How He Reversed MS & Beat a Stroke | Montel Williams

It was a pleasure to sit down with Montel Williams, someone many of you will remember well from from his years on television, but whose health journey is what makes this conversation so compelling. We talk about his experience living with multiple sclerosis, symptoms that likely began decades before his diagnosis, and his recovery after a hemorrhagic stroke. It’s a different kind of New Frontiers conversation, more personal than usual, but still very much grounded in the physiology and clinical questions we care about.

What stood out to me most is how closely Montel has paid attention to his own health over time. He’s approaching 70, living with MS, and still training at a level that would be impressive for someone much younger. We also talk about how he’s incorporated mitoquinone, or MitoQ, into his protocol, something I’ve been exploring clinically as well. And if you think this molecule is the same as the CoQ10, I strongly encourage you to take a closer look and compare the two side by side. There’s a lot here to think about. ~DrKF

Montel Williams joins Dr. Kara Fitzgerald to share his decades-long journey with multiple sclerosis (MS), offering insight into the progression from early neurological symptoms to diagnosis. In this episode, created in partnership with MitoQ, the conversation explores MS through a functional medicine lens, focusing on neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction as key drivers of fatigue, cognitive changes, and disease progression.

Clinicians will learn how to recognize early MS patterns, differentiate emotional lability from depression, and address cognitive symptoms through mitochondrial and anti-inflammatory strategies. The episode also highlights the clinical application of mitoquinone (MitoQ) within a broader, mechanism-based approach, offering practical insights for managing MS and other neuroinflammatory conditions in clinical practice.

In this episode of New Frontiers, learn about:

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Hi everybody, welcome to New Frontiers in Functional Medicine where we are interviewing the best minds in functional medicine. And today, of course, is no exception, but I will tell you it’s an interesting mind that I’ve got with me on the podcast. I am joined by Montel Williams. Many of us grew up with him, watching him on TV. He’s an Emmy award winning television host, bestselling author, longtime advocate for health and wellness. He was diagnosed with MS in 1999. He had a hemorrhagic stroke in 2018. He believes MS was probably initiated in 1980 and we talk about his extraordinary resiliency.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: He’s a remarkable human being by all measures, but one of the molecules that he has embraced recently on his journey as he hits 70—and looks and acts like he’s about 50, if that—is mitoquinone. I’m a huge fan of mitoquinone, better known as MitoQ, and so I just invite you to take a listen to this conversation with Montel. I think that you’ll find it interesting and really something kind of different for New Frontiers.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Montel, it’s just really an honor to get to speak to you today. You’ve inspired many, many, many people over the years with this extraordinary journey that you’ve been on. Everybody knows your face from television and so forth, but you were diagnosed with MS 27 years ago in 1999, and as you just told me off air, it should have been 47 years ago. So you were symptomatic many years before that, and yet here you are—strong, agile, vibrant, incredibly active, and an inspiration. Talk to me about your story.

Montel Williams: Well, to back up a little bit, I was at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, preparing to graduate, class of 1980. And I know as a doctor, you’ll understand what I’m about to say. Before we were commissioned, we had this whole series of pre-commissioning immunizations and inoculations where they run you through this line. Back then at the Academy, my class was the last group of people in the military to receive the immunizations through the gun. If you remember, they used to line us up and put a gun on each side of you and you walked in line and you could get three, four, five different things at the same time.

Montel Williams: When I went through, it just happened to be one of those mornings that I was on the run for a lot of stuff I had to do later on in the day, and everybody had to go to sick bay to get the shot so I thought, I’ve got to get there first. So I got up at 5:30 in the morning, did my workout really early, ran down to sick bay and I was the eighth person in line. Well, we found out later that the first hundred people in line got an overdose and my overdose was probably about 10 times what it should have been. That’s when they used to combine—It was a series of four different immunizations that they gave me at the same time, which literally within an hour put me on the floor and I went almost blind in my left eye. I was taken to the hospital because here I am, this strapping Naval Academy graduate—I was weighing probably 220 at the time—I was a bodybuilder, weightlifter, a ‘workout-aholic’, and literally it knocked me down.

Montel Williams: I lost my vision. My vision went from 20/20 in both eyes to 20/40 in one and 20/600 in the other, to the point that I had a huge scotoma in my left eye. They listed off a whole list of other things, a pupillary defect and all these different things that were going on and nobody could figure it out. They chased me around hospital after hospital after hospital trying to get me ready to be commissioned. As a matter of fact, I’m one of the first people to graduate from the Naval Academy and receive their diploma on graduation day and not be commissioned on the same day because I had no vision in my left eye. And the military requires that you at least have correctable vision. My vision was not correctable so I was about to be processed out.

Montel Williams: Now, I’m not trying to say that the shot caused the MS. But what the shot did was cause such an overload inflammatory response in my body that it probably triggered the first episode or bout of MS in me. And then over the course of six months I went from Johns Hopkins to the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, to Walter Reed, Bethesda, and the University of Maryland Hospital. Everybody looked at me and no one could figure out what was going on.

Montel Williams: And I had other symptoms, not only the blindness, but I had symptoms like some real patchy neuropathic effects. My feet, my shins, my knees, my side, my face. I had trigeminal neuralgia so bad that it used to make me almost have to squint in my right eye. And six months later the vision issue subsided, my vision came back to 20/60, which then allowed me to be commissioned—which is something called MPQ, not physically qualified. I was commissioned, but instead of being able to go back to the Marine Corps they made me go into the Navy. So I went ahead and served in the Navy.

Montel Williams: Now, supposedly being not physically qualified meant that I shouldn’t have been able to do sea duty, but that was a bunch of crap because I became a special duty intelligence officer. I studied Chinese at the Naval Academy, so they sent me to the Defense Language Institute to study Russian and I became a Russian linguist. Because of that, it gave me a very unique skill so I ended up spending more time at sea than most of my contemporaries and peers. I ended up having over 300 days underwater, 600 days on the water on various platforms, from aircraft carriers to submarines.

Montel Williams: And throughout my entire career, every three months or four months I would go to the doctor complaining about something weird. Like the strength just dropped out of my left arm, or I started throwing my left hip around because I was having some left hip flexor issues. They couldn’t figure it out and all the answers were always: if you stop putting all that weight on your back—Because I was a very, very dedicated powerlifter. I was squatting close to 650 pounds, I was deadlifting almost 650 pounds, bench pressing over 400 pounds. So most doctors would look at me and go, “Dude, if you stop messing around with all those weights, I bet you’ll find some relief.” And of course, I chased that for years, trying to figure out if I could lower my weight, raise my weight, finding out what I needed to do, never really getting the answer.

Montel Williams: I served out my entire career with no answers and it wasn’t until I got out and started some other programs, and years into my talk show, that I went through what I think would now be my second major episode or bout of MS. And when I went to the doctor the symptoms were so easily and readily seen that this doctor said, “Dude, this is really weird, but I really think you have MS.” And I was like, “I don’t have MS. You must be crazy. Get out of here dude.” So I saw some specialists at Harvard and came back with the fact that, yeah…

Montel Williams: Back then, if you remember, MS was never characterized as a disease of people of color, though it’s been all over the planet for that same amount of time, no ifs, ands or buts. So most doctors completely checked that box off and said, “No, he can’t have it because he’s Black.” However, my mother was biracial, her mother being from then Scotland, so if they had dug a little deeper, they would have been able to figure out that maybe he does because if you look at his mother’s lineage, this might be where it came from.

Montel Williams: And so, when I was finally truly diagnosed, which was almost 20 years later—I graduated in 1980 and I didn’t get a real diagnosis until 1999—it literally threw me for a loop. And again, even if you go back to 1999 or 2000, there wasn’t a lot of literature, and remember, our internet wasn’t as robust. You couldn’t look things up and Google things as easily. I had to go to the library and study up on this disease and one thing that really, really impacted me more than anything— I started my talk show in ’91, so I had been on the air at that point for nine years. And when I finally realized that this was what it was and I went public with it, I had people reaching out to me from all over the world.

Montel Williams: I had one particular nurse reach out to me who had been surviving MS and literally doing a good job managing it who reached out to me and said, “Listen, my friend, the one thing that you need to understand is that inflammation is your nemesis. Anything you can do to reduce inflammation in your life, you should attempt to do. And I’m going to tell you, I think carrying all those weights around… I mean look at you. I know you’re one of those big, Neanderthal-type of weightlifters and you ought to probably try to knock a little bit of that off. When you’re doing regular exercise, it’s probably not as inflammatory, but when you go after those big numbers, you’re probably going to induce an inflammatory response in your body. And if you can, you should start looking at a diet that helps you regulate inflammation in your body.”

Montel Williams: And I think those were some of the best words that were ever said to me. She also said, “Go to the library and look this up. Study this. Understand it. Doctors don’t know as much as they claim they know. If doctors were God, none of us would be sick. So the truth of the matter is, you need to know as much about this illness as you think your doctor might know so that you can explain it to them and then they can dig into their wealth of knowledge to help figure out what you’re doing.” And I literally took myself to the library and went all in trying to get a master’s degree in MS on my own.

Montel Williams: And that’s what I think helped me the most in those first five years of the real diagnosis. And at that point in time I was starting to have recurring, relapsing episodes where I would have a vision problem for two or three days and then it would go away. When I say vision problem, my vision in my left eye would go back to about 20/300 where I couldn’t see anything. I’d have a huge scotoma, and then it would come back down. And then I’d have pain in my face that was excruciating, pain in my feet that was excruciating. I realized right then I needed to change my diet, I changed my exercise, I dropped 20 pounds immediately, and I literally went almost 100% vegan. I know you have a lot of people who listen to this and a lot of MS patients listening in and I’m not suggesting that anybody go vegan. Please do not say that Montel Williams said if you go vegan it’s going to change everything. It’s not.

Montel Williams: Paying attention to the foods that cause inflammatory responses in your body genetically is what you need to pay attention to. I went to the extreme, but I think that extreme also helped put a punch right in MS’s face. I basically went for about five years where I liquefied every single thing I ate. If you go back in time and take a look, you’ll find that I was probably the sole person responsible for the high-speed blender that’s available in stores anywhere near you. Because I went on QVC and all over the place selling a product where I could teach people how to make green fruit smoothies. I was one of the first people on the planet to start mixing together fruits and vegetables in a smoothie with coconut water to consume. And I’m telling you, I was drinking two, three gallons of that every day.

Montel Williams: I went off all red meat completely for about five months. I didn’t consume any animal products at all, but then I started becoming what they call a pescatarian. I started eating some fish. But the majority of what I consumed, I mean, all day long, I walked around with thermoses in a thermos bag—five, six different thermoses of different flavors of different things that I would eat, and that was my meal for the entire day. And I was consuming enough calories, but I realized that fruits and vegetables are nature’s natural anti-inflammatories and if I could consume as much of that as possible, I could keep that inflammation level down. And it seemed to work for me. My symptoms started to abate.

Montel Williams: I did go on a Western medication, but at the same time I sought out Eastern medicine and other alternative treatments and modalities that literally have helped. I am absolutely 100% positive they’ve helped. I work on things called neuromodulation and other approaches. I went into supplementation and started supplementing with vitamins and things that I thought could help reduce inflammation. I was completely blown away—and not to jump ahead—but about five months ago, I was doing a show called The Balancing Act, and some people came on the show with a product called MitoQ. And I was like, yeah, what is this? Let me take a look at this thing. And I looked at it, flipped it over, looked at the back, and I was like, hmm… interesting. Let me see what this thing does.

Montel Williams: And I had taken CoQ10 and other things before, never really getting much of an impact out of it. I couldn’t tell whether it was good or not because it didn’t seem to register. The first two weeks of MitoQ, I will tell you—I literally had to pinch myself and question whether or not—Am I playing this hypochondria thing where I think I’m feeling something, but I’m not. This is really weird. And then by week four, I started realizing—Because I missed a couple when I was traveling and forgot to take it—and I was like, no, come on, this can’t be. So when I went back on it again, immediately within four or five days I got the same response that I had gotten in the first 17 days. I felt nothing for the first 14 days, but then from about day 15, 16, 17, 18, my energy levels started picking up. I started noticing my recovery started picking up.

Montel Williams: And I didn’t mean to jump ahead in the interview, but I was just trying to say that along the way for the last 47 years, I’ve been seeking things, or people make claims and I test them out, and if they don’t work, it’s out the door. I throw them away. This is the only product like this that I’ve come across where for me—and I may be an N-of-one, but I don’t think so. I’ve read reviews, I’ve read other patients’ input and I know I’m not the only one. First of all, I’m going to be 70 years old this year and my workouts right now are as intense as any 55-year-old workout I’ve done in my life. Any 40-year-old workout I’ve done.

Montel Williams: As a matter of fact, I shocked myself about a week ago because for about the last month I’ve gone back and forth working out. I use heavy weights or I try to do some aerobics every day. And I was doing aerobics at the beginning of my workout and then going to weights and I realized that, it’s probably not that right. I should do the aerobics at the end of the workout, get the weights out of the way first. I shifted over and I was shocked at how quickly I recovered from that. I was also shocked at the amount of weight that I could do—not weight in numbers, but how many reps and sets I was doing.

Montel Williams: And I’ve noticed now, in the last two weeks, that my recovery is insane for a man my age. And I know this because there are guys at my gym who try to see if they can keep up and do what I do and I’m doing three sets of 90-rep kettlebells. I’ll do five or six different kettlebell exercises in a row to get to ninety, put the weight down then I get right down and do my abs and get right back up and do another set. The first week I did only one set and I did it for seven days and I was like, I could probably increase this. And I increased it. Within three days I didn’t blink and I was doing three sets, and I’m saying 3 sets of 90 repetitions in a row. And I haven’t done this ten years.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And this was after MitoQ?

Montel Williams: Oh no question, so it’s something that I would recommend to anybody. But going back to my journey with MS, like I said, I’ve been on Western medication, I’ve been on Eastern medication, I’ve been on some alternative medications, I’ve supplemented with some biologics and other things, and I know my baseline. I’ve improved my baseline. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So I get that you know your baseline, and I get that you’ve worked incredibly hard since you opened the story from your experience in 1980 and I’m sure if we go back further, it’s an impressive story. So you had this profound inflammatory assault with the vaccine exposure, and then this eventually presented with components of MS, and eventually full-blown MS. And you learned that it was a profound inflammatory condition. You began to really change your life toward adopting as complete an anti-inflammatory lifestyle as possible. And then throughout your journey, you’ve continued to layer things in. This is an ongoing process. You didn’t simply put MS down and walk away. You’re actively working with interventions that can help lift some of the fallout of it.

Montel Williams: No, no question.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: But let me just say before you jump in—you’re kicking ass, excuse my language. On one hand, you’re battling the original toxin exposure with the overdose of the vaccines, and then you’ve got the genetic predisposition to the MS presentation. You’ve really figured some things out, and I have no doubt in my mind that you know your baseline exquisitely well so that when you do start your N-of-one study which you did with MitoQ—and by the way, folks, we will link to the many research papers on MitoQ that fit in with Montel’s story, and we do have, not just case reports, but ongoing current research in MS and just some very cool stuff there. But you’re able to tell. You’re able to get in there and notice the difference, and you’re measuring your—

Montel Williams: (20:48) I truly can. Am I a little obsessive about it? I am, in the sense that I literally pay attention to everything. I pay attention to how much water I drink each day. I pay attention to how much sleep I get. I pay attention to how many times I wake up at night. I pay attention to input/output and always trying to make sure– One of the things I have not been able to tackle—and a lot of my other MS warriors out there will know what I’m talking about—is that I have an extreme heat aversion. Now that may sound crazy from a guy who lives in Miami, but starting from now until probably December, I don’t go outside that much. I do go outside to try to get some vitamin D from the sun every day, but I’m not out once that temperature hits 79, 80. And then when it starts getting to 85, 89, I’m like Superman with kryptonite. It just starts to weigh my body down. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts.

Montel Williams: And when I’m weighed down, then I try to go to the gym as a pick-me-up, and most of the time it is. However it makes things tough. And there are days—I don’t want to give the impression that I’m kicking MS’s ass completely, because I’m not. I have days where the pain in my feet can be overwhelming. I have days with pain in my face. However, no matter how I feel, I always know there’s something I can do in my brain that helps me feel better. So if I put the work in, it pays back. It gives me the dividend I need. And that’s what I suggest to anybody listening. Can MitoQ help? I firmly believe it can, without any hesitation.

Montel Williams: I can say that for me, but I don’t know if it will be the same for everyone, but put the effort in. That’s what people need to do. If you haven’t tried it, try it. If you haven’t tried exercising every day—I’ve talked to several celebrities who have MS who you may know of, like Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, and others. I’ve suggested to all of them that they go out and get this product, but also to know the journey they’re on. The thing that is so insidious with this disease is that it’s different for every single person. We know that there are well over a million and a half people diagnosed in the United States alone, contrary to what some other published documents claim.

Montel Williams: I did a study myself through Gallup and through Zogby Analytics, paid for it, and they came back 30 years ago saying that the numbers were well over a million and a half when the National MS Society was still putting out 300,000. And every single one of us who has this illness suffers differently. However, there are common things I believe that can make us all feel better, and one of them is, you know, extreme temperature aversions. For some people it’s extreme cold that really upsets them. For me, it’s extreme heat. I can live in the cold. And though I’m cold, it honestly makes me feel a little better because I can do anything I want. I feel like I’m Superman. I can run around all day long, I never overheat, I never seem to get too inflamed. But the heat, you know, I don’t get to go out and hang out at the beach with my wife. When she wants to go to the beach and get some sun, I can’t do it. I can’t even sit under the umbrella because it’s too hot and it’ll shut me down. But I can still work at having fun and work at having a full life.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: We can say for sure across MS that inflammation really drives it. Just as that nurse informed you many, many years ago that there’s a potent inflammatory component. And within that, there’s oxidative stress and damage and damage to the mitochondria. I think that mitoquinone, MitoQ, is able to support mitochondrial energetics profoundly. And in so doing, there’s research in MS, but beyond MS, in many human clinical trials, but also in animal studies, just demonstrating its ability to support energy synthesis, to lower inflammation, and commensurate increases in energy and so forth. So mechanistically to me, even as you are all presenting differently, there’s some underpinnings, there’s some underlying shared imbalances that are happening that it makes sense to me that you would have such a good response using MitoQ.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: But I also want to ask you—you’ve been open about depression and we know that the MS associated depression and perhaps all forms of depression across the spectrum, have this really profound inflammatory component as well. And this has also been something which dropping your inflammation, focusing on your exercise, you can speak to MitoQ if you have any experience there, but that has been a piece of your story.

Montel Williams: And you know, part of it could have been—Again, this is not an aspersion, but sometimes because we use this term depression, and that’s really an umbrella that we put over so many other things. When my doctors look at my imaging from MRIs, I have a large number of scars—because for people who don’t understand what MS is, multiple sclerosis means multiple scars, scarring in the brain and the spinal cord. I have both multiple and lateral sclerosis, so I have scarring in my spinal cord. A large number of my scars are in the pons area of the brain, which is in the back near the cerebellum, and we know that’s an area of the brain that attributes to something called emotional lability, or what some people call pseudobulbar affect. In me, I believe that early on, not that I was misdiagnosed with having depression, doctors failed to acknowledge the fact that I literally am a person who suffers from emotional lability.

Montel Williams: What happens is my highs and lows can be extreme in either way. And that also falls in line with some of the episodes and bouts that I was having. As my episodes kind of go up a little bit, meaning the inflammation in my body is going up and my body reacts with MS symptoms, you know, I could cry at the drop of a dime. I could get extremely angry at the drop of a dime. And I had to pay very close attention to this because that wasn’t me. That’s not the human being that Montell Williams has been his whole life. That’s not who I might have been. And all of sudden to start being angry if a dog ran in front of me too quick, or if somebody walked in front of me fast, it’s like, whoa, slow down. What do I have a right to have an attitude about that for? So I started to realize that that’s one of those symptoms of my MS that was never really defined the right way.

Montel Williams: I wore the badge of courage of being a depression survivor for 14 years and then started to realize that maybe this isn’t depression because I don’t sit around talking myself into an abyss. I just fire up. I get angry. I start crying and I get mad. That’s different. That’s not thoughts of suicide. That’s not thoughts of negativity about me. That’s just I can’t control how I respond. Once I realized that, it also made me focus more on reducing inflammation so I could reduce those outbursts. And the more and more I’ve done that, the more and more I’ve been able to—I’m a very passionate guy. That’s who I am. I was born that way.

Montel Williams: However, to have those outbursts and have those real bad, negative thoughts that would run for five or six minutes and go away, then another five minutes and go away—made me realize that I needed to again, try to help myself control that just to interact as a human being. And when I started working on that, that was maybe six or eight years ago before I had my stroke, I started to realize that I can kind of contain this a little bit. And again, the more and more I reduce my stress, the more and more I reduce that inflammation, those outbursts don’t come back.

Montel Williams: Now go back six weeks ago, seven weeks ago, I’ve had probably the most consistent seven weeks emotionally that I’ve had in 20 years and I changed nothing other than started using MitoQ. So, again, I’m that N-of-one guy. That’s what I try to do. I try to experiment and look at if nothing else has changed—I’m working out the same, I’m eating the same, I’m taking the same vitamins, taking the same supplements, I’m taking the same medication. The only thing I put in is this other little pill that’s called MitoQ, and now all of sudden, I don’t find myself looking at the TV and crying when the dog commercial comes on. I don’t find myself looking at the TV and crying when the cancer commercial comes on.

Montel Williams: Now, I may cry a little bit during this interview, but that’s because I have to reach back and think about things of my past. However, that’s different than how I’ve been. So yeah, I almost want to give MitoQ a little plug for that too.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Well, there is corroborating data in that, actually, in an MS cohort where they did see quality of life improved, they did see depression measures drop. And I know you’re talking about something a little bit different than depression. You’re talking about emotional lability presentation, but I think plenty of individuals with MS are just on that continuum of some sort of an emotional shift that’s driven by inflammation, oxidative stress, et cetera. So I think it’s pretty cool that there’s corroborating evidence in a benefit just with what you’re describing in the scientific literature.

Montel Williams: You know, I’m chomping at the because—You know Christina Applegate, right? Christina is very good friend of mine. We’re close and I try to reach out to her and I’ve not been able to get ahold of her. She just published a book and it’s been hard for her to catch a phone call, but I’m chomping at the bit to get her to understand that this could be something that could help her in her day. And I’ve been reaching out to friends of mine that I know just, and some of don’t even have MS, and said, I’m telling you, there’s something about this weird ass supplement that you need to figure out how to get it. I even just had a doctor’s visit, my annual physical, and I took it to my doctor and he was like, I’ve not seen this before, but this is very interesting. I said, yeah, it is interesting. You’ve got to recommend this to more people.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Well, let me say, because we’re talking to a bunch of physicians here and other care providers, that there’s a clearinghouse of the research that’s happening, both preclinical in animals, but also in humans, at mcrp.dev. It’s a mitochondrial clearinghouse for just a collection of all the MitoQ studies that are happening all over, actively recruiting to already been published. Anyone can go there and see what to me is one of the most impressive databases of solid research across the spectrum of cells to humans demonstrating what you’re describing, Montel.

Montel Williams: Yeah. I wish I had known about this a year and a half ago, because I spoke before the National Convention for Osteopathic Doctors, and this would have been something I would have brought up immediately to them. I work with doctors across the country and a lot of them work with veterans organizations. I work with doctors on different projects, I’m working on something right now for neuromodulation. I’m also working on a protocol that right now is one of the only cures for PTSD. It’s something called RTM (Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories Protocol). And that’s something, for doctors who are on right now listening, that you really need to go and look up the RTM protocol.

Montel Williams: For the first time we have quantifiably changed the outcomes of people who have gone through therapy for PTSD just by using this protocol alone. It has no medications, no drugs, no nothing. In five to ten hours, nine out of every ten people who go through this protocol, will remit 100% of their symptoms of PTSD. If you added MitoQ to that, I bet it might go up to 10 out of 10.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah. Well, we know there’s an association with PTSD and some of the same underlying inflammatory and mechanistic imbalances that MitoQ has been shown to benefit. So I agree with you, I do think it makes sense. And I want to just circle back and say, there’s other research in Parkinson’s and we see it in post-menopausal women, and in hypertension and so forth. And circling back to your comment about experiencing a stroke, which I would like to spend a little time talking about, there’s data on using MitoQ in stroke patients for improving outcome. You had a hemorrhagic stroke in 2018 and again, shared really publicly about that.

Montel Williams: It was a pretty profound one. My stroke was, I think, a bleed level category three and a half, almost four. I had a cerebellar hemorrhagic stroke and I was treated at New York Presbyterian Hospital and the doctor there told me that were it not for the grace of God and the fact that the blood missed my brain stem by a hundredth of an inch, you and I wouldn’t be talking today. But it did. I had stainage in the back of my brain that was clearly evident three years later. The stain was that big and I was in the hospital for almost 28 days, 29 days. I had also been working with a technology called portable neuromodulation and that system actually helped me stay on track and stay focused. I did the best I could to recover as best I could. I paid attention to my physical therapy, I paid attention to my cognitive therapy, and I worked my tail off.

Montel Williams: The first four years, I was probably around 91% recovered. Next four years, I’m 97, 98% recovered. Do I have some lingering symptoms right now? Yeah, a couple, but not as bad as it could have been. One of the things that a lot of MS patients and stroke patients will talk about is brain fog. I have literally been blessed with the fact that my brain fog is very, very, very limited and from a functioning standpoint, I do a lot of speaking, I do a lot of reading, I try to keep my brain as active as I can. But I have noted in the last, again, eight weeks—And it’s been eight weeks that I’ve been really consistently taking the MitoQ—And it’s one of those things where right now it’s even hard to put my finger on, but the rapidity of which I can call upon things from the files, that’s how I like to say it in my brain—You ask me a question and it comes to me in less than a hundredth of second. Maybe before I started doing MitoQ it was coming to me in a second, not a hundredth of a second.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s awesome. Well, I do want to say there’s some corroborating data out there, not to jump into the science again, but it’s interesting and our listeners would be excited to know that in fact, secondary measures of cognition, one of the tools we use to evaluate improvement, and again, in an MS population were significantly bumped up. So I think your experience has some data behind it and I think that’s awesome. I want to ask you, just long-term thriving. I would be curious to know your biological age if you’ve gotten that measured. Even with all of the assaults that you’ve experienced across the course of your life, and still having some experience, some symptoms both from the stroke and MS, but you’re just obviously kicking butt and you’re almost 70. Do you know your biological age?

Montel Williams: I haven’t taken that test, but I’ve gotta tell you something. For me, I swear to you, I look in the mirror and I look at myself, I train, I work out and I can’t put myself over 51. I just don’t even look at myself and think I’m over 51. As a matter of fact, I have a daughter who’s just turned… I told her, “Child, let me tell you right now, don’t you ever tell a person that again. You stop that and you start going backwards. You have reached your limit on birthdays. I’m sorry you’re gonna stay at that age or start getting younger, because the older you get, you make me look older. I’m not gonna make let that happen.”

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: You don’t though. That’s the crazy thing from when I was watching you on TV when I was younger. You don’t look older. Well, if you ever feel like knowing your biological age, let me know and I’ll send you a test kit. Because it’s gotta be—

Montel Williams: Sure, sure.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I believe you. I mean, I think 50 is a realistic assessment. And just as you opened our conversation up, that’s how you feel, or even younger. You’re outperforming your younger self.

Montel Williams: Right this minute, I most definitely am outperforming my 50 year old self. Though, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve maintained my health and my shape, and physicality, and I probably haven’t gone more than five days of my life not working out. I took yesterday off because it was a really busy day, and I’m kicking myself, because as soon as we get done, I’m going to the gym and I got to get a workout in tonight to recover and then I’ll keep working out. I’m one of those people, I don’t do that three days a week, four days a week. I work out until I can’t and then if I have to take a day off, I’ll take a day off and then I’ll work out until I can’t, and then I’ll take a day off.

Montel Williams: I look in the mirror and I know I’m still wearing the same pants that I wore when I graduated from the Naval Academy and I still wear the same size shorts that I wore. As a matter of fact, I wear a smaller shirt than my son wears. And I know what I look like when I’m in the gym. I can compete with anybody in there. I will tell you the truth, I do enhance the color of my goatee a little bit. I just do. I went to the gym about a week ago and I had not colored my goatee before I went. There was one guy that I’ve seen in the gym probably 30 times. He kept looking at me and said, you come down here every day. I said, yeah. He goes, wow, how old are you? And I said, how old do you think I am? And he said, I thought you were like 39, 40, 41. I said, dude, you’re a nice guy. I love you. Let me make sure I give you a gift. And he said, no, but how old are you? And I said, I’m about to turn 70, and he was like, what? So if that’s a measure, I don’t know.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s awesome. That’s a great story. That’s so much fun. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming and sharing your experience. There are a host of user reports in the MS population of using MitoQ and seeing really similar stuff, like a wheelchair-bound individual not going there. And this was many, many, many, many years ago. So there’s some pretty cool stuff and I do think the science bears it out and for that reason, I’m a huge fan. It is part of my personal stack and for most of my patients.

Montel Williams: You probably feel the same way that I do, Doc, and that is, for those people who have MS, look, I’m sitting here telling you that you take MitoQ, you’re going to jump out of your wheelchair tomorrow. That’s not what we’re trying to say. But what we are trying to say to you is that if you put this in your arsenal, you add this to your quiver of arrows, this is another one of those arrows in your quiver that’s going to pay back.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes.

Montel Williams: I can’t challenge a person to it, but I will say, I defy somebody telling me that if they use MitoQ for a couple of days, five days, 10 days in a row, you don’t feel a difference on day 10, I’m gonna challenge you and say, I guarantee, I think you would—this is the N-of-one talking—use it for 10 days, and then that’s what’s going to make you use it for the next 10 days. Then those 10 days are going to make you use it for the next 10 days. And then that might help you. If it only gives you power in this one finger to help move your wheelchair faster, I want to move my wheelchair faster.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes, that’s exactly right.

Montel Williams: So we should be doing everything and anything we can do to have a better day and a better outcome.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah. And I think that it’s fair what you’re saying and I say this to my patients. Actually I say it to my mom when she asks me what she should be doing. Write it on your calendar when you start and have some tools to track, like you were paying really careful attention to your lifting routine. I think it’s important that we have measures, and there’s lots of wearable devices that we can use these days and we can track our energy outcome and cognition and so forth. So I agree with you that it’s worth a shot and I think the data bear it out.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And the other thing that I want to say, circling back to their science, is that there are studies looking at regular people. Like, you came to this conversation already a superman. You started MitoQ with an incredibly high bar as a person. But for the “every man”, the rest of us out there, there are also really cool outcome data showing improvements in people who aren’t super active already and people who are more compromised with their illness, so I do think that it’s appropriate to try for a broad spectrum of folks.

Montel Williams: And I think I would also just like to add that I’ve been approached probably by 20 different companies for different products in the last 10 years and you don’t see me supporting any of that. This is one that I’m very proud to discuss with people and have brought it up with almost everybody I know. This is something that I think should be part of your daily regimen. I would say, had I not seen the results myself—I know what happens when I don’t take it. And it’s only been two days that I missed it, but in those two days, I was like, oh no. Oh no.

Montel Williams: I’m one of those people that if I have to take a shot or I have to take one of my other medications—I’ve even reached out to the manufacturers of one of the medications that I take. And they said they know for a fact I must be the most compliant patient that they’ve ever seen with this medication because over the course of 20 years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve only missed a shot twice. 20 years. When it comes to MitoQ, it’s become part of my—I get up in the morning as I’m headed to the bathroom, I grab my MitoQ, I’m popping the pills out of the pack, I go to do my thing in the bathroom, pop them in my mouth, walk back into the kitchen, grab a glass of water, drink that first. That’s before I had anything else.

Montel Williams: And then I normally sit and have a cup of tea. I also take one or two supplements. I won’t say what they are, because I don’t want people to think that I’m just trying to pitch you to go and get supplements. But I take another supplement and I sit on that for another half hour before I eat my first meal. I’m also an intermittent faster, so I go 14 to 15 hours between my last meal of the day and my first meal of the day, every day. But the MitoQ comes three to four hours before I take that first meal and that way I know that I’m digesting that by itself. And I’ve not missed this now for 21 days, so I’m going to stay on track, and you and I can check in again in a couple months because if I stay track, I don’t know. If this is doing what it’s for me now at this age, I’ll be doing this until I’m 80. No question.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: For sure. Yeah, we will stay in touch and I’ll get a biological age kit out to you. That would be really fun. I do want to point out that you’re taking it correctly. You do want to take it on the empty stomach and just like give it some exposure time without the other supplements, so that’s a really cool addition, an important point on this. I just want to thank you again, Montel, for joining me and sharing your story and your inspiration. Just such a cool journey.

Montel Williams: No, I thank you and I thank your listeners. I mean, you point out the fact that you have a lot of doctors who are tuning in and some of them being osteopaths or doctors who really acknowledge the fact that not everything in this world of Western medication is the answer to all. There are answers that we have not even discovered yet. And when you talk to your patients, I’m not saying to you to endorse a product, I’m saying to you, offer them an alternative. Offer them something that– Is it hope in a bottle? I don’t want to go that far, but I will go this far and say that it’s hopeful to think that something like this could help my daily life. And if you let your patients know that, this is something that if you you put the effort in, the effort will come out.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And we’ll keep track of you and tune in to see how you’re doing. To be continued.

Montel Williams: To be continued. Thanks you. You take care.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Montel Williams, I certainly did. Gosh, again, I just invite you to explore and dive in deeply to the research on mitoquinone. If you’re using CoQ10 and you think you’re using the same thing, I just strongly encourage you to do a side-by-side comparison. You won’t regret it. As a clinician treating mitochondropathies and other issues, you will not regret just educating yourself on this molecule.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Of course, on the show notes, we’ll have the full transcript, but we’ll also link to the website where there’s a clearinghouse of all the science happening in Mitoquinone at www.mcrp.dev/. Thanks again for listening. If you have any thoughts, certainly share them. I always want to hear what you’re considering, maybe how you’re using it in practice, et cetera. And also, please send it to somebody or leave us a review if you’re so inclined and we’ll see you soon on New Frontiers in Functional Medicine.

Montel Williams is an Emmy Award–winning television host, New York Times bestselling author, and leading voice in health and wellness. A U.S. Navy veteran, he has spent decades advocating for resilience, longevity, and proactive health strategies. After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1999, Montel adopted a disciplined, science-informed approach to managing his condition, centered on daily exercise, anti-inflammatory nutrition, and integrative care. In addition to his media and writing work, he is actively engaged in advancing innovative healthcare solutions, including neuromodulation and neurological-based therapies.

Montel Williams

Montel Williams shares his MS treatment story

Montel Williams Shares His Health Journey With Multiple Sclerosi

Montel’s PTSD project: Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories Protocol™

Mitoquinone Research Library

The Mitochondrial Collaborative Research Programme (MCRP)

MitoQ Research Page

Scientific Papers and Journal Articles Mentioned

MitoQ, MS and Traumatic Brain Injury

Effect of Exercise, MitoQ, and Their Combination on Inflammatory and Gene Expression in Women with Multiple Sclerosis

Mitoquinone Helps Combat the Neurological, Cognitive, and Molecular Consequences of Open Head Traumatic Brain Injury at Chronic Time Point

MitoQ, Cerebral Ischemia and Neuroinflammation

MitoQ alleviates hippocampal damage after cerebral ischemia: The potential role of SIRT6 in regulating mitochondrial dysfunction and neuroinflammation

MitoQ, Exercise & Inflammation

MitoQ supplementation augments acute exercise-induced increases in muscle PGC1α mRNA and improves training-induced increases in peak power independent of mitochondrial content and function in untrained middle-aged men

MitoQ Supplementation During Vigorous Training Improves Reactive Oxygen Species, Glutathione Peroxidase, and miRNAs Regulating Vascular Inflammation in Cyclists

MitoQ, Cardiovascular Function and Hypertension

Moderate Endurance Training and MitoQ Improve Cardiovascular Function, Oxidative Stress, and Inflammation in Hypertensive Individuals

Mitoquinone and Parkinson’s disease

Molecular Mechanisms of Dopaminergic Neuron Degeneration in Parkinson’s disease: A Comprehensive Review

Recently Completed Trials

MitoQ for Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

The Influence of Race and MitoQ Supplementation on Skin Blood Flow in the Cold

Active Research Currently Recruiting Participants

Probing the Role of Mitochondrial Oxidative Stress in Impaired Vascular Function Among Young Adults With Early Life Adversity (PROMISE)

The Influence of Mitochondrial-Derived Reactive Oxygen Species on Racial Disparities in Neurovascular Function (MAVHS)

MitoQ and Ischemic Conditioning To Assess Vascular Health Outcomes (MITO)

Podcast: Hidden Mitochondria Problems Are Accelerating Your Age & Draining Your Health with Dr. Siobhan Mitchell

Blog: Is Mitochondria-Targeting the Best New Strategy for Longevity?

Bio Age Self Assessment Quiz

Younger You book

Better Broths and Healing Tonics book