After 23 years of being on a biologic drug, Matt has been able to discontinue medications by following the Paddison Program for Rheumatoid Arthritis Personalised Coaching Program

We discuss in this interview:

• • Matt had been on Enbrel and Humira for 23 years to treat psoriatic arthritis, and previous attempts to stop the medication had always resulted in severe flares

• • Following the Paddison Program protocol for six months, Matt successfully discontinued Humira, and is now symptom-free.

• • His blood markers showed dramatic improvement

• • The success was built on three key pillars: dietary changes to improve gut health, consistent strength training, and gradually spacing out Humira doses.

• • Matt’s physical strength improved significantly

• • How he transformed his diet, focusing on diversity to improve gut health.

• • Approaching drug reduction in a systematic and patient way

• • Bowel health as a key indicator of progress, with resolution of chronic constipation being a crucial milestone

• • Family support and professional guidance were crucial elements in Matt’s success, along with his commitment to following the protocol exactly as prescribed

Clint – In today’s episode, you’re going to hear an incredible transformation. My guest is Matt, and his outcome is so awesome. I’m going to let Matt tell you where he’s at now compared to where he was. Go ahead. Matt.

Matt – Hey, Clint. Thanks for having me. 23 years of being on a biologic and six months of the Paddison program protocol, and I am off of Humira. I haven’t taken it. I took it one time this year. I took it in January, two months ago to the day.

Clint – It is an absolutely amazing transformation. So Matt is going to share all of this in this conversation. So Matt, take us back to before we started working together. Talk about what you’re going through and how this all developed and set the scene for how dramatic this transformation was, because I believe at one point when you tried to get off Humira by yourself, your blood inflammation markers went through the roof. So we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about how strong you’ve become. Going to talk about you’re now, your new outlook on life and the foods that you’re eating and everything to help people who are in a similar situation, so that they can also see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. So over to you.

Matt – Really happy to share this. I’ve been struggling with this for a long time, since 1993. When my son was born, really kind of a rough time in life. Not a lot of sleep, really bad nutrition at the time. Symptoms were pretty bad. I started taking indomethacin, as my PCP at the time kind of prescribed me. I didn’t like the warning labels on that. And I went to a naturopath, to which definitely helped a little. She did a little acupuncture and a bunch of things which helped. And I kind of suffered along until 2001 was the first time I saw an actual rheumatologist. He put me on a prescription along with my indomethacin. He put me on methotrexate and I can’t remember the amounts, but I didn’t seem any better on the methotrexate, and I had to get liver biopsies or kidney biopsies every six months or something like that, I can’t. It was so long ago, I can’t remember and didn’t see a lot of improvement. And then, I actually switched, a couple rheumatologists till I found the one that I really felt confident in and he said you fit all of the kind of protocol for being on a biologic. At the time, Enbrel was just released for psoriatic arthritis. So that was in 2002,23 years ago or so. I started taking the Enbrel and within two weeks, all of my symptoms were gone and I felt just amazing. I felt, I actually, the kids were a little older, and I bought skateboards for the kids, and I started skating with them again like I had in the past.

Matt – I just felt like myself again. But I had still been trying to get off of it, every once in a while, I didn’t. I was really scared by the black box warnings on these things. And I had tried and tried and actually, I have a friend whose dad, wrote a book on reversing heart disease and just living a plant based life. And now I’ve kind of got to know him through family functions and stuff like that. And he sat me down, and he’s like, You should really be on a plant based diet. I tried it, and this was probably 15 years ago or so. But the thing is, I didn’t. He wrote this book about heart patients, and I was like, well, I have arthritis. So I didn’t follow any of the guidelines about low fat or anything. So, I was still eating. I was eating a vegan diet, but still using the, like, processed fake cheeses. And I was still having like chips and sugar, stuff like that. So it didn’t work and I felt like crap, but I wasn’t following it correctly. So, I went back to my standard Western diet until 2018. I was hospitalized with Legionnaires disease, which they’re pretty sure was as a result of my lowered immune system, and I was intubated.

Matt – I was in ICU for seven days. They really didn’t think I was going to make it. I was in a coma. And I lost a ton of weight. I just got some of my blood work back because I had more blood work done just a few days ago, and I didn’t realize you could compare your blood work to years ago. And I’m looking at my blood work. So, when I went into the hospital, they took me off of all the biologics, obviously, and my sed rate spiked to 99 and my CRP went up to 134.9. So, I’m comparing that today in real time. I’m off of the Humira for even longer than I was when I was hospitalized. And my sed rate right now is two and my CRP is 3.0. So, I don’t know how anybody could look at. And I have this like, I’d be willing to share this with you. I don’t see how anybody could look at this and not say, well, God, that what did you do differently? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was, I’m sure there was some kind of inflammatory things happening in my body when I was laying there in the ICU. But I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, And that brings us up to speed, I think.

Clint – There was maybe a disconnect with moving from Enbrel to Humira. How did that actually occur?

Matt – For some reason, I was taking the Enbrel beautifully for I think it was something like 17 years or something. No problems at all. No other symptoms. And then it just stopped working one day. and the doc said, all right, well, I’ve seen this a couple times. He’s like, let’s just try another biologic. Let’s pick one. And Humira seemed to be kind of the thing at that time. So, around 2014 is when I started the Humira. Then it started working again just fine. So I have no idea. That really didn’t make sense Why it just stopped working like that. But that’s how I went from the Enbrel to the Humira.

Clint – There’s going to be a lot of people who are either on Enbrel or Humira or who have been suggested those medications for part of their treatment plan. Who are going to want to know what did you do to get off that drug? So that’s what we’re going to spend the bulk of our conversation about today. Now, to set the scene for how difficult a task this was going to be. Tell us the times that you had previously tried to come off of either of those two meds and the outcomes of trying in the past on your own.

Matt – I had gone as far as two months before trying to get off of it. Just eating. So cutting out all the plant shades, cutting out all the gluten, cutting out. So eating a very limited diet. I was just kind of, in my mind all this doesn’t react well with me. Potatoes or straight out eggplants. Forget about it. You know peppers. I haven’t had peppers. Well, I’ve been eating peppers like crazy lately, but I hadn’t had them in 30 years. So just kind of doing that. And I went to about six months, but leading up to that six months, I knew I was off of it. I was a mess. I was just like just going to try to give it one more week and all the symptoms were raging back. Probably at around the five week mark or so.

Clint – You said six months. You meant two months was your record in the past, but you were struggling at two months.

Matt – Two months. 60 days is what I was trying to say. I had done that a few times, I would find a new diet. I went on McDougall’s diet, which I think is great. It’s elimination diet. You start out pretty much on potatoes. I did think I had something. And I still do think I have something with potatoes because I’ve tried to reintroduce potatoes, a few months ago, and I had a little flare and I’ve been a little scared to do potatoes. Another setback with that. So, I’ve tried a number of crazy diets and hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of supplements. I’m a sucker for supplements, And I’ve been. And I eat a pretty clean diet to begin with. I was eating mostly chicken. Never went to a fast food restaurant, ever. You know, home cooked stuff. But also lots of cheeses and that kind of thing. I had done that 2 or 3 times, tried to get off of it, and never had any success.

Matt – But the one thing I will say, the thing that struck me, and connected me with you, like, instantly was when you were sick, you stopped eating for a week and all your symptoms went away. That exact thing happened to me before I started any of this. And that’s what kept coming back to me that it has to be food related. I got really sick. It was just a stomach virus. Coming out of both ends, I didn’t eat for a week. I think I lived on saltines and a little bit of Gatorade and water and was having trouble keeping that down. But, all of my symptoms And I had a lot of them at the time. They all went away. And as I started eating, they gradually came back. Then I was just right back to where I was, when I kind of was when my diet was back to where it was. All my symptoms were back.

Clint – Totally. For anyone who’s not experienced that, it’s quite the insight as to when you avoid food, You feel better. There’s a couple of mechanics involved there which will go into another on a different call. I just want to sort of establish where you’re at right now. And then we’ll talk about how you got there. So, you’re over 60 days without having your last Humira dose. How are your symptoms right now?

Matt – I have no symptoms. But not only are we over the 60 days, but we were increasing the amount. So we had the frequency we were stretching out. So we were already stretched out, to like three weeks before that. It’s not like I had a constant supply of Humira leading up to the last dose, which was on like the 26th of January. Zero symptoms. I don’t have a thing that I can point to right now.

Clint – If we then look at the actual data points of the injections, you might have done one at like the beginning of December, one in January. And that’s it. Like two in the last 4 to 5 months.

Matt – Exactly. I did one on November 27th, one on December 17th and one on January 26th. So basically once a month until the 26th of January, which was my last shot. Hopefully forever.

Clint – How’s the rheumatologist relationship been through this process?

Matt – He’s been willing to try it. He did say, I’m happy to give it a shot. We’ll monitor you the whole way. He wanted to see me in May which is coming up. That’s why he ordered the bloods and stuff. He’s been good about it, but he also said as I was walking out, he’s like, well, good luck with it. A lot of people have tried, but nobody’s done it yet. and I’m like, I’m going to be the first, so he’s like, I hope so. And so I can’t. And you had mentioned, don’t go in there all, kind of too confident and what not, but it’s hard. It’s hard not to be confident in a lot of the confidence that I have in you, it’s just I want everyone to know. Because I almost died as a result of being on this stuff. And I do think it saved my life in other ways. So I do think there’s a place for it, but long term use of it, I think is it just seems crazy to be on it when you don’t need to be on it.

Clint – Let’s talk about what a body needs to be able to be self-sufficient with the least amount of external interventions of any kind, whether that be painkillers, supplements, whether or not be medications or whatever, because everyone will agree that a perfectly healthy body doesn’t need to have interventions. A perfectly healthy body is optimized in three areas. The microbial system. That’s the oral health. The bacterial. The microbial health inside the colon. The nervous system and the antioxidant system. So when you and I started working together, which was a little over six months ago, you’d tried to come off the Humira and always ended up tail between your legs in pain, going back on it. So take us back to that moment. Let’s talk about what we did together when we first connected, share the strategy we put in place and what you put in place.

Matt – So I did. I followed the diet which the first three days were the juicing of the cucumber and the celery. No, it was no problem. I’d been on so many diets along the way, and I was like, at the point where this is my last, this is my last chance. So I was willing to do anything. I was having a little apprehension about when at time it came time to do oats again, which I was really happy about because I’ve been having oats like, for 30 years. and you said, oh, you could put bananas in there. And I’m like, I can’t do bananas. And you said you can do bananas. Just start. I want you to start slow and, you know, your micro dosing bananas. So I’m like, all right. So I started just I put, like, one slice in my oats, and then I didn’t see any kind of difference. And the thing that it did to me, and I know it did it. I always had suffered with IBS and constipation issues and bananas just seemed to just back me up like it would just solidify everything down there. I started having another slice the next, few days later, and now I’m up to, like, a half a banana in every one of, along with a boatload of berries.

Matt – I put walnuts, pumpkin seeds, some plant based yogurt in there. There’s all kinds of Chia seed. So the oats are my favorite meal of the day, without a doubt. And then, just kind of working through the diets pretty quickly. I was losing a lot of weight being on baseline. So we moved, through those pretty quickly, added things sometimes adding 2 or 3 things a day, and adding nuts pretty quickly. Once I got on pistachios, I stopped losing weight, and I actually started gaining back a little of my weight and I felt satiated. And it was just I was like, I could do this forever. And I was eating, I counted, my new PCP is actually, plant based, and I love them. and I was counting all the vegetables, like, he always asked what I ate last week. When I go in to see him. When is your conventional doctor ever asked you what you ate last week, he asked, what’s your typical diet like?

Matt – So I had written everything down and wrote how many different vegetables and fruits that I had in a week, or plants, actually, because some of them were beans and during that week I had 44 different varieties of plants not counting spices. All the things that I’ve been listening to is just like they keep hammering home on the diversity. And that’s the thing that I was lacking, during the times that I was trying to figure out my own diet, I was checking things off my list that I couldn’t eat, and I was down to a very kind of narrow window of food that I thought I could eat. I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy for your microbiome. So that’s where I’m at today. I’m on, like I said, I’m eating peppers. I’m eating tomatoes. I’m eating all the nightshades. I still haven’t gotten big into regular potatoes, but I eat sweet potatoes like crazy. There isn’t one thing that I’m not eating right now other than I would say potatoes, but I haven’t really given it a good shot, so I’ll have to do that again pretty soon.

Clint – Amazing. So you went through that process together. I want everyone to understand the following. This is absolutely crucial in terms of the strategy. You and I did not even touch the spacing of the Humira for I think the first three months together, we kept everything identically the way that you were before we started our coaching together, because we needed to put into your regime all of that diversity to improve the microbiome, but also the physical therapy. So let’s talk about that. What were you doing in terms of exercise? I know of course, these things. I know your situation back to front, but I’m asking so that everyone else can learn too. What were you doing at the time? And then how did we modify that in terms of physical therapy?

Matt – At the time I was cycling a lot. I would go out on a Saturday, I would do 25 miles or something like that. But I wasn’t killing it. I was going I was on a bike trail, which is pretty flat. And I was going maybe I was averaging 11 miles an hour or something like that. 11-12 average. So I was fit, but I had never been to a gym, like in my life. I’d been to like rock climbing gyms and stuff like that. But never a gym. And the thing that I realized right before we met. I work on the builder. I’ve worked in construction my whole life, and I went to pick up a bag of cement at the Home Depot. Usually I would go over to the pile, and I would just kind of pop it up on my shoulder. Those bags are £80. They’ve always been £80 when I was 18 and they’re £80 now and up. Until recently, I could just throw it on my shoulder and go over to the register and they would zap it and I would be out, because you can never find one of those stupid carts. So, I went to get one and I couldn’t move it off of the pile. I thought, like I was just like this and it was so heavy I couldn’t budge it. And I looked underneath to see if it was stuck or something, and I could pick up a corner. And I realized it wasn’t stuck.

Matt – It was just I had gotten that much weaker and I never saw it happening. I don’t know when it happened. I mean, recently I’m going to be 60 this year. So I think it’s just one of those things that creeps up on you. And I started going to the gym as soon as I started the program, and I’ve just noticed my strength. I’ve been doing strength training, resistance. and really, I got to say, I put a pull up bar in over here at the house, and I have one at work that I can work on to. And just the dead hangs were at the time your goal was to get me dead hanging for 30s. And I’m like, I could hang off of a bar all day long. I think I told you, and I went, and I got that bar, and I think I did about 15 seconds, or something like that. I couldn’t believe how much strength I had lost. And eventually I got up to 30s and then passed up to about a minute. Then I started doing the lats pull ups and kind of reverse pull ups where I had a ladder out there. This is kind of attached to my shop in the backyard. I would do a reverse pull ups where I’d go all the way up and I would lower myself down. Those seem to really help. And I did a bunch of those, and now I’m up to five pull ups right now. I’m pretty psyched about that. I could see a couple abs now, actually. So pretty happy.

Clint – Let’s pause for a minute. Struggling to hold your weight for 15 seconds. Now doing five clean pull ups. Now. Here is something that is so not obvious to everyone with this disease. There is a biological marker, which is your level of glutathione in the body. Studies have shown that glutathione levels are so tied to inflammation levels that just like C-reactive protein and sed rate. If we were able to measure glutathione in the body, we would get a very good indication as to the level of disease activity for someone with RA or psoriatic arthritis, which you’ve been diagnosed with, which, by the way, I just see as rheumatoid arthritis that’s not as symmetrical. Plus you get some psoriasis for free. That’s all I see that as. So treat it the same. Results are the same when you do everything right. Coming back to glutathione. So when you are building strength like this you are developing the antioxidant system in the body, which is the glutathione predominantly. And if you are therefore producing higher levels of glutathione, you therefore reduce inflammation in the body because we know that from the studies. So we know high levels of glutathione, low disease activity. Low glutathione, which, by the way, is virtually everyone with active disease. High active disease. Okay. We know that we can impact and influence and modify our levels of glutathione through physical activity and cycling like you were doing in the past.

Clint – Great. But what I like from the studies is that the resistance training is going to help us predictably with this cause. Plus, when you build strength, it protects the joints. Having a load of muscle mass around joints, it’s just like shock absorbers around those joints. And it makes us feel more in control of our own body and more resilient going forward. You and I spoke about we are not going to touch the Humira until you are physically strong and you have a diverse microbiome that’s come only about through the specific Sequencing that you went through with us. So that we know we’re hitting all of the key nine different types of prebiotic fibers that your bowel needs to create short chain fatty acids to heal the gut wall. And so three months into this, you’ve got this amazing microbiome restoration. And you’re getting stronger and stronger so that when we start dialing back the dosage of the Humira by increasing the frequency, there is this platform in place, like there’s a structure in place that can take the heavy lifting as the drug influence is reduced. And that was our plan. They were two of the big pillars that we wanted to put in place. Right?

Matt – Right. I obviously was getting a little antsy and wanted things to go faster. And you kept like, we have to do this like, slowly and let’s do it right. We don’t want to do this again. So you talked me off a couple ledges and I definitely, it was hard with me because I didn’t really have any symptoms. The Humira was masking all the symptoms. I guess you’d say. The only symptom I had was that I could point to with my bowels. During the start of the whole thing, I was still constipated. And we had talked, every meeting, I would bring up my bowel movements. It got to be a joke after a while. Up until about three months, I was still constipated. And then I think once we realized that Okay, things are moving along fine down there, I think that was the go ahead to start increasing the frequency or decreasing the frequency of my shot.

Clint – Yes, exactly. We know that constipation causes leaky gut, and I find that interesting. That’s not the other way around. It’s constipation causes leaky gut. And I love the certainty around that statement. It’s come directly from a quote from the literature of a published study that looked into literally the correlation between the two. And so when we were able to resolve that, we then had these wonderful, indicators of success with eating foods without noticing any sort of negativity in terms of any symptoms showing up, any bowel, bloating, indigestion, discomfort, and then getting really physically strong. Great. I just always feel a huge amount of safety in this prospect of someone when they’re physically strong, it’s like, okay, you’re going to be fine. I mean, you’re just strong and that’s what we got to shoot for. And then bowel movements. Wonderful. Normally formed stools happening on a regular basis once, sometimes twice a day. Most of the time, I mean, there’s a healthy body. And of course, from your viewpoint, you never projected this kind of high stress, highly concerned, pessimistic, woe is me victim mentality. You’ve never had any of that. All of which, by the way, undermines someone’s likelihood of success. So because you’ve never had that, we didn’t need to delay any further based on that aspect of feeling like you’ve got this because you always had that. I’ve got this. I’m always shocked when I can’t come off the drug. Right. You always had that. So that’s when we’re able to say, now we’re good to go. We’re good to go. And, did you end up getting a whoop band? I think we talked about. I don’t think you did.

Matt – Well, I ended up getting an Apple Watch instead, because I was in there, and I got kind of talked into it. But I had found that I do love the, like the information that it gives you, but I was getting really kind of stressed having it on. and I’d be constantly checking it, and I wasn’t sleeping well with it on because it was just one more thing that I was thinking about. For some reason. And that’s just me. I think they’re great, and I wish I gave it a little bit more of a chance, but it was this kind of thing where for 14 days you can have it and if you don’t like it, bring it back. And I was just like, I don’t know. It’s not working out for me, but I should have gave it more of a chance than 14 days.

Clint – It Can be a double edged sword when it comes to the data. You’ve got to sort of look at the data from an emotional distance and not too frequently. So that was never really one of the major factors throughout your whole life, I don’t think, let alone, since I got to know. So then we’re able to start stretching the Humira. Let’s talk about that. You mentioned the rheumatologist was on board. I want everyone to understand this is just Matt and his rheumatologist. Me acting as a consultant, if you like, with my personal views, obviously, of offering no medical advice. And so you then said, okay, rheumatologist, we’re going to start. Stretch your knees out. Talk about the plan with the stretching them out.

Matt – We started going three days extra on every shot. So it was like very baby steps. So, the first one, I was doing 14 day increments up until that point. That when we decided to do it, we went an extra three days and then the next shot we would go another three days on top of that. So six days and then the next shot we would go another three on top of that. So nine days and so on until I got to the 26th of January. So that’s how it started stretching out pretty quickly. And I never felt like I used to be able to, I think kind of tell when I missed a shot. Like I would start feeling creaky and I would kind of look forward to being able to take that shot. But I never noticed anything like. That’s why I kept asking you, like, can I just stop this?

Clint – And what did I say?

Matt – You said, we have to do this right. We have to have your rheumatologist on board. We have to have the data. So, if you go all willing to live the way you always have, we’re not going to be able to convince him, that this is that we actually did it. So, I’m going to go in there and I think it’s pretty compelling evidence. You know, I have everything documented. We’ll see what he says in May. We’ll have to have a part two of this call.

Clint – Part two will be very justified. Why do I feel that you’re fine? It’s because of those pillars that we’ve discussed. And the cause of the things that you’ve put in place. I want everyone to understand. Matt here has not just roll the eyes. Changed his diet, right? He’s not rolled the eyes. Just started going to the gym. We’re talking about surgical like interventions with healing, leaky gut and the nuances of physical therapy that took me 11 years to perfect so that he’s exercising joints in a way that only help and don’t potentially irritate joints like wrists, which are delicate ankles, which are delicate shoulders, all the joints, in fact delicate if you do it the wrong way. We’re talking about, like Matt doing every single nuance absolutely perfectly so that he can get a scorecard with a CRP of three and ESR of two, having only taken one shot of Humira in the last like four months, like 16th of December, you’ve done one and that’s it.

Matt – Right.

Clint – And then to be completely symptom free. This isn’t a do it yourself at home kind of job.

Matt – And I’ve done it myself many times and it didn’t work out. I knew that about me. I knew I needed someone to really hold my hand. Because I tend to, and I’ve got a lot of books on this and I’ve read them and I’ve tried to do them. But I tend to be a scanner. I’ll read something and I’ll get what I think is all the information off of it. But, I’m oftentimes reading it kind of quickly and maybe not getting the actual point. It was so great to have you and correct me a couple times and say, no, this is really what I want you to do here. And having all the other members on the call, going through, their stories really helps too, because you could you could just see a common thread of where they’re going wrong. Sometimes I want to yell at the screen like, when Stephanie needs her chocolate or something like that. I’m like, no, don’t eat the chocolate. Like she’s like, well, I had a little cookie today, or something or Gene likes to cheat a little bit. Anyway, it was so great. I got to really love all of these people on the calls, and I really was pretty active on the chat because I wanted everyone to get where I am and I hope they do.

Clint – Awesome. We will do a part two. I’m just wondering if there’s anything else we’ve missed. Let’s just summarize. You’ve had this disease for 32 years. You’ve been on Enbrel initially, later on to Humira, after Enbrel stopped working. Humira used to give you. I don’t know if you went into this with enough frequency, is what I know from our getting to know you over the last six months, but you used to develop upper respiratory infections regularly from Humira, didn’t you? Right.

Matt – Well, not regularly. I had a couple colds, which I thought, I don’t know if that’s what you would consider.

Clint – And you said each year. I Thought you like not on this call. Over the months that have passed, you were times where you said that each year around a sort of you’d feel vulnerable to develop pretty bad sicknesses because your immune system was compromised.

Matt – Right. Every winter I would get a cold, and it was pretty bad. That didn’t happen this year, But, yes I would get a pretty good cold every year. But I just thought everyone gets those, but it’s funny, I didn’t this year.

Clint – Then you had the big one which gave you the big scare. So you’ve tried to get off your Humira multiple times. You’ve extended it to a two month gap, but at the consequence of lots of pain and inflammation. And here you are now. So you’ve done, You’re at 60 some days, feeling perfect. And the life forward looks really, really good. So, where do we go from here? We continue to get as strong as possible. You cannot have too much strength. Strength defeats inflammation. For people who are still, like, on the fence about this, just try it. Just start with a small amount of exercise each day that won’t hurt your joints. You want to do a sample size and then build and scale ultimately to get stronger and stronger and stronger. You need to go through the reintroduction process that we have in the Paddison program. You’ve got to rebuild your gut health, take out all of the factors that are causing inflammation, and build an army of microbes so that they develop the short chain fatty acids for the gut wall to stop leaky gut. And then you’ve got to be in your case Matt, surrounded by a group of people, or on a similar journey to you and the physical therapy. The medical doctor myself. I think it was a complete 360 approach that made made a big difference for you.

Matt – 100% yeah. My family was super supportive the whole time. I wish I could get them to eat some more of my meals, but occasionally, if I was running late, my son would cook me one of my meals out of either this cookbook or forks over knives or engine two diet or something like that. One of those pretty safe cookbooks. And my wife. Same thing. When just real quickly when I started this, everyone was kind of skeptical about it because it was an investment to do. And but I said, I need everybody to be on board with this. And I’m like, this is like my last chance. I think. and I don’t need any skepticism in my life right now. I need everyone behind me and they’re like, all right. To their credit, they didn’t, usually I’ll get the eye roll from my son or something. If I say something crazy like, I saw this on Instagram today, but I didn’t get any of that. He was great and very supportive, and I couldn’t have done it without your whole team and my whole team here. It’s amazing.

Clint – How are they now? How’s the family in terms of how they look at you? And what do they say about how far you’ve come?

Matt – It’s like, no big deal around here. It’s just like. Because as far as they’re concerned, nothing much has changed because I still feel the same exactly as I did. And I had been eating this way, and I’ve always had a crazy diet my entire life anyway. So it’s like, what’s Matt doing now. So, I don’t think they get quite the scale of what we’ve accomplished here but maybe someday they will.

Clint – Your Rheumatologist will.

Matt – I hope so.

Clint – Wait till you speak to him. And again, You probably won’t even have him ask. So what did you do? What is this program that you did? You might not even get that from him. It’s amazing. But anyway, it’s not about his kind of interest levels. You’re going to enlighten him to the possibilities of what is achievable when the disease is addressed from the root cause. And so that’s going to be something that you’ll never forget in terms of that feeling of, wow, like I’ve impressed someone who’s been at this game for a very long time and been the first person to show them what’s possible.

Matt – I can’t wait for that conversation. And like I say, he’s been pretty open, so I think he might be the one to actually look into it. Maybe.

Clint – Well, let’s keep you feeling great between now and then, and let’s do a follow up down the track. I think everyone would like to hear how you are in six months from now and so on. I like having that social pressure to people wonder how my CRP is and how I’m doing. They ask sometimes. I think it’s that’s why I still enjoy sharing intermittently my own status updates and so on, because ultimately it’s one thing to get well and then it’s another to stay well. I’ve been off drugs since like 2011 or something. And so you have that responsibility to yourself, to your future wellbeing, to your joints and also a little bit of accountability to a community. Even if you don’t know the people on social media, it’s nice also. So stay well for you and for everyone. We’ll look forward to chatting again in the future.

Matt – Thank you Clint. I owe you my life, man. I can’t thank you enough.