Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) has a lot of similarities to RA, falling in the inflammatory arthritis category: today’s guest tells us how he’s been able to keep symptoms under control and become drug-free thanks to healthy life choices.

We discuss in this episode:

• Simon’s journey from being diagnosed with AS and taking biologic drugs to becoming pain-free and drug-free
• Movement as the number 1 factor for AS recovery
• How diet also plays a crucial role, and how homegrown foods are often an optimal choice
• Simon’s daily routine for eating in a healthy way
• The importance of having a supportive community around us
• Managing stress and meditation routines
• Breathing techniques
• Exercise
• Supplements
• Apps and devices for monitoring sleep quality and stress markers

Clint – Ankylosing spondylitis has a lot of similarities to rheumatoid falling in the inflammatory arthritis category and it can be debilitating, awful and a lot of the same medications that are used for rheumatoid are used for ankylosing spondylitis. We want to help people with all forms of inflammatory arthritis conditions by sharing success stories from those who have overcome very challenging situations and have put themselves back in the driver’s seat and have regained control and confidence over their condition. So today I’ve got Simon all the way from Belgium, who’s got a fabulous story for us about his transformation with ankylosing spondylitis. He has not done the Paddison Program or the Rheumatoid solutions system. He has discovered most of this on his own and has ended up with the same approach virtually by continually to trial and error and paying attention to the research and watching podcasts, including this one and learning and implementing over many years. So, Simon, it’s a pleasure to have you here. I can’t wait to hear about your journey in detail. But first of all, tell us the sort of before and after how bad you were and then how you feel right now.

Simon – Thank you, Clint. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me. And I would also like to start by saying thank you for all the work you’re doing for people with rheumatoid arthritis and AS like myself. So basically the AS is as always, sort of been a part of my life. And at one point I started waking up with pain in the morning from it. It dictated most of my day in the sense that it took away a lot of my energy and that was always on my mind as well. And but that has disappeared for a large part now. So I can say that now I’m not dominated by the disease anymore, but it’s part of my life. But it’s very, very manageable for me And I can do everything I want to do. And even more, it has pushed me to do things that I might not have done otherwise. So and that’s regard I think it’s, yeah, an important part of my life that Negative and also positive things have come from.

Simon – and I used to take the biologics and now I’ve completely stopped doing that. And I just rely on the lifestyle and the health choices to manage the AS.

Clint – We talked just before we hit record here, and I want to share with the audience what we’re in for. You’ve got a substantial list here of things that have helped you tremendously and that you kind of use as your non-negotiables of how to keep pain low. We’re going to go through each one of those, and then we’ll sort of exchange our experiences on both of those to provide as much insight into how we utilize these strategies for everyone. I almost don’t want to say, but first, because it’s just as important though, is your discovery of each one of these. So let’s work through in that order. You have had it for a long time, I think you were diagnosed around 21 years old. Can you take us back to what that felt like? I imagine you wanted to be just hanging out with your friends and maybe trying to have a fun social life and suddenly you’ve been diagnosed with something like that. I mean, what was that moment like?

Simon – Actually, for me, the first time someone, a doctor mentioned this to me like he was really serious. And I think you have a very serious disease, and. And I didn’t really want to believe him, so I was like, Yeah, yeah, okay. It’s fine. It’ll probably not that bad, and I’ve had back pain for most of my life and it’s I can manage and whatever. For me, it took a while for me to accept the fact that I have this disease. Um, I had been prescribed anti-inflammatory drug drugs for a while before the actual diagnosis, and I kept taking those for a while and it took a while for me to start the journey into how am I going to get or live with this kind of pain that I that I have? I wasn’t like bedridden or anything, I started waking up from the pain in the morning, um, which was annoying. And then I had some pain for the first few hours of the day and it was always kind of lingering afterwards. But maybe it wasn’t like at 21 this started for me. I always had like a weak back since I was 14. I even remember a swimming teacher at one point telling my parents, I think there’s something wrong with his back because he’s kind of crooked when he swims. That started a whole physio thing. And I’ve since I was 14 or so, I’ve always been going to the physio doing exercises for my back, going to the fitness, it has always been a part of my of my life. I’ve always had to deal with this lower back pain. So when the doctor said, Yeah, I think it’s really serious, I think it’s AS yeah, it was just another name for me. But then I had to take more and more anti-inflammatory drugs which started, you know, having an effect on my gut, on my energy, on everything, basically, and. It’s also a bit part because in my family my mother has some form of rheumatoid arthritis, not very heavy, but she does have it. My father has the skin disease.

Clint – Psoriasis?

Simon – Yes. So it’s in my family. So I knew there’s probably a big chance that this is correct and that I have this. And then I started seeing some more rheumatoid doctors, so specialists who also said, yeah, probably so they did a blood research, they confirmed. And then actually one of them put me on a trial for biologics because at that point they weren’t that common yet, this is 22 years ago now. And they started taking Enbrel. I don’t know if you know that, but there’s shots every week that I had to do, which is a pretty major intervention, I thought, at that point, but yes it did help. So for the first few years, I sort of managed with these shots. The back pain in the morning went away. During the day I still had some discomfort and it was always a little annoying and it was always there and it was always, you know, it’s always been a thing. It’s always sort of connected to me. Oh, no. Simon Yeah, he has back pain, right? So. And. That went on for some years. I’ve always sort of done sports and fitness and moving because I did feel or did see that that helped me, right? So when I was moving and when I did sports and when I, I always felt better. Also, the back pain went away. And when I was doing sports, I never had to think about the back pain, right? It wasn’t there so that was very, very fun for me. So I did a lot of sports, played volleyball for a long time. But then I think like, so stop me if this is going too long.

Clint – No, I’ve sort of I’m accumulating sort of things to add and to comment on and questions as you’re going in my mind. Let me share one of those. One of the most dramatic recoveries from ankylosing spondylitis that I’ve ever participated with or played a role in. I’ve never shared on our podcast because she the woman was um, a little bit shy and didn’t want to share. But the number one strategy that we used when I was doing sort of 1 to 1 work with her was exercise. And I said, What are you going to do? You’re going to do three Bikram yoga classes a week, and every other day you’re going to go to the pool and you’re going to swim laps. So she began doing these exercises in those formats that she hadn’t done before. Prior to us working together, she couldn’t get in and out of the car. Her back hurt so much, she couldn’t get into the driver’s seat and so on. And at the end of a six month period, she was so good that she felt like she didn’t even have the condition anymore. And yes, diet played its role, but it was this commitment to movement that I felt was the stronger of the two. So I just wanted to add that example.

Simon – I think that’s completely true. This is the part where it really started to find the solution for me. So when I was 35, I discovered CrossFit. Which is basically moving every day. So I started doing this every day and I forgot about taking my medication. I just it just went out, I didn’t have to. The pain was gone, I didn’t think about it anymore. And then I realized, I didn’t take my shot this week, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t feel anything, I felt great, I was moving. This is a bit the problem that I have with the doctors was they always gave these really annoying exercises you had to do to strengthen your back. But it’s always such an annoying thing and you have to like, you have to do this for half an hour every day. But CrossFit, it was fun, you got to do it for an hour. I felt great, I had a lot of energy, and that sort of started this whole journey for me, right? So the more I moved, the better I felt. And then I started looking into, okay, if this works, what else can help me? Right. And I have to say, the community around the CrossFit has really, really helped me in discovering these things.

Simon – So it started at like 35 and then went off and do this really research, trying to find everything that could help me. And one of the first things was next to the movement is then of course, what you eat, right? Because for CrossFit, if you do a lot of CrossFit, you have to eat a lot. And it was a bit the from the muscle side, if you want to gain muscles, you have to eat a lot of things, right? But then the thing I’m I discovered was I started eating a lot of carbs because I wanted to bulk up. But a typical story maybe. But then I felt that my energy was not so great anymore. So at that time, keto was very prominent as a strategy as well, so I started trying that and I did feel, okay, this is good for my energy, right? I can keep doing the movement. I can even do more. So not too many carbs, great. Also found Tim Ferriss at that point who had a low carb diet that he prescribed, which worked really, really well for me. So I started fine tuning this a bit, but I’ve always sort of been on the low carb side, so a lot of fats, I do eat fruit, which I know is carbs and sugar, but it doesn’t really mean for me that doesn’t cause any problems. Although some forms, like weirdly apples don’t really agree with me, I don’t know why. So I started using a CGM as well to see, okay, which kind of foods work well for me, which raised my blood sugar very much, and then sort of decided on, okay, this is my diet that works really well for me, which is low carb, which a lot of vegetables. One problem that I have is I have a sweet tooth. So I eat a lot of candy and cookies, and I used to do that in the past, really a lot. It’s sort of a family disease, a lot of people in my family are overweight. And when I got that out and like the pre-made stuff, that also made a huge difference. So just the organic foods, the homegrown things, lots and lots of vegetables that put me on another level for my health.

Clint – So the assumption is that when you start to reduce the carbohydrate intake, then we become calorie deficient and we need to replace that deficiency with something else. And everyone’s mind immediately jumps to meat. So when you hear low carb, the assumption is typically a high meat intake, especially when you talk about keto. You can do a plant based keto, but not many people do that.

Simon – I tried, but it didn’t really that didn’t really go so well.

Clint – Right. I just wanted to get some more sort of clarity then around where you’ve, where you’ve landed now. Obviously I wouldn’t have invited you on here if you have some views that aren’t based on any kind of science. Just explain where you’ve ended up.

Simon – So one of the things then by bit by accident, I think because I was, I used to eat a lot of meat. But in Belgium we have like a no meat week or month that you can do or that used to be a thing. And then I just thought, okay, let’s do this, let’s try this. And immediately also felt better. So I became plant-based. I took meat out of my diet fish as well for a few like six months. I didn’t eat any, um, like animal products, um, and went to plant-based but quickly discovered that plant-based without like if you try to do a keto with plant-based, that’s not, that’s not a good idea. So eat a lot of beans, chickpeas, um, all those kinds of, of carbs, plant-based carbs. I did start looking into supplements as well at that point because yeah, I wanted to have enough of all the different macros in my diet and enough indeed like you say, enough calories to be able to do my sports and everything. So it was quite active if you sport if you do exercise every day then you need a lot of food as well because otherwise, yeah, energy is a bit deficient. So that I’ve ended up now with a plant based diet. And I do incorporate some fish, mostly fatty fish also for the omega 3’s and to keep that those levels up. But it’s mostly like salad with sardines or stuff like that, which I find works well for me. Um, yeah. I also tried intermittent fasting for a while. I’m not a real breakfast eater, so I have to force myself a little bit to eat breakfast. and then a salad with some fish in for lunch and maybe in the evening some more carbs. Like maybe in Belgium we eat a lot of potatoes, right? I don’t know if that’s the same for you guys, but we eat a lot of potatoes. So I ate some potatoes and vegetables. And also the rest of the family is not. We eat a lot more plant based, but they eat meat. So try to. Try to be a bit more aligned. And sometimes I just eat the potatoes and the vegetables and they have some meat on the side or something like that. But yeah, that’s, that’s a bit that’s what I’ve landed on and that works really well for me.

Clint – So a couple of things on that, because I know some people in our community are really strictly plant based and I just want to sort of say, Hey, chill out a little bit here. So if you mostly eat plants and you eat a lot of diversity of plants and you exercise like a crazy person like you are, then you can get away with from a strictly inflammation reduction or low inflammation viewpoint. You can get away with an egg here or there and a little bit of fish here or there. So it’s about having the vast majority of the intake being anti-inflammatory and microbiome supportive. So what you’re doing does not conflict with what the research says, which is that if you’re eating more than 30 plants a week, then it sets you up to have a healthy microbiome. You can still have problems, but it’s definitely in your favor. So my message is, personally to go as much plants as you possibly can because we’re up against the greatest evil or greatest challenge, whatever you want to say. But if you exercise at the level that you do, which is most days intensely right, this is not the average person with inflammatory arthritis. They do not do that. You have a different paradigm in your life than the average person from which they do the studies and they conduct the meta analysis and show that mostly plants is best. Okay. So you are consistent with the studies because exercise is so powerful as an anti-inflammatory that you can have a few little extras in your diet there and has no impact whatsoever.

Simon – Yeah. And I’ll be honest, it does. Sometimes I do get like a sort of a sometimes it’s a little worse days, sometimes it’s better. When it’s worse. I do cut back. I just go full plant based. I don’t eat some of the other foods. And then you notice, okay, if I do this for a couple of weeks, then then it subsides again. So it’s a bit seeing where you are at what point, but you can go a bit stricter or maybe a bit less strict in my opinion hat’s that’s what I do. And I used to a few years ago, I was very strict as well. So never on a in a restaurant or when I went to family or never, never ate anything that wasn’t on my list. Like so everything plant based very, very strict. I’ve sort of come back from that because I think it’s also important to just be able to have a nice meal with family and not be the one that has to really bring his own food all the time. And I mean and indeed, because I do the exercise and because I do some other things, I can from time to time, just eat what everybody else. I don’t still don’t eat meat, but I mean, you can just join the rest of the family, eat a piece of cake. I mean, it’s like not really. Of course, you don’t have to do that every day, but you can do one piece of cake once in a while. I mean, don’t be the guy at birthdays that doesn’t want to eat cake. Yeah. I mean, it’s more. It’s more like go exercise, go do something every day. And then if you have one piece of cake, fine.

Clint – I wish I hadn’t have interrupted you there. That’s the perfect clip for this episode. The perfect clip for this episode is you saying go exercise because it is the highlighted point for ankylosing spondylitis. If you’re watching this and you have ankylosing spondylitis, if you were to take nothing else away, it is exercise your little butt off. That is what you need to do. Yeah. Um, and then if you do that, then all of the little delicacies or all the little sort of sensitivities around the dietary side of things drop way down. I exercise most days. My boys’ birthdays coming up in nine days we’re counting it down and, and I’m definitely having cake on his birthday and I can do that because of the same reasons that we are currently discussing that enable you to have a piece of cake from time to time as well. So I want to ask you this. So let’s stay on diet for a little while. How are you with oils? Have you noticed a reaction to oils? Talk oils with us?

Simon – I think it definitely plays a big role for me, mostly in prepackaged foods. Right. So the rapeseed oils, all the different kind of sunflower oils, very prominent in the foods in the supermarket, as you undoubtedly know. So I started looking at this really closely. Like I said, I like cookies, I got those out because there’s a lot of bad stuff in there, not just the sugar, but also the oils and stuff. Luckily, I think in Belgium we have kind of a nice culture around food. It’s mostly, it’s very can be very fatty, but it’s mostly like butter, a lot of butter and stuff like that. But we don’t have a lot of the like the rapeseed oils or the oil stuff is not so prominent in Belgium. It is in the prepackaged foods, but not in like the cuisine or the cooking. And also very, very happy to say that I come from a family and I think in Belgium most people we cook, right? So we’re used to cooking for ourselves. So every day we try to make a meal that’s a healthy meal. But my father is like always taught us, you know, cook for yourself. It wasn’t really not even a lesson, it was something that was obvious was always like that. It’s in the family history, you know, It used to be they had their own vegetable garden. They even. Yeah, I know it’s a bit bit tricky, but they slaughtered their own chickens, cows. I mean, we have a lot of farmers here. It used to be all very close by so the local produce was something that was very typical, has started to change now because of course, yeah, everybody’s working more and you have to go to the supermarket for your stuff. But also a bit of a the tradition is coming back of using the local produce. I use olive oil a lot because that works for me. I like that also for the fatty parts of my diet, but that’s about it. I try to cut out all of the other oils. I did notice, like I said, the prepackaged things when I got those out. And when you start looking, it’s like the mayonnaise, the dressings on the salads it’s really, really bad. I mean, I’m shocked that people are allowed to sell this kind of thing because, yeah, it’s so, so bad for you and it’s not even real food anymore. I mean, yeah, that’s really it’s like kind of a pet peeve for me and I annoy a lot of people with it. But yeah, especially my family who like, uh, but I try to make my own mayonnaise with just, you know, the eggs and the, and the olive oil, which is of course also not very not that healthy, but better than the stuff from the store. So we try to make a lot of stuff ourselves, that’s basically if you try to cook for yourself, find some local produce farmers that we that we get our vegetables from. Yeah that is what we try to focus on and the oils I try to keep that out as much as possible except for the olive oil.

Clint – Okay. Yeah. Right. So, um, the interesting, there are a few interesting things about processed foods. So the couple of reasons why they’re so bad. I like the metaphor of having, do you ever play golf? Have you ever played golf?

Simon – Once or twice. Yes, I tried it. Yeah.

Clint – So in a golf course there is a par three, a par four and a par five. The par five is a very long distance between where you hit the ball and where the hole is that you’re trying to get the ball into, it’s a very long distance, right? If we think of our target and I it’s a little bit too graphic, but the whole is quite a good metaphor because that’s where we want the food to get out the other end if we’re talking. Right. So if we tee off at the tongue and the hole is at the other end, we need our food to go all the way down the long par five and get right to the other end. And that is fiber, we need fiber to get to the very end. Okay. If we’re eating processed food, all that is is just hitting a shot that’s not even getting you to the hole in a par three. It just burns before it even gets more than halfway through the small intestine. So you’re starving your microbiome, there’s no food for the gut bacteria that going to provide the substances that are going to help you have a reduced leaky gut and a healthy microbiome. Okay. So the first thing with processed foods is you’re not feeding the part of the body that needs to be fed. The second thing is the lack of actual nutrients in there. So the macronutrients like vitamin C, which rheumatoid arthritis patients are deficient in, and any of the other polyphenols, again, which are anti-inflammatory, so we’ve got nothing in processed food. And then thirdly, and this is where, you know, you touched upon the oils, all the oils in the processed foods are not only rich in omega 6, which is pro-inflammatory but they’re also oxidized because they’ve been sitting in like they’ve been sitting on shelves forever, and so they’ve been oxidized. As a result, they’re very rich in free radicals. So you’ve got a free radical, nutrient deficient, microbiome depleting inflammatory food. So hence, don’t eat them. Okay, so. So it’s good that you’ve cut all that stuff out. And as I’m learning more from you, of course, we spend five minutes chatting before this, and then we learn a lot as we go here. It sounds like in your family and this is just observation, not judgment. But if your mom’s got some autoimmunity going on, your dad’s got some autoimmunity because psoriasis and autoimmune condition and then you’ve been born and as an early teenager develop some symptoms as well. This stuff sort of stirring up these symptoms, you know, so the more that you can be a shining light for the family and help them with their foods, I think everyone will everyone will benefit because there are some consistent themes.

Simon – Yes, absolutely. And it’s also something that I recognized for myself. And in the family, more people have sort of these problems and try to be a bit evangelical. I don’t try. I just talk about it all the time. So it’s something that I’ve. I’ve become a bit of a Yeah, I don’t know if they find it annoying or not, but something I talk about very, very much to them as well because it helped me so much, you know, and I don’t want to see them with all these problems all the time. And I do see that it does in fact affect their lives as well. And these solutions are not that difficult to do. Right? It’s not so hard. It’s not a not a thing that you have to it’s just move, eat well, and make sure your health is good. Basically, this is why I was always frustrated with the medical profession a bit because they always started with the drugs, right? So they just also my, my mother as well, they just gave her drugs and yeah, take the drugs. My mother is very obstinate, so she never wanted to do this. She was like, No, no, no, I don’t want to take too many drugs. And we had a family doctor when I was little that described this in a very good way I thought. He said, your health is like a bucket, and if you keep your health bucket full with all of the things that are good for you, then like the the rheumatoid arthritis or your AS is only going to be a small part of your bucket and you won’t feel it that much, it won’t be that present. If all of the other stuff is not there, then the bucket is full with your AS. So make sure this health bucket is really, really well filled with all of the other things and then it won’t be that much of a problem. It’ll always be there, but it’s only a bit a small part of your day to day life. And this came back to me when I was thinking about the health thing and all the things that I try to do now. And that’s just what I try to optimize everything just so that is the smallest part of the bucket as possible. So that’s the approach for me. And I try to help other people with that as well. Also I think the CrossFit community around it a lot of people are focused on their health there which helps a lot as well for me. I think you probably know this, the five people that are around you the most are the ones that influence you the most. So these are all healthy people in my case, all of them are. We always talk about these things and that helps a lot as well. So the community around you is so, so important for me as well.

Clint – I love that. I watched a presentation at a conference that I was hosting in a different capacity. I was hired as an MC, which is sort of another career that I have, which is hosting events and doing entertainment and stuff. And I was sitting down watching the presenter that I’d introduced at this conference and thought, This will be interesting. He’s talking about what influences success. He’s a neurosurgeon, brain expert, and he has a sort of career in coaching high-performance sporting athletes and helping them get that extra 1% to get the first place instead of third place. And he ran all of the analysis on what skill sets or attributes across the whole spectrum gives you the most likelihood of success. And he had a list on the screen and asked the audience to have a guess in their mind which one. The options were things like education, family wealth, location of upbringing and so on. There was about 20 things on the screen and we all thought in our head and thought about what it would be. And he revealed the number one contributor to the likelihood of success was the community surrounding you and their shared vision of the outcome that you want. And so in the case of Formula-1 drivers, he explained, which is an area that he spent a lot of time, is that if the pit crew and the guys that give you the information over the headsets, the guys that change the tires, the research engineers, and if everyone along with the driver all work together closely as a team and were friends and, you know, basically had the same shared vision, they had the greatest success over the fastest cars and everything. So that ties in with being in that community around your CrossFit community who are all like-minded. This is powerful stuff and it’s why I set up our rheumatoid support platform where all of us inside that support group all have the same vision, which is maximum health minimum symptoms, and it’s catching you rise up to the level of your peer group just as you do at the gym.

Simon – Absolutely. Yeah, totally agree with that. Yeah, I think it’s one of the most important things to do. And for me, stress is also something that’s very, very much kicks my AS into being. So I think the community and the fact that I feel good with them is also, for me, an anti-inflammatory. I mean, that works really, really well. It’s just something that it’s the moving as well, but my wife always says if I’ve not been to like the CrossFit for like three, four days, it’s like, get out of here because you’re annoying me, you need your dose. So it’s like it’s such an effect on me. It’s really, really powerful.

Clint – What happens when you feel stressed? Because this is something that a lot of us can relate to. But are you able to articulate or have you have you found patterns? Does it result in more back pain or is it just the emotional side of things? Can you see if you can answer that for me as best you can?

Simon – Yes, it does. The two things are true for me. So it does result in more back pain. I do feel in periods of stress that it’s heavier for me, I have less energy, I feel more it’s more like a how do I say it’s more like stiffness, the stiffness is worse. It’s not pain, but I feel it. You know, everything is like cramped and my muscles get more cramped and everything is it’s like the stress really just it tightens me up. Right. Um, and then if I have my routine, I can manage this. Right? And then it’s. Then it’s okay, I can sort of, um, offset the stress symptoms. But sometimes I have to do a little more exercise, a little more yoga to offset it. Um, and then the emotional part is for me as well, I noticed that I get a bit short, so I tend to not angry, but tend to be like a chip on your shoulder, like tend to be more like shorter with my kids and shorter with everything is a bit more difficult to deal with, let’s say. Um, so that’s, that’s definitely an effect for me also. Because if I noticed that for a really long time and that’s something I’ve now just started, let’s say for a really long time, the AS for me was like, how do I explain? It’s a problem I wanted to solve. I needed to solve, and I saw it as something outside of myself. And something that if when it kicks in and when it gets worse, I get angry because, I’m doing all these things and why does it happen again? And I’m always trying to optimize. So why is it there again and stuff like that. What I’m trying but is very difficult for me is to accept it, just see it as it’s a part of myself. And if it kicks up, it’s maybe a signal to me to say something is wrong, maybe you should optimize or look at something. It’s just a signal, it’s a thing that shows you something. Maybe it’s sort of a guide even for me. It’s a really weird way to describe it, but that’s definitely not something I’ve worked through yet. It’s that’s really just, yeah, something I’m trying to modulate or think about in a different way. And hopefully I think that meditation for me has, has definitely been one of the things that that that help as well. So to keep the stress down also but yeah breathwork meditation I find very, very powerful. That helps me a lot in managing the AS as well. Sorry I may have gone off track here.

Clint – No, that’s great. How committed to meditation and breathwork are you? And when do you do them and how often?

Simon – Yeah, I try to do a routine. I’ve also noticed if I make this a routine, it’s a lot easier. So it’s basically a daily routine. When I get up in the morning. Yeah, I’ll just describe everything I do. Right. And then you can just say what you what you think is interesting. When I get up, the first thing I do is I drink a liter of water with some salt in it to rehydrate, and then I go outside to get some light in my eyes. And if the weather allows, I will do a half hour of yoga outside. If not, I’ll do it inside. And that really has helped me just to start my day without the stiffness and just alleviate that part of it. And then after the yoga, I do like it’s like five minutes of breathwork 5 to 10 minutes of Breathwork Um, and I meditate. I try to meditate for also ten minutes. Something like that doesn’t always, to be honest, doesn’t always succeed in the morning, but I try to, to incorporate it at that point and that really does give me a form of being ready for the day. Right? If I don’t do this, then I just notice that the rest of the day is sort of off. Um, and then most days I then, yeah, the kids wake up and we have breakfast and I bike my daughter to school, so I go with her. So that’s also a bit of movement already, so I do like 20 minutes of biking, which I like. And then usually in the evening I go to CrossFit, I do an hour of CrossFit, or I now have some like a weightlifting bar and stuff at my home or I do an hour at home.

Simon – So I’m always most days I do some form of exercise, usually the CrossFit or the weightlifting part, which I found through CrossFit, the weightlifting. And it’s really, really, really, really like it. It’s something that I’m very, very much into now. Also because I sort of have this reflex of the AS is not going to beat me. I’m going to beat it. I know that’s not the best way to deal with it, but, you know, I can do this. I can lift 200 kilos despite the AS, you know, that’s sort of the mindset. So that and then in the evening I try to do a bit of breathwork before going to sleep. So calming down, um, like a four, seven, eight count, of breathing or some yoga nidra before going to bed. Um. I try to go to bed on time. You know, sleep is very, very important for me, but that’s one of the biggest things I have to work on. You know, I tend to go to bed a bit too late, but I try to get seven, 7.5 hours of sleep, um, which that’s might be better if I got some more. But that’s basically if I can do that then, then I’m, then I’m good. So that’s, those are basically a lot of the tools. And then in the morning I also take some supplements just to try and do like the 5% optimizing that I can still do. I have some omega 3’s, some magnesium, some curcumin vitamin C, and vitamin D.

Simon – I told you before that I am now also involved with a supplement company, Tyranos. And one of the things that they make is a supplement that has curcumin, Boswellia, the vitamin C in really high doses. So one of the supplement issues I think is for most supplements they’re made for maybe a stupid term for normal people not not that we’re abnormal but we need more. I think we need more of certain things and this supplement has a higher dose. So for me that works really well to just do a few percentages that I can add to the health bucket, like I explained. Yeah. And then take a cold shower. I forgot about that. I liked that after the breathwork in the morning, I take a cold shower. I think those are almost all of the things I try to do. And then for me during the day, it’s like sitting down is, is what activates my back pain as well a lot. I try to move a lot during the day, I stand up a lot, I walk a lot. I always tell people when I’m in meetings, guys, I’m going to stand up. It’s not because I’m not interested, but I focus better when I stand. So I don’t try to sit too much. I try to move around during the day a lot as well. Um, yeah. So those are a few of the things that I try to do, try to look at daily basically. Yeah.

Clint – Fantastic. Thank you. I really appreciate that. I would love it if actually future guests could do that and go through their days just like you have. I think that’s really valuable. And I might even ask guests to start with that in the future because that could be a great launching pad for them, expanding on each of those things. A lot of them we’ve already covered. We’ve talked about yoga and you’ve got, well, exercise in general breath and your CrossFit and movement you’ve added to that the meditation breathwork, the four, seven, eight, that’s not complicated, folks. If you’re wondering what that breathwork is, you simply breathe in for four count of four and then hold your breath for a count of seven and then out for a count of eight, That’s what you do. You said in the evening. In the morning. Is your breath work the same or is it more aggressive? Wim Hof style?

Simon – Yeah, it’s more aggressive. Again, not to push some kind of sort of breathwork or anything, but I came into it with the Wim Hof Breathwork, so it’s just super oxygenating breathing also because there’s a link there with him and rheumatoid as well. The research in Holland with his breathing showed that they were able to offset some of the effects not they don’t know if it’s long term or not, but I figure what the hell if it doesn’t, it won’t hurt me. So and I do like it because it gives me energy in the morning, right? So it basically gives you a lot of adrenaline which fires up your immune system, of course, but it also gives me energy to start my day. So to do Wim Hof breathing usually or some form of super oxygenated breathing. But it can also be like box breathing is also nice in the morning, I think. So just kind of four and then four in hold for, for four out. Yeah. Four out. And so just four counts of box breathing like that as well in the morning. And then during the day sometimes I don’t know. Do you know Andrew Huberman think the whole world maybe knows him but.

Clint – Yeah, I know who you’re talking about. Stanford guy who’s got a huge following.

Simon – Yes, he has, like, a very short way of resetting, let’s say, or activating your parasympathetic is like, a parasympathetic sigh is what he calls it. It’s just like, so breathe in another short breath in, and then breathe out. And do that for like three or so and do that during the day. Sometimes when I feel stress coming up or feel like something is annoying me, I use that to regulate a bit. But basically any breathwork that allows you to breathe out longer than you breathe in will activate your parasympathetic and that helps to offset the stress.

Speaker1 – Do you have any performance monitoring gear like a whoop or one of these aura rings or anything like that?

Simon – I’m a bit analytical in that respect, and a geek too. So like my gadgets, I have an aura ring to track my sleep. Specifically because I wanted to work on the deep sleep. I have a Garmin watch for sports and also to track my HRV. So I also looked at, the, the effect on HRV a lot for a lot of these tools that I use. Then use the CGM so a glucose monitor for a while just to see if that had had any effect. Those are the main monitors that I use.

Clint – I got a question for you, with your Garmin watch, and let me just explain the acronym there. So HRV folks haven’t come across that before. Stands for Heart Rate Variability, and the heart rate variability correlates with the parasympathetic nervous system. And so if we can track heart rate variability using a device that can sense that in your body by being physically connected to your heartbeat. We can then infer from that what your parasympathetic nervous system is like. Now, why does this matter? Well, there was a study that I shared on either a YouTube short or Instagram or as a regular YouTube video, I can’t remember which one, but it was definitely a social media clip where they analyzed the effects of heart rate variability on people with rheumatoid arthritis. And found that it was a predictor of remission rates for people on biologic drugs. So this is like a profound insight is that if you took heart rate variability data and then use that, you could tell before the person went on the biologic drug whether or not they would hit remission or not to a pretty high accuracy to around about 80%. And so what we’re talking about here is a huge influencing factor into the likelihood of medications working and likely inflammation maintaining at that at a low level. So with all that sort of pre-frame, can you tell us whether or not your heart rate variability you’ve been able to see any correlations between it and inflammation levels? Because I, somewhere in one of these drawers. And you’ve caught me on the hop because I didn’t know we were going to talk about this. But I’ve recently bought myself a whoop band and I, I’ve just been getting it set up in the last few days and I wore it about a few times before I actually realized that I hadn’t charged the thing up and got it ready to accumulate data. So I’m going to start looking at this myself. But what have you found? I’m curious.

Simon – Yeah, actually, I tracked it quite diligently for a few months. Um, so and I found that if I am more stressed and there’s more like don’t sleep enough and then also correlates with more discomfort from my back pain my HRV is definitely lower, so the higher the better. And I can definitely see the effect of some adverse things like not sleeping enough is a big one. Basically I think so or my doctors have said I’ve been in remission for a few years now, basically. And I do think that the level of health that you try to aspire to helps with that. And sometimes when I feel like, okay, I haven’t slept enough, I’ve maybe gone drinking with some friends and I try to cut out alcohol as much as I can as well because that has a very negative effect on the HRV part and also on my general disease management. But it does really give me sort of a compass to see, okay, I need to do a bit more, maybe a bit more breathwork a bit more exercise. I’ve been a bit negligent with some things and now I can see the downward trend in the HRV as well. When I’m sick, not AS but you can see it plummeting immediately and even a few days before you get sick you can see that. So for me, it’s definitely something that’s interesting to follow to see. Okay, what’s happening with that? What can I maybe do? Maybe. Okay, this is a signal that I have to maybe do a few things a bit better or I’ve been a bit lacking in some respects. And usually I know pretty quickly what I’ve done or not done that I need to improve. So I think that’s a very interesting data to have and to follow a bit. Yeah.

Clint – Yeah. Great.

Simon – I haven’t used the whoop band myself, but I hear good things about it. Some friends of mine have it on the CrossFit box. I went with the aura ring because supposedly it parses a bit more data than the whoop specifically for sleep. But I use just to measure the HRV, I’ve used a chest band because that’s more accurate and then linked it to the watch in the morning. See okay what’s my what is my HRV level at this point? Did that for a few months just to be able to get like a baseline and then know when it’s up or when it’s down.

Clint – It’s great. It’s something that I’ll probably talk about more on the podcast down the track. So if people are interested in this and let me know because I might share data around what I’m learning myself about correlating my sleep and my heart rate variability and any other things.

Simon – So if you’re, if you’re interested in tracking this, then definitely interesting to also maybe set your baseline with the chest band because they both work, but it’s like the on your arm it’s never going to be exactly accurate. So I use it just compare it to all the data from my arm, let’s say. So that’s not exactly accurate, but you can see trends, right? And if you want to be a bit more accurate, use the chest band to set your baseline. And then from now on and from time to time, do that again to see, okay, where are we going with it? So the measurement on your wrist is fine to see the trends.

Clint – Yeah. Gotcha. Absolutely. Yeah. To see the direction of how things are going. Yeah. Well, thanks, Simon. This has been fabulous. If I could list some of the things that you’ve mentioned and we’ve talked exercise, diet, stress reduction, acceptance, and feeling like it’s providing lessons and not sort of trying to push back against the signals if there’s some pain. Having a really, really good daily routine behind this so that everything gets done in the day that needs to be done for your health. And then trying to work on sleep and measuring things that matter like heart rate variability. And of course in your daily routine, the things like getting the early morning sunlight to set your circadian rhythm and your breathwork, which you do twice a day, and meditation and some supplements there. Do you feel like we’ve covered Simon in an hour here? Do you feel like we’ve unpacked what we wanted to cover?

Simon – Yeah, I think so. For me, the most important thing is and that’s a bit of the frustration I had with the doctors is don’t just sit still and accept this move. Exercise, go outside. Going outside is also one of the things that I wanted to stress. Go into nature. I mean, go take walks, go into the forest, that also helps. It’s also amazing for just for the stress, but also just, I don’t know, the anti-inflammatory aspects of nature and forests and the air that’s there. I’m not scientific. I can’t explain it scientifically, I know it’s beneficial, I know there’s science about it as well, I can’t really tell you how, but it works. So just go exercise outside, go run outside, outside, do stuff outside with your family or we got a dog during Covid, like maybe a lot of people, but also amazing. You just go outside and walk the dog twice a day. It’s fantastic, you get movement, it’s nice to be outside. So if there’s a tip that people that say exercise is not for me, get a dog, walk your dog twice a day, it’ll help you amazingly.

Simon – So I think we did cover most of the things I think maybe one thing I would want to mention is we covered relationships and community. The AS sort of forced me to go to focus on myself a lot, right? Because I had this pain, I had this thing that I need to solve, I was always thinking about my disease. So what this health journey has allowed me to do now is maybe shift that externally more towards being there for my family, being there for the kids. Not always focus on myself, which also helps a lot to not think about it all the time. Just focus on them and be with them and do stuff with them. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s I think in the first part of your disease, it’s easy to just go, Oh, woe is me and I have this terrible thing. Yes, of course, you do, but there are a lot of things that you can do about it. And then if you do those things, it’ll sort of fade into the background. Partly not always, but partly.

Clint – That’s a great one. Contribution? Yeah, that’s the word. Yeah.

Speaker1 – Absolutely. Yeah.

Clint – Yeah. Contribution.

Simon – I know you’re big on this, and thank you again for what you’ve done. But I think helping other people with these things, like you said, my family, but also my friends or other just being able to give this advice to other people and help them is also something that I want to do a lot more in the future and that that definitely feels like will help me as well. Just sharing this knowledge, maybe even a bit of breathwork coaching or yeah, helping people with some exercises. I mean that’s, that definitely makes me feel good as well.

Clint – There’s definitely a need for it. And whilst what I’ve observed is that the same things that work for rheumatoid work for ankylosing spondylitis, work for psoriatic arthritis. Having said that, people want to preferably hear from someone with the exact diagnosis that they have. And so, if you were to be able to, you know, offer those things you mentioned to specifically ankylosing spondylitis community, of which there are plenty of people, then that would be of high value. So certainly things to look at in the future. I think that obviously presses a few buttons for you, gets you excited. So go for it.

Simon – Yeah. Thanks.

Clint – Thank you so much for communicating all this with us. It’s really been a pleasure to have a chat with you. We got from you that you do work for a supplement company, but before we hit record, we said, let’s not even go there because we do not want this to appear in any way like a push towards that company. I didn’t even realize that before we set up this podcast. However, those supplements do sound good. So what we’ll do, is we’ll put a link on the blog page that this episode will end up being posted to, which will be over at RheumatoidSolutions.com/blog, and then just put in the search term Simon and this will come up. So if you are interested in those supplements, take a look at them. We’ll put a link there that has no affiliates, nothing like that, just a website link. And other than that, I just want to say thank you and keep up the great work and uh, yeah, great stuff.

Simon – Yeah, the same for you. Thank you very much. As I said, I appreciate what you do and what you put out in the world. And yeah, thanks a lot for inviting me and letting me share my story. It was a great experience for me. Thanks a lot.