In this episode Clint retraces his own personal experience and identifies the 6 biggest mistakes and the consequences he has faced in his healing journey.

My friends in this video, I’m going to share the six biggest mistakes that I’ve made with my rheumatoid arthritis since I was diagnosed almost 17 years ago. I’ve had a lot of experience over those years in what to do, but also I’ve made some mistakes along the way that have cost me a lot of cartilage, a lot of heartaches, a lot of pain, and a lot of sleep. I’m going to share with you today those 6 big mistakes that I made with the intention that you may not make those mistakes again or if you’re currently making these mistakes, that perhaps you might want to make some strategy adjustments.

Mistake 1 – Taking High Dose NSAIDs

The first one was way back at the start when I was first diagnosed and let me set the scene, I also tore my left knee ACL playing football the same week I was diagnosed. And so I had a massive swollen left knee from the ACL tear to begin with, let alone the impact and quick onset of my rheumatoid factor, positive anti-CCP, seropositive inflammatory arthritis with CRP markers in the fifties. Okay so huge inflammation, very aggressive disease, fast onset straight to the knee, and then big mistake number 1 here we go is I took high dose nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. When I took those upon prescription from the doctor, I then felt immediate relief and thought all I need to do is to keep taking these drugs for the rest of my life, and I’m going to be fine because my pain is gone, ladies and gentlemen. Only to find that by about the third or fourth day, I needed to take a little more than what I needed on day one to get complete pain relief. By week 2, I needed to take a lot more to get the same degree of pain relief. And then at the end of the third week, I thought, hang on a second, I’m taking like twice as much drugs here to get the same relief. And on the packet, it says Do not take for more than 14 days and I’m on 21 days and I am actually taking a lot more now. I wonder what would happen if I stopped. Whereas my actual levels at and I stopped taking those non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. And the next day the true nightmare of this disease became evident because at that point I realized, oh my God, I’m now in absolute agony. Now without these drugs, I’m way worse than what I was before taking these drugs. So I had been on a sort of a platform of pain of around about a 4, 5 out of 10. Oh, gee, that’s generous. Probably more like a 6 or 7. Then I took the painkillers, which dropped that right down to like zero to o1ne, and then after they stopped working and I tested where I was at, I was at like an eight or nine. That 8 or 9 stuck with me from that point onwards. And so my big mistake, number 1 was thinking that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were going to be a long-term solution and being completely unaware of the negative impact that they have on inflammatory arthritis, so that was a huge error. At most anyone should only be taking a small dose of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. And if they’re needed each day, then other things need to be put into place to reduce the dependency on having to take them every day. Read the packet yourself. It’ll say on the packet that you’re taking, if you are, do not take for more than x many days. Okay. So that was big mistake number one.

Mistake 2 – Delaying Methotrxate By A Year

Big mistake number 2 is I delayed methotrexate by a year instead of starting it straight away. And let me just add that these particular mistakes that I’m listing here are not in order of biggest impact and worse decisions. They’re just in chronological order. All right. So my second big mistake was not starting methotrexate soon enough. The reason for this decision is because I thought with the determination, resourcefulness, and commitment I had to this project, in my mind, I should be able to get results on it despite all the evidence. Well, with people’s opinions telling me that I have to take the drugs and I am only going to get worse. And no one has ever improved with diet and all this stuff. So I had all of this sort of you can’t do it. And I had tremendous amounts of, yes, I can do it. But I had absolutely zero strategy. I had zero strategy, I knew none of the science, I was as naive as you could possibly be. When I was told I got the disease, I didn’t know what rheumatoid arthritis was and I’d never heard of it, couldn’t spell it. Therefore I was basically just maximum enthusiasm, zero knowledge. So under those circumstances, should have followed medical advice because, how can you expect to become the best at something when you are starting from zero and you’ve got all this inflammation that was attacking particularly the left knee and then progressed into my fingers, wrist, jaw, chest, ankles, feet, you name it, except my hips and shoulders. So I should have taken the medication. What I now know, and this is crucial for everyone, it doesn’t matter where the inflammation is in your body, systemic inflammation correlates to inflammation at the intestinal lining. And the greatest cause of leaky gut is inflammation at the intestinal lining. The gut wall is hypersensitive to inflammation.

So if we’re running high CRP markers, you have a leaky gut. It’s not debatable. Okay. And we likewise know that the reverse is true and that leaky gut, the greater amount of leaky gut corresponds with more inflammation. I guess you can look at it as like a two-way street, you can’t have a mutually exclusive situation there. I didn’t know any of this. I postponed, I got lots of tremendous amounts of pain. Joint damage in the first 12 months on the left knee was substantial. And should it went on the methotrexate sooner. There is no counter-productive impact on healing by taking methotrexate. If we want to get into the nitty-gritty, yes, there are some additional challenges with it that many of you are aware of with taking that or other disease-modifying drugs. But in my view, if you’re on a mission that’s going to be a long-term strategy towards maximum health and minimum symptoms and you’re inflamed, you’ve got to get it under control. And a drug assists you doing that as long as it’s not one that is counterproductive to gut health. So that was big mistake number 2.

Mistake 3 – Not Exercising My Swollen Elbow

Big mistake number 3. When my left elbow became inflamed, I didn’t move it. So number 3 is not moving an inflamed joint. My left elbow started to get involved and it became one of the more problematic joints that I’ve ever had. So left knee, left elbow, they were my absolute nightmares. What I used to do in efforts to reduce the inflammation in my left elbow, something out of like films I used to like Jesus nailed to the cross. I used to tie my wrists to poles on either side of the bed when I fell asleep so that I would avoid rolling onto my elbows during the night, not just due to the agony of the elbow when I would roll onto it. And because I couldn’t sleep accordingly, because of the pain, but because it would noticeably set me back the next morning, you wouldn’t even say more than you would say by the time I got out of bed because I was awake so much during the night because of the pain. And this is, by the way, whilst I was on methotrexate at a maximum of 25 milligrams a week tablet dose. So what I was told by the medical advice that I sought was don’t move it if it hurts. Obviously if it’s in pain, then you should not exacerbate that pain. That is officially the worst advice that I’ve ever been given. So that elbow ended up in surgery just four years after diagnosis. And I had what’s called a synovectomy, which is the removal of all the synovial tissue inside the joint. It’s a long recovery period, it’s very, very disruptive, I couldn’t drive my car after that for six weeks. I mean, I couldn’t do anything. My wife is a caretaker while I was, recovering from surgery. Of course, other joints then start to worsen because you’re not moving, you’re not going to yoga or whatever your mechanism of exercise is, and you just feel miserable and have to take painkillers for a while. So that was big mistake number 3 is not moving my joint.

By contrast, the right elbow started to get inflamed as well, not long after that. In fact, it was inflamed during the surgery of the left elbow because when I had my discharge meeting with the surgeon after the sort of the follow-up meeting to check on it, after a few weeks after surgery. He looked at me in deadpan, said, I will see you for the next elbow, I’ll see you for the other one, he said. I thought to myself, the last thing in the world that I want. So the right elbow I saw, I thought, there’s no way that I’m going to end up, I never want to see that guy again. Right. He did a fantastic job on the surgery, but my mission was to never see that guy again, the surgeon. I didn’t want to go through that process again because obviously, that’s a disastrous disease management strategy, is guys getting surgery. What did I do? I went like crazy moving the right elbow because if not moving it is the worst advice in on the planet, then maybe moving it a lot might just happen to be the best thing I could do, and that’s what I did. I would do a thousand elbow pumps a day, which is you just bend over at the waist, engage your lower back, and just move your arms back and forth as if you’re sort of running but on the spot. And that’s an invention of mine, I used to do that walking up and down the corridors on cruise ships, I used to work a lot on cruise ships. And I used to do it in the corridor at my apartment complex up and down our little apartment or even on the spot. When I needed to and I was in a public space performing at corporate events and things, I would go to the bathroom, do 100 elbow pumps before going back out and going back on stage and doing my thing. So I was just keeping those elbows. That was number one. But what else did I do? I started to train those elbows. And so that moves on to point number four, a big mistake that took too long to do this with the knee and too long to do this with the right elbow and, of course, the left.

Mistake 4 – Not Doing Resistance Training

Big mistake number 4 is not using resistance training as my modality for exercise earlier. So for most of this time I was doing Bikram yoga, and Bikram yoga has a tremendous list of benefits which includes detoxification of pesticides and heavy metals, because sweating is a preferred pathway of eliminating those particular unwanted aspects of our health, it enables strength, building flexibility, it can increase antioxidant enzymes, it’s definitely a cardiovascular workout so you become fitter. There’s a lot of benefits to it. Also, the deep breathing, and the pranayama at the start of class is very good for parasympathetic nervous system activation, which is calming again vagal, nerve stimulation, all this stuff very, very good. However, if you only do that for a year and a half, which is what I did in missing out on some therapeutic benefits of doing resistance training. So in the book that I am finalising, my recommendations now around exercise are that resistance training is compulsory and other exercises such as Bikram or other sorts of yoga formats, you’ve got Pilates, you’ve got swimming, stationary bike or regular bike and just rowing machine, different forms of exercise running if you can. All of these things are great, but not compulsory, whereas the resistance training must be compulsory.

That’s because the tendonitis around the joints needs to be engaged for that to reduce inflammation in the tendons. Right. Engaged muscle tissue, produces anti inflammatory molecules that have the same pathway, would you believe as the JAK inhibitors, those form of tablet based biologic drugs. And the studies on this are exciting. So I found this practically is that as soon as I’m doing resistance training on my elbows and also doing resistance training on my knee, that I was able to see faster progress than what I’d been getting from every single day attending Bikram yoga. So Bikram yoga has its place, and for many of you, if you’re doing it, I’m not suggesting it’s not sensational, but maybe add some resistance training as well. Take a day off, alternate it. Right. Just mix it up, get some targeted resistance training through the joints that are affected. And this will serve you, I promise you.

Mistake 5 – Delaying A Cortisone Injection

Number 5, is I should have got a cortisone shot in my left knee much earlier. I persisted and persisted and persisted at yoga, and most of my joints showed tremendous improvement over that time. But the left knee just remained swollen and stiff and had very limited range of motion. And I kept going and going and going and going and just thought it’s maybe improving just a tiny bit. Keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. And then after 12 months of of that, because I did something like 360 yoga classes in a year or it didn’t miss many days. And then I had a cortisone shot in the knee and suddenly it was like every single door opened for that knee. Then I was fine on that left knee for another ten years. Right. And I used resistance training after that, some bicycles getting on the stationary bike and doing squats and lunges, walking, lunges and things like this. That proved to be far more effective, but only after the cortisone shot had been put into the knee to give me a playing platform that wasn’t impossible. The knee’s developed this closed loop of inflammation. A baker cyst forms in there, swelling comes up over the top of the knee, the range of motion gets restricted, muscle wastage sets in, and it’s a damn nightmare to try and get rid of that without any other interventions like a cortisone shot. There are strategies that I use to reduce the baker’s system now and recommend and also to reduce the swelling without cortisone shot. And I’ve just put a new video inside the members area of many of the memberships that you have Paddison Program, Rheumatoid Solutions or Rheumatoid Support. So inside there just go in and it’s called Baker’s Cyst a complete overview. So watch that. If you’re not a member of our program, make sure you join life changing, I promise you, there’s nothing better you can do for your life. If you have inflammatory arthritis, become a member, get yourself sorted out.

So the cortisone shot played a massive role. If you aren’t doing them regularly, like if you’ve only ever had one or two cortisone shots and most of your body is okay except for one joint that won’t respond, consider having it done because it’s clear that that joint is a non responder and the small impact of a cortisone injection on cartilage is tiny compared to the 6 to 12 month impact of doing nothing and letting that inflammation predictably break down the joint structure. All right. Talk to your doctor about it if you’re interested.

Mistake 6 – Becoming Complacent

Finally, the last big mistake that I made with my rheumatoid arthritis is getting complacent. I’ve told this story many times, so I won’t do the long version of this. But basically I went to a restaurant and I hadn’t had symptoms for years and I went to a restaurant and it was late at night and the kids were screaming. It was past their bedtime and I was mad and we didn’t get serviced for very late, and the whole thing was a nightmare. We ended up at this restaurant because the one we used to go to had been closed for renovations, and we didn’t discover that until we showed up and it felt like we were stuck and then drove another half an hour to another restaurant and I ate a very, very oily meal. It had been like deep fried food. And the next day got symptoms back and had to recover from that all over again. It was non-trivial, it was hard to recover. And I never went back to baseline foods, so I did it all without having to change my broad plant based diet, I didn’t revert back. So what happened was the consequence of that meal was catastrophic. Just the setback, it was just went through all of that process all over again, and it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t have been complacent. It’s better to skip a meal, just don’t eat one night. You’re not going to fade away, nothing’s bad’s going to happen to you. Just go home, have some fruit, have a banana, or maybe have a bowl of oatmeal or something, even if it’s 10:00 at night. The impact of that’s going to be nothing compared to eating what I did, which was a huge like bowl. Like a huge bowl like this of deep fried potato wedges in this huge oily veggie burger. So tons of science onto the impact of that and I’m really enthusiastic to share all the science as to why a one meal can have such a detrimental impact on health. But that’s for another video.

Summary

For now I want you to don’t make any of the mistakes that I made. Don’t do high doses of painkillers, try and get off the painkillers. Don’t delay medications that are designed for long term inflammatory arthritis management like methotrexate or sulfasalazine or Plaquenil or even Arava, if the doctor likes that drug or whatever. And these medications can reduce the symptoms enough, the inflammation enough to stop that cyclic inflammation cascade and reduce that inflammation at the gut wall. Therefore reducing intestinal permeability, which means that everything else that you’re doing therefore gains more leverage and can have more success. All right. You cannot heal with high inflammation levels. Okay. So and then number three, if a joint hurts, give it attention, give it movement, resistance training onto that joint, make sure you do that. Reps Equal relief and strength building around a joint is anti-inflammatory in itself, right? And then get resistance training in your picture. If you’re not doing resistance training, you just walking. Maybe a swimming. Okay, Yeah. Good, good, good, good. Love it. Keep it up. You’re a champion. But make sure if if a specific joint hurts, that joint gets some resistance training. If it’s fingers, then, grab an overhead bar, try and take some weight. The resistance, that isometric resistance while holding your weight, will give those fingers a workout. If it’s knees, do some squats, if it’s elbows, do some elbow punches with some resistance weights, lift some weights doing some what they called military press, whatever.

All these guidelines are inside your materials in your membership. Okay. And then not having a cortisone shot into the one nonresponsive joint that I had in my body. When I eventually got that done, it was like whole world opened up. All right, opportunities opened up. And then finally, don’t get complacent, you know, Remember the life of Pi metaphor? Life of pi? Yeah. We’re living with a wild animal here, and you can train over very long and cautious period of time to live with that wild animal without it attacking you. You can get to the point where you’re almost friends. Okay? But if you go poking that stick at that wild animal again, that thing will immediately revert to its biological nature, which is to attack the crap out of you. Okay, So don’t go poking the lion, don’t go messing around. Remember, we have this condition, and even if it’s quiet and you’re living with it and you’re in control, don’t poke the lion. All right? Love you guys. I hope this video is helpful. If you liked it, make sure you give me a thumbs up posting the comments below if you haven’t subscribed. If you’re on watching this on YouTube, please subscribe. Plenty more videos like this in the past and in the future coming your way. And thanks so much. Bye for now.