Angie Gensler is a mother and personal trainer who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004. In this episode, Mathew Embry speaks with Angie about her diagnosis and why she ultimately chose not to pursue drug treatments. Instead, she focused on lifestyle changes including diet, exercise, and daily discipline. Along the way she faced several major challenges including a serious car accident, a hysterectomy, and the effects of menopause, all while continuing to pursue optimal health and eventually stepping onto the competitive bodybuilding stage in her 50s. Her story is an inspiration to anyone navigating a difficult diagnosis.
It was December 23rd, 2004. Angie Gensler's children were four and six years old. For weeks she had been struggling with numbness, crushing fatigue, and visual disturbances — symptoms she half-recognized, because her older sister had already been living with MS for five years. When her phone rang, it was her doctor with the MRI results: "Your scan lit up like a Christmas tree. You have multiple sclerosis."
Looking back, the diagnosis had likely been coming for decades. In her 20s, Gensler had been hospitalized for two weeks with neurological symptoms that were misdiagnosed as Lyme disease. On hot days, her legs would give out. She'd drop things without warning. "That would come on and off through the years," she said. The 2004 diagnosis brought both dread and a strange relief — finally, a name for what her body had been doing.
Her neurologist presented three drug options, complete with glossy brochures, branded pens, and a nurse ready to walk her through her choices. Gensler kept putting off the call. Twenty-two years later, she never made it.
Her decision was shaped almost entirely by watching her sister. "I would see the bottles of pills she had to take to counteract the side effects of the medication," she said. Her sister cycled between injections, recovery weeks, and the inevitable crash before the next dose. After her first relapse, Gensler recovered at what she felt was close to full function. "I'd rather take my chances on functioning at 98% than go through this cycle of taking a pill, then an injection, then all these other medications — when there was no true cure."
Her family doctor gave her a photocopy of an anti-inflammatory diet that she still has tucked away in storage. When she eventually compared it to the Best Bet Diet, they were nearly identical. Cutting artificial sweeteners cleared her mental fog. Reducing gluten reduced her fatigue. She had found something that worked — but she hadn't yet found the discipline to stay on it.
For fourteen years, Gensler's approach was inconsistent. When she was disciplined, she felt well. When she strayed, she paid for it with relapses and flare-ups. Then two things happened in quick succession that changed her trajectory permanently.
Her father died of Alzheimer's after a long, stressful caregiving stretch. Months later, she was rear-ended at highway speed. Her head hit the steering wheel. She lost consciousness briefly, and at 45, she found herself in an ambulance for the first time. The recovery took nearly a year and a half — vestibular therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy. Her neurologist used the hospitalization as an opening to push a new drug. "I'm not putting anything in my body while my brain is swollen," Gensler told her. The MRI showed no new MS lesions. "If I was on medication and you gave me these results, you'd say the medication is working." Her neurologist closed her file and told her she was no longer welcome in the office.
Bedridden, unable to watch TV, she eventually caught a post from Mathew Embry online. She watched the film Living Proof. "I realized at that very moment that I lacked the knowledge, lacked the support, and lacked the true discipline that I deserved." She reached out to David Lyons — another person featured in the film — and the transformation began.
Gensler joined the MS Fitness Challenge community and for the first six months simply observed — watching others post workouts and nutrition wins, thinking, "I want to be them one day." She ditched the overheated, overworked approach that had been flaring her nervous system and replaced it with structured weight training adapted for MS.
During COVID, she built a gym in her attic, got certified as a personal trainer, and added a second credential as an MS Fitness Specialist. She became a coach with Optimal Body and MS Fitness Challenge, and began training MS patients across North America.
"It's living proof of what discipline and training and feeding your body can do," she said. "Not just nutrition, but what you listen to, what you read, who you spend time with. All those things are either going to lift you or they're going to keep you down."
In November 2023, at 51, Gensler competed in her first NPC Masters 50+ figure competition — and won. In July 2024, she competed at nationals and placed fourth. Then the weight of the prep, back-to-back travel, and dehydration caught up with her. She lost the use of her left leg and ended up hospitalized — going from the competition stage to a walker and wheelchair within weeks.
She traced the collapse to a combination of factors she hadn't fully accounted for: a hysterectomy at 49 for aggressive pre-cancerous cells, followed by menopause hitting hard in the post-show crash. "Dehydration, post-show nervous system dysregulation, plus menopause — it was the perfect storm." When bloodwork came back showing completely flatlined hormone levels, she began menopause hormone replacement therapy. Within months, she was training again.
"MS affects 80 to 90% more women than men and we all go through menopause," she said. "The lack of knowledge and support is horrible." She's now cleared for competition in June and July of this year, working to re-qualify for the credential she lost during her recovery year. Her goal: earn her ISBF Pro card.
Her advice is immediate and specific. Go to MSHOPE.com. Go to MSFitnessChallenge.org. Then pause before doing anything else — and look backward.
"Take a second, digest it, but then look back. What were you eating? What are your stress levels? Did you have a major illness before this? If you look at it as your body saying what you've been doing is no longer serving you, then you go — okay, I can change this, or this, or this." She recommends living through at least one full cycle of seasons before making irreversible treatment decisions, noting that some people are most affected in summer heat, others in winter. Give the lifestyle changes enough time to actually compound.
"Pivot toward the people who are showing you the outcomes you want," she said. "Don't focus on the negative people. Focus on the people having positive outcomes — because that's where your energy is going to go, and that's where your choices are going to go."
Her daughters — the four-year-old and six-year-old from that Christmas Eve phone call — are grown women now. They were in the audience for her first competition, screaming her name. "You taught me to never give up," they told her. She's now building a dream home near the water with her husband — a life she couldn't have imagined when she was quietly contracting her future out of fear.
"What you focus on is where you will go."
