Alicia gives us a powerful transformational story, from being on five medications to completely pain and drug free in six months by using the Paddison Program for Rheumatoid Arthritis.
We discuss in this interview:
- Alicia’s first diagnosis and experience with rheumatologists
- Her encounter with the Paddison Program and consequent shift in lifestyle
- Diet and exercise changes
- The importance of keeping the right mindset
- Managing pain while tapering down medications
- Six months from triple meds and steroids to pain free
- Kambo
- Spiritual practices
Clint – Boy, do we have a transformational story for you today. My guest is Alicia and she lives in Vancouver in beautiful Canada. Her transformational story is going to uplift and inspire. She is doing fantastic and she’s going to walk us through it today. Good day, Alicia. How are you going?
Alicia – Hi, I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Clint – Great. So we’ve spoken for a couple of minutes before we’ve started here. We did speak several years ago before you begun on your mission towards wellness. Tell us how do you compare today to how you were before, in a just a brief snap snapshot.
Alicia – Sure. Right before I found your protocol, I was medicated on, I think four different 4 or 5 different medications, methotrexate, prednisone, plaquenil, sulfasalazine having to go and get my blood checked and organs checked monthly and my eyes checked. And really gnarly experience as you share. And I have been pain and medicated free for over five years now.
Clint – That’s just incredible. So everyone’s going to be leaning in right now and saying, please tell us, what processes did you go through? What was your journey like? So just to clarify, it was a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. When did this begin? If you’ve been off all those meds for five years, then presumably you’ve had this for some time. Walk us back to the beginning and the diagnosis and how this came on.
Alicia – Yeah, sure. I got diagnosed shortly after I had my son, who’s about ten now. And it started when I was actually, it got triggered by a fall, actually, I was holding my son in the garage, and I slipped and I fell, and I twisted my arm and was trying to block his head and I fell on my shoulder. And I woke up the next day with a pain in my shoulder, which normal I fell. But then over the next few weeks, that pain started moving to my other shoulder, down to my knee, down to my foot, and just ping pong all the way through my body. And I was just like, determined. Like, no, this happened from a fall because that’s when it that’s really when it started. People were suggesting maybe it’s arthritis. I’m like, no, I fell. Now, this pain is just like, I don’t know what’s happening. I remember my finger got so swollen like really, really fat. I went to the hospital and they did X-rays. Then, of course, they couldn’t find anything. Eventually, it took about a year to get the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. Then, constant pain, and I was not willing to receive that diagnosis at all. I know that you can relate to and it’s been a journey. I remember going to my doctor and saying, I’m going to heal my body naturally. I knew when I got the diagnosis that I was not keeping and this was not for me. However, the doctor was patient with me, but adamant that I have to manage my expectations and get prepared for something not so great.
Clint – You’re a practitioner of Kambo and it’s some other sort of natural healing methods, which you’re going to teach us and explain to us shortly. Did that come about because of your health journey or did this sense of wanting to be natural? Also, to have this sort of spiritual side and a healing sort of aspect always exist in you?
Alicia – That’s a great, great question. I am very ethereal and I live in a very spiritual way. I have a relationship with the divine Spirit, God, or whatever. I found your program, I was about to be put on biologics. I didn’t want to be injecting my body with any medications. The methotrexate wasn’t working and the only thing that took the pain away was the prednisone. I didn’t want to be medicated at all, and at some point, I had started taking CBD to just whatever, anything natural. Then, I started googling, Healing my Body with CBD. However, the night before I started googling that, I had prayed to God. I said, please God, show me how to heal my body naturally and I started googling how to heal your body with CBD. Then, I found you and without a doubt, I knew you were what I was praying for. I signed up for your program without question. I was like, this is it. I saw your TED talk and that was it. To go circle back to your question about Kambo and finding the natural remedies, I think we’re all innately spiritual or we’re spiritual beings. When I look back at this diagnosis, I can recognize it was my spirit calling me back to self-love to heal my body so that I eventually found this path that I’m currently on. Now, I did get introduced to Kambo while I was sick, but I wasn’t open to receiving it. When they told me what to expect, how it was administered, and what my body was going to experience. Essentially, it’s applied through superficial burns on the skin and you’re vomiting in a bucket. My mind was like, no thanks and I’ll figure this out on my own. I found you, but that little Kambo seed had been planted. However, I healed my body by following your protocol I found my way back to Kambo and Bufo, and the medicines that I work with after I had healed my body from following what you offered.
Clint – Right. Interesting. Thank you for that clarification. You’ve been faced with the prospect of biological drugs after you’ve already been on the standard disease-modifying drugs of methotrexate, Plaquenil, Sulfasalazine, and Prednisone. Then, you’ve started the program. Now, how big of a shift was this being a plant-based elimination diet with lots of exercise and so on? Can you talk us through the adaptation of that?
Alicia – I had started exercising right before I found your program. I noticed that I had shifted my diet a little, but I was a meat eater. Like, lots of carbs and meat for lunch and dinner, and veggies weren’t my favorite thing. I did notice that when I moved my body, I had more movement. The exercise was easy for me to implement because it helped my body move. I remember because I did do that praying and found you. I didn’t know that switching from eating the way that I was to follow the plant base was not an option for me. It is because I literally prayed and my answer was right here. I remember going to a restaurant, we have this restaurant, White Spot in Canada. I remember going for my last supper as I was mentally preparing like I signed up for your thing and saw the protocol. I’m like, it’s either be medicated and possibly crippled for the rest of my life, or this answer that I was praying for you showed up the next day. I remember going to dinner with my friend and being like, I’m going plant-based tomorrow. Like eating my last supper and my burger, and diving straight into it. The elimination diet helps me stay. Your podcast helped me like the glimmer of hope. I remember driving to work in the pain, fatigue, and the side effects from the medicines. Just holding on to hope and listening to your podcast was huge for me. I listen on my way to work and on my way back from work. I was working in the school board at the time and it was a transition, but it was also not an option. In my head, the food part for a lot of people is tricky. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who knew that I was on this path and asked me how to do it, and who had been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis for years. The moment I said it was a food-related issue, they weren’t interested.
Clint – We serve our business only a very small percentage of the rheumatoid market. As you said, there is an incredibly vast number of people with the condition who do not want to make adjustments to the way they live. They also want to defer all responsibility for symptom management to the pharmaceuticals. Now, that’s just a different approach, neither right nor wrong. However, I resonate with you and with the community that we have who have the mindset, why not do as much as we can, that we can influence ours, that we can influence to keep symptoms at an absolute minimum? Therefore we only need the smallest amount of drugs because we’re healthier and it’s just a different approach. Now, with the multiple medications you’ve switched to fully plant-based. What was your experience going through that period? What happened?
Speaker4 – I mean, it was full of highs and lows for sure. I have a pretty strong connection to my intuition and trust my ethereal spiritual realm. It’s because I did that praying also when I got that diagnosis, I knew that I was going to heal my body naturally. When I asked for help and you showed up, it was for me and it was a no-brainer. It was like, this is the answer and I know it in every ounce of my being. The dedication, commitment, and consistency were just it was a thing. However, there were days that I had friends and family who were like, Alicia, this is never going to work. They also said that I’m going to have to come to the realization I’m going to be sick for the rest of my life. What if it doesn’t work? I had all the naysayers around me and I had to push them away. I just focused on your podcast, which was a blessing. I remember waking up days just like, is this the quality of my life? I can’t live like this. How can anybody live in this much excruciating pain? I can’t live like this. I had many hopeless days and many days where I would cry and be in bed, and forget that I could heal my body. I think a lot of it is the mindset and you have to believe that it is possible for you. You have to believe it with your core. Even on those hopeless days, like it was still somewhere in there. Then, somebody talked to me about the language, also saying my rheumatoid arthritis, you kind of own it instead of rheumatoid arthritis or the diagnosis. You’re not embodying that or owning that or identifying with that.
Clint – That’s really insightful. For example, when I set goals for myself, I like to completely avoid using any of the words that are associated with the disease. So I like to say things like my joints feel smooth and cold and wonderful to move. Notice, like in the past, you may have many people have may have remembered me I used to have the mantra pain free, drug free, full of massive energy. So we kind of get away with that because the word pains right at the start, and by the end of it, the brain has connected more with the energy and the uplifting of the rhythm of it. Right? But for the most part, yeah, my refined mission for myself is for smooth, cold joints. Okay. So this sends a message of health and not a as like you say, sort of owning anything in the future associated with pain. One thing you mentioned before that told me that you thought like this immediately was this beautiful phrase that you said right at the start. It was very quick, easy to miss, but you said, I’m not keeping this. What a beautiful expression. Give us some more sort of um meaning behind that expression.
Alicia – I don’t even know that it was a conscious thing like it took a really long time to get diagnosed. And because I had associated this pain with a reaction from falling, I think it was easier for me to recognize, that this doesn’t make sense. The connection of why my body is hurting doesn’t make sense. And I think it was just an automatic no, this doesn’t belong to me. It felt like a passenger coming through. Again, in the hippie woowoo mindset that I can find myself in, coming out of that depth of the mud, like the pain, the excruciating, hopeless days of many, many intrusive thoughts and hopelessness. Like looking back, I know that like your program, the movement of my body, the taking care of believing in myself and my ability to heal my body was the beginning of me learning how to love myself. And if you just heard a statistic that 80% of women are the people that are infected with autoimmune. And a lot of that, if you listen to Gabor Maté is about being in marriage and self abandoning, there’s a lot of links to ailments and trauma in the body. And I’ve had a very, very traumatic life. And so to, to kind of link that into what was being held into my body it really makes sense. So to recognize that the disease arrived in my body or developed in my body for a reason and a purpose. I know that can be hard to hear when you’re like, in the midst of your pain, but I really believe that these ailments are our spirits telling us, hey, we need attention. Something in here needs attention.
Clint – Yeah absolutely. So that’s a deep topic there, and there’s a lot to talk about. We could, we could consume our hour just on that, but I also want to go back to your story. So let’s go back to the story, I want to hear about when the pain started to come down for you and also when the meds started to come down for you. So talk us through that whole part of your journey.
Alicia – Like when you say when the meds came down for me, like when I stopped taking them?
Clint – Yeah, so obviously that follows with pain reduction. We don’t just suddenly drop the meds out of disdain normally unless you did. But you can tell us, I mean, it’s your story there’s no right or wrong.
Alicia – Well, I was pretty adamant that I didn’t want to be medicated. Like, I went to my doctor, nope, I don’t want to be medicated. And I remember going to a naturopath at first because I was going to heal my body naturally. And whatever she gave me set my body on fire to the point where I ran to my doctor and I said, I need something, I want to die, this is too painful. And that’s when he prescribed prednisone, which was like a miracle, like it took all the pain away. And then I got the referral to the rheumatologist and, and started the medication. The only thing that helped with the pain was the prednisone, any time I tried to get off the prednisone, there was still a very large significant amount of pain. So even with the methotrexate or the sulfasalazine or the plaquenil, all the pain was still there. I remember trying to taper off the prednisone many times and just having this excruciating amount of pain and, and frustration because it just felt like nothing was working and like this was going to be my life. And I remember the first rheumatologist going in there and saying, hey, I’m going to heal my body naturally, and I want you to help me. And he just essentially rolled his eyes at me and laughed at me, and I went back and told my doctor, I don’t want to work with that guy, he’s, you know, whatever. And I said the same thing to my new rheumatologist, and although he was quite patient with me, he still had the same kind of no, this is it. So it’s unfortunate that the doctors are not necessarily trained in I want to say health and more pain management with prescriptions.
Alicia – I was on your elimination diet for two months and I was still medicated during that time, and I was working for the school district. And I remember trying to come off. I was trying to come off during work and I couldn’t because the pain was too excruciating. So I was calling in sick all the time and I’m like trying to manage going to work and coming, not taking the meds and trying to all juggle all these different aspects. And I remember around spring break, I tried to taper off the medications, but it was just it was too painful. And then and I know your teachings are like, do it with your doctor and taper off. By the time spring break came, I just told myself, and I think by this point, I had connected to a couple of those people off your podcast and checked in with their story. And I just said, I’m doing this. I’m letting go, I’m going to trust, I know I’m going to be in pain for a little while, but I’m I’m not taking these medications anymore. And I just stopped and I gave myself that spring break time to really just allow the pain and the detox from the medication to be what it was. And then, I guess it would have been after around two months of following that elimination diet and listening to those two people that weren’t necessarily following your program, but following a whole food plant based diet. Then I started reincorporating the food shortly after that, and I want to say it took about a total of six months to even out from finding your program, getting off the meds, going into whole food plant based and finding my balance of no pain and complete movement.
Clint – Wow, six months. Yeah, I want that to sink in with everybody. We’re talking six months from triple meds and steroids to pain-free. No drugs.
Alicia – Yeah.
Clint – Wow. Okay. All right, we want to know more. So we know that you’re eating plants. Okay. So we know that that’s a good start. There’s more to it, though, there is more to it. What else was going on? Had you at this point. I mean, you’ve applied at this point complete certainty and conviction that you’re going to get well, okay? We can see that from you. Your determination, I can see it in your face when you want to achieve something, there’s nothing’s going to stop you. Right? I can see that. You’ve also discredited the diagnosis because you’ve said it came about when I fell and hurt my shoulder therefore, this is somewhat of a mistake for me. It’s almost like I don’t believe that this has come about through conventional means, and therefore it’s almost like you’ve got an escape route because it came about through an accident. Therefore it’s not meant to be.
Alicia – Maybe. Like kind of yes. When you’re saying it back. Yes and I also can recognize the amount of trauma that I’ve been through. So it also makes sense that this accumulation of energy could have just been triggered and opened up from that fall so there’s yeah, lots of aspects. And I just want to say like hearing you say I got off these three meds and the steroids. Just hearing you reflect that back to me, it’s been so long that I’ve been pain free and medicated that sometimes I forget that I was even sick, which is a freaking gift to have, you know, and to hear you say that, I was like, oh, it’s like this strength in my heart and in my solar plexus that just kind of lights up with wow. Oh yeah. Because that’s suffering like, it’s it’s excruciating suffering.
Clint – No doubt, no doubt. You have absolutely managed to jump out of an inferno and survive. So I want to chip away at you and to find some more things because a lot of people are doing the diet and they are certain that they’re going to get well, and at least that they’re working at it with complete conviction. Clearly the spiritual side and the mental side is a big part. But what else can you tell us? Were you exercising? Did you start this new practice of kambo? What else was going on? I want to learn more.
Alicia – So I definitely was, I was exercising, I was doing some cardio, I think even before I found your program or right around the same time that I found your program or maybe just before. And I did notice that when I moved my body, I would not be able to lift my shoulders and then I’d start to exercise, and all of a sudden, I had more mobility because of the blood flow in my body. I think I had started doing that actually, before I had found you. So that I did notice as a shift so the movement was for sure. And I had shifted my diet, I had started this MLM multi-level marketing dieting thing and it was incorporating more vegetables and stuff. And so I didn’t put the link that the food was also helping. So I think there was some of that already taking place before I found you. And then I and then when I found you, I did dive deep into the hot yoga, for sure, I was doing that, just even being in the heat, I think I was very much in ketosis for the two months I was doing the elimination diet. I was always freezing, so going into the hot yoga room always felt really good. Um, and so yeah, the, the exercising and uh, was definitely a big part as well.
Clint – What other spiritual practices or mindset practices, or stress reduction practices were you doing at the time?
Alicia – Oh, at the time, other than really having just complete faith and surrender that your program was it, I think that was most of it. I wasn’t super spiritually connected, you know. I mean, I was, but also disconnected at. I wasn’t consciously, spiritually connected, if that makes sense. It wasn’t until like I started getting better, like I got introduced to Kambo was it was a no for me at the time and a couple of years later, I must have been, um, starting to feel better, at least within a year. That’s when I started to revisit what is this Kambo thing? Kambo had started calling me, but I actually didn’t start working with it until the beginning of the pandemic, that’s when I really got called into this work. And by that time, I’d already been it’s been a few years that I haven’t felt pain or been medicated, and so my spiritual practice didn’t come into play until years later.
Clint – All right. Well, I’m going to take the microscope off you, uh, for trying to pick at this even more for more things. It sounds like this massive change of diet has led to massive change in the functionality of your body. That you did better when you moved from the elimination process on to a whole food plant based diet, when there’s lots of diversity so that we feed lots of different strains of bacteria in the bowel. Therefore, through a collaborative way, they are able to create more short chain fatty acids and heal not just the leaky gut, but also provide the production of more mucus to protect the gut from ongoing damage. So it sounds like that has played a major role, including the reduction of oxidative stress. Plus, you were doing some hot yoga at the time. You’d already been exercising, and you had complete conviction that this was going to be your mission and you were going to get there. You came off the medications, which were clouding your feedback mechanisms of pain. You could tell exactly what was going on because there was nothing between the pain and your brain in terms of influencing the signals or the symptoms or anything. And whilst we both agree that’s not the conventional way, that’s just the that’s your story and you were able to get it all under control. Amazing. The Kambo is interesting, we create an open loop by mentioning that. Is that something that could help our audience in terms of their rheumatoid arthritis?
Alicia – Yes. It’s been shown to help with many different ailments, including cancer and different viruses like HIV and herpes, as well as autoimmune, chronic fatigue, headache, lots of different physical ailments. Kambo is a medicine that comes from Peru and it’s filled with over 16 bioactive and neuroactive peptides that enter your lymphatic system and really pull out blockages, toxins, trauma, but also dark energy that our body holds on to, which can cause that stress and disease, it’s clearing it out so it can be really, really beneficial. Even having Katie here and to see her shifts and mind body connection after Kambo has been so beautiful for her to because she’s had it for so long the juvenile rheumatoid arthritis so she had some big shifts.
Clint – Yeah. Let me just explain to our audience. So the way that we connected on a recently is because Katie, who’s been on our podcast three times now, once providing her improvements on the Paddison Program twice, coming on to explain that years after doing the Paddison Program, she then represented, I think, on a national level at Bikram yoga. So like, incredible when she was in a compared to being in a wheelchair when she was a kid. And then also coming on on a third time to do an episode all about the wrists and how she’s improved her wrists with different physical therapy. So you can go and look through the archives of our podcast and listen to Katie’s episodes. And so Katie has connected with Alicia, because Katie was looking for a Kambo practitioner and lo and behold, you two have connected. So Katie came to see you. You’re saying? And she went through your teachings and your training. How is she doing from that in terms of response?
Alicia – Yeah. there is a one 1 to 2 year protocol to work with autoimmune and it will differ depending on whether you’re trying to maintain, an even keel versus really shed it from your body. And so when Katie came we just that was our first time working together. And so yeah it is a very intense medicine when you experience it, it’s short-lived. It’s only on your body for about 15 to 20 minutes. But the intensity it can feel very overwhelming. But it is a beautiful and profound medicine to heal, not just physically but and mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Clint – Wow, okay. Whilst we’re on this topic, why don’t if you’re interested in of course, um, in having people reach out to you on this, uh, if they want help in this area? Is that something you’d like to share your, your business contact details? If people want to go through this process with you.
Alicia – Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I’m on some social media, Instagram and TikTok I think as sapo spirit. So Sapo means toad in Spanish, and in Peru they didn’t have another word for frog, so they also called kambo, which comes from a frog sapo. But I also work with a toad medicine, which is sapito anyways, that that one comes from Mexico. So Sapo spirit is on Instagram and TikTok as well.
Clint – Yeah, Instagram is where we more recently connected to. So. Okay, awesome. Um, let’s try and wrap up with some words of wisdom from Alicia. Can you let’s say you’ve got someone sitting in front of you, they’re trying hard, they’re doing a lot of the right things, they’ve still got some symptoms, they’re still worried about their future. What would you say to them? What would be some insights that really helped you to get to where you are now?
Alicia – I would definitely if it was somebody I would always recommend them to you because you were such a profound. I always tell people you saved my life, like, really saved my life. The quality of life I had after following your your program was I mean, I’m paying a medicated fee, which is huge. Support, mindset is huge, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Doctor Joe Dispenza, that is somebody that I’ve referred to Katie, but I think that people he talks about visualization and going into this void and coming back into your body, Bofo is very much like that. It can create a near-death experience so that you can come back into your body and new. So that’s what another medicine that I work with. So there are things and just holding on to that hope, that belief, like our mind is so powerful. And to circle back to what you were saying about the language, about the cold joints, it’s our subconscious holds that, so it’s reprogramming our subconscious brain with that positive reframe from how your what your mantra was versus what it is now I think is is huge. Mindset is a big, it’s a powerful tool, like our bodies were innately designed to heal themselves, they really were. And so when we can tune in and tap into and believe in that, it’s a game changer. It doesn’t mean that that’s going to be consistently happening every day because there are highs and lows and moments of belief and moments of discouragement. That’s life. But just to, you know, hold on to that trust and faith and surrender.
Clint – What do you think’s been the greatest thing to come out of? Going through what you went through with rheumatoid.
Alicia – Finding my path to work with the medicines that I work with to be able to help people heal their mind, body and spirit, whether it’s physically, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally. I can absolutely see that diagnosis was leading me here to do what I do now. So that’s been huge for me, and it’s a blessing to witness people heal.
Clint – And what would you hope that people take away most from what you’ve shared today?
Alicia – Hope. Hope that it is possible, you know. Really hope. Because it is a scary, a scary thing to be, to be chronically sick. That chronic pain and other ailments, chronic fatigue, the chronic part of being sick really messes with our mental health, whether it’s depression, anxiety, uh, other mental health issues that arise. So just just hope.
Clint – Thank you. Alicia, this has been really awesome. So really appreciate you sharing your story with us. And congratulations. And just it’s also so wonderful that you help people who are also needing some assistance in the way that you do, which is very unique, very, very unique. So congratulations and keep being so amazing and like a bright, shining star.
Alicia – Oh, thank you. And thank you for the work that you do, really saved my life. I will, I’m forever grateful and forever sing your praises. So. Yes. Thank you.