reserves and we just keep building and building more reserves, and we get high levels of sugar. We get high levels of everything else that's not good.

And this becomes the seeded for, diabetes, obesity you name it. So you know, here with all this water and also I'm, doing the Okinawa thing and I start unknowingly intermittently fasting every day for at least, 12, 16 hours. And then I started fasting one day a week, and I had no idea what it was doing, but I had guessed right on everything.

I continue this, I go 16 hours every day without food. So I think those four things, diet vitamin D what is it? Exposure to cold and also the fasting. I think those things are what basically, the, those things together I think really had a huge effect on changing my immune system.

[00:42:52] Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. You're definitely talking about things that are super important for us, for all of us, whether or not we have MS or anything, just for general health and wellbeing, especially that getting that morning sunshine. So many people, like you said, we're not only used to just, we wanna be comfortable all the time, and so we're used to that constant temperature.

But also so many people are so afraid of sunshine. The minute there's any sunshine outside, people cover themselves completely up and limit that vitamin D exposure, right? Cuz they're so afraid of it. They've been conditioned to think that it's bad or dangerous. And obviously, We wanna do things with the, you don't wanna be out in the sun all day where you, where it's like constant and you're creating damage, especially if you live in a climate that's like really hot all the time, but there is so much benefit in getting adequate sunshine.  that morning sunlight is really beneficial. That afternoon sunlight, around sunset time. 

[00:43:51] Bob: Yeah. If you think that sunshine is basically the engine behind life and if you think that fossil fuel is stored sunlight, if you think that, basically when you when you eat plants, you're eating energy from the sun, right?

The sun provides everything about life, right? 

[00:44:09] Chazmith: r Yeah. I love sunshine. Do you still do meditation? 

[00:44:14] Bob: I don't now. Not so much, no. Because, they're basically, and I must admit a certain sense of complacency after 23 years of being asymptomatic.

[00:44:25] Chazmith: Yeah. And what would you say what was your life like before this?

Because right now, so you're not doing the meditation, but you did that for a period of time where it sounds like you were really supporting creating new neural pathways and changes in your, at a cellular level. And, probably calming your mind. But, you said you have these major key players, diet, sunshine, cold and fasting and then you're doing your exercise.

But what was life like before all this ever started? Were you exercising before this started? Did you, do you feel like your mindset is really different now than before all this ever started? 

[00:45:01] Bob: Yeah. I was always in good shape. I always loved cycling and, I did yoga. Every day for a little bit, but not like I do now.

Now I do a whole regimen. I actually put my whole exercise regimen on YouTube. It takes about 30 minutes. If you just just, Google get on YouTube Cafaro regimen and you can watch what I do every morning, and it's a combination of, the yoga, the deep breathing. I think deep breathing makes a huge difference.

The weights the upper body. I do handstand chin-ups, and here I'm at 63 years old and I'm probably in better physical condition than I was at 20 now. 

[00:45:41] Chazmith: That's so awesome. You've got younger. What about mindset? Has that, is that vastly different now from before it all started? 

[00:45:50] Bob: I think the whole thing, the whole experience really changed my mindset and it gave me a confidence.

It instilled this belief that I'm capable of anything I put my mind to. Because you know what the neurologist said, you did the impossible. And you know that, that's very powerful for him to say that. So yeah, I do believe it in that sense. Unfortunately, I'm mortal.I'm gonna die at some point, but hopefully I'm, I'm confident I'll be one of the centenarians. 

[00:46:22] Chazmith: Nice. And you mentioned you had children, so did you notice any shift in your relationships through this experience? 

[00:46:27] Bob: Yeah, there was the, whoa, there was anyway, so I went through a pretty contentious divorce when I get sick and they say that an illness can make a marriage stronger, it can rip it apart, in my case it did rip it apart and it cost me pretty heavily with, collateral damage with my relationship with my daughter.  My son, I have a good relationship with now after years and years of trying to rebuild that. So I'm hoping one day I could have a good relationship with my daughter as well.

[00:47:04] Chazmith: Yeah, it sounds like you're on the right path for that. 

[00:47:07] Bob:  I hope so. 

[00:47:07] Chazmith: nd then what about, okay, so what would you, what would you say to anyone? Say there's somebody out there and they find this episode because they have MS. And they're listening to this, but they've already been told. Perhaps even by a doctor, cuz sadly, sometimes we get doctors that tell us that, that tell us things that really get in our head and become our story.

So say they've already been told that their MS is too far along and that they don't have any hope, there's no chance of repair if they're like stuck in that story of mine is too bad, my lesions are too big. And they're like at that hopeless state. What advice would you give them? 

[00:47:46] Bob: Again, I think it's important to understand that I'm not a doctor.

I have no medical background. I have. I have no medical training. I have no background in science, biology, pharmacology fitness, nutrition, nothing. But, MS affects everybody differently. And Dr. Terry Wallace thinks I was fortunate that I didn't have eight years of this in my system.

I had eight months before I aggressively started making every possible change to my lifestyle, my diet, everything. So she thinks that was a big advantage for me. But, a healthy lifestyle will benefit everyone regardless of their state of health. And, I'm gonna look at it this way, that the drugs that we have for MS, there's no cure for the drug, for the disease.

And all the drugs can do now is slow the progression down. So I would say that, you have nothing to lose by, trying everything you can, as far as, leave no stone unturned as far as, diet, exercise, hydration, mindset, meditation, these things. All, the culmination of all those things will yield benefits to everyone.

[00:49:04] Chazmith: Yeah, I agree. You have nothing to lose. If you've already been told by a doctor that it's all downhill from here, then why not do everything you can to take your power back and see what is possible. 

[00:49:13] Bob: That's, I was told exactly that and I was like, no, and God gave you a middle finger, it’s time to use it. 

[00:49:20] Chazmith: yeah. I like that. This is not necessarily MS related or healing related, but it can be. But if you only had one, if you were told that you could only share one message with the whole wide world for the rest of your life, what message would you want to share?

[00:49:36] Bob: My message would be to cancel your membership in our toxic society as far as diet. It would be like I would say as far as, all we have say GMOs, genetically modified organisMS in our food pesticides, all these things, I would say vote with your wallet, cancel your membership, show that you know that there's a need for a healthy lifestyle.

And it's funny because even the big box stores like Costco now, they've got this amazing assortment of organic food now. Because people want it. Yeah. And that's a sign that people are getting smarter. They're voting with their wallets. 

[00:50:14] Chazmith: Yep. Yep. I love that. Thank you. Yeah. Do you have any other insights or just thoughts or advice that you would wanna share based on your own personal experience for anyone out there listening, whether, whatever they're going through?

[00:50:27] Bob: I believe that we're all capable of being one of those people who accomplished the impossible. And it's funny that to have listened to Nando Parrado’s speech, he said that he is no extraordinary human being by any means. He said he just refused to die, and he never thought that he had the capability to do anything like what he did.

And I think that, we're all capable of doing amazing things if we put our minds to it. 

[00:50:59] Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. The whole time you were telling the story about him, I just, all I could sit there and think was, wow, he had the will to live. Yeah. That was it. He made a decision and he really had the will to live.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes we need that. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and how people can find your book and also connect with you? Sure. 

[00:51:17] Bob: I I wrote the book and I'm pretty proud of it. Never thought I'd write a book, but I never had anything like this to write about.

My website, bobcafaro.com, and you can order a signed print copy directly from me and I ship it to you, or you could download the book on Amazon Kindle. And that's all right on the right on the website, on the homepage. And also I did a TED Talk, and that's on the homepage of my website as well.

That's probably where you found me. Am I right, Chaz?

[00:51:48] Chazmith: Yah actually, I think I found you on YouTube originally. 

[00:51:51] Bob: Okay. And also, I've helped people in one-on-one consultations, personally and in video. And I've had a lot of success with helping people as far as have nowhere else to turn.

And it's not just people with MS, it's people with other illnesses as well that, mess western medicine and doctors are, really unable to help them. And, that's that's something, it's time to help yourself, and it's funny that Robert Sergott the neuro ophthalmologist that Wills eye Hospital said that, he said, we're very limited with what we can do for people with MS.

And I, I have a saying of my own, it says, doctors in medicine are limited, but you have no limits. 

That's a good one. And if you think of that, that like the human spirit has no limits. Like you are capable of anything. 

[00:52:42] Chazmith: I love that so much. That's beautiful.  you are on YouTube, are you on any other social media?

[00:52:48] Bob: Yeah, I've taken a break from it because it was taking up about three hours every day, doing videos, uhhuh, editing doing newsletters, doing answering emails, answering comments. It was really taking up about three hours a day and, this isn't my profession.

I don't have a team to help me here. And it was really cutting into my cello playing and my piano playing as well. I like to practice the cello. I like to practice the piano for an hour a day and, all these things were falling by the wayside with social media. I will get back to it though.

Okay. I need to get a balance where I can do. Social media, but not have it take over my life, 

[00:53:24] Chazmith: yeah, I will. When you find that balance, you let me know. Yeah. 

[00:53:28] Bob: And also I should tell people that I had covid, I got hit with it in January and I was completely recovered in two and a half days.

And on day four I biked 10 miles. I worked with weights again, did my yoga, everything.

[00:53:46] Chazmith:  Wow. You know that because you just got your, you have yourself like in a really good place. 

[00:53:48] Bob: pya my immune system. And also I do take vitamin D three because my wife runs a study for hospital workers and she works for a functional medicine doc now, and it's she loves it, okay. That would, that's the only thing I take Vitamin D three, I don't take any medication. 

[00:54:07] Chazmith: Yeah. It's a good supplement. Especially in areas where you're not getting ample sunshine. 

[00:54:12] Bob: Yeah. Throughout the, all the seasons of the year. And I think that makes a big difference when you get hit with Covid ,and it's not if,  it's when, you get hit with covid because I, I believe we will all get it. 

[00:54:24] Chazmith: Yeah. Makes sense. Now. Okay, last question and then I'll let you go. But if somebody out here is listening and they're like, where do I start? Where would you just, out of all the things we've talked about, where would you say is like maybe the first place you'd encourage somebody to start or maybe the first place you'd tell them to use as a resource? 

[00:54:43] Bob: The first thing I would do, I, my book is helpful cuz I detail everything I did with my diet and a lot of trial and errors. You can learn from my mistakes, not your own. Okay. And I would say the first thing is to basically reevaluate your entire diet and hydration. I would cut out anything that the human body was not meant to ingest and, go to basically a hunter gatherer. 

[00:55:15] Chazmith: All right. And also, of course, reading your book. Yeah. And I'll put the links in the show notes for people to have easy access to check that out. 

[00:55:25] Bob: Yeah. And if anybody wants to contact me, they welcome to do it through the website or directly.

It's bobcafaro@gmail.com.

[00:55:38] Chazmith: Awesome. Thank you so much, Bob. I really appreciate you connecting with me today and sharing your story with everyone who's gonna be listening to it. And hopefully we can send this continued message of inspiration and empowerment and the idea that healing is possible.

[00:55:53] Bob: Great. Chaz, thank you so much for reaching out and for the invitation, and I can't tell you how appreciative I am and I wish everybody good health.

[00:56:02] Chazmith: Thank you. All right, y'all, there it is. How amazing is Bob's story? Am I right? You guys, our bodies are so amazing, and every day I am more and more inspired by different stories of what is possible from many perspectives.

Bob's story is a miracle, right? But for those of us who understand the intelligence of our bodies, we know that we are capable of miracles every single day. And honestly, I believe our body is just one big, giant miracle in and of itself if you really think about it. I really hope that you guys enjoyed this episode, and I hope you will share it with a friend and on your social media, because who doesn't wanna hear a story like this?

So let's spread the word and let more people out in the world know what's possible. Also, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and a quick review on Apple Podcast if you enjoy these episodes. And as always, there is a link in the bottom of the show notes to the virtual tip jar. If you wanna support future episodes now, go and play.

Have so much fun. And until next time, make this week so great.