I want to share with you the three fundamental foundational things that we need to be focused on when we have inflammatory arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and so on.

Why do I want to get back to these three foundational core principles? It’s because there’s so much going on in the world right now. Right now, the virus numbers have reached all new heights around the world. If you’re like me, you’ve got loved ones, family, friends and maybe even yourself who have come down with the virus and it’s difficult times, we don’t know what’s going to happen throughout the next 12 months. We don’t know if life is going to return completely to normal this year or how things will look in the future. So there’s a lot of uncertainty and there’s a lot of fear, frankly, not just in the autoimmune community, but around the world affecting everyone, regardless if they had a pre-existing medical condition or not.

So today I want to come back to just some real fundamental stuff. In doing that, we can just say, “look, take a deep breath. As long as we’re working on these things, we can then know that at least that aspect of our responsibility in life, which is appropriately managing our autoimmune disease is is in is in good order”.

Fundamental #1 – Little To No Inflammation, Always

So let’s get started on that with the very first and foundational principle, which is we need to never have more than low inflammation levels, ideally none. Of course, a condition where we’re really we’re not in a really aggressive or a heavily inflamed state.

This is essential. It’s not only essential from a point of view of protecting your joints because the more inflammation in any one particular joint will cause a proportional amount of degradation of the joint, the cartilage and so on. Thus, we really want to make sure that we’re in a low inflammation or no inflammation state to the best of our ability. For that reason this rule is valid enough – but there is another reason that I pay close attention to, because I’m in the business of wanting people to have maximum health and minimum symptoms, and with that, maximum health includes the gut health.

Gut health and inflammation

When we have high inflammation levels, we simultaneously have high intestinal permeability. And this matters because leaky gut, or intestinal permeability, is one of the underlying drivers of inflammatory arthritis. We want to protect our joints by having low inflammation levels, but we also want to reduce intestinal permeability, which is also linked to high inflammation levels. And what do I mean by that? Studies have shown that there is a directly proportional relationship between the amount of leaky gut or intestinal permeability and joint inflammation in inflammatory arthritis patients.
In Crohn’s disease, which is a hyper intestinal permeability state, they did an experiment where they reduced the inflammation in patients pharmaceutically. And this coincided with a dramatic reduction in intestinal permeability.

Across the various approaches of looking at this. We know that if we can get inflammation down, we get leaky gut down, and likewise if we can reduce leaky gut, then we also can reduce inflammation. So there’s this dance between the two. It’s not always obvious as to which one is happening. First, it’s a bit chicken and the egg sort of situation, but we know that if we get the inflammation down or we get leaky gut down, we’re going to serve both purposes and that’s crucial.

It’s crucial for long term health because ongoing leaky gut long term leads to ongoing high inflammatory levels, which leads to the joint destruction and surgeries, joint replacements, deformities and all the ugly things that we don’t like about inflammatory arthritis. So never try and push through high levels of pain. Never give it months and months and months and months and months get the inflammation under control.

No one never persist long with lie high inflammation levels for a long period of time. It actually retards the ability to make progress with your lifestyle interventions. So if it’s not coming down and you’re throwing everything at it, all of the lifestyle things speak to your doctor and get it under control. You can always taper the meds in the future. That’s something that is fairly frequently reported by guests on our podcast. Okay. Coming going on a disease modifying drug or biologic and then later taping it down or extending the periods between the the injections, for example. This is commonly discussed, there’s a well trodden path for that. But what isn’t common is to be massively inflamed, to push through month after month after month, year after year and and suddenly have that crazy breakthrough with a supplement or something. It doesn’t happen. Okay.

You’re the CEO of your health condition

Be proactive. You’re the CEO of your health condition. No one’s going to switch out the situation and make it better unless you are pulling the strings. You’re in control. You’re in control of the most important aspect of your life, which is your health. So be the boss. Act like a boss. Make decisions so that you protect your joints. Okay? So at your rheumatologist visit say “What can I do? Let’s look at the drug situation at the moment. What medications can we shift on? This isn’t working”. Of course, we’ll talk about lifestyle in a minute.

Fundamental #2 – Avoid Medications That Are Counterproductive To Gut Health

We don’t want to use medications that are counterproductive to gut health. Counterproductive medications are ones that cause more gut leakiness. So it comes back to that once again, and this means that we don’t want to be on long term use of prednisone or prednisolone. We don’t want to be taking long term use of antacids, proton pump inhibitors. We don’t want to be taking non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs long term if we can avoid it. You can read for yourself on the packet. Don’t take longer than x many days. I mean, this isn’t rocket science stuff.

And then we also need to be very cautious with the use of antibiotics. And I know there’s a a portion of the autoimmune community who follow the Brown protocol, which is related to low dose of antibiotics. But that is a that is a tip toeing delicate approach that is well documented within that community. And it’s not an approach that that I’ve gone down personally. In fact, for me personally, my rheumatoid arthritis was created by antibiotics. I took long term doxycycline for five consecutive years for acne when I was a teenager, and then when I was just after I turned 30, I went to the Middle East and entertain the troops over there as part of the entertainment group from Australia. And I was doing stand up comedy in case you wanted to know. Not much humour in these videos. I’m sorry about that! But on that trip, I had to take the same exact doxycycline before, during and after for malaria prevention. So three months more of the same doxycycline and shortly after returning from that trip, I developed the onset of rheumatoid arthritis. So I’ve shown in other studies, other podcasts, so much content I’ve shared about antibiotics and inflammatory arthritis, and we know that there is an association of more antibiotics leads to more risk of rheumatoid. It’s that simple, right? And therefore, we’ve got to be careful if we have antibiotics in our treatment protocol because antibiotics are like bulldozers and chainsaws in the delicate Amazon rainforest of our microbiome.

So I’m just saying be cautious with all these drugs, the proton pump inhibitors, the prednisone, the non-steroidal and the antibiotics. All of them have a place, yes, there is a place for the appropriate use of these medications. When you discuss with your rheumatologists, though, just bring up these sort of discussions that I share with you and just say “Is there an appropriate drug that’s designed for long term use?” And they will be forthcoming and enthusiastic about discussing biologic drugs and disease modifying drugs, which are appropriate long term drugs for autoimmune arthritis. That’s where the emphasis of your long term path should be, in my personal opinion, and discuss that with the rheumatologist, because those drugs (the disease modifying drugs and the biologic drugs) I have seen transformational results when used in parallel with the Paddison Program. Because keep in mind, just because you’re on those drugs quite often doesn’t mean that you become symptom free. So there’s often symptoms there to play with when you’re experimenting with your lifestyle interventions and so on to the third and final point.

Fundamental #3 – Engage all lifestyle interventions that are scientifically supported

We need to engage with all lifestyle interventions that are scientifically supported to improve our inflammatory arthritis symptoms. Just changing diet is great. Alright, we know the studies show that the more plants you eat, the more whole food, plant based diet that you go towards, then the better off you’re going to be. In terms of gut weakness, oxidative stress, intestinal permeability, long term outcome with rheumatoid arthritis and so on. So we want to go down that path.

Is dietary changes alone enough? Quite often it’s not enough. It is the foundational concrete slab of a house. That’s what the diet is. So we shouldn’t expect that the end game is just to change our diet. And then after a month, say, “this hasn’t cured me, I’ve still got pain, this doesn’t work, I’m going back to the old ways or to some other unscientifically supported dietary fad!”.

No! We don’t do that. What we need to appreciate is that we are David and the battle we’re trying to fight is Goliath, and we need to get all aspects of the lifestyle interventions in place. We need to put action across the board. Not just the diet, but also exercise, supplements, address our stress levels. Review where we’re at in terms of our interpersonal stressors at work and our our close family relationships and really work on that. We need to look at our supplements and we just have to from across the board get get all of these things in order.

Common Mistakes?

Exercise deficiency is probably the biggest issue I see amongst people who are interested in lifestyle changes, but who are still not seeing the results they want. Remaining on the counter-productive medications for long periods is also probably an equal number one or number two issue for most people who aren’t where they want to be with their inflammation levels.

Coming back now to trying to push through high inflammation levels – it’s not going to work, you just constantly creating more leaky gut. So I hopefully have helped you with some clarity and some direction. This year is going to be an interesting one. We don’t know, as I said, where this virus is going to go and my prayers, my thoughts, are with you and your family.

You Can Do This – The Paddison Program Will Help You

If you’re in a tough time, right, at this moment, things change. You know, things change. Just get the fundamentals right and you will be able to at least get this part of your life under control. We can help you. We have a support group. I would start with the Paddison program, head over to Paddison program. It’s a do it yourself program. All the information you need there across the board is laid out step by step, scientifically supported by over 300 references. Get started on that.

Want Personal Assistance? We’re Right Here For You

If you want some support right off the bat, you can join the support group as well and we offer coaching. I personally will help you on a day to day in a day to day manner. In fact, now I’m done with this video. I’m going to log in there and help members of our community support group right now.

I hope this information is helpful. Stay strong. Keep it up. And life’s better when you’re healing.