We discuss in this interview – Successful Rheuamtoid Arthritis Strategy of Yvonne:

• How Yvonne’s RA symptoms started from the knees and then all joints were severely affected
• Her first encounter with the Paddison Program on the web and an early start along with Methotrexate
• A drastic change in diet and initial results after 3 weeks
• The importance of doing even a little bit of exercise
• Healing in a wave-like progression
• Bikram Yoga and swimming
• Yvonne’s drop in inflammation levels and termination of Sulfasalazine intake
• RA red flags
• The 8 reasons people can fail with the Paddison Program

Clint – In this podcast episode, I have Yvonne from the UK, and we are going to go through her story and talk about her immense improvements with rheumatoid arthritis. And a theme for this episode is going to be along the lines of doing the Paddison Program in parallel to medications, the interpretation of progress and how to taper off those medications, and observing the low state of symptoms that remain as medications are tapered. So. Yvonne, after some tech problem, we are set up and we’re ready to go. It’s lovely to have you on the podcast.

Yvonne – It’s lovely to be here. Hi, Clint

Clint – Give us the snapshot. How bad were you at one point and how do you feel today?

Before and After – Yvonne’s transformation

Yvonne – I will give you a snapshot. I was really bad at the start. In fact, why it’s so lovely to talk to you? Or one of the reasons is because when it first started with me and I was diagnosed, it was so bad and so painful, and I used to watch the podcasts all the time. They were absolutely brilliant for me, I used to like soak up all the information from them because you always thought someone had some tiny little snippet, they could tell you it would really help and I loved it. But I remember lying there, being propped up in bed, watching the podcast, thinking, Wow, how amazing to be at that stage because these people, Clint’s talking to seem to be sort of free of pain, and they’re smiling and laughing. It’s like they’re leading normal lives because I was lying there like a zombie, unable to move. I just thought, wow to get to that stage would be amazing. So that’s great because I’m here and talking to you and I’m at that stage. I say that is absolutely amazing for me because I like to go back to the start.

Yvonne – I was really bad. It started for me and I know the date because I really felt my knees go was the 9th of December 2017, so right at the end of that year. I was about to go and visit a friend of mine, and I got up and it was really weird I could hardly get out of bed, both my knees just wouldn’t work. I said to my partner, this is strange because I’m about to go visit my friend, but we’ve got a long train journey. I really feel something weird has happened to my knees. And he said, Oh, it’ll be alright it’ll loosen up, try and go and enjoy yourself So I had this horrific train journey where I had to stand because the train was crowded, I was going off to Liverpool to see my friend. And I thought, Wow, I can hardly cope with that, I can’t deal with it, it’s getting really bad. I got there and had the most horrendous weekend where my knee joints were just awful. I felt dreadful, I felt dreadful riding on a friend in that state because it just seemed to get really bad, she was lovely. And so that’s when it started and it escalated really quickly, kind of that was the start. Then over a matter of weeks, every joint became inflamed. I couldn’t move my hands, I couldn’t lift my arms, just about every joint. I just like, slowly, you know, came to a halt. That’s what it felt like. Like, I was sort of resting up, and it was literally in a matter of weeks. I went to my doctor, I think, just before Christmas so this was like early December it started. Just before Christmas, I said to my partner, I’ve got to go and see the doctor because this is something very, very strange is happening to me. And I never heard of rheumatoid arthritis, I didn’t have a clue what it was. So I went to the doctor, lovely young woman, and I think she was a trainee or something. I absolutely it took me, I don’t know how long to get from the chair in the waiting room to her waiting at the door. I was walking so slowly I could hardly move, but I sat down. I think I might have burst into tears and I said, I just said to her, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I feel like I am seizing up completely. She took one look at me and said, I think we’ll organize a blood test. Do you know what I think I might need to make an appointment for you to see a Rheumatologist at the hospital? She said that straightaway. And I think just one look at me and the way that I was moving and less as she did she organized things pretty quickly because she gave me some naproxen painkillers, and I have to admit they helped. I did feel a difference when I got home and my fingers when I take the painkillers was only, of course, when I did more of your program and realized that I should be taking that stuff that I stopped taking it completely. But they did help for a few days, and I think they must have helped me get through the Christmas period.

Yvonne – I went to see the rheumatologist on the 30th of Jan in the New Year and was diagnosed with RA. They gave me a steroid shot, didn’t do anything, never felt anything. They put me on 15 milligrams of methotrexate, it was later put up to 20 in March. So a couple of months later, they gave me up and took me for a couple of X-rays. I think, obviously to check my bone situation or whatever, and that was it, I was told I’d got rheumatoid arthritis. I think it was quite bleak, I wasn’t in there too long. I mean, they’re all lovely, but, you know, busy, busy people, busy department. And I was sent leaflets of, you know, looking diagrams of what I got to look forward to and how they could help gadgets to help me take the tops off jars and things like that and all that stuff. And then information a little bit of information about the drugs and stuff like that. So I think I just came back and I was in shock and I obviously googled like mad. I came across you, I mean, more or less straight away. I got home, I must have been googling away Rheumatoid arthritis came across a talk by you. I don’t think it was your TED talk, I think you think you were talking at a sort of convention or dinner or something it was noises with people eating in the background. But that was the first time I heard you speak. Then I think I did see your TED talk and I started to really look at what you were doing before I joined your program, which I think was at the end of March or it was about a month later. But I was doing lots of reading, I was getting the idea that it was plant-based, that there were a lot of green juices and I was getting that idea. So I think more or less started thinking, I think I’ve got to do this straight away. And as you know, I did join your program in March. With only kind of a month between being diagnosed at the hospital, finding out what had happened and then I was on your program, so it almost runs alongside. (inaudible) which is amazing, I have to say, because I think I’ve been thinking about it over the last couple of days knowing that we’re going to talk. I was thinking, Wow, if I hadn’t found your program, then I think it would have been a very, very bleak time for me. I can’t imagine going through what I’ve been through, not working alongside you and your program, I can’t imagine it. Because just leaving the hospital with those diagrams, that’s a bit of information, telling me to perhaps come and see the physio and kick in with a bit of exercise? I think I would have felt very, very bleak really?

Yvonne – So came across you and this was something different. You kind of, you know, I thought, Wow, perhaps there is another way, there’s a bit of hope here. I can do something, I can start to help myself because I’m quite proactive, and I like to do stuff I can’t sit back so that was absolutely brilliant. Having an elected to the program as soon as I joined full on. The juices, the plant-based, talk to my partner about it said what I was going to do, and this was totally new to me. I wasn’t a vegetarian. I was a meat-eater, I ate all the wrong things. I thought I ate quite healthily, but you know, it was dairy, it was meat. I had eggs, I had fresh veg and whatever, all that stuff. And so for me, it was like overnight, I’m now doing this. I’m following the Paddison Program overnight, and I just was totally and I did so much research and listen to podcasts and talked so much in, I kind of learned all that I could. I was thirsty to sort of really find out what I could do to help myself, really. But I have to say that the first few months, I think that the implementation was really out of control for a few months and because it’s a weird one. I was looking back and something happened 3 weeks after starting your program, 3 weeks into March, in one of my notebooks, I’ve put pain completely melted away from both shoulders. And I think that’s what made me think, Oh, what’s going on here? Because I really noticed a lot. I wasn’t one of those people who would cleanse the cleansing juices had an amazing effect that didn’t seem to happen, so I just kept going with the program. But about 3 weeks in, the pain went from my shoulders because I hadn’t been able to lift my arms at all. I put in my notes I can make more of a fist, I can almost make a fist with both hands. And for me, that was like, Ok, something’s happening here, what it is, I’m not sure. Is it the drugs? Is it the Paddison Program? But something is happening, so that helps to keep me going because I think my Inflammation was like all over the place. I think when I first, even though I was so bad, it still got worse. And for the first months until about May, June that summer, it really. I mean I was bedridden for about a month in April I think. IT got so bad and I looked at my ESR results and they kind of started off, CRP was 15 when they took my first blood test. My ESR results were about 30. Then, like February time, they were 34, March going up to 40 something. And by the time I got to April and May, my ESR was like 87, and it was really high. And so I was in so much agony I hardly moved, going to the bathroom was like about 10 minutes, because I would like to sit on the edge of the bed and I’d move to my daughter’s bedroom and bed because simply because I couldn’t stand the thought of what my partner or the pain would have been horrific. And I had to do that, I had to just sleep on my daughter, just does not live at home anymore (inaudible).

Yvonne – The other thing that was great was that her bed was about four inches higher from the ground, which doesn’t sound a lot. But when you’re really struggling to stand up with bad knees or whatever, it made all the difference to me being able to stand, but it was horrific. Just getting up to go to the bathroom was horrific. It was like needles in my knees, and I would move myself to the edge of the bed and then kind of psychologically the sight my foot to stand up. I don’t know if you recall really like that, but kind of thinking, OK, I know this is going to be painful. I would have to like really talk myself into being able to stand and to get up to go to the bathroom. And I also remember one night lying there and my shoulders were a bit cold, and I honestly the easiest way to pull the duvet up to cover my shoulders was to use my teeth, I use because I couldn’t lift my arms. I’m thinking back to this now, thinking this is crazy that so much pain and so much disability, absolutely crazy. And oh my goodness, you never, ever want to revisit that again.

Yvonne – And so it was almost as though when I went to the rheumatologist, they diagnosed it. This disease was just beginning and nothing was going to stop it for a month or two, it was like, right, this is the first roar if you like in your body and, I’m good and it’s going to go. So I don’t think anything would have stopped it, I certainly think what I was doing was out to slow it down, but it’s almost like it had to get that bad, and nothing was going to stop it. So then when I looked in my notebook about around July, I’ve put it in my notebook. Oh, a bit of a healing curve, actually today was downstairs for the whole day I’m able to not be so fatigued, but you know, I had to go back to bed. And so I started to come out of it that summer. I actually sat outside and started to exercise more because I mean, I think I said this to you, once? I was listening, you were chatting away on a podcast or something, and I was lying in the bed roundabout sort of the early stages. And you were saying things like, you’ve got to exercise, you’ve got to keep moving. I was lying there going, Oh, for goodness sake, what are you talking about? I can’t even stand. But then you said something that really was excellent. You said, Look, it doesn’t matter if you could only move a few inches, if you can only move for a few seconds, do it. That really struck a chord with me. So, I literally I did, I stood next to the bed doing a few Bikram poses that must have looked like nothing like Bikram poses for a few seconds, and then I would fall back onto the bed.

Yvonne – So I started, you just said, do what you can? And I thought, Okay, you can’t lie here forever like this? Do what you can. I did start to exercise. My daughter was going to visit me and said, OK, Mum, how many laps can you do around the kitchen table? She’s a little like me, get something done. She forced me to walk around the kitchen table six times. I said, Okay, like tomorrow you can try for seven. So this was lovely. A neighbor had a spare pair of crutches and they were brilliant. So I borrowed those and I used them for about a couple of months. And because they kind of enabled me to move and walk when I don’t think I would have been able to. So I actually use those crutches for a couple of times and in fact, one of the blood tests. I went down to the hospital, which is about a mile away, I went on the crutches. I walked on the crutches, so they helped me to move as well. That was the start, it was really bad, really bad. Every joint I can think of, even my jaw and my toes. Very bad first few months and then from then on at just steadily getting better from then on. No, not in a straight line, it would get better and then go back again. That’s another thing that I’ve learned through this process. I certainly didn’t heal in a straight line. I just kind of, but I was healing all the time. I have this sort of metaphor, where I say it now that I look back on it to me, it’s like the tide coming in. At the seaside you see the waves wash up on the shore, and that would be my light peeling surge. I’d feel good for a week or two, but then they roll back again and that will be something you have a mishap or whatever, then they will back up again and you’re having a good time. But then you exercise a bit too much and it’s a setback. But actually, all the time and you hardly notice it, the tide is coming in, it’s inching in and the waves are coming in. That’s what my healing felt like, sort of coming or going, ebbing and flowing. But actually, when I look back on it, I look back on my notes, there was steady progress.

Yvonne – It was hard work, two things obviously that everyone mentions, and it is such a major part of your program, the diet, and the exercise, and I certainly had to do both. I wasn’t one of these people who didn’t have to do much exercise the exercise made a big difference to me, a big difference. The diet, I just went full, fully it just like the juices My partner was absolutely brilliant, you know, a week or two in and he’d got me a Vitamix from an auction site or reconditioned Vitamix, which I’m still using now and it’s brilliant. He’d got me a juicer because realized we needed that for the celery juice and whatever, He got me a stand so that I could stand my bike on it and it turned it into an exercise bike. I could do that in the hallway, the didn’t bike go anywhere but I could use

Yvonne – It, and he was absolutely amazing. So I did both the diet full on absolutely, just change the way I ate overnight. Lots of green leaves, lots of juices, some smoothies, salads, salad, salad. I’d I lost lots of weight, a huge amount of weight. But then, of course, you get people being concerned about you because you’ve lost a lot of weight, so you have to sort of talk through that one with them. And the exercise, exercise just so important. I was reading my notes, it said that exercise for three full hours and realized felt so much better for hours afterward today, and so I had to do that. I had this for the first two years as soon as I could sort of move a little bit more again.

Yvonne – I had this regime of exercise. I’ve got a local gym, it’s in a little hotel about 2 1/2 miles up the road. I got into this little routine. I’ll explain it to you, but then I’ll tell you how. I would drive to the hotel to begin with, sometimes using two hands to move against gearstick, but I was safe. I didn’t do anything not safe. I would drive to the hotel and I would go into the gym and go on the exercise bike. And later on, I’d also go on the rowing machine, the cross-trainer. But again, I just go on the exercise bike because you talk to quite a lot about that, and this were a big problem for me. Then I would move to the next little (inaudible) and do a few weights. Then I would go upstairs and put my swimsuit on, I would go into the sauna and do Bikram moves in the sauna. Because I learned from the online course, and then I would just remember the moves and I did them in the sauna because that was the closest I could get to a hot, cold, right? I do them in the sauna, I’m sure people thought I was crazy. Then I would go down to the swimming pool, swim as much as I could. Then I’d go back, have a shower and do a bit of a Wimhoff at the end of the shower and have 60 seconds of absolute cold.

Yvonne – So that was my routine, it would take me 2 or 3 hours a day. What’s so wonderful is how that changed during the course of the 2 years. So when I first did that routine, like I said, I drove to the hotel could hardly move, would make my way on the exercise bike. I wouldn’t put it on any resistant number at all. I would get on it and be on it for about 2 minutes, you’d think I’d run a marathon, I would be so exhausted, so I’d get off it. Then a few weeks exhausted, then I would pull myself up the stairs, I used to have to pull myself upstairs. And honestly, even getting changed for the swimming pool was exhausting. I do the Bikram yoga moves and do a bit of swimming. When I was getting changed and dressed again after the swimming. Oh my goodness, I would just have to sit and rest in the middle of drying myself and getting changed because it was like I was so fatigued. So that would be the start, it was the same routine, but that was the level that I was doing it. What is so wonderful is by the end of the 2 years I did it, for most days. There were some days I missed, but this was a daily thing. But by the end of the 2 years, I was cycling up to the gym, 2 1/2 miles, going off on my bike. I would get on the

Yvonne – Exercise bike and I think I got up to about resistance nine and I’d be on it for about 25 minutes. I then go, do some rowing machine. I’d do the cross trainer, I loved the cross trainer because it moved your knee joints without putting weight on them. You sort of you’re moving them, but you’re not hitting them down on the ground so it worked really well. I do the weights for much longer, much heavier than I had before. I’d nip upstairs, not pulling myself up the stairs. I would do the Bikram yoga, I’d have a really good swim up, down and I would cycle home again. So that is the difference, same routine but it helped me to do the same things and see how I could improve with all of them. So it was full-on, I needed to do your whole program full-on to take massive action, do the diet and do the exercise. I say it’s nearly four years now, but we’re coming up to the next in January, it will be four years that I was diagnosed. There’s like no comparison. Now I’ve got a little bit of inflammation in one elbow, but it’s getting I thought I got rid of it. Whoever I put on your program, hey my elbows better while it came back again. That elbow joint is still little, but it’s good. I still do lots of swimming and I think I’m getting there with it. It’s not painful like it was, it’s just a tiny bit swollen. Apart from that, sometimes my knees could feel a little bit stiff if I don’t look after myself, but otherwise, I live now and I kind of almost forget I’m still taking methotrexate, I’m still taking 12.5 Milligrams. I’m just living a completely normal life, eating very healthy food, and exercising a lot more than I probably ever would. And so although I don’t class myself as one of the people who did your program, sort of it all happened within a few months and it was great and it all fell away. I sort of think, no, I was a slow burn, but definitely have been moving in the right direction all the way, all the way. And yeah, it’s absolutely amazing. that’s me before and after.

Clint – Throughout that period as well, we mentioned just before we hit record here that you were also on Sulfasalazine. So you’ve come off that avenue?

Yvonne – Yeah. They put me on that, probably they put me on that actually in May when it first started. So, you know, I said the information was getting really bad in those early months. And I think that’s when a consultant thought, Well, hang on, let’s do this thing where we put on 2 drugs and have them running side by side. So I did take it for a while, but I’m not taking it at the moment. I’m just taking the methotrexate.

Clint – Ok, great. Ok, now I’ve made a ton of notes as you’ve talked there. Let me just echo some things that you experience with my own experience and that of others. I might speak for a little while. You can jump in if you like. I’ve just got some notes here, and I’ve got a lot of things that support all the things you’re saying. Such a sensational story, so inspirational. As you say, it’s great to share with our community examples of really hard yards, like every single movement up the football field has come with effort. It’s not like one of these Hail Mary’s on the American football, where they throw the ball at one end, catch it at the other and score a touchdown. You’ve had to drive up the middle one after another, after another, and it’s taken a very long time and very slow. I love your metaphor of the the tide rising slowly as the waves go out and in. But there’s a general slow trend, and that’s was my experience as well. So I’ve had two experiences of battling rheumatoid the one I always speak about, the one on my TED talk, which went over a sort of a four to five year period. And for the most part, for me during that time, I experienced little to no progress. It was just at first backwards, backwards, backwards, backwards, and then after that, there were periods of stability. Like one year, for example, I did Bikram yoga almost every single day just so that I could walk, and I was on a raw food diet most of that time. At the end of the 12 months, I just wasn’t worse, and that was my first victory. Is not being worse at the end of that year because I had worsened for the two years prior terribly. And so likewise, mine was an extremely slow burn, and then, of course, I spoke about at length in my summit, my Rheumatoid Solution Summit Presentation about the setback that I had from one awful greasy restaurant meal and how I had to recover from that from a few years back. I’m really excited to share these other things just to complement the wonderful information that you gave us just then. I love that you’ve done disease-modifying drugs in parallel to the program and not tried to just do the program. When rheumatoid arthritis is early diagnosed, it’s exactly like you say, it’s got its own agenda, and it’s so difficult during those first months. I think it’s got in the first 9 to 12 months. It’s like an out-of-control Raging Bull and Rheumatologists will use the phrase it’s a race to remission, that’s what Dr. George Munhoz has frequently said on our live monthly calls with our members. He will say it’s a race to remission, we’ve got to get the disease under control. The studies show that the sooner you can get normal blood work and become asymptomatic or in remission, as they medically say, the much better long-term outcomes for patients that are studied with the duration of time it takes to get remission and then how they do long term. You’ve gone and done medically what is sensible and also commonsensical what’s sensible, which is what else can I do? I got to eat right, I’ve got to eat anyway, I might as well exercise, I might as well get healthier, and you’ve done that in parallel.

Clint – I just want to say how great that was and bring up something that I share with some people who are sometimes struggling in our support group. I wanted to read these eight things out which are the only ways that people fail this program. And I put fail in inverted commas because there is no way you can fail. The only failure is giving up and thinking that the science doesn’t apply to you. This is science, so it’s not like one person should do keto, the next person carnivore, the third person autoimmune protocol, and someone Paddison Program. The science supports completely and in a concrete manner that a plant-based diet is optimal based on all the studies that have been done over the last 30 years on diet and rheumatoid. So these are review studies, not just someone says, here’s our study. This is a review of the literature, 3 separate reviews of the literature by different groups around the world over the past 4 years say the same thing. So we haven’t got one diet for one, one diet for the next. What we have is a personalization challenge, and this is where people give up. They find challenges and they think, well, I’m on the wrong diet. It’s not that, its modifications need to be put in place to accommodate the inadequate microbiome that they currently have until their microbiome improves and leaky gut produces sufficiently. That they can tolerate this particular food and that particular food. And I’m about to do a podcast about histamines and people who had problems with histamines and worry about histamines like fermented foods. That is a red flag indicator of a poor microbiome. It’s not that we should be scared of fermented foods because they have histamines. It is a case of, well, I need to improve my gut because I’m getting a red flag to tell me I’m histamine sensitive. It’s like allergies are also a microbiome compromised indicator.

Yvonne – You’re exactly right. You begin to realize the more work you do. Well, I certainly have done how complex not be this disease is, but your response to it and how complex your body is. I really think you just have to become your own experiment. You just have to listen to your body. You have to look at what you’re doing to it, you have to look at how it responds. And I mean, again, with hindsight, I wish I knew about the red flags that you call them because I think I’ve had them almost all through my life. Now when I look back, I can see, you know, I got psoriasis when I was nine years old. In my early 20’s, I had an allergy test. (inaudible) always say, Oh, you seem to be responding to everything in a mild way. Oh, that’s interesting. When I was in my late twenties, really starting off with work and doing some very stressful things like going to lots of conferences, I started to get sort of stress swellings. My lip would swell or my eye, and it would be like if I was really stressed before a conference, then I’d have to take an antihistamine. And so that’s my body saying something. When I was in my 40’s, I got diagnosed with an underactive Thyroid Gland. So there were all these kind of signals, and also during a few years, about five years before it started, I had this kind of strange illness. I used to call it the perfect storm, and I’d have 24 hours. All I could say was feeling like I’d got a bad hangover, but I hardly drink. I never found the trigger, I don’t know what caused it, and my partner, you say it’s like you’ve got food poisoning. I would just start to feel so ill, I would then be sick. I vomit usually several times over the 24 hours, and in between vomiting I do sleep, a deep sleep couldn’t lift my head off the pillow. My doctor actually laughed at me once because I think it happened one night after I had had a glass of wine, but a single glass. (inaudible) the worst hangover I’ve ever seen, and that’s my digestive system what else could it be? I was vomiting, something was going on, I must have been reacting to something, but I could never find the trigger. And it became something that happened to me 4 or 4 times a year for about 5 years, couldn’t find a trigger, don’t know what set it off. But it tells me now that my digestive system was in a bad way.

Clint – Does that happen anymore?

Yvonne – No, it hasn’t happened for 4 years since I’ve changed my diet. It’s just disappeared. It’s easy, isn’t it? With hindsight, you look back and think, wow, I wish (inaudible) really. I used to react to food, I reacted to food. There was a certain chewy, fruity, sweet, if I had a red one, my face would go hot and I would sweat, just like a chemical reaction to the sweets. And so I think I always have been someone who’s reacted quickly, which is actually now. Oh, well, that’s quite a good sign that tells me when I shouldn’t be doing something, you know, now I look at it differently.

Clint – Exactly, the best example of all, of course, is the inflammation in the joints, which is our ultimate reminder that there’s still work to be done and it is the alarm going off in the fire department to say that there’s an issue. If we ignore that, and we just go and sort of cut the cable so the alarm doesn’t go off, which is to suffocate ourselves with non-steroidal or prednisone and this sort of stuff, whilst that gives us some relief that can be temporarily helpful. But ultimately, until we work out how to just stop that alarm going off by addressing the underlying cause, life is always going to be more challenging than it could be.

Clint – As I promised, let me just finish off with some of the commentaries that I had around all the great points that you made.

The 8 Things That Can Prevent Success On The Paddison Program

Clint -I’ll just close off the ways in which people can fail, as I said in inverted commas on the program. Because you raised a really good one, which was number four on my list. Which is being newly diagnosed and the condition is developing. During this period, some people think that just by eating some more salad, they’re going to slow down or reverse the progression of this extremely aggressive onset. It’s not the case, at that point, you have a big challenge, as we talked about with the snowball effect. So that’s number four. I’ll go through the other seven.

Number 1, inadequate exercise. Daily exercise is 40% of the program. You have ticked that box because this is crucial and you can’t just line the bed. You must at least begin something.

Number 2, changing medications prior to starting or during the program, lowering them early. Some people will say, I’m going to start the Paddison Program on Monday, great, I’m going to stop Methotrexate. That’s just doesn’t work like that, so we want to avoid that kind of approach and we don’t want to be dropping non-steroidal on day 1, halving our Prednisone on day 2. This isn’t a way to get predictable and steady positive results.

Number 3, being on antibiotics, prednisone, or frequent use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory or proton pump inhibitors. All of which retard the gut healing process. I’ve got some people in rheumatoid support, our coaching platform, and for the next 3 or 4 months, all we’re doing is moving those people off of counterproductive drugs. Because until we achieve that milestone, then it’s like one step forward, two steps back situation. Our strategy is, let’s do this, let’s do that, let’s do that, and let’s get you off. Some people have been on proton pump inhibitors antacids for the past seven years, and one person who’s part of our group actually developed rheumatoid arthritis with an otherwise healthy life, healthy family, no family history in her early years. I think she’s only in her early 30’s because of cons or an association is the correct term. A strong association of heavy use of proton pump inhibitors. So we’ve got to get off all of this stuff that makes our gut worse and then we have just a fair battle after that to then begin on the gut healing.

Number 4, we talked about above in detail is having an early diagnosis, in which the disease can progress rapidly against every natural intervention. In such circumstances, the plan there is to make sure we’ve got a suitable disease-modifying drug in place to do in parallel whilst we undertake health-restoration practices.

Number 5 is the ways that people can fail in is being very insufficiently medicated, causing really high joint inflammation and consequently, simultaneously leaky gut to the extent that natural interventions just can’t compete. This ties In with what happens again in the early stages. Again, if we’re really undermedicated, give yourself a chance, get some inflammation down with a non-counterproductive drug to the gut, and take advantage of that.

Number 6, is frequent constipation. If we’re backed up, we’re not getting our bowels moving, then, as one guest said on our podcast, it is our guest talking all about vitamin D. He said that literally, leaky gut is small stool components. It’s literally like portions of bacteria and stool that are entering your bloodstream. So no wonder your body’s really reacting to that. So we’ve got to have frequent bowel movements regularly.

Number 7, is insufficient intake of bacteria-rich foods like miso or in the form of Probiotics. If one can’t tolerate miso and one is not taking probiotics, then you cannot start a new culture, new species if you actually don’t have any of them to begin with. It’s like the dodo bird, right? We’re not going to suddenly have Dodo birds do well when we give them more dodo bird food. We need to actually add some dodo birds back into the world if we’re ever to see a population of dodo birds.

Finally, number 8 is the reintroduced production of foods faster than the recommended guidelines. What I see frequently is by day 4 people say, Hey, I miss this, that and the other, I’m going to skip forward and start eating bread. Hang on a second bread took me two years to eat, and so maybe I was really conservative. But there is a sequence of foods for a reason so that’s number 8. That’s why another reason why some people might say, hey, it isn’t working or I’m not getting the results.

Clint – I think you put it well, is that we have a lot of complexity in our health and we like to intellectualize and believe we have great knowledge of how the digestive system works just because we’ve read a little bit or listened to our podcast a little bit about leaky gut, about bacterial overgrowth, and autoimmunity, and we feel we have some basics. I know less than probably 0.1% of what’s going on in the gut, and I’ve been looking at this for a good part of 10 years. It is so complicated, in fact, let me show you something. I’m going to move my video around here. My floor, see those on the floor where they’re all scientific studies. Okay, so we’ve got intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, cell membrane composition. What have we got there? Negative effects of a high-fat diet. What’s that other one? Omega 3 fatty acids and inflammatory processes. These are just things I’m reading this week. With all this going on all the time, I think I know about 0.1% of how the body works digestible, it is complicated. However, we can also learn anecdotally from stories like yourself, from my experience, and now hundreds and hundreds of people who have shared stories like ours. What we learn is that the principles work, the principles are working.

Yvonne – I think that’s great that you say that you’ve been doing all this studying and learning and you have like been doing an enormous amount of research and you realize how little you know. Because I used to work with students when they used to come in the first year because I used to work with them for three years till they get their degree. And I would say to them, you know, they would come in thinking they kind of knew loads because you do at that age. And I would say, I hope that by the third year, you realize how little, you know? They would look at me as though I was crazy because I think that’s when you really, truly understand the depth of something and the complexity of something. You’re right, there’s so much research going on at the moment (inaudible).

The Evidence Already Exists – Let’s Educate The Medical Community

Clint – And you know what? We already know what to do. We know what to do, we are doing it, and it’ll take another couple of decades for science to prove that what we’ve got here is pretty close to what I think will ultimately, I’m hoping, become the ideal path for autoimmune diseases in the future. Sometimes like particularly arthritis charities, will criticize our program on their website when people, the charity members in their community say, What about Paddison Program? They say, Well, there isn’t any published evidence on that. Well, I see that there’s so much evidence! Whether or not having us present the same sort of information that Dr. McDougall did about 20 years ago, which is plant based diets reduce C-reactive protein dramatically in patients with rheumatoid arthritis in 10 days. Me doing something similar would just gets overlooked. What we need is people like you Yvonne and all the people who listen to our podcast to just show up so much better to their rheumatologist and just talk about this and say “this is what I’m doing” and eventually the response of “well, whatever you’re doing, just keep doing it” will eventually change to “oh, another person doing Paddison Program. I guess I probably should look into this”

The science is there. www.PaddisonProgram.com/Guide-For-Rheumatologists. Half of the studies on the floor here are helping me write my book and the book is going to be done by July. That’s my plan, I’ve got a medical writer working with me.

Elbow Pain With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Clint – So anyway, you’ve stimulated so much sort of content, things that I’m thinking about through what you’ve shared with me. You’ve fueled my vehicle. There are a couple of other things I wanted to say? For the elbows? Try and do some pull-ups, okay? Get an overhead bar because I reckon probably, I don’t know because it’s hard to know even when it’s your own body whether or not it’s tendonitis or synovitis. My elbows one had surgery, one was inflamed for four years. Pull-ups just try and do some pull-ups, even if you can’t even lift your body weight, just try.

Yvonne – That is so timely you saying that because the other day I visited my brother and he’s got scaffolding at the side of his house and I actually said, ou know what? that’s a good height for pull up. He’d used it to heal his frozen shoulder that he’d had in a while. So that’s very timely yeah, I’ll try that.

Clint – Do it at the gym if the gym is open as well, do it every day. Just attempt to hold your body weight and attempt to pull up with one little caveat. Don’t hang completely such that your elbows are completely in extension, right? Basically, as long as they can until you’ve built great strength in the biceps and triceps because otherwise, all the weight goes through the joint. So have a little bend in your elbows when you start doing this until you’re getting stronger and stronger, and then you can attempt a complete free hang. Okay.

Yvonne – thank you.

Clint – And then pulling up your covers with your teeth. I used to do that. I talked about that I think in my Ted talk, that used to be something I did every single night. My knees are like yours, just trying to get off the bed, excruciating. That’s everything, that’s all the notes I wanted to add.

Clint – Thank you, this has been fun. I feel more energy than what I when we started, and we’ve been chatting for a while. So thank you very much, it’s been wonderful, and keep up the great work.

Yvonne – Oh well, I certainly will. There’s still so much to do, but oh no, I just hope that, someone gets something from listening to this. I still remember bits now that really resonated with me. You did a podcast with a guy called Danny. He went swimming and it made me think, Yeah, I really love swimming. I’ll do that. And he also said something he said, look, you said something like, Well, you’re putting a lot of energy in your exercise, and this guy said, hey, you know, it’s a very savage disease. You have to come back at it with just as much energy and I’m paraphrasing. But he said something that really made me think, this needs massive action. This isn’t just, I can’t just play this. And so I did get an enormous amount from, little snippets that people would say in the podcast, and it was very, very important to me. Obviously, I’m so grateful for you putting everything out there and for this resource you’ve created. I was thinking the other day is in every stage I’ve been on, the Paddison Program has been brilliant.

Yvonne – So that early stage gave me so much hope, it kind of made me feel empowered that I could take back a bit of responsibility. I could work with the doctors, I could do something. I don’t think I would have had that otherwise, not just from going to the hospital. So that was so important for that and all the podcasts and all the bits. Then when you’re really trying to figure things out or you feel you’re falling off track, you’ve got the wonderful support forum where you could just ask a question, and lots of people come back with answers in a really supportive way amazing, amazing. Allen just comes up all the time with her wonderful thumbs up or well done. You feel that when you’re trying to figure things out, you can find out how to do it. Now I use it just the thought that it’s there and it’s developed into such an enormous resource where you can think, Oh, yeah, I wonder what Clint thinks about, I don’t know, vitamin D3. Let’s have a look at the resources or what, and you can just look up, It’s like an encyclopedia now. You just have to kind of look this stuff up, and that’s the amazing comfort to think of that. I knew when I was like feeling confused about COVID and what happens to people like us with our immune system, I wasn’t getting much clear information from anyone, but I thought, I know I’m going to look at the Paddison Program, Clint would be on this, and you were. It was sort of your discussions and your talks with doctors and whatever that put me at rest. It’s an amazing resource, which I’m sure you know, and thank you very much just for existing and putting it out there.

Clint – Well, thank you so much, much, much gratitude. Let’s keep up the good ork and keep doing what we’re doing, no complacency, hard work discipline, and feel happy about every little extra little victory that we do. Whether it be able for yourself to hold your body weight, maybe in a few months on a pull-up bar. And for me, I want to like I’m up to almost 10 pull-ups, 10 Chin-ups back to back in one session. So I’m working on that. We always have improvements to make and thank you for today.

Yvonne – Thank you very much. Bye.