Good day it’s Clint Paddison here from RheumatoidSolutions.com If you have inflammatory arthritis, and you’re looking for a rheumatologist or a doctor that you can work with who understands the connection between the microbiome and lifestyle choices and your inflammatory condition, then this video is for you. What we’re going to talk about here is where to find some doctors that you can access right now who do telehealth appointments, who are familiar with the Paddison Program, familiar with my work, and are going to be very supportive for you on this journey. We’re also going to talk about why your doctor is unlikely to know the connection between lifestyle choices and inflammatory arthritis to the degree that you might if you’ve been a follower of my work for some time. We’re also going to talk about why that actually doesn’t matter that much, and we’re going to talk about how you can get the most out of your local rheumatologist and how to make the most out of the sessions that you have with her or him.

First of all, let me give you some great resources of rheumatologists. Firstly, that I recommend and I suggest you check out. First of all, Dr. Nisha Manek, who’s a rheumatologist based in Arizona. She does telehealth appointments often comes on our live calls for our members on the monthly Q&A sessions. What she does is she emphasizes a holistic approach to inflammatory arthritis, and she used to work at the Mayo Clinic, very, very wonderful professional. She is also very good at visualization, manifestation, and picturing a future outcome for yourself with less problems, less inflammation, less drug dependency and so on. A wonderful human being. She’s over at NishaManekMD.com.

Another I will bring your attention to is Rheumatologist Dr. Micah Yu. He is a plant-based rheumatologist. He has inflammatory arthritis condition himself, so he has got an empathy, possibly like no other, because of his own personal condition. And that important story of having being able to develop control over his symptoms without using medication. Currently, because of the same lifestyle changes that we teach and are scientifically supported, which is that a plant-based diet is going to be the most effective at an inflammatory-inflammation reduction. He’s living proof of that himself, he coaches that for his patients, and so if you’re looking for a holistic doctor who’s rheumatology trained and can assist you with your inflammatory arthritis specifically, then head over to DRLifestyle.org, and it’s Dr. Micah Yu. Tell him I sent you, tell Nisha I said hi as well.

Then if you want to have another source of medical support that isn’t rheumatology, but are medical doctors who understand this connection tremendously, then head over to plantbasedtelehealth.com. The team over there are outstanding Dr. Laurie Marbas, Dr. Michael Klapper, Dr. Chris Miller, all good friends of mine, all wonderful human beings, and all of them have an intimate knowledge of the relationship between what we eat, the microbiome exercise, and the impact on inflammatory arthritis. You can’t go wrong over there at plant-based telehealth, and if you’re not sure which doctor you might want to go with, ask them they’ll give you guidance. Dr. Michael Klapper, my Goodness, I mean, he’s been supporting our work. I’ve done events with him in Sydney, in Florida, live events and his knowledge on both the science and also on personally helping people with inflammatory arthritis over decades is second to none.

Okay, so what if you want someone local and you want to work with someone because you need to, you want to go and see someone locally. If you’re outside of the United States or you just want that one on one connection, you need to see someone directly for insurance purposes, whatever. What if your Doctor does not make any comments or in fact makes negative comments about the association between diet, exercise and inflammatory arthritis. Well, first of all, don’t be surprised if that’s the case. The reason is that at medical conferences where latest papers over the last 12 months are presented and the medical community rheumatology community are trained on the latest and greatest, diet, it’s just there are just not many papers, it just doesn’t come up very often. There isn’t as much research funding in the area of what broccoli does, as opposed to what this next biologic can do, so there’s just not a lot of information. When this information, the studies are published, sometimes they’re not in the major medical journals, so they can be overlooked even for the more astute rheumatologist who’s looking for information about lifestyle choices. This doesn’t matter because you don’t need to go to your rheumatologist and ask for nutrition advice. We’ve put all that together for you in our coaching programs or in the Paddison Program. You can get all that information by looking at the scientific studies and going to the sources yourself and making up your own mind. And we share that information so that you can see that the review studies on diet are consistent over the past 4 or 5 years. All of them point to a predominantly plant-based diet. Also that exercise is consistently encouraged amongst scientific publications. You will know you’ve learned from your doctor directly that smoking and alcohol should be minimized. But beyond that, do you really need to have the discussion? Well, potentially not as long as they’re supportive of your future vision. You say I’m hoping to be able to get to this point and be healthy enough to maybe get off the discretionary nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or reduce prednisone. But other than that, then, you can work with them on the conventional things like your blood tests, your imaging, having flexibility from them with drug administration, like we talked about to meet your future vision if your blood test inflammation markers are supportive of, say, de-escalation objectives. And if your symptoms are low enough to make some changes that perhaps you hope for in the future.

Having that shared vision is crucial, so as long as you cannot be on the same terms, get along with the person and be able to get your blood test, your imaging like MRI, x rays, and so forth, and this agreement on the future and the way in which drug administration will be best administered, then you’re fine. It’s also handy if your rheumatologist is also willing to be adaptable. Methotrexate, by way of example, doesn’t work for everyone, and it’s observing that look, things aren’t working out on this particular drug if it does it. Then saying, well, let’s try something else, let’s not sit on that for very long periods of time where symptoms are uncontrolled and it’s just having that adaptability. I think that most, in most cases, rheumatologists are very good at that.

I hope that’s helpful, and if you have any questions, post them in the comments below. I certainly have had a wonderful experience with my rheumatologist in the 17 years, nearly that I since I got diagnosed. These people work very hard. They’re overworked with enormous waiting lists of patients trying to get in their door. So the more you can take care of your health and show up to those appointments with the least possible symptoms, it makes their life easier to keep your symptoms under control and manage well because you simply require less intervention and less escalation of intervention, and less complicated treatment. So do your part, be as healthy as possible, get as fit as you can, get as healthy as you can on the inside. Improve your microbiome, keep your mindset right and do everything that we talk about in these videos and you will do great and your relationship with your rheumatologist, whether it be male or female, old or young or whatever it might be, telehealth or local is going to be a good one, and it’s going to help you get to where you want and you’re in control and you make it happen and things are going to be good for you.

If you’d like more information from me, check out these videos, subscribe. And also, if you’d like some coaching from myself and my team, head over to RheumatoidSolutions.com, we will look after you and help you and guide you. Hope to see you there until then, see in the next video.