With Rheumatoid Arthritis, sometimes finding the right medication, the right mental approach, the right physical exercise, the right diet, and putting it all together can take time and effort: today Sonya shares her journey through all of it, and how she managed to achieve a tremendous outcome in the end.

We discuss in this interview:

• Sonya’s RA diagnosis, after several symptoms accumulated over the years from a completely fit condition
• Genetic factors and lifestyle
• Cesarean birth and antibiotics
• Sonya’s trials with different drugs, and her positive results with biologic ones
• How she started the Paddison Program, and the great help it brought to the effectiveness of medications
• Daily exercise
• The importance of the right mindset
• Meditation and its effect on feelings
• Sleep

Clint – One of the messages that we like to share in our community is that we need to throw everything at inflammatory arthritis so that we can get the inflammation under control. And today’s guest is going to illustrate that really well. Her name’s Sonya and she’s in Melbourne, Australia. She has a journey to share with us about breaking down barriers through drug problems and physical problems until eventually finding the right medication, the right mental approach, the right physical exercise, the right diet, and putting it all together to be in a position where she lives pain-free with rheumatoid arthritis. And of course, that’s where we all want to be. And when we hear a case study of someone who’s achieved that, then we can learn a lot. So we’re not just going to be talking about some kind of breakthrough, no more meds, years of all of that. No, We’re talking about a case study of using everything at once, putting it all together, and having a tremendous outcome. And so with that, Sonya is going to say hi and join us.

Sonya – How are you going?

Clint – It really good. Thanks for joining me. Middle of the day, it’s beautiful here. What’s it like in Melbourne?

Sonya – It’s sunny, absolutely sunny, I just wanted to say thank you to you. First of all, our Paddison Program and all the information that you provide for patients with arthritis, it’s absolutely incredible. I don’t know what I would have done with all the information through your own journey. So I’m incredibly grateful to that information because it certainly made my journey a lot easier to have all those different insights. So thank you.

Clint – Well, that’s wonderful and kind. Thank you so much, Sonya. Now, as I said in your introduction, you’ve taken like what we love to say, like throwing everything at it. You really struggled. We’re about to hear about your story, and what you went through, and you’ve ended up now finding a medication, Cimzia, that works for you so everyone can understand right from the start that you’re on a multiple-faceted approach. What I’d like to do is just find out, like just do a before and after, like the struggles that you had and then where you’re at today. So especially because we want to hear where you’re at today because a lot of people are still in a lot of pain. Then we’re just going to break down the drug journey in particular because it turns out with you that it’s the drug journey that was really the troublesome one. And one drug led to side effects that led to troubles to try and heal your gut and so on, so that’s what we’ll do. But first of all, how are you waking up in the morning these days and how does that compare to before?

Sonya – So these days I’m waking up every morning, I get up early, I get out of bed, and I go with my husband every day. I will do 10K’s every single morning as the sun comes up and I’m having very minimal symptoms. I feel so incredibly healthy, I feel probably the best I’ve felt really in my life. So I’m incredibly grateful to be honest, for this journey as my health is just so fluid. I’ve had really an awakening three and a half years ago now and actually longer than that. So 2017, I was incredibly fit, I was running long kilometers every week and I decided I’d enter Melbourne Half Marathon as I came 20th in my age group and I just thought like was in shape. But at the same time I’d noticed that in my right side I developed, I was accelerating, just feel right. And then not long after that I developed a frozen Shoulder and I developed terrible pain throughout my body and I knew there was something wrong. So I went and saw my GP 2019. I went for a walk one day and I got home and my right foot was just blown out when I got home. And I just said to myself, there’s just something really wrong. At three weeks later, the same thing happened to my left foot and my GP noticed that my knee also got swollen. He said, well, I’ll throw you on to see a rheumatologist. I also had joint swelling in my hands, and he said, look, I think it’s just related to you’ve done a lot of sport, a lot of running and you need to see a rheumatologist. And I went and saw the rheumatologist and 5 minutes after seeing her she said, it was inflammatory arthritis. This is definitely rheumatoid arthritis straight away, just from looking my feet, it was so swollen. And then I went on and had further tests that she’d ordered me. And then just before Christmas 2019, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was just devastated because my happy place was always my running. It was from a very young age I’d done athletics at school. Then I used to run every single day pretty much from my life when I was 18, right up into my 40’s.

Clint – Running is healthy, right? We don’t want to create this perception that it’s a risk factor for developing inflammatory arthritis. In fact, the studies show that there is no upper limit to the protective effects of exercise and fitness to the point where the absolute greatest level of fitness that you can achieve correlates with the lowest mortality risk. Right? So fitness is tremendous. So what do you think? What do you think brought this on? I mean, you’re fit. So were you eating lots of like processed bars to keep you running and and doing protein shakes? I mean, what were you doing?

Sonya – Well, I had a reasonable diet, but I was eating meat. I was having dairy before that. Six months before my diagnosis I decided to change my diet and I became vegan because I knew I was in trouble. But I think I have a family history showing me two things, maybe a cousin to having arthritis and other auto-immune diseases. So I think there is a strong family history there, but I would say my diet along with I did a lot of exercises. That makes sense because I wasn’t having a lot of time or recovery time in between my training as well as I used to drink alcohol, I used to drink coffee.

Clint – They’re not too bad. What about caesareans cesarean birth, and breastfeeding? Did you get breastfed? Natural birth.

Sonya – So I had two cesareans. A lot of antibiotics with my second child.

Clint – So you personally had the caesareans?

Sonya – Not. Sorry. No, I wasn’t a cesarean baby, so. But yes, my baby’s via cesarean.

Clint – Okay. And some antibiotics there.

Sonya – Yeah.

Clint – All right. And so when you said you went on a plant based diet, did you do that because you’d already noticed symptoms starting to happen?

Sonya – Yes, I had. I felt like just my grinding pain and I developed a frozen shoulder. And I just felt like we’d sit in a car when I was driving and just think, what’s wrong with me? I just don’t feel right. The pain was really significant, so I just decided that one day I just said, that’s it, I’m going to try this. And I tried a plant-based diet and see if that helps. So I started implementing that six months before my diagnosis.

Clint – Yes. Often what we see is that no matter what you do when the disease is beginning to progress, it seems to almost be like a snowball building down a hill, it’s very hard to stop. So you can try this, try that, but progression just continues and that happened in your case.

Sonya – And that is exactly what happened, it was progressing very quickly.

Clint – So tell us about the methotrexate, because that was the Celebrex. And then what happened when you went on to the methotrexate?

Sonya – Okay. So I went on the methotrexate and my pain levels went down, but I still had swelling in my joints and stiffness. And so I also had issues with some of my enzymes, they went up a little bit as well as my white blood cell count went down low, and I always felt like I had a sore throat. And from methotrexate I then tried site along with Plaquenil as an add-on that was not effective and I developed really bad headaches from that. So then I went off that and I went on to leflunomide which seemed to control the symptoms better. But then I had hair loss. And then I then went on to Cinzia, which controlled my symptoms well.

Clint – Fantastic. Okay, so you mentioned the gastritis. Do you think that that was. Oh, it’s hard to identify a particular drug cause, but let’s just say that no wonder it was hard to get complete symptom relief on the combination of meds you’re on when you got inflammation of your intestines.

Sonya – Yes, that’s correct.

Clint – Yeah. So Cimzia offered you an alternative, it provided you a chance to heal. Because at this point, as we’ll talk about in a second, you’re doing so many other things that were awesome.

Sonya – Yes, that’s correct. So I definitely noticed I just felt better, I just didn’t feel like I was getting hammered by methotrexate. I started to feel better. And I actually had COVID march last year, and after had COVID, I noticed a lot of my body actually started to get a lot better. And I was feeling like I used to feel my arthritis. I was feeling full again, I was feeling the right energy. And I just generally felt very, very well. So that was my experience.

Clint – Yeah. Great. Okay. So we know that biologic drugs frequently don’t create complete symptomatic relief, right? We know that there’s more to it than just what drug we take is going to create a miracle outcome. Like I thought that, for example, with methotrexate, I thought, if I’m going to take methotrexate, okay, fine, I give in. At least I can have no symptoms so that I can therefore, you know, take the drug and have pain relief. And I know methotrexate is not a biologic drug, but we do assume that as we go up the echelons of medication prescriptions that we’re going to hit one that’s like a miracle, that’s not necessarily the case. So for your body, the way that your body metabolized certain meds, you found that the meds were a wrong combination for you and causing more of the underlying cause or contributing to it. And then you found the drug that works and we tick the box a big green tick. But everything else needs to be done in parallel so that we create this rock solid future. So what are the other things that you do? Just go through one at a time and tell me, what else do you do that really helps you?

Sonya – Okay, so. Things that have are really helped me is obviously adopting the Paddison Program. I just found that I love eating that way, that it’s just sort of nourishing. Eating a lot of leafy green vegetables, whole grains like the buckwheat quinoa. And basically, I’ve just adopted a diet and basically I don’t eat really any processed foods. I’ve just found that last year that I had a big change and I think it’s from the three and a half years of adopting this particular diet that I felt like that. So I’m just really passionate about it. I’ve just really love eating that way. I just feel like it helps my body to feel great. Yeah. I’ve really embraced being vegan and learned to cook in different ways, and I really feel like it definitely helped my arthritis.

Clint – Yeah. Great. An exercise, you used to do lots of running. What do you do now instead of running? Or are you planning to run again? And what about with regards to your upper body as well? Weight training or anything?

Sonya – Yeah, I’ve done a lot of exercises. So in 2021, I was walking every day and then in 2022 I had a few problems halfway through last year and I spent all of last year, I think, trying to rehabilitate my right leg. And now I’m back walking back doing weights and I’ve done a lot of upper body weight with my hands, my right hand. I developed some dexterity problems, like just when I was out shopping, opening up plastic bags and things like that. So I’ve done a lot of like hanging off bars, I did a lot of chin-ups. And just really throughout the last three and a half years just said to myself, I’m going to become as strong as I can. And that’s pretty much what I’ve done.

Clint – The way you speak about it, makes me think like it’s like what you’re saying is actually far more profound than the way you’re telling us. You know what I mean? You’re just like, Oh, yeah. I started doing, like, chin-ups, and we’re like, Hey, one second. There’s only a handful of women at the gym doing chin-ups. Do you know what I mean? And you’re like, Oh, yeah, I just totally. Just, like, started rehabilitating everything. So, I mean, I think you’re being humble and understating some of the achievements that you’ve done here.

Sonya – Yes.

Clint – Be proud of these things. These are hard things to achieve. Your hands were inflamed. You said your feet were killing you, your knees. I mean, all this stuff’s going on. So to be able to achieve that is immense physically.

Sonya – From the time I got diagnosed, I said, that’s it I’m going all in. I’m not going to go in these half-baked, I’m just going all in. I’m going to heal myself and I’m going to live the best life I can and have the best outcome for myself. And I started thinking to myself, best outcome, best outcome, because I had a lot of fear. Fear of because joint pain was there, then I’d be out walking, I think really hurts, my knee really hurts. But I had to say to myself you’re okay, you’re saved, you’re going to be okay, just keep going. And I used to say that to myself every single day. And I’ve definitely got that running at times, and when I have, I’ve just been so grateful. I’ve got a few mechanical issues in my right leg, so that’s probably what’s been holding me back from running. But that’s my dream to get back to my running.

Clint – Yeah. And it doesn’t matter if you like that. I think you can disassociate the level of success with running or not running. Whether or not you can run is is not ultimately the measuring stick as to whether or not you’ve done amazing things.

Sonya – Yes. And I’ve definitely gone back and forth, back and forth where I’ve always sort of that’s been the running’s been so much part of my life. And I have been thinking along those chain thoughts, you know, it is okay, I’m doing tremendously well. I’m out walking ten times a day. In 2021, I walked three and a half thousand kilometers.

Clint – Yeah, that’s a rheumatoid arthritis record. So you’re setting the bar higher than anyone else in the world. What else are you doing then? So we’ve got the drug, right? We get the exercise right. We’ve drug, diet, exercise. Let’s talk about stress reduction.

Sonya – It would have been around in 2021 in October, I just got along with Cinzia and I decided, well, I’m going to try and meditate and see if that really helps me. And I used to meditate up to 3 hours a day. What I found was that my gut health started to improve, and I started to feel feelings of wholeness again. I just felt like my health was really starting to turn around. And I thought, there’s something in this is it’s definitely something in this meditation. So I just kept on doing it every single day and trying to feel feelings of feeling uplifted rather than feelings of feeling depressed. It really changed the way I felt about myself was just such a positive experience. And that just really has really helped me a lot.

Clint – Out of a scale of 0 to 10 with ten being the worst. Where would you say that sort of depression and mental health challenges were for you before you got everything right?

Sonya – I would say that it was quite a significant problem, especially in 2020. Obviously, I was at the start of the journey and the pandemic hit and I was obviously with my family every day, which was fabulous, but socially, like very isolated, Melbourne being like a city of lockdown. And so I kind of had time to think about where was my life going, how was I going to go on these drugs. But I eventually just said to myself, Yes, this is it, I’m not going to feel this way anymore. And. Yeah. I eventually got better.

Clint – Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then what about. How’s your sleep? Do you have any sleep strategies you can share with us that work for you?

Sonya – Yeah, I really prioritize my sleep. At the start, when I was really sick, I was going to bed at 8 -30 at night. Like I’d get at the end of the day and think, I’ve just got to get to bed. Like, sort of going to bed at 10 -00, I would be in bed in the house. So I just consistently start with sleep because I just felt like that sleep was really healing my body. And then I listened to one of your podcasts on Vitamin D, and I was like, I’m going to give this a try and try the vitamin D. I read the book, The Optimal Dose, and he talked about how fantastic it was, the deep sleep. So yeah, I really found the vitamin D very helpful for that deep restorative sleep. And I really haven’t looked back since taking vitamin D. Like, my sleep is just so good every night. I rarely wake up. You know, I really wanted to stay at a really high dose of vitamin D, but unfortunately, I had to drop back to a slightly lower dose. I take 7000 units a day. But what I was finding with the 30,000 was I was really getting like I was sort of going to sleep. And then I was like, you know, like.

Clint – Oh, you mean like you slept so well.

Sonya – I just slept so well. Yeah, but I couldn’t keep taking that because my levels just went up really quickly. I didn’t expect that they would go up so quickly. I thought, oh yeah, a couple of months. And I was like three weeks and I was there. I started to feel a bit like in my stomach and I was like, Oh no, what have I done? Like, Oh really? I never reached the top, I had some symptoms, but I didn’t have the calcium in my blood. But yeah, my sleep is very important, and I notice you have a late night. Probably don’t feel quite as energized the next day.

Clint – That’s fascinating. Yeah, that was an experiment I went through to my wife and I, we at one point used to supplement and then we had our numbers checked. I don’t know, like about everybody, but certainly the people I’ve communicated with like yourself and many other people. If you hit up this like the 5000, 10,000 international units a day and you’re not taking some kind of, you know, lousy, lousy product, the vitamin D, it’s going to shoot right up real quick. It’s an easy change to make. And so I love it as a simple strategy to correct for inflammatory strategy disorders. Because if your vitamin D is off, that’s a no-brainer, you’ve got to get that up. That’s one of the foundational things for us to have a well-balanced immune system.

Sonya – And since I’ve started it, I pretty much haven’t been sick. My kids like post-COVID, we had COVID last March, and I have not been sick since then. And my husband’s had the flu twice, my kids have had the flu twice, but I didn’t get any of it like none of it.

Clint – And you’re the one on immunosuppressant.

Sonya – That’s right. And I was just like, it was a moment that I just went, wow, Like, I am not getting these flus, I’m not getting colds. And I’ve been so sick on the methotrexate in terms of sore throats and always feeling quite like quite off on it. So going to really a whole year without anything has been amazing. So that podcast and that book are fantastic.

Clint – Right. Yeah. I’m really glad that helped. All right. What are we missing here? Do you take any other supplements?

Sonya – I take zinc, B12 spray and vitamin D, That’s it.

Clint – Okay.

Sonya – And I have I have trialed a couple of times probiotics as well. I’ve tried those as well and have had pretty good outcomes within.

Clint – Okay.

Sonya – From a gastro-health point of view.

Clint – Yeah. Speaking of gastro health and how are bowel movements for you?

Sonya – Yeah, they’re really excellent. So, Very good. Yes.

Clint – Great.

Sonya – I imagine very different to when you were having gastritis with them.

Sonya – Yes, that’s correct, quite a contrast. Definitely, my gastrointestinal system is not right. And I think even before the diagnosis of the arthritis, I had problems as well as problems digesting fats, but now I’m in a really great position.

Clint – Okay, so let’s wrap this up. So it feels if I was to summarize and you can modify this, if I make some errors here. But it seems like you were living a fitness lifestyle and for reasons that remain a mystery, you developed inflammatory arthritis. You then through either intuition or through conversations, you decide I’m going to go plant-based to try and bring this under control. Just making some changes to a plant based diet without going full on like elimination process, sticking with certain foods, with certain healing properties and so forth. It wasn’t enough to curb the tide of eventually rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. And then you’ve tried non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, methotrexate, so hydroxychloroquine and then leflunomide, which didn’t work for you. The combination created a mixture of different side effects without being adequate enough to justify the insufficient pain relief that you were getting. And so, the rheumatologist does the right thing comes in and said, all right, let’s try a biologic drug. We’re fortunate living in the same country here in Australia with socialized medicine. You’re able to get on to that because you demonstrated that you failed other meds without a cost. So you’ve then gone on to the Cimzia. This has been a drug that’s synergistic with your body and it’s enabled you to go hardcore on the exercise, on your diet, on your meditation, on your sleep improvement through research and implementing some testing on dosage levels of vitamin D. And the whole package has led you now to today to feeling great as someone with rheumatoid arthritis who feels tremendous and grateful and it’s a wonderful thing.

Sonya – Yeah, it’s absolutely amazing. Like where I was hit, where I was in 2019, my life is just really I’m so grateful for it. I just feel amazing. I feel I’m not getting sick, feeling strong, I’m feeling grateful, I’m feeling just so grateful for my journey because I feel like long term, like my health is going to just be so much better for it. It was just a really great decision to invest as much energy as I could to healing myself. And I feel like I’ve really accomplished that, even though I’ve gone through so many ups and downs. But the holistic approach of trying to attack it in all different areas has just driven me to get a very good outcome for myself. And definitely the nutrition has played a massive part in that. Just consistently right through, consistently, slowly introducing like I stayed on the baseline Paddison Program, I would say for 6 to 7 months, whereas just eating the same thing. So I had so many food intolerances. Now I feel like I’m able to embrace all the different varieties of foods in terms of, I’m able to eat grapes because my gastrointestinal system is so much better able to eat that really great diversity of food, that’s a great feeling in itself. Really passionate about nutrition, and I always have been. It’s opened up a whole new world for me, I feel that’s just really amazing. You can see it like from the time I’ve started and three and a half years to now, it’s so much easier to eat out to get a plant-based meal than, say, four and a half years ago. And I feel like in time to come, thankfully, plant-based nutrition will be in our hospital system so that people that are really sick can access these nutritional foods to support their health. It’s a pretty evolving area of things. And the science obviously, that’s supporting is there, and I think that’s just amazing.

Clint – Yeah, and I believe that a whole bunch of funding has been put in place for many of the New York hospitals under now this sort of control of the vegan mayor who has taken over to be plant-based in their hospitals, which is groundbreaking, right? So the default meal in New York hospitals will be a plant-based meal. And I mean, that is that’s phenomenal. I was chatting with Dean and Aisha Sherzai, who are the brain docs on Instagram at a conference recently, and they said that they expect California their hometown to follow soon because they you know, California is pretty forward thinking and that could happen also in some or multiple hospitals in California with some luck. So once that starts to happen, people pay attention. And once the studies start coming out to show, hey, this duration between post-operative care and departure from the hospital is quicker at these hospitals where there’s a plant-based diet that’s going to catch on. And so that’s going to be good. So I’m glad you brought that up, we’re both passionate about that and feel like we’re on the right path, a world path, not just a sort of community path. And and well done with all that you’ve done. Thank you for sharing your journey with us so far. Lots of things for you coming up in the future and with all the things that you’re doing, it’s so great to hear you’re living a really, really high-quality life and demonstrating to us all that high-quality life with rheumatoid arthritis is what we are aiming for, what we strive for, and what we shouldn’t stop until we achieve.

Sonya – That’s right. Thanks, Clint Thank you so much. I’m so grateful, I really am. I would have been lost without your program and your direction and all the information and all the podcasts and yeah, it’s been just so, so, so helpful. So thank you so much.