We discuss in this interview:

• Alli is a nurse with the defence force and understood Rheumatoid Arthritis prior to her diagnosis
• Alli’s journey through 11 different drugs in 4 years with no success
• How her condition has dramatically improved since she did lifestyle changes following the Paddison Program
• Holistic approach and medical background
• The benefits of a whole food plant-based diet
• Palindromic rheumatism
• Prednisone, balancing effectiveness and side effects
• Complementing diet with exercise and a complete lifestyle
• Vitamin D
• Scientific studies and personalized approach

Who is Alli?

Clint – Lots of fun today, lots of lessons, lots of inspiration coming from Alli all the way from Washington State. She is bubbly, chatty, and friendly, and she is a military nurse who has a story of dramatic improvements from inflammatory, severe negative rheumatoid arthritis. So let’s go across now to Alli and find out how much she’s improved by following the Paddison Program and all of its aspects from diet, exercise, supplements and so on. How are you, Alli?

Alli – I’m doing really well. Thank you so much for meeting with me today. I always wanted to be one of your success stories. So here I am, a success story. Thank you to the Paddison Program.

A Quick Snapshot

Alli – It’s super exciting. And, you know, we just spent a few minutes going through this before we hit record, and you give me a quick snapshot. Perhaps you might throw the benefit of our audience to give us an idea of your transformation. Just a real short summary before we go into all the detail.

Alli – Sure. So I was diagnosed or I guess not diagnosed, but my journey started back in the spring of 2015. I began having lots of symptoms that I could have Googled and figured that they were rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. I was put on about 11 different medications over the last four years. None of them except prednisone were successful for me personally. However, once I started the lifestyle changes, even as much as the dietary changes, I would say they are equally as important that I listened from the Paddison Program and I feel almost 100% better. I do have an occasional bad day, but I would live a very normal life.

Clint – It’s just so exciting, isn’t it? I mean, how does it feel to be able to say that and to know that you’re in such a better shape? And what always buys me up with excitement is to know that your future looks better.

Alli – Yeah, and I think definitely it’s so exciting. And I think, like, I feel great now compared to how I felt before. But I think that also leaves room for more improvement. So I you know, I think you can only improve your health continues to improve it. So I’m super excited that I’m on a journey now because even looking like long term at other health complications that I could have experienced from not doing the health and lifestyle changes, I may mitigate those as well because of this. So it’s very helpful. It’s very exciting. And I’m just super blessed that I came across this. I was hesitant at first. I did push the button and then cancel one time on you because I was I was hesitant. I was like, does he really know? Is it really going to work for me? But it did, so I’m happy. I’m happy to be here.

Raising Eyebrows

Clint – And I think that’s normal, especially when you’re coming from a medical background. How does this all fit with your nurse friends? I mean, you’re a nurse, you’ve been trained medically. You’ve probably, you know, what’s the word looked after people with inflammatory arthritis. How that does this fit in your sphere of friends and colleagues, that situation you’ve got, has it really created some eyebrow raising conversations?

Alli – Absolutely so. And I love to talk about that. So I so many times I had to leave the floor because of problems that I was having before I started the Program. And people were always saying, isn’t there just a medication? And I’m like, yeah, I’ve been on these medications. I’ve been taking them, it’s not working. And they were like, there should be a medication that just helps them such as this. And I was like, yes, I’m looking for that too. Like, I really want that for me as well. And then now that I found the Paddison Program and the lifestyle changes, the dietary changes and incorporated those, now it’s kind of shifted to I’m I’m doing really well. And whenever I talk to people and who are my patients or even my friends that I work with or my colleagues, my coworkers, I’m always like healthy plant based diet. Make sure you’re doing your hot yoga like. Well, I’m like, this is what you need to be doing. You need to be taking high dose vitamin D like I like. I’m just totally like I’m so excited about it and passionate about it that like whenever I hear one of my clients be like, oh, I have a stomach ache from that potluck that we ate this afternoon. I’m like, you know, if you would just eat a whole food plant based diet, you would feel really great. And I think that it would help all of your health problems as well. So even when it’s not inflammatory arthritis related, I’m always throwing that out there. And I feel like people definitely haven’t felt that. And it’s funny because I have a girl that sits next to me and every day, like in the morning, I bring a banana and two oranges and two apples and that’s my good morning breakfast. And she started doing it to (inaudible). And I’m just like, that is so exciting. I love, like this influence and that it’s funny how originally it started as medication is the way, and then whenever I started to get off medication and move towards this direction, now I feel like I have kind of a little bit of influence over inspiring other people, too, which is really great and exciting.

Clint – Yeah, absolutely. And what about your nurse friends? Obviously, you know, you’re going to have a lot of friends who are nurses. Are they interested in what you’ve achieved and thinking about also spreading the word or at least advocating more lifestyle changes to their patients?

Alli – I would say unless you’ve lived with inflammatory arthritis, you have absolutely no idea what that’s like. And I would say for me personally, hearing your story about having like an elbow replacement and the severity of your symptoms. I look at my symptoms and I’m like, well, not that my symptoms aren’t severe, but that is even worse than what I’ve experienced. And so I think unless you’ve been somebody that has even experienced it mildly, you would have no idea of what it takes to, you know, to encourage that to somebody else.

Clint – And whilst I was hoping that you might say something different, your answer fits exactly with my experience and what everyone else describes as well. Generally, it’s almost like a game of Chinese whispers where one person says one thing and they pass it on. Well, it’s not the best metaphor, but it’s almost like the second person just decides not to pass the message on. It just sort of stops. It’s like, oh, well, like my friend Alli has just transformed her life, she was on 11 medications and now she does lifestyle changes, hopefully a plant based diet, lots of sweaty exercise. She doesn’t need meds anymore. Why don’t you tell everyone who’s in agonizing pain, who’s depressed and mental health issues and their whole family’s falling apart? Oh, no. I might just tell them to go take a drug, you know what I mean?

Alli – Yeah.

Clint – It’s just it just blows my mind that bad news travels to the end of the street and good news just barely makes the neighbor, doesn’t it?

Alli – That’s 100% correct.

How Alli’s Symptoms Started

Clint – So tell your story. 2015 you’re working in the Navy Health Department as a nurse and you suddenly are impacted with how you can work.

Alli – Yup. So for me personally, I was having problems that were coming and going. It was kind of like I would say I read about palindromic rheumatism and it kind of fit that description at first where it was like off and on symptoms. And that became consistent over time, and I was cleared to go overseas. And I, I did go overseas and my symptoms just worsened. And I was in a terrible place where I was having trouble with walking, I was having trouble and bending my fingers. I’d wake up and I just I was completely stiff and I couldn’t open my hands and move my wrists. And so I would I don’t know, I did all these tricks where I could do Epsom salts and ice (inaudible) embraces. And I was referred to many places, neurology or ortho, occupational therapy, acupuncture or like I did all the things I did, all the medications, the Humaira, the prednisone, the Cocentex, the Cymbalta, the gabapentin, all the things. And nothing was sustainably made it better, aside from taking prednisone every day, which anybody in the community, I feel like, of rheumatoid arthritis knows the side effects of prednisone. And so not being on high doses of 20, 30 milligrams of prednisone a day isn’t good for anybody, even though it dramatically helps your pain.

Alli – So I have been working to get off that and that’s the only thing that I would say that I’m still about 2.5 on the occasion if I’m having some symptoms, which I don’t have to do often, which is really great. But yeah, so I’m obviously having all kinds of problems referred to many places and nothing’s working for me. And then I finally got my diagnosis when I came back to the States in 2017 and then started the rheumatology journey. So and I’ve had a really great rheumatologist however, we don’t see eye to eye as far as natural methods. I remember specifically when I had met him, I said I really want to try a more natural approach to treatment. And he said all of that Tumeric in the world is not going to help your inflammatory arthritis and I was like, OK, I’ll do the Humira then. And that’s when I made the decision to go in that direction, which never worked for me. I know a lot of people experience really from that and it didn’t help me personally.

Clint – Can I jump in there? I have a couple of things I mean, it’s a fair call, but he said it’s true. All of the Turmeric or Curcumin, which is the active component in the world, is not going to do the trick and that’s true. But that’s not what you’ve done and that’s not what we recommend. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I said to someone, take Turmeric or take Curcumin. I just that, it must be years because it isn’t effective compared to what you’ve done and what our audience knows, what we need to do, which is we have to throw everything at it. And as you said before, it’s not just the diet and it’s not just the exercise or those two of the biggest two pillars of the natural side of self-improvement. It’s also the supplementation and it’s also the mental health side of things, and getting the gut-brain axis not being counterproductive. You know, it takes everything and it takes everything at an extreme level. I think we’re going to get into that with you because you want or you were mentioning to me before a Facebook comment that I’d like you to bring up in just a moment. And so this is where it’s hard for the doctors to sort of be able to come on board because they don’t realize that when you put all these things together, which is hard in a scientific study, right? There’s no one study that shows look, this person went and did this. because no one funds those studies because there are too many variables, because you can’t just test the one thing which everyone wants to test the one thing. But life isn’t one thing and dealing isn’t one thing. This is like systemic healing to systemic disease and so that’s why the studies aren’t there that support the whole picture. We’ve got the studies for the diet, for vitamin D, and we’ve got studies for all of the stuff, but we haven’t got the study of the Paddison Program, which people pressingly for but it’s tricky to put together. So anyway, so does that comment that I wanted to make about what the rheumatologist said. And then there’s another thing you said which now eluded me is to another comment that I was going to make. So anyway, that that I think is important. Tell us about so continue your story, I think first and then I’ll make a note here to come back to the Facebook comment that you mentioned before. we hit the call. So you spoke to him weren’t quite eye to eye because he downplayed the natural approach, but then you went and did that anyway.

Finding Balance

Alli – Yes, I did. So I tried due to what he said, incorporating both like lifestyle change medication and dietary changes. But I was still having so many problems and it took a while to find the balance for me, which I don’t need medication really like these big biologics and things like that where his prescribing or many rheumatologists, which I really don’t need those. And so it took a while to find the balance of what works for me. And it was huge and it propelled me forward using the Paddison Program and just did the lifestyle changes. I would say the hot yoga helped me tremendously and the vitamin D like I was doing well as far as the diet. And I was like, OK, I’m doing well, I’m still having pain, but I’m doing a lot better than I was before. But once I did that vitamin D and I did the hot yoga four times a week, I was like, wow, I’m really cooking now like I don’t have pain. Like I’m waking up pain-free, like I’m doing great. And like, if I get a little twinge here, there, I’m like, there are people out there who have this lot worse than me and I’m going in the right direction. So I’m very hopeful that eventually, if I have a little twinge, that that will go away. But I also like what you said about the mental health side and the spiritual side as well. Because I didn’t actually write that down to include that I did once I started the Paddison Program and I also started mental health. So I did therapy because I was like, you’re exactly how you said. I was like, I’m going to attack this from every angle, lifestyle change, spiritual change, physical changes, dietary changes and I’m going to do everything because I want to get better. And so I did, I pursued therapy and Bible studies because that’s my personal Christian faith is to do that. So I really wanted to get dive deeper into those things. And I feel like everything, all of those components together helped me not to need any of these medications. So I’m really glad you brought that up, because I totally agree that it takes all of that together. And there are no studies that are just this whole thing in the whole picture. So I believe that if you can improve those things, you’ll go in the right direction. If you can hit all of those things like better sleep, supplementation, and all of those things. So, yeah, definitely.

Alli – But as far as my story, so, yeah, I came back to the States, I got linked up with the rheumatologist and for the last two years, I’ve been seeing the same rheumatologist. I did get a second opinion that was largely the same opinion as my current rheumatologist. So I had spoken with him and he wanted me to try a couple of months ago, Cosentyx, because I started the Paddison Program prior to Cosentyx. But it’s taken months. Like that’s another thing, it doesn’t just start working right away and it takes a long time. And so I was like, well, in the meantime, if I can help with the medications and the things, then I’ll try. So the last time I checked one was a couple of months ago and he started me on that. I did two of those injections and it didn’t work for me the same as Humaira didn’t work for me. So I wasn’t like very surprised that I didn’t have a positive reaction to that. So it does seem like Humira works for maybe like two or three days and then it goes away and then it stops working altogether. So I don’t know other people’s experiences because that was my experience. And then since those last few months, I would say probably 5 to 6 months is where my dramatic improvements came in, and that’s where I started the vitamin D and the yoga. So yeah, it really took off from there.

Is Diet Enough?

Clint – Make a really good point here that I want to reinforce is that sometimes people question diet. And this is I’m so glad you brought this up, because a few emails in the last couple of weeks, I had to address this in length and now I can just talk about it so everyone can hear it. So some people say, I’m not really making much progress or I’m sort of at a plateau just from doing the diet. Well, first of all, as we’ve already said, diet is never enough on its own. I think I did a podcast with Cecille, go back about 10 podcasts or 12, 15 podcasts. And the title of that podcast is Diet is Never Enough. So it’s not just the diet that is just like think of that as the concrete slab from which we then got to build the house from. Get the diet right and that is the diet that is not just useful for inflammatory arthritis, but will extend your life, will reduce the risk factor for all other diseases, as you said, Alli. So we need a low fat, whole food plant-based diet. Ok, so if that’s not doing anything, don’t change your diet. Don’t go looking for other miracle stories or miracle cures of random supplements of things from other parts of the world that are unique, bizarre, and shiny objects. You’ve set your concrete foundation from there. Now look at what else needs to build your house strong and solid again and for you, that was the exercise. It was looking at vitamin D levels, it was mental health and that’s right. So just put the diet in place and actually forget about the diet and then work on all the other stuff and that’s what needs to be done. And all the other stuff that comes is usually for most people, the exercise. It really is and it’s like meditation. Right. So the mind gets in the way of doing things that prevent the mind from being active and it’s self-sustaining its own activity levels. And so the mind says, don’t go meditate, you’ve got to pay that bill. You’ve got to call someone so it doesn’t get in the way or anything that will stop it from being stopped for a while. In the same way, the mind says, don’t go exercise because that’s going to hurt. And if you exercise well enough and hard enough, the mind then also tends to just go into almost like a neutral site. And that also enables, you know, that’s good for you but the mind doesn’t like that either. So we actually have to understand that our own mind prevents us from doing some of these things that are beneficial. It’s a weird paradox and that’s where everyone gets stuck. You got to go and do these extra things on top of the diet.

Alli – Right.

Clint – Forget the diet it’s just a concrete slab.

Alli – And then also if you focus everything around just your diet, you’re constantly like, what? Well, I did this one thing wrong. Or like you’re constantly like, what did I do? Like all these things? And you’re so hyper-focused on what you’re going to eat that it’s like, no, go out and enjoy some hot yoga, go out and enjoy a walk, go out like, you know, if you can. I know that people have a lot worse than I thought. But, you know, if you can do those things and enjoy your life, then you can also incorporate your diet to help you. But you have something else that’s keeping your mind off of food and your intake and every little thing that goes into your mouth. Well, I’m going to punish myself because I ate whatever and like, this made me flare. And it’s like maybe that specific thing didn’t make you flare, you know, but you’re constantly questioning. So I think, like, stick to the diet, keep your progress. Keep it like as you say, keep a diary of your progress, because that’s so helpful. You’re like once you start getting better, you kind of forget where you came from. And so that’s I feel like you’ve said before, keep a diary, keep your goals of why you want to get better and then be able to see where you came from in the past that you’re like, I am meeting my goals, I am doing more, I’m like staying awake longer without pain, and I am doing exercises that I couldn’t do before. Like I do so many things like the crow pose I have such bad wrists. I was like, there’s no way I’ll ever be able to do a crow pose again, things like that. And I’m getting back there, which is amazing compared to where I was before. So definitely I recommend to anybody who’s going through this keep your pain diary, write your goals down and incorporate everything from mental health to your lifestyle changes to your exercise, your diet. All those things don’t just hyper-focus on your diet.

Clint – Absolutely. And I don’t think we can label this enough because sometimes I respond in a way that you and I’ve just been discussing. And then I still get a question back and someone still emails me back and says, you know, like a week later I’ve just tried to introduce, I don’t know, X, Y, Z, food, broccoli or something. And I had a reaction, so I’m frustrated and I don’t know what to do. And I feel like, you know, I’m frustrated because I’m trying to convey the same thing that I’ve been discussing. And so the truth is that if that person goes for half an hour session on a treadmill or if they went for a 15-minute swim, they could probably eat the broccoli without any inflammation. There is a way of accelerating the dietary introductions, and it is by becoming better, you know, the exercise improves the microbiome. And in a way, I’m not certain as to how it works but it reduces the food sensitivity. So we use the exercise to get more food back into us and so on. So I think that this will be a massive aha moment for a lot of people who were like, you were going well on the diet, but it was when you set that as your foundation and then said, OK, what else do I need to do? Not how do I maybe I’m doing the wrong diet? What else do I need to do? So that’s great.

The Role Play

Clint – So give us that or teach us now, Alli. Let’s say you’re sitting next to someone on the airplane. The plane’s going to land in seven minutes and you’re going to have to get off the airplane. And the person or the stranger you’re sitting next to has just mentioned to you that they’ve got inflammatory arthritis.

Alli – I need hours to talk to them, not seven minutes.

Clint – See what you can do in the next few minutes. I want to hear your pep talk and the instructions.

Alli – I would be, oh Clint it’s so nice to meet you. I also struggled with inflammatory arthritis really bad. I want you to look at the Paddison Program. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that before, but it’s something that I’ve been implementing in addition to supplementation and lifestyle changes, dietary changes, it incorporates all of that. So I would definitely recommend checking that out and then just know that there is hope because it does feel hopeless. It feels lonely and your friends don’t understand, your family doesn’t understand and nobody understands. But, Clint Paddison understands them.

Clint – But Alli, you’re really young and you don’t look like you have arthritis.

Alli – Oh, yeah, I get that a lot. You’re so young, though and you’ve so far to go. It’s just going to get worse. All these things I’m like, thank you for the encouragement. However, what I’ve been doing has been super helpful to me. And I would be like, can I have your information so we can exchange? Because I think that I could send to you and we could hold each other accountable and we could talk about lifestyle changes. I wouldn’t mind being your friend and let’s make it a relationship. Like I love to talk to you about what you’ve struggled with because your struggles aren’t the exact thing of my struggles, though. Yeah, totally that would be my seven minutes of just like tell me about.

Clint – What do I have to eat? I don’t have to become one of those weird vegans.

Alli – But there’s so many options and that’s the thing. It’s hard when you’re a social eater and you go out to the restaurants a lot and you’re like, what am I going to eat? Or I go over to my friend’s house and they’re like, What can you eat? Like, I want to make something that you can eat. And you’re like, Oh, this is what I eat. And they’re like, look like I don’t know if I want to eat that. But actually, like, there’s Pinterest, millions of things on Pinterest that you can look up as far as a vegan diet, as far as whole food plant-based diet and find out what works for you. As I said, I eat fish too, sometimes three times a week, and that works for me. And I think it’s different for everybody. And definitely, I one hundred percent agree with what you said as far as like your lifestyle is going to enhance dietary changes. So get healthy with your dietary changes, get on the green diet, green smoothies all day, greens with the greens if you drink a green smoothie every single day. And so I can’t recommend that enough to somebody. Spinach, kale, get it all in there, find what works for you, what you like. And then I think, yeah, it’s hard for some people, but you can make it really, really good and you can make smoothies and stuff that you’ll love and you’ll feel the way that you’re going to feel will far outweigh missing McDonald’s French fries, which is terrible anyways. So, yeah, I just can’t even look at that food anymore. I can’t smell that food. No, we like green smoothies and I love a big salad. I love to put this on my salads, I love to make big sheets of vegetables and I love to put asparagus on the stove and make it in water like those things you can make so delicious. And I’m a terrible cook, you can ask my husband, but you can make that really delicious, though.

Clint – So still role-playing here. Actually, before we just something you mentioned with the fish thing, I thought I’ll probably get a ton of comments saying, hey, Alli said she eats fish. Is that OK? Just to clarify, a lot of the majority portion of your healing progress was done without the fish. You’ve added that because the family likes to be able to eat with you and so forth. Am I correct?

Alli – Yes, you are correct.

Clint – Ok, beautiful. And so, you know, what we find is that my parallelism to that is that with nuts. Right? So I couldn’t eat nuts for the longest time. But then you feel like you’re doing really good. You find that you can eat some things that are higher in fat, whether it be in your case, an animal-based fat source and or in my case, it was nuts. And we just find that things that were otherwise challenging in the past, we can eat. Does that mean that’s all the time that it would be good for me? Absolutely not. So we got to be careful. But we find we do develop a sense of robustness that allows us to eat the sort of highest risk or less of the healing and more of the calorie-dense options.

Clint – Back to the roleplaying, I’m sitting next to you on the plane. We’ve got a few minutes left to go through this. You’ve told me that I’ve got lots of options that I can eat within the plant-based thing. You’ve told me to do lots of green smoothies. But and in the role-playing, my rheumatologist said that diet won’t do anything.

Alli – Well, I think if you just change your diet, it won’t do anything. If that’s the only thing you’re changing, then it might not. One thing I did have tested and have had consistently tested throughout the last four years since my symptoms were my vitamin D levels. And I was always markedly deficient, which I know is consistent with many people who suffer from inflammatory arthritis. So I would recommend to the person that I’m sitting next to you like, have you had that done? What’s yours look like? I had been supplementing, my doctor said a supplement with a thousand IU per day of vitamin D because you are deficient. I did that and I did that for a year, maybe every six months to a year, and then had it retested and I was 16, which is still low. They want you to be at 30 and so he said increased it to two thousand. I increase to two thousand and it was unchanged again in my neck. So I’m like, this isn’t working. But once I started increasing, increasing, increasing, and then I started doing the high dose, which is like I think it’s like 50,000 IU for like a week or six weeks period.

Clint – A week right?

Alli – Yeah, just for a week.

Clint – Yeah. Just to clarify folks, that’s fifty thousand IU per week.

Alli – Finally, once I started getting my levels to a normal level, my pain was decreasing, which was really awesome. So I definitely would recommend it to that person as well. If you haven’t had a vitamin D level checked, get your vitamin D checked.

Vitamin D Supplementation

Clint – Yeah, absolutely. The feedback we’ve been getting so far from the episode that I did with Dr. Somerville, which is an episode of a podcast episode going back about a month ago, the feedback has been excellent. People have been seeing improvements to their sleep, especially. And just the feeling of increased well-being from supplementing the D. It’s too soon to see whether or not the general feedback has been also been inflammation reduction. But in your case, you’ve reported that and you were at it for a while, like a year of one thousand a day, and then increased to two thousand. It’s not like you just started to, right? So you’ve been at that for a while. So, you know, I absolutely agree. My God, my recommendations to aim for your levels, to be at just within the normal range at the upper end. So just so the doctor is happy and you’re happy the doctor won’t freak out if it’s over the maximum, that you’re happy because it’s really high. If the range is between arbitrary units 0 to 100, then get it in the 90s. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve, right?

Alli – Yeah.

Take It One day At A Time

Clint – Yeah, it’s an open mic, you can now talk about anything you think’s really important down to anything else we’re missing or you just want to encourage people, whatever you want to say now you can go for it.

Alli – Sure. So really, I would just say stay encouraged. Like it’s so hard when you’re in the trenches, you’re hurting and your social life and your work life and things are suffering. Because you’re in so much pain and disability, you can’t do anything it’s hard to be happy and thankful when you’re you’re constantly swollen and in pain and having trouble moving. I know what that’s like I do one hundred percent and it’s awful. But there is hope and little improvements just take it one day at a time. Just because you feel worse today than you felt yesterday doesn’t mean you’re not improving. And I think that was really hard for me because I wanted to just fix it now. I wanted one thing to just hyper-focus on and then correct that and then feel better each and every day. But it was like we talked about encompassing all of the things and just realizing that just because you feel worse today than yesterday doesn’t mean that tomorrow you’re not going to feel better again to where you were before. So I highly recommend staying positive. And just please, please, please look at doing Bikram yoga and hot yoga and get your vitamin D checked and have a green smoothie every day. I think that’s my recipe for success.

Clint – Speaking of recipes, what’s your favorite green smoothie?

Alli’s Smoothies

Alli – So, I do coconut water with a little bit of oat milk and I put in a full frozen large banana with a little tiny bit of kale. Like I really don’t go heavy on the kale because of the texture. If you put too much, it can ruin the texture of your smoothie. So I put a little bit of kale, but then I load it with spinach. So it’s extremely green, I love the color and the vibrance of that of the color I put chia seeds and then I put in a little bit of like almond butter or some kind of nut butter. And then, yeah, it’s amazing and you just blend it up and you can drink the entire thing in like an hour if you like, make an entire big. Yeah. And just drink it over an hour and you’ll be full and you’ll feel amazing and it’s like a whole meal for you.

Clint – Absolutely, that’s a great one. I love it. Yeah. OK, now I almost forgot but anyone who’s been wondering, is he going to ask about these Facebook comments. Let’s go there now. I think because and what we’re about to do is basically pay tribute to anyone who’s following the Paddison Program, anyone who’s making a big last mission to get well. And what we’re about to do is say right now we get how hard this is. This is extremely challenging and it is with open arms and with huge respect that we pay tribute to the efforts that you are putting in right now. Because it’s so challenging to be able to, you know, shift the needle on this naturally. And so wherever you are right now, listening, watching, whatever you’re doing, thank you for putting your energy in this area, because it is a challenging path, but it is worth it regardless of whether or not you improve one percent the next month, one percent the next year, it’s better than worsening or it’s better than worsening at a rate that you would if you just eat a Western diet and did nothing. OK, so you had a comment around this on that Facebook post, didn’t you, Alli?

Alli – Do you want me to read it? Because I don’t remember I have to go to my email real quick and pull it up, I think because the only reason I have it in there is because I think you liked it, which I was like, oh, Clint liked my comment when you look it up because they don’t have it readily available. I don’t know, do you have it readily available?

Clint – No, but you can paraphrase it no one’s getting a double-check anything.

Alli – OK, well, I have commented because I really wanted to meet you and I really wanted to thank you personally and just be like this has been such an inspiration for me. I went from working for limited hours. I got put on limited duty in the Navy, so I worked minimal hours. I only worked the day shift. And I worked in a very easy job because everything got changed and I started the Paddison Program. And you started the whole diet and I started lifestyle changes. And now I work a full-time job and I do everything that a regular person does. And I don’t have pain in my mind all day long. So I think I put something to that effect in there that I started off not working as a full-time job. And then since I’ve incorporated this, I’m now working full time. I’ve gotten a promotion I’m now the lead nurse of my team at work. And so, and then I said, I can’t remember it because I know I often message you or message the Paddison Program directly in the progress report and so, I said that I just love the way you speak to people. I love the way that you are eloquent when you speak to them. I love that you listen to what they have to say and you write-downs that you can, like, really focus on what they’re saying. And I just love that about you. And I think that is very welcoming. And it’s like it makes you want to do the Program. So I think I said something to that effect as well.

Clint – Thank you all of that stuff’s very, very lovely. And congratulations on your improvements to being able to handle much more workload, responsibility and comes with that, the stress and the time commitment, the out of work thoughts that need to be applied to your job. You know, the whole thing just becomes more of a more consuming and that becomes more of your life, occupies more of you of who you are. And then, also you mentioned to me there was a simple comment that someone said that, oh, why don’t you just go do the programs.

Alli – That was like I think that one was like directly undermine or somewhere close to it where they said, oh, yeah, because paying a couple of hundred dollars for a simple fix, wouldn’t you think that everyone would do that or whatever if that was the case, that you could just and instead of thousands of dollars in the medical industry or whatever, just pay or couple hundred bucks and get cured by Clint Paddison. And I said to Clint earlier, if it was easy, then yes, everybody would pay a couple of hundred dollars and do it then yes, that would make logical sense. But it’s not easy, it’s easier to inject myself with Humira. It’s easier to inject myself with Concentyx and take a thousand oral pills than it is to do the cancer Program. So if you’re looking for easy, then OK, the Paddison Program is not for you. But yes, the diet, the lifestyle, the hot yoga, the vitamin D, the green smoothie. If you’re looking for feeling better without medication, then yes, the Paddison Program is for you. And one hundred dollars or a couple hundred to have personal one on one help. If that is what is more helpful to you and hold you accountable, then yes. Then that is for you, the Paddison Program is for you.

Clint – I was thinking about this. You know, what also needs to be offered as reassurance is if someone’s still sitting on the fence after listening to dozens and so I think we’re up to 158 episodes or whatever of this podcast. If someone’s still sitting on the fence and have listened to a lot of these and thinking, oh, well, Alli and Clint have just told me it’s too hard, I’m not going to do it. I just want to say I want to say this is you can do it at the smallest possible level and still feel proud of yourself and still get on the healing path in that very small step forward. So, for example, it might look, I don’t know, let’s say you’re just totally against it, but you’re curious and you’re only capable of making some small changes. Why not just make Monday night, make free night something like that, instead of going for a walk every couple of days with one of your friends? Why not start the day with a walk every day? And why not just go and get some more sunshine early afternoon when you might lie on the couch or maybe at work like you’re at work in your high career champion. You step outside and make a phone call, God forbid, like pull the legs of your trousers up so you get some sunshine on your legs or something like that,

Alli – If you are in much of that pain, it will motivate you to do everything. You’ll want to be here, to do anything to fix that. So it’s very motivating when you have pain behind it to want to see things. But if you can’t and it’s hard for you, start with the little things for sure.

Clint – Totally agreed. And because when you get a little progress, isn’t it motivating? Isn’t it? It’s almost like it’s catching, It’s exciting, and It’s like a fire that continues to burn and get bigger. Because you think, well, if I feel better from just doing that, what if and once you start asking, what if the mind just takes off and you get pumped and excited?

Alli – Yeah, totally. Especially with the hot yoga, you’ll see your progress. You’ll be like at first I couldn’t do this, but now I can do this. And it’s amazing and like I can’t say enough times because it just is so helpful that hot yoga all day, every day.

Clint – Well, up in the old part of the world, Katie, who is now becoming a yoga teacher after being so, so challenged with her physical limitations only a few years ago from doing Paddison Program, starting in her case Bikram yoga, doing something like 500 classes in 18 months, something like insane. And she’s now off and learning to be a yoga instructor, and that’s how much it’s impacted her life. And, you know, you’re also seeing such tremendous benefits and who knows where this could go. You’re doing wonderful in your career right now, but you could have a parallel career, you know, becoming an instructor.

Alli – Totally I would be so open to that. And also, my life goal is to run a marathon. I ran track in college and that’s when I started having all these problems that goal kind of went out the window and I was like, I’m never going to be able to run a marathon. And that’s ok, I’ll stick with hot yoga. But now I’m like, I think I could run a marathon. So I’m going to keep doing everything I’m doing and start training for that.

Clint – Have you read Born to Run? Have you read that book yet?

Alli – No.

Clint – Why? Buy that book and your motivation for marathoning will skyrocket.

Alli – I will definitely, have you run one personally as well?

Clint – I haven’t, but I was a cross country champion at school. But let me just put a little disclaimer there. There were only about 50 runners and I only won it when I was in year 12. And so some of the competitors, because my school was tiny. So the guy who comes second, who was my PE teacher and he was like 55 at the time, and I’m running as a 17-year-old, but I wasn’t exactly like state level. But you know, I was lanky and built like a long distance runner. But no, I never pursued it anything other than just recreational. And but I would push myself as I’ve always had that thing where I would in my internal dialogue to achieve is like the whips on me, you know, so I can be falling apart. But inside I’m like more.

Alli – Oh, yes that’s like that’s the making of a very good runner.

Clint – Yeah. So I’m weaker in yoga. I don’t have that same inside of like all I did this two days ago. My muscles will be tight and I don’t need to be on working them.

Alli – You should definitely go for running the marathon. In Australia and we can run it in the same race.

Clint – Right, exactly OK, well thank you very much for this is highly enjoyable and I hope everyone has had some inspiration and make a smoothie and go and take some steps and if they’re already crushing it then refine with some more things you add, add more. What else can you do? Yeah, win that (inaudible).

Alli – Yeah, totally. I really appreciate your time.

Clint – Thank you very much you too. You’re doing wonderful and keep up the fantastic work.

Alli – Thanks, I hope we’re in touch again.