Brian shares with us his story of slow but constant progress and the mental and physical discipline that was required throughout this process. RA inflammation reduction can be a very slow process sometimes, to the point that improvements can only be assessed over a long time span: still, things are silently progressing, and there comes the day one can feel most of the pain is gone.
We discuss in this interview:
- Brian’s first diagnosis with seronegative RA and his somewhat atypical symptoms
- How he started the Paddison Program, acknowledging very slow progress
- Attempts with methotrexate and leflunomide with no results
- How slow progress resulted in 95% improvement after 5 years
- The role of mindset and support
- 1-, 2- and 3-meals daily schedules
- Primary digesters and secondary metabolites
- Routines to ensure diversity of foods
- Static-held resistance training
- Supplements
Clint – We’ve got another one today, and I cannot wait for this story. This story is for you if you have been working and working and working on your inflammation reduction with inflammatory arthritis, and it has been excruciatingly slow, and you are looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. An example of someone who has been through the trenches and has had excruciatingly slow results but has got there in the end, this episode is for you. My guest is Brian, he’s going to talk about his unusual diagnosis procedure that ended up being rheumatoid arthritis. And then, as I mentioned, this very slow progress and the mental and physical discipline that was required throughout this process. We’re going to talk about disease-modifying drugs and how in Brian’s case, they weren’t the answer for him, despite trying several and in fact, some of the side effects that were potentially associated with one of those medications. And then something that’s absolutely fascinating, we’re going to talk about how he manipulated the time he ate and the amount of food that he ate that dramatically gave him breakthroughs with his inflammation. So much so, although I won’t do these before and after for you, I’ll let him share that with you right now, before we get into his story and talk about all of these things. But you’re going to love it. So, Brian, thanks so much for joining me today. Can you just give us like a TV commercial like where you were and where you are now in just a little snapshot?
Brian – Well. When I first struggled with my most intense symptoms about more than five years ago. My symptoms would come on just suddenly and I’d be have debilitating symptoms in some joint or whatever, and it would just keep jumping from joint to joint. It almost it felt like being in a car accident like every other day in my life. And there was new parts of my body that I couldn’t move. And I’d always be hobbling around work, struggling to walk sometimes, and there were many times I had to over the years had to call in to work because I couldn’t walk to function. After five years of really struggling and not getting benefits from the medications, I’ve gotten myself to the point where most people would consider where I’m at as completely symptom-free. I’m aware that there are little twinges here and there that are just slight here and there. So I’m still working on improving at this point. But I’m at least like 98% of the way symptom-free.
Clint – It’s absolutely sensational. And, um, you know, what we’re going to cover is our theme here is this was one heck of a grind, wasn’t it? One heck of a grind.
Brian – Very, very slow to the point where the first couple of years I was questioning, is this helping at all? And my wife, I think, was getting a point where I think we’re on the two year mark. She’s like, Are you still doing this? Is this worth it, doing this anymore? Yeah so it was a very slow process.
Clint – Okay. Well, fortunately, we’ve already revealed that there is a happy ending to this. And you’ve shared that incredible before and after where you talk about feeling like a car accident, not able to get to work. So we’re all curious because I don’t know myself the details of this, so let’s get into it. Let’s make our way nice and efficiently through your story, because I think where it gets really interesting is how you manipulated all this with your exercise, with your diet manipulations, that’s what we all want to hear. Walk us through you had an atypical diagnosis, tell us about that.
Brian – Yeah. Um, I was diagnosed in June of 2017 and I was having symptoms and suspicion of possible autoimmune. I personally was suspecting that for about a year before that. And I was diagnosed completely just on the fact that in an x-ray of my hands, there was some osteopenia, and the rheumatologist like, well, we should look at this a little closer. She first thought I was kind of just feeling of anxiety and everything, and she thought it was not, you know, she thought I shouldn’t be there. And then she did the MRI on my hands and this very clearly has active synovitis. So the diagnosis was seronegative RA. The atypical things about it is that most of my symptoms would often last for many days at a time, it would almost never last in a joint more than about 6 or 8 hours at the most, sometimes 4. So one joint would just flare up and just be completely distorted, and I couldn’t use that joint and my finger would swell up. So it looked like a sausage or something. And it would just go away in a few hours, but it would be somewhere else. So it was very difficult to monitor also my progress because it would always go away for a day or two here and there anyway, and come back suddenly.
Brian – Also other things are atypical about my symptoms. The most common for me was my wrist, my hands, and my knees. But I also would get it in the cervical spine to the point where that motion you’re doing right there, I couldn’t do. So, like, I couldn’t lift my head, I would just have to turn my whole body to look for six hours or a day or something. I just could not move much at all without severe pain. It would affect the once in a while still affects my tendons and the worse were back on my knees and my sometimes my Achilles’ tendons. It would really swell up a bit, and they click and grind and pop as you move them, and that can be really painful. One of the ones that was most painful is a little unusual. I get it would just happen once in a while. But I get in this joint right here where my collarbone meets. So that’s the shoulder.
Clint – And that puts your arm out of action. Right, I imagine.
Brian – Completely yes. And my CRP on those days, I was never I was always negative, but my CRP, for example. The days my knees were just swollen, huge. I would hobble and get my blood work done and my CRP would come back like 7.
Clint – At just 7?
Brian – 0.7.
Clint – Ah 0.7. So you were seronegative with rheumatoid factor, anti-ccp antibodies and you’d also not have responsive CRP and yet you could barely walk and your knees were swollen. You’ve got all these other issues going on feeling like you hit like a bus. It does happen sometimes, doesn’t it? And the doctors often come on to our live calls and talk about this.
Brian – So, I mean, I’ve had people try to tell me I have undiagnosed chronic Lyme disease, all these other things, and there’s a lot of things that didn’t make sense with most of the other ideas, too. But, I mean, I probably have some sort of unspecified arthropathy, that just doesn’t make sense. But my rheumatologist believes that it doesn’t matter what the diagnosis you treat with immunosuppression, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Lyme disease or whatever. M progress was so extremely slow where those first couple of years I was doing all the work I was exercising almost every day I was working with at first it was swimming and then I tried the Bikram yoga, which I knew would be limited because I have this old issue with my hip. But I worked with the Bikram yoga for a couple months and realized that I can only do less than half of it. But still it was still maybe a little helpful. Then I got to the bicycle and I was able to bicycle, which I hadn’t been able to do in a long time for that same reason. And once I got the bicycle, then that was just my, I was on that bicycle almost every day pushing myself and loosening up my knees, getting going, getting going. And. Just make sure I push myself to the point where I’m just totally drenched in sweat. Every time I come back half hour, 45 minutes, whatever. All my other work in the kitchen and everything. Then I do my meditation, then I’d be studying what am I missing? Because it was just such slow progress.
Brian – After two years of doing your program, trying methotrexate, which failed in five months, and that almost seemed to make it worse. So I was afraid to try the next thing. Like, well maybe this isn’t RA. So then I was afraid, I’m just working with the lifestyle stuff. And six months later and then I try Hydro chloroquine did that for six months. Absolutely. No, no hope. After a couple of years, I’m like, I think I’m 25, 30% better. But as it just my imagination, you know, like, am I just tricking myself because it’s still overall the same situation. And then I started getting close to the third year I started Leflunomide which has a little weary about. And I was also struggling do I go to biologics and I kind of first requested that I should go to a biologic kind of your recommendation but she’s like, no, I should probably try this. Let’s try a little more conservative first. And so I did the Leflunomide, I was on that for a year and about six months in I’m like, Well, maybe this is helping somebody because I’m getting a little bit better. But it was very slow. And then I ended up after a little over a year, I ended up developing a side effect with that where I started getting neuropathy in my feet and after a few months, I found literature that showed that that could be potentially related to the leflunomide.
Brian – So I stopped that. And was looking into that. And as I was off the leflunomide for a couple of months, I kept getting better, I kept getting better. So six months later, I’m still getting much better and much better. So I’m like, I really struggled with the idea, okay, now do I go to biologic now that I’m 60, 70% better? And still getting better over time. So it took me like five years before I got to the point where I’m like 95% better. I’m kind of getting, you know, I’m getting a few of those advanced foods in my system and. It’s very slow progress. But the over the time I could never see the progress, months and months, I could not see any progress, that was a frustrating thing. It was only when I look back two years or three years, that’s when the progress was apparent. Like, Yeah, I’m definitely getting better. So now I’m to the point where I have almost no symptoms most of the time and a little bit of symptoms I have, let’s say in a week I might have a few hours of symptoms once or twice a week. But it’s so minimal that most people wouldn’t even notice it. It’s just like, Oh, I have a slight stiffness in my wrist and four hours later it’s gone. You know, I’m aware that it’s still there, so I’m still working on it, still, you know, trying to find new ways to move forward a little bit further.
Clint – Yeah, that’s. I mean, it’s phenomenal. So what was getting you through all this time mentally? Because when there is that degree of resistance for progress and if there’s probably, family pressure saying, come on, is this, as you said, is this working?
Brian – I’m sure my in-laws thought I was absolutely crazy after a couple of years.
Clint – Yeah, that’s right. When when you go to social events and then your family are there and they’re like, why don’t you eat the chicken with us? And you have to go through that whole process of explanation. So what things did you keep coming back to in your mind to keep you pushing forward?
Brian – It was a lot of leaf. In the literature that is there on, improving with the low fat, plant-based diet. The literature that is there on the gut biome and everything like that. What you have laid out with Dr. Klapper and all the other professionals that you have on the show and everything, it was my best bet. And I really believe that it is likely that over time it could improve. And the fact that you have the support forum, which was not the same for me as the majority of people or some people that are in a forum, you know, they’re trying to work through their stuff all the time and, you know, talk with other people who support. I kind of envy that a little bit, but for me it was more just knowing that everybody was there, that you could reach out to people and could reach out to you every six months or whatever and just say, you know, this is where I’m at, Can I get some advice? It made such a difference. I mean, I don’t know if I could have done it by myself. And it gives me an enormous respect for how you figured it out in the first place, you know, and did it without the support. There was just so much at the time of me working through those most intense years with meditation and, you know, working on gratitude, it all adds together.
Clint – Isn’t it interesting how we do continually sort of increase the bar to what we expect for ourselves with our symptoms as we improve such that it continually looks like we’re sort of just in a treadmill. Um, I can totally relate to that. And we forget just how bad we were. Each of us could list all of the horrendous levels of incapacity that we’ve been through, but it probably would not be any different to every one of our audience members who are thinking, well, I can beat that because I did X, Y, Z, or I couldn’t open this or move my foot or and we’re all just in that together. We’ve all had bad days that are so awful. And when the days are much better, then something like you said, like once a week when that wrist is sore for a few hours, that consumes our world. And we think, why haven’t I gotten to the absolute 100 out of 100 yet? And that is all consuming whereas back in the day not going to work because you couldn’t move your neck and your hands. Everything was I mean, obviously, you can look back and see it now, but as we’re going through it year by year, what I’m trying to say is if we it is sometimes hard to see the progress as we go through this.
Brian – Yeah. Those first couple of years I think I’m maybe 30% better after the first two years. But looking back compared to when I first started. But here was also like, well, it’s been two years is it just my imagination that I’m that much better? But I’m still dealing with those same type of process and the same oscillation of symptoms and it took just so much time. And I hope that’s an encouragement to the people who have been doing this for a long time, and are struggling with where I was years ago.
Brian – I don’t think there are guarantees that it will work, but at the same time even a little bit of improvement over time. Even if that’s just combined with your medications, is a huge improvement in the long run. It’s so worth it, especially when it slowly is building on each other year after year.
Clint – Why don’t we, when we’re towards the end of this chat, we list all of the things that worked absolutely the best for you, because one of the things we haven’t got to yet and I want to spend a fair bit of time on that. Let’s just go straight to the modifications to your eating that you did. And I want to explore that from both the science and also from your personal experience and the mechanics of it. But tell us, when did you start this dietary manipulation? What did it look like? Where did the idea come from? How did you sort of implement it? Just the whole lot.
Brian – I think I heard it from multiple places, but both were from some of your material that you have out there where you were talking about giving your digestive tract a lot of time and for intervals between taking in food. And also there was one point where I’d reached out to True North a couple of times. I think by the time I reached out to them, that was also I was also already starting on this path. But that was one of their recommendations as well is close the window of your intake of calories to a small time frame. So when I ended up doing that, made a big difference. Which was very difficult because I had very, very high calorie intake needs just to maintain my weight. But I ended up starting to realize I was doing just as well as far as my weight If I was eating two really big meals a day rather than three. I don’t know how I got there, I don’t know how I got there.
Clint – What you did is you went from three meals or possibly more, as many of us have done over the years, snacking, if you include this. So you just condensed all of the same amount of calories into just two meals.
Brian – Yes. It was more of an eight-hour window of eating. I usually eat around a little early for lunch or at lunchtime somewhere 11 -00 or 12 -00 is my typical breakfast time, and then I would eat again at dinnertime. So I would be able to eat next to my wife or whatever in the evening. By doing that I was noticing already just by doing that, that it was I was getting a little bit of improvement. And I worked with your baseline for probably close to two years where I was just mostly almost always just on a baseline or just maybe including 1 or 2 of the next things. And the baseline going back to the baseline wasn’t resetting me. And it was also hard to tell when I get a reset because I have such short symptoms anyway. But what would help reset me was so I’d be in that two-meal-a-day rhythm, and then if I had really bad symptoms, then I’d go to one meal. And I really worked with this for a long time to figure out how much I could I do that for three days? You know, 2 or 3 days in a row if I had to and not lose weight, and it was working for me.
Brian – I don’t know if that was something that only happened over time. I don’t know if you could start with that because this was years into it. Is that when I first started the plant-based diet, I dropped down to 130lbs and I was just stuck there. So I was able to overtime get a little bit better than that, and I was able to go, you know, do the two meals a day and then just oscillate down to one meal a day for two, sometimes three days in a row to reset. And that would just slowly ease back my symptoms and ease back the inflammation and then go back to two meals a day, which worked really well. I would think that that could be helpful for certain people that have been doing this for a long time. I would hope that somebody first starting this in their first year probably wouldn’t recommend that especially if you can get benefits from medication and, you know, modifying everything else first. But if somebody’s been struggling for a long time and you can manage to do a couple of days of one meal a day and not lose weight, you know, or if losing weight is not a concern, you know, that might be a really useful strategy.
Clint – How much food did you have to eat at that meal time and how long did it take to eat that food? And did it feel uncomfortable during or afterwards and then have more questions?
Brian – Well, normally it takes me a pretty solid hour to really get a good meal. Some to take in enough calories and always finish everything with a big batch of sweet potatoes at the end to fill myself up. The meals if I go to one meal a day, I would probably take at least an hour and 15 minutes, sometimes an hour and a half of just slowly chewing and chewing and stuffing it in. And and you get to that point where you just can’t get any more in and you’re just done and you’re done until the next day around that time. I hated those times when I had to do that, it was really difficult for me. And there have been a handful of times I’d passed it, a couple, you know, a couple times to test that. It is so difficult for me to go without eating, but that we’re just doing that calorie restriction one meal a day. But it would work a lot as long as I was careful not to lose weight.
Clint – Let’s take a pause there and I’ll read out some information that I printed out here from a microbiologist and researcher, Kiran Krishnan. This is from a transcription from an interview that I watched, and then I’ve got some science around this. So what’s going on here is Kiran says, when you first eat a meal, the first 7 or 8 hours of that meal, the primary digesters. Now, primary digesters are the famous species in our gut, microbiome like bifidobacterial, lactobacillus, etcetera, etcetera. These are called primary because they take the macronutrients, a lot of the cellulose and so forth and convert that into their own energy and spit out metabolites. But he’ll probably get to that in a second. So they consume the main nutrients and then they’re kicking out the secondary metabolites and then other molecules will then feed on the secondary digesters, right? So what’s happening is that let’s say that the primary bacteria, they are producing substances that actually are the fuel for a subset of species of microbes that can only thrive when with space, and real estate in the colon. When the first guys the primaries haven’t been fed for a while because then they are benefiting from the metabolites from the first from the primary. But if you keep feeding the primary constantly, then their numbers become so great. Even though they’re healthy bacteria, their numbers become so great that there are sort of ones in their shadow the secondaries, they can’t proliferate. And so if we’re looking for diversity increases, then it has been proven that if you take long periods where you don’t eat, the secondaries can develop in their numbers. And then we show up with more diversity in our gut tests and so on. I’ve got a bunch of studies here that’s yeah, it’s all like it’s all messy to try and share on Zoom and stuff. But here’s a quote from one study Intermittent fasting has been shown to increase gut microbiome diversity in mice, rats, and humans. Multiple studies on that. And cross-feeding in another study ere is a common phenomenon in the gut microbiome, where different bacterial species work together to utilize various nutrients and substrates. A study published in the Journal of Nature in 2018 found that cross-feeding interactions among gut bacteria are crucial for maintaining microbiome diversity and function. The researchers identified a network of cross-feeding interactions among different bacteria in the microbiome of healthy individuals, which include both the primary and the secondary fermenters. And so a whole bunch of studies support the fact that a lot of microbes need to eat the downstream sort of output of a bunch of other microbes, and they can only thrive if there are periods of fasting. Yeah, it’s fascinating, isn’t it?
Brian – It fits my experience. I wasn’t aware of what you just discussed right there in detail, but mean that absolutely fits my experience.
Clint – Now like because he would have been doing resets over the years, going back to baseline foods where you’re just eating a, you know, a limited range of foods, eating three meals, like how if you were to draw a graph, how significant was the progress month to month when your resets were down to the two meals a day, sometimes less versus resets going back to the standard three meals a day.
Brian – The resets doing three meals a day, I couldn’t notice any difference. I mean, and I got the point where I did, I think a year and a half where I was just doing baseline foods and, you know, that wasn’t resetting me. That’s where I started getting a little noticeable difference and a little bit of note, you know, where I was really noting that I had more control. I wouldn’t say control, but strong influence. So it wasn’t just riding through and pounding my head against the wall and, you know, hoping that’s going to be much better down the road, and being frustrated that I’m not getting progress. But that was when I got to that point where I started doing two meals a day. That’s when I started noticing slow, slow improvements over time. And it wasn’t as much of an abstract thing of looking back, trying to look back a year or two and saying, I think I’m better than that.
Clint – How often were you then utilizing that strategy? And then what are your eating patterns like now?
Brian – The strategy of going to one meal a day. One would say, Yeah. So I was just consistently doing two once I started that. Yeah, once I started that, that was just very consistent. The exception would sometimes allow myself just a snack of some fruit or something in between, but not outside of that eight hours. They usually would just be two meals and then I would have to go to one meal a day, just depending on if the symptoms got really bad at some point that could be I think when I was struggling a lot, that was sometimes 3 or 4 times a month. I might have to do that at the worst, other times it was just a couple of times a month.
Clint – Okay. Okay. For the one day. So for the one day you were doing maybe a couple of times a month, but you were consistently eating two meals a day for months. How about now?
Brian – I think I wouldn’t say for months. I’ve pretty much just adopted that eating pattern, and it’s rare that see, now, now I can step outside of that, but I really do. You know, I’m so kind of trained to that that and I don’t see a reason to really step outside of that and. Eat necessarily eat three meals a day anymore.
Clint – Right. Your face looks full. And so normally you can imply a reasonable amount the rest of someone’s body mass by, you know, their fullness. Like if I were to try and do a sketch underneath the zoom rectangle, I would draw you as like as a solid, healthy, fit, athletic build. Is that applicable?
Brian – I’m still very thin, but always have been so right. Yeah. I mean. So I’m only 15lbs heavier than I was when I was really too thin. But also I’ve never been more than 15lbs heavier than I am now. Even when I was eating all the restaurant food every day. So yeah. That has been, everybody says that’s a huge blessing. But when it comes to RA, that’s a curse.
Clint – So we’re identical like that? Identical. I think I could put myself into that exact same sentence you did with the variations. Yeah, pretty much the same. Um, okay, so you’ve got your food thing dialed in, what about the diversity of the foods now to, to really, I guess, take this home.
Brian – I have a routine for my food that I’ve stuck to because it works so well and I literally try to eat about between about 30 to 40 different things at every meal. So what I do is I plan, I eat and I make all my food for the week once a week. I have to spend all the time making the food and then I have just food I can pull out the refrigerator and work with. And it also makes it consistent, so I always have, you know. I’m not buying vegetables that I’m not prepping and stuff like that because you get distracted and you got other things going on. I prep everything all at once and then I’m getting my mix of all these different vegetables that are that took forever to chop and, you know, spend three hours sitting or chopping vegetables, once a week. It keeps everything very diverse of what’s coming in. And things are not being constantly just left out because you’re too busy with other things that day.
Clint – And what do they look like? Give us an idea of your meals.
Brian – They typically start with a big bowl of quinoa and buckwheat with all kinds of different. Basically make a giant salad, usually with red cabbage. And at this point I was almost always put some nuts and seeds on it. I have some little dulse on there sometimes. There’s almost always something like carrots, radishes, cucumber, just whatever I put in there that day. Then I have these big vegetable mixes that I make, and they almost always have and it lasts a whole week. Almost as many heads of broccoli, usually multiple cauliflowers will have asparagus. Usually different zucchinis and squash and mushrooms, onions and baked, in that way it keeps it consistent. All these things are always coming in, even if I’m really kind of on the lazy side that day or really busy that day. And then the next thing I’ll usually have a lot of sweet potatoes and then I’ll usually have some days I’ll have like corn and some usually the easiest is some frozen corn and some peas or something up in the microwave. And then I’ll usually have oats and a lot of berries or some sort of fruit at the end. And so I try to have all this diversity at almost every meal to make sure I’m.
Clint – Yeah, I’m loving it. I would love to see a microbiome sampler. I reckon you be right up there with like, quality.
Brian – Yeah, there was a long time ago I was doing that ubiome. And I wish that data was still there that we can compare. But so I haven’t had any kind of test or anything because I can’t compare to any of the old data.
Clint – Right. Yeah. Um, well, that’d be interesting. You know, when the time comes and you feel so inclined, do a sample, I’d love to see a sample, the results of the sample, I should say. So we’ve got all these great things going on. You’ve got a huge diversity of the intake of plant foods, which is microbiome rule number one. And then you’ve got long periods of intermittent fasting, right? So that’s rule number two. For the rest of us, if we feel like, this is something I should look at, The best way to begin exploring this direction is to eat earlier at night and keep your breakfast at the same time to pick yourself up an hour or an hour or two. So right now we’ve built into the program, finish eating by 7 -00, don’t eat before seven in the morning. You’ve got 12 hours. Now, according to the microbiologist, the guy who I quoted before, that is typically enough time for the secondary feeders to begin to benefit from the primary in terms of their metabolites. But we might need to explore this avenue a lot further in the avenue that you have and to look at extending that 12 hours to 13, 14 and so on. And as you point out, as long as you meet your calorie requirements, it’s happy days, right?
Brian – Yes, I was really careful to dial in and really watch my weight during those times. And of course, if there was a day of real getting the calorie restriction, then I would have to not do the exercise that day. But any day that was taken in the calories, I was always on the bike or doing light resistance training and recently started the knees over toes that you recommended seems really help strengthen my knees, I believe, more than even just the bicycle.
Clint – Yeah, tremendous. Okay, So we’ve got let me see if I can hit most of the crucial things that you do so that other people can implement if they wish, some of these strategies. So first of all, we’ve spent a fair bit of time and we wanted to go in the details about reducing the number of meals and also compressing that eating window to a smaller period of time, maybe in your case down to eight hours. Other folks might like to explore reducing it from the current 12-hour recommendation down to 13, sorry, increasing it to 13 or even 14 hours just to see how you go. It literally cannot hurt you, in fact, all the longevity studies that have been done and there’s never been this done on humans because you’re not allowed to do these tests on humans, but restrictive eating that have been done on all animals that have been tested, restrictive eating as in, what you’re doing has extended life and it reduced the risk of all causes of different sorts of infections, diseases and so on. So overeating, by contrast, is the enemy to longevity, right? So we as long as we’re cautious, we’re doing a healthy thing here. And then on top of that, you’ve maintained exercise throughout this entire time, haven’t you? We haven’t given it much air time, but it’s been a crucial factor, hasn’t it?
Brian – Yes. Yeah. The other thing that I have got some benefit out of with exercise is static-held resistance training. So I’m not working through over and over, through the range of motion of the joint, you’re just doing like a static contraction. And some examples that it’s just like holding a push-up for close to a minute or doing a pull-up for close to a minute, you know, and it’s holding that position and that gets the cardio going to very well that works for that as well. The problem with that was there were times when I had to give that up for long periods of time because it seemed to be even though it was good most days it was probably it was still probably too much decompression for the wrist or compression. And it seemed like that was my wrist were continue to be my problem area for long term, so I cut that out for a long time. If you have difficulty with the wrists that depending on how you’re doing it, that could be a concern. But overall, that’s, you know, doing a static-held squat. Think he would do in yoga or some of these other situations where you can be as gentle as you can under joints has been very helpful.
Clint – Couldn’t agree more. I would say still a portion of my exercises now, after years and years of experimentation and trial and error and failing and making some progress. We’ve put it all together. Still, parts of my workout is isometric exercises, right? Holding a position for a period of time while I count in my head or I look at a clock or something and we can absolutely build muscle mass doing this and reduce inflammation.
Brian – That helped me. That was the first thing that helped me start to gain a little bit of weight back from the when I was at 130lbs for almost two years. That was what started me getting back to the 140 and at some point up to close to 150.
Clint – Yeah, absolutely. Okay, and then obviously throughout this if people have not we haven’t spelled out the obvious, but you’ve been eating plants all that time. To get to this point, you haven’t been eating, you’ve had the discipline of not eating at restaurants, and abstaining from animal products and dairy products.
Brian – All that stuff is yeah, it seemed to be like didn’t need to be said but yes, absolutely.
Clint – Yeah, yeah. Our audience mostly, but some there might be some newcomers tot his podcast and then.
Brian – I stick to everything I do is on your reintroduction sheet. And there are only a few things that are not explicitly on there, but they fit the general pattern of eating. And I wrote them in, you know, as, as I feel that they’re very safe. It’s very clear this is what I eat and that’s why I stick to.
Clint – Any exploration or worth noting of any supplements, or do you think that that throws credit to where it doesn’t deserve?
Brian – In in general, the supplements were not helpful for me. I would dabble in them quite a bit, especially for probiotics. And I couldn’t find any noticeable benefit when I was taking them. But the caveat to that now is now that I’m doing so well. If I take out my fermented vegetables after about 3 to 5 weeks, I start getting a little bit more RA symptoms again. And then as soon as I put them back in it just goes right back. So there’s been a couple of times I’ve tried to test that and make sure that that would be true for a probiotic supplement. And I haven’t been able to for sure prove that, but I imagine it’s probably true there too. But back when I was having horrible symptoms, I was not able to notice a difference. And any of the other supplements I’ve ever tried have never seemed to make any help for me. Um, that doesn’t mean that certain people might benefit for a certain thing, but for me, none of them were that helpful. You know, I’m just careful supplement-wise by, you know, vitamin D, B12, I do Algae Omega 3.
Clint – Yeah. Beautiful. I’m glad you mentioned the fermented foods that you’re eating as well. I mean, you really have checked all the boxes in terms of how to optimize gut health. That’s why I believe you just feel so much better. I do genuinely believe that you have just reestablished a healthy microbiome by doing all of these things. As I said, I’d love to see a report of your microbiome analysis. And it’s great that we also have de-emphasized the reliance on supplements. Some guests have find that that was a breakthrough for them. My experience are that they play a secondary role like we talked about like the secondary feeders in the microbiome. There are really are only a supplement compared to the big hitters. Meditation, Brian tell us about the impact of that before we wrap this up.
Brian – I couldn’t discern that that was beneficial to the actual symptoms. But I think that was absolutely vital in emotionally getting through all that. And keeping myself centered, especially the frustration of after two years this is really helping. You know, every time it keeps happening, two days later, you know, and then you’re struggling for a couple of days, it’s like. That mental, this frustration and anguish and sometimes just outright despair over it. I can’t imagine getting through it without that.
Clint – Right? Yeah. So maybe not to reduce symptoms, but to allow yourself in your mind to be able to get up each morning and say, I’ve got enough.
Brian – Keep all the tedious work day after day.
Clint – Do you think we’ve missed anything? Is there anything that needs to be mentioned that has definitely been part of your toolkit? You mentioned the support, it’s been a pleasure to work with you over several years and to assist intermittently as you’ve needed me. I’ve always enjoyed those interactions. You provided me with clear summaries and updates and just a couple of simple questions. And then I would look forward to the next installment. As you said, like six months later, you did most of this on your own. Is there any, anything else than all these things we’ve talked about that you think needs a mention?
Brian – Did the work on my own. But, you know, without my wife’s support and, family support and also, like, like I mentioned at the very beginning, just knowing that you and everybody else in the support form are there, so going through this. And so many people getting benefit from this helps keep you going.
Clint – It’s like the four minute mile, isn’t it? Until someone. Till you’ve got an example. You don’t. You can’t believe in yourself. Well, thank you, Brian. How confident is my last question, then I’ll let you go. On a scale of like 0 to 10, how confident are you now with your inflammatory arthritis that you feel like you’ve developed the tools to be able to thwart off little symptom here and little symptom there?
Brian – Well, yeah, little symptom here and little symptom there. Yes, I’m very confident. But at the same time, I’m aware that I can never just go back to eating this general restaurant food and, you know, eating animal products and everything that’s going to start pushing me in the wrong direction. I’m also aware that you just have to be very cautious and know that if there was ever a situation I had to take antibiotics or something dramatic happened. I’d have to be mentally prepared that what’s likely to happen for a long time. And would I try another medication or something at that point, I might. I’ll have to cross that bridge if I get there. As far as where I’m at and small symptoms day to day, I’m very confident that that’s very stable. It has been for really the last year and a half I’ve just been in such excellent shape most of the time. And with those little moments that I don’t have, I have a little bit of symptoms for a few days or whatever, or just for a few hours, a few times in a month. You know, it’s so minimal and so easy to just get back. Yeah. So where I was and I always know that if things were really bad for a few days. Okay, I’ll start doing oscillating between two meals a day and one meal a day, back and forth a little bit to ease back the inflammation over time.
Clint – It’s incredible and phenomenal. It’s a huge transformation and you must be pretty thrilled with how far you’ve come. It’s certainly amazing to sit and listen to you talk through this journey. So thanks for sharing. It’s inspirational.
Brian – Yeah, well, thank you. Like I said, even if I found all that the right direction on my own, you know, without you having things laid out in the support, I don’t know if I could have pushed through that long. Without eventually giving up thinking this is not going to work. Which you have put together,is very comprehensive.
Clint – Yeah. Thanks very much. Well, thanks for applying it to the extent that you have and pushing some of the barriers in directions that some of our other guests, including myself, haven’t done in terms of that eating pattern. We had a guest on the show a couple of months about a month ago. Um, um, I want to say Mike or Matt, we had a mike and a matt very close together and they used, he is from South Africa, living in the US at the moment when I interviewed him, he also used the restricted eating to phenomenal effect. And the two of you in that sense have very similar experiences where just phenomenal outcomes around that. So this is something that I’m going to explore over the coming years, probably as more people are trying this and I gather more feedback around this. Well obviously, as I’ve read out before, there’s plenty of science around this. I don’t know whether we’ll officially change anything with our program, but there certainly could be a sort of an additional paragraph that says, Hey, by the way, if you’re interested in reducing your eating window, this could work for you.
Brian – An extra step of troubleshooting or whatever. But. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t encourage somebody to start there or start there and in the first few months mean getting everything else in line, that’s more important. If you can get help from medications, I do not recommend people do it without medication is not a good experience.
Clint – Yeah. Yeah.
Brian – Even though I was trying medications.
Clint – Yeah. That’s it. We got to get the inflammation down that’s the number one priority. It’s very difficult to improve leaky gut if you’ve got high inflammation levels because anywhere in the body, if there’s inflammation, we have increased gut lining inflammation. So tons of studies on that. So inflammation down is number one, which is the message that you’ve what you’re getting at there. And if medications assist you with that and they don’t have a counterproductive impact on the gut, that’s a win. That’s a huge win, that’ll help you on your healing mission. Brian, thank you so much. I’m going to let you go, my friend. It must be getting late there. You’re in Buffalo, so you need to wind down for the evening. I want to say thanks once again. I appreciate you and all that you’ve done. Thanks for sharing today. If anyone else would, if you’re watching this and you’ve got a wonderful story to share, just like Brian, please reach out to me. We love to share stories like this. We can learn and exchange ideas and benefit the rheumatoid arthritis community. Thanks for watching everyone. If you like this video on YouTube, make sure thumbs up, subscribe. And if you’re on the podcast listening to this and you like this episode and you want to say thank you to Brian, who this is his first appearance Ladies and gentlemen on the Internet, please head over and give us a five-star review on iTunes. I don’t ask very often because it gets a bit laborious, but like literally ask like a couple of times a year. If you could go and give us a five-star review on iTunes, it would help other people find this show. Thanks so much. Thank you, Brian.
Brian – Thank you.
