We discuss in this interview:

• Quick recap about Gabe:  2+ years on the Paddison Program; started on Christmas Day of 2018; Occasional setbacks (e.g. psoriasis picked up in recent winter and his knee had some slight swelling before he raised his vitamin D), but his symptoms are mostly under control now again. No medications, feels tremendous, plays basketball regularly, psoriasis has cleared up with PP and additional modifications that we’ll discuss today
• Earthing mat
• Eccentric exercises for tendonitis
• Sprouting for digestion
• Vitamin D mega dosing
• Types of Vitamin B
• Water kefir for psoriasis

Clint – Today I got back on this episode, a good friend of mine who I’ve been communicating with over the past few years inside Rheumatoid Support. His name is Gabe. He was on our show back in May 2019 talking about the improvements that he’s made with cirrhotic arthritis. And since then, he has continued to experiment with some variations and modifications in his approach. And he has provided several updates over the past month or so inside Rheumatoid Support, telling us what he’s been doing that has been working. Gabe has agreed to come back on the show to talk about what’s working for his psoriatic arthritis since we last spoke. I hope that today’s really valuable and you can get lots of little tips and modifications yourself so that you can continue to work on your health. So welcome, Gabe.

Gabe – Thanks very much Clint, I’m very glad to be here.

Clint – We’ve enjoyed a long chat before we hit record on this episode, we really do get along well. I really do enjoy listening to your life and the choices you’ve made, both personal and with your health and so on. I consider this a really enjoyable opportunity for me to connect with you, it’s like just speaking with a friend. Thanks for coming on.

Gabe – Likewise. I’m very glad to be here, and also to be of service to anybody who might find this information valuable too.

Clint – Yeah, well, let’s do it, let’s talk about psoriatic arthritis. Give us the little recap of, nearly 2 years ago we had you on here, you shifted to the Paddison Program. That’s plant-based eating, lots of exercises, you were overcoming several things with your health. But tell us again a little recap where we were 2 years ago, how far you’d come before we then talk about what you’ve done since.

Where Gabe Was 2 Years Ago

Gabe – Sure. So I found the Paddison program on Christmas Eve of 2018, which really was a great gift. At that point, my left knee had been swollen with a lot of fluid for 8 months and I had had psoriasis for 4 or 5 years and a lot of other strange symptoms for many years prior to that. Migraines to believe my hands numb and also a lot of fatigue and a lot of GI issues. So when I found the Paddison Program, I had been contemplating going on to methotrexate, and fortunately I jumped on to the Paddison Program before trying methotrexate and it worked for me. I was just on the edge of taking that. Within really the first couple of days of starting your program, I knew that it was working and, just in terms of my energy levels. I had a two week break during that Christmas period from school, I’m still a student so that 2-week break was great because I was doing all sorts of strange stuff in the kitchen, making a lot of rice and it was working. It still took 3 months for the swelling to go down, but I never had to go on methotrexate. Eventually, the swelling subsided, my energy came up.

Gabe – My psoriasis still lingered for a while, and it really wasn’t until I started getting into some of the more complex probiotics with the psoriasis went away. I had a very significant psoriasis on my eyebrows, my ears just large flakes falling off my scalp also. Once I started to add some of the more complex probiotics in particular for me, Water Kefir, that really helped, things started to go down. That was the first year of the Paddison Program. As I got into the 2nd winter, my left knee started swelling again. I had attributed this to a slight amount of oil that I ingested like a very, very minor amount with some garlic salt that I’ve been trying. And also just the stress of winter and maybe a lack of diversity in my diet during the winter break, I kind of got lazy and wasn’t cooking as much diversity and still get my greens in, but eating the same thing, also I introduce nuts at that point. In any case, the point is that the basically a year after having great success with your program, my swelling came back not nearly to the same extent, but enough to stop me from playing basketball, which what I cared about at the time.

Joining Rheumatoid Support

Gabe – So it was at that time that I joined your forum that would have been maybe the January or February of 2020, and you suggested right away to me to try an earthing mat. And I got an earthing mat, I thought it was kind of crazy, I thought, I’m going to electrocute myself. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I read the science, I read some of the PubMed review articles and the earthing mat really helped. That’s kind of what got me being a member of your forum and got me doing some of the more, the work that we’re here to discuss, which is after having success, how do you maintain that success and how do you deal with the occasional setback and in various things like that?

Clint – Absolutely, fantastic. We already touched upon some really, really juicy topics here. We’ve talked about things that I’ve written down in addition to our notes before we started, we’ve got the earthing Matt, numb hands I wanted to mention as well that hasn’t come up, and the water Kefir for psoriasis. we got lots of directions here before we even get onto the list of things that we have ready for our audience here that they can benefit from. In no particular order of priority, but we’ll speak shortly about the issue for a short period about the earthing matt. I’ll do another episode about this and show the science so that we don’t just sort of brush over it too shallow, because this needs more attention. In short, the concept of Earthing was originally brought to my attention by a different podcast. Actually, it was a podcast that I no longer listen to for various reasons so I won’t mention. They had a great guest on their Clint Buba who wrote the book about earthing. I bought the book, read the book and it’s fascinating basically, the concept being that we develop electrostatic charge due to interactions with carpet and wearing flip flops and rubber soled shoes. That by using this artificial lifestyle, accessories and so forth, we developed this small but can be significant electrostatic charge just by connecting with the Earth. By sitting or walking and just standing barefoot on the earth, then dissolves that charge and that practice that humans have done from the beginning of humanity, which is walking around on the earth, has been lost since the introduction of rubber soled shoes.

The Benefits Of Earthing Mat

Clint – As you said, there’s science supporting health benefits of going barefoot and that we can artificially create that earthing experience by putting a mat down on a bed or putting a mat down under your feet at your desk or sitting on on your chair if you can’t, for example, where you are now, where it’s snowing, get outside and connect with the Earth in a more of a conventional way.

Clint – I’m glad that that really helped, and that was delightful for me because I go through phases where I recommend things heavily because I’m doing it or I’ve just read the science and I’m passionate about it. Then time passes, and then I recommend something else which we’re about to talk about in a minute, the sprouting. Let’s close out the earthing mat knowing that I’m going to do more about that in a future episode.

Gabe – Sure.

Clint – By saying it really helped you. Right?

Gabe – It really helped and my understanding is basically that it’s a low risk, really high reward thing. Actually another angle on it is that of all the things that we do on your program, it’s actually one of the easiest things that there is. I plug in a mat to the wall and I sleep with that touching my skin every night and that just helps tremendously. I can tell when I don’t do it for a day or two, and so I thought, OK, well, 30 bucks for one of these mats I got to try this. I’m very thankful that it works so well.

Clint – You say that if you don’t do it for a few days, you start to notice. What’s your sign that you haven’t done it?

Gabe – Well, the first thing I notice is just how well I sleep or don’t sleep. Since I sleep with it, sleep is a big thing for me I probably average just by earthing alone, I think I averaged 15 minutes to 30 minutes more sleep a night. If I were, keeping track of better track, that I’d have a more precise number. But that’s kind of my sense. The second thing I would say is simply there’s kind of a sense of calm in my body. It’s just the sort of sense of things are kind of quiet. I don’t know if it’s inflammation exactly being calmed down, it’s probably a combination of some other things, but it’s really just this kind of peacefulness and ability to withstand. Then the final thing I’d mention is my ability to withstand stressors is greater, physical stressors, psychological stressors, I noticed that that the mad dampens those experiences a bit for me. That sounds like some extravagant claims, but it really is one of the most helpful things that I do.

Clint – Yeah. I’m often reluctant to go too far down these discussions without supportive evidence, and so I think that this is one of those rare instances where it does deserve us to spend some minutes talking about this. Because whilst we’re not discussing the science right now, there is science about this. If you just feel better from doing it, then something’s going on and it’s undeniable in your case, you saw a specific point in time when you felt better from doing it. That’s one thing which is great, the Earthing mat, so we like that. Then you mentioned the Water Kefir for your psoriasis. Can we stay on track for a moment with the inflammation in the joints? There other things we want to go to those first before we get to Water kefir or does that overlap?

Gabe – In terms of helping the swelling in the joints?

Clint – Yeah.

Eccentric Exercises

Gabe – Well, one thing I would mention, too, that that I didn’t put in the notes, but for those folks who have psoriatic arthritis in particular. One thing that’s really helpful as an exercise to keep in mind are eccentric exercises. One of the things that I’ve noticed in my time with this arthritis and even predating it a bit is that I have a tendency to get these kind of tendon injuries. And conventional medicine, we refer to these as tendinitis and think, oh, that’s no big deal, you know, just takes some ibuprofen it will heal up in a couple of days. But what I’ve noticed is when my inflammation is high, I get a lot of these tendon issues and seemingly more so than most people. But that’s anecdotal, I haven’t studied it. In any case, one of the things that I dealt with last summer or 2 summers ago, actually. I had a little bit of tendonitis in both my Achilles’ tendons. So one of the things that I did that was extremely helpful in healing from that issue is something called eccentric heel drops. An eccentric heel dropped is, I can demonstrate with my hand, so if you imagine you’re standing with your feet, your toes are on the book. What you do is so you have your two feet here, with both feet, you go up. Then say that you’re right, heel is the one you want to fix, you lift your left leg up, and you slowly lower down just a little bit below parallel. While you’re doing that, you want to kind of stretch the Achilles. It will hurt just a slight bit, but the pain there, what’s going on is that you’re lengthening the tendon. As you’re lengthening it, you’re allowing it to heal in a way where it doesn’t shorten up, so you’re allowing it to lengthen out its full length and heal at its full length. You’re also stimulating the healing process, and so for a lot of these tendon issues that I’ve had, these eccentric exercises were extremely helpful. I had one in my forearm, my Achilles. Just find a way to do the eccentric work and it can be really helpful. So that may be something to that would be a nice nugget for somebody with psoriatic arthritis.

Clint – Absolutely. Eccentric, meaning the reverse of a contraction, correct? It’s the reverse muscle direction that it’s sort of conventionally thought off. So an eccentric is like relaxing the weight under tension.

Gabe – Exactly. It’s the opposite of what we tend to think is the hard work. That bicep curl. You’re thinking of, it’s the letting down piece.

Clint – Gotcha. In simple terms, it’s like doing a calf raise but in the reverse direction and then going slightly below horizontal to get a stretch at the same time.

Gabe – Exactly.

Clint – All right. Great tip, and so for tendonitis, you found these eccentric exercises to be helpful for your elbow and also the Achilles.

Gabe – Yes. The reason I mention that in particular for psoriatic is that my understanding of psoriatic or at least my experience of it is that, it’s a kind of arthritis that tends to attack the tendons. Fortunately, I’m not losing cartilage and bone tissue in the way that somebody with R.A. is. For whatever reason, my arthritis tendons, the soft tissue. These eccentric exercises, along with basic strength training in the gym, I find to be pretty helpful.

Sprouting

Clint – Ok, beautiful. All right. Well, we’ve got two fabulous suggestions there. Let’s talk about potentially, what about we move on to the sprouting?

Gabe – Oh, I’m glad you asked. OK, so I brought some of my sprouts out here.

Yeah, look at that. If you’re not watching this and you’re listening to this, find this same point on the recording on YouTube, because Gabe has produced the most epic bowl of homegrown sprouts.

Gabe – Yeah. These are fenugreek and basically, I got a book by a guy named well, I can’t remember his name. I can send you a link and (inaudible). But in any case, he has this method whereby he grows Sprout’s, enough sprouts for a little green salad every day of sprouts. He started doing this in the winter, he lives in Vermont. He started doing this with his family, just his way to have green stuff. And also just it’s fun because it turns over so quickly. In about 7 to 10 days, you can have a bowl like this, which is just about ready to harvest. One of the things that you’ll see, I don’t know if this is picking up the camera exactly, some of these still have the seeds and the seed shell on them. As they grow and as the two green leaves start to split, that shell will come off, so it seems some of the work of picking those off. But in any case, in 7 to 10 days, you have these nice green sprouts. And the best part is that you don’t need special sunlight, you don’t need special lamps or anything like that. I’m in the middle of winter in northern Indiana. We have a foot and a half of snow on the ground and I’m growing these in my room. The basic process is that you get a little bit of kind of a seed starting germination mix. I have a big tub of this soil just behind my couch, and then you get a little bit of compost and you get a little bit of fertilizer. I use kind of like a (inaudible) type fertilizer. What you do is you soak the seeds overnight you get the the soil a bit moist and I use a bowl, he recommends using an aluminum pan, but you can use whatever you want. You put a little bit of the soil in on top of the compost and the fertilizer, and then you take the soaked seeds and you just lay them over the top. Then you take some newspaper, you soak the newspaper and put that over the top of the seeds, and then you keep them in a dark place for 4 days. What’s kind of interesting about seed’s is that during those first four days, they don’t need the sun to grow, because all the energy is stored up in the seed. What will happen is that after you pull it out after a couple of days from the dark place, you can imagine newspaper sitting on top of this. The newspaper will kind of fall off to the side as the seeds just sprout up, push it off, and then, you know, the seeds are ready to go to get some sun. When they get in the sun, that’s when they turn green. You know, we all know from our basic science, that’s from the chlorophyll comes in. And so usually what I do is I let them green for a couple of days before they start to get bitter. They usually get bitter when the little leaves give way to bigger leaves, so that’s the point that you want to snip them. I take some scissors and I just kind of pull them up by the roots a little bit, pull them up like this and just snip it and throw out my green smoothie. So that’s how that works.

Clint – Do you put them in smoothies?

Gabe – I usually do is just I find someone to be a bit, like some of the radishes and so on by themselves, I find it a bit tough to get down. So mix it with some banana and it makes a little easier.

Clint – Well, that’s certainly impressive. We buy the sprouts and I have not yet moved across to the advanced approach, which is growing them at home. Let’s now answer the question that’s burning in people’s minds. Why would you do that? Why would we be wanting to go to such lengths to create sprouts?

The Benefits Of Sprouting

Gabe – Sure. As you mentioned and a lot of your work sprouts have all sorts of good stuff in them. They have in particular digestive enzymes, they also have a lot of good micronutrients, just really jampacked at very high concentrations in them. It’s a really great way to get a lot of good nutrients in a lot of bank for your buck in that way. Moreover, sprouting makes things easier to digest. For example, the soaked almonds that you recommend in your program, that’s kind of the start of a sprout. It’s kind of the same concept. When you have a seed, say a flax seed, this is something I am getting I haven’t got the flax seed yet, but flax seeds have a lot of good things in them. By themselves they can be a little hard to digest because the shell of the seed has. I don’t know if this is the right word exactly, but anti nutrients in it. It has a coating that makes it hard to digest. When you sprout, what you’re doing is you’re selling the seed, OK, It’s time to grow. You can get rid of that protective shell that’s meant to protect against insects and also meant to protect against animals eating it or the digestive tract. So if an animal eats it hopefully that shell protects it enough that when it comes out the other end, it will still grow, hopefully. In any case, once you kind of coax the plant out of its shell, then you get all those nutrients that the seeds have, but in a form that it’s easier to digest. So that’s one of the benefits of sprouts, along with all sorts of other things.

Clint – Yeah, well explained. I think that they are absolutely sensational for health and digestion and longevity and so on. I have been eating mung beans sprouts right? The white ones that you see on Asian salads often. With most of my meals for the last month or so, and they’ve just done it because I just want to see how much better I digest whether or not it affects, like the odor of my gas and so on. The sort of bowel movements that I get, all these sorts of like. I can say for the most part that it gets a tick, but the non-quantitative thing that I’ve experienced the most is just the more vibrancy, I just feel happier. I just a feeling of well-being that you can’t really describe in other terms and just feel healthier for doing it so we can feel happy eating these sprouts all the time. Therefore I do it, I digest well, it makes me feel good.

Gabe – Yeah, I. Wish that I had paid a little more attention. When I introduced sprouts, I was also introduced to some other things and I just knew they were so good for me and easier to digest and all that. I can’t say that I’ve noticed like too much, but I was in a pretty good place when I introduced them, so that’s one thing. But I would say that on 2 fronts. One of the other experiments I’ve done was Sprout’s is tried sprouted flowers for various things. Now definitely more of an advanced thing, I would think, based on the kind of the reintroduction sequence. But the basic idea would be that a flower that comes from sprouted plants say sprouted weed or something like that. You’re getting taking away those anti-nutrients and you’re also getting some of the better nutrients and just the easier to digest kind of flower. That might be an experiment worth having for somebody who’s interested in it.

Gabe – One of the other benefits of growing sprouts this way is it’s just nice having something green in the in the house. Especially for me in the middle of winter here, it’s nice to actually feel some connection with nature that it’s not, freezing cold out in the snow and actually makes me feel like I’m a little bit of a gardener. You know, I take care of my little plants each day, and it only takes about 5 to 10 minutes to do it all once you get the set up in the routine down. Now, there are a lot of other ways to grow sprouts, the method you’ll see most commonly is somebody will take a jar with kind of a mesh lid and you take the seeds, you soak them, and you flip them, and let them dry out. I tried that method with a cloth bag, kind of a similar concept or a hemp bag, and what I found was that it was difficult for me to get the seeds to grow in the first place because I could never figure out the right level of hydration and they need to be pretty moist for them to grow. Where I live now in the wintertime here it’s very dry.

Gabe – The second thing that one of the reasons I chose this particular method, was that you’re not as concerned about getting fungus growing on sprouts themselves. The reason for that is that the kind of germination makes it’s well ventilated, and also the particular kind of like it has some bacteria in there that are kind of antifungal. So you get this kind of nice benefit of not having to worry as much, and it’s also easier when you go it this way and you have the jar, you have to flip that 3 or 4 times a day. With this 5 minutes, set it and forget it 4 days later and come back and put it on the windowsill.

Clint – And nobody got time for flipping.

Gabe – No with my busy schedule at least. Plus the final thing I’d mention is that the root systems are pretty neat, and what they do is these will actually go down basically to the bottom of the bowl. That’s where the compost and the fertilizer are. You’re also picking up some of the nutrients from that too, so it’s just kind of neat..

Clint – Yeah, I love it. Okay, awesome. Well, that is a lesson on Sprout’s that we haven’t had before on the show, thank you very much for that.

Gabe – You’re welcome.

Clint – We’re all now going to go and follow your technique. Now, let’s move on to the next tip that you have for us, the vitamin D. It’s been a big one, hasn’t it? You’ve mentioned this several times to me offline.

Gabe – Yes.

Vitamin D

Clint – Let’s talk about vitamin D, and how that’s helped you, and just your current regimen.

Gabe – Sure. Following on the forum, I was listening to the various folks talk about vitamin D and also the high doses, vitamin D stuff. I started doing my own research and thought, well, at the very least I need to go get tested and know what my starting point is. When I got tested, I was at 23 nanograms per milliliter, which is low. In the United States, the measurement that we use is nanograms per milliliter. I think that if you want the nanomoles, you basically just multiply by 2 or 2.5. So. 56 and more I think you multiply by 2. In any case, the point is it was low, in the US the recommendation at least on the blood test that I got. I think this comes from the Institute of Medicine and a Harvard researcher. is that at the bare minimum, you want 30 nanograms for milliliter to avoid things like rickets. Now, some of the high dosage stuff that I’ve been researching and learning about and I actually just even Dr. Michael Gregor on nutrition facts, he goes through some studies where he looks at optimal dosages, optimal levels of vitamin D. And what Dr. Gregor says is that, if you were to take somebody in the wild, so to speak. If you to test somebody, say, in a place that’s near the equator in Africa, I think that he said that they would be at something like 115 nanomoles per milliliter, so something like 50 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. Now that’s somebody in the middle of the average, in the middle of the distribution. You’ll likely have people just kind of we spend a lot of time in the sun near the equator, quite a bit above that. That raises the first two questions. Is there a benefit to having a higher level of blood concentration of vitamin D? And Dr. Gregor goes through in a video and he explains that, to a large degree, it’s better to have more vitamin D, especially for people who have autoimmune disorders who tend to be low on vitamin D to begin with. So anyway, taking all this into account, I thought to myself, well, the toxicity of vitamin D is it’s pretty safe, even the Institute of Medicine, which is on the more conservative side, says you can do 10000 IU a day. I found a paper online calculated how much I would need to take to get my blood level up to be at the higher range of what I just said a minute ago, hoping to be up to close to say 80 to 100 nanogram per milliliter. Which sounds pretty high, but it’s not in the toxic range yet. So I thought I wanted to try that out.

Gabe – I did 12 days of 30000 IU, and then I’ve been maintaining since then at a dosage of about 15000 IU. I got tested about a month ago, so I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks, I think I may be on week 3 now, week 3 or 4. I’ll get tested again next month, just kind of see where I’m at. I felt so great doing this that I’m not looking to go too much higher, but in any case, the point is about a week after taking the daily 30000, I just all of a sudden just felt great. I mean, I felt really great. The best way I can illustrate that is that as a student, I often fall asleep in class, and this is something that has bugged me for a long time. I mean. I’ve been in college now for a long time, I’m in my fourth year of graduate studies and I still for many years, I fall asleep in class. This is the first time since I’ve been on vitamin D, the first time in a long time that I’m not regularly falling asleep in class, which is pretty great, and not falling asleep when I’m reading and I do a lot of reading so that’s helpful. That’s the story on vitamin D.

Clint – Vitamin D is so interesting and it’s linked to sleep. When I did the review podcast somewhat about a month ago or something, the overwhelming experience that people have when they start getting their intake up is that they sleep better. Now you’re putting more fuel on the sleep benefits by saying you’re more alert potentially through better sleep at night, deep asleep at night, potentially getting more rest that’s that seems to dovetail nicely.

Gabe – Sure, that’s in a lot of the studies that I saw, too. I would say that I’ve probably noticed a significant increase in both the quality and quantity of my sleep. I don’t know, maybe on average, 10 more minutes, 15 more minutes sleep a night. And also just one of the other things that I read about vitamin D is that it actually helps with melatonin production. So it sort of helps to regulate the circadian rhythm, for me, that’s a big issue because where I work, the kind of ministry that I do with young college students, it’s not uncommon for me to be up, say until 4 -00 a.m. in the morning working with students because some issue came up in the middle of the night. I run pretty long days, so I’ll get up around 8 -00 and then I’m working pretty much up through 11 or 12 at night and then go to bed. And then some of these extra days on the weekends. So one of the things that I was really concerned about when I started this kind of ministry was how do I regulate my circadian rhythm? And how do I make sure that I’m making sure that my sleep is good? That’s a whole another can of worms that get into, but vitamin D has been helpful in that. I’ve noticed the difference in my nose doesn’t even minimal congestion is even more minimal, which is especially relevant right now because the covid and so on. Another is I’ve noticed it seems to be that my respiratory system, my immune system is just more robust, that’s been a great benefit to it. Actually, my skin has cleared up a bit, too, which is kind of cool. Vitamin D, it’s amazing.

Clint – Nice. Just a comment that someone put under the last vitamin D episode that I did was valuable to me and I didn’t realize this. I can’t remember the person’s name to thank him, but he said when you get your vitamin D measured, allow 3 days since your last dose, otherwise the circulating dose that you’ve taken artificially elevates the blood test that you’re about to have done. Therefore, I would love it if you were to do that, because that would give us then your blood levels, and we wouldn’t want to have a frightening figure come back with you if given that you are doing an interesting experiment on yourself to then make us all alarmed or something unnecessary.

Gabe – Sure, I will keep that in mind, that’s good to know.

Clint – Yeah, keep that in mind, okay, great, and I love that discussion, let’s move on and I’m reading off your list here so people know I’ve got your list that you sent me here. You talk about vitamin B complex, tell us about the impact of that and tell us about what that is, first of all.

Vitamin B

Gabe – Sure, first of all vitamin B, there’s a specific complex called B-100, and what that is, is there’s a lot of vitamin B’s, Vitamin B1, B2, B6, B12 gets a lot of attention in the vegan world. What B-100 is, at least 100 micrograms of each of those B vitamins. Now, so if you look at the back of the bottle, one of the things that you’ll notice is that the daily value is ridiculously high for a lot of these, it’s at, 50000% daily intake recommended it’s a really high number. One thing to know about vitamin D is that the reason doctors tend to not worry about them is that they are water soluble. In particular, when you have enough. one of the vitamins makes your urine really yellow, I think it’s vitamin B6 maybe. When you reach the saturation point, you can tell when your urine is this kind of a neon yellow.

Clint – Glowing (inaudible).

Gabe – Exactly. So B-100, is this complex of all of these different B vitamins, and according to the work of Dr. Stasha Dalmanock, she’s the one I’ve been listening to on this. She is a neurologist and she works with patients, particularly with sleep issues, and she also brings in vitamin D, which I’ll touch on in a minute. What she says with respect to the B vitamins is that you want to get all of them in at the same time, so it’s more helpful to do all of the B’s together because the sum of the parts is greater, the whole is better than the sum of the parts type phenomenon, and they work together somehow. She has a particular protocol which I’ve been sort of interested in following myself and also with my sister, who has some sleep issues. I don’t know where you want me to go exactly with the B’s here.

Clint – Definitely you’ve got us on the hook here, very interested, so you the way you take it is that via a tablet with a glass of water and you do it at mealtimes. And what experiences of changes in your health have you noticed since you started doing it?

Gabe – Sure. The most important change for me, other than the change my urine color has been that it’s taken away my fear around getting migraines. Now, the connection between vitamin B and migraines is that the various vitamin B’s are really important for the nervous system. 4 or 5 years ago, I used to get migraines where I’d start off with migraine aura, so I kind of lose part of my vision and then it would quickly go to my hands, make my hands numb, and I just have a tremendous amount of pain. This was actually before I had started Paddison Program, before I even knew I had arthritis, I get these debilitating migraines and thought gosh, I wonder if I have a tumor or something. I got tested for that.

Gabe – Within my first year of the Paddison Program, I discovered that there is some connection between the B vitamins and these migraines, and the way that I discovered that was that if I felt a migraine coming on, I could eat some seaweed and the migraine would subside.

Clint – Fascinating.

Gabe – Yeah, it was really interesting. And so I the summer that I discovered this, actually, I was very fortunate, I was in Lourdes, France for 2 months. What a wonderful experience to be there and to pray with so many people from all over the world. In any case, when I went over to France, I was really worried because I thought, how am I going to eat Paddison Program over here? That was a big question for me. The second was, I need to bring some seaweed with me because it’s really important so I walked around Lourdes and I always had some seaweed in my pocket just in case, just in case I felt something coming on. So I so I did my seaweed. I’d done this 40 or 50 times by the point at which I knew, OK, probably a vitamin B issue. Working with a functional medicine doctor helped me identify B2 is probably the primary culprit.

Gabe – I’ve left you with a cliffhanger, which is how did I do the Paddison Program over in in Lourdes? The answer to that is that the hotel where I was staying was run by a wonderful couple who had some dietary things of their own that they’d healed through a very strict diet, very similar to Paddison Program. So I was very blessed over there because she just made me lots of potatoes, lots of veggies, and I ate a lot of fresh fruit from the from the Pyrenees region. Wonderful experience. OK, so vitamin B, when I do the B-100, my nervous system just feels solid and I don’t worry about getting migraines and I also don’t worry about how much I’m eating, because one of the things that I had been doing was overeating, because that also seems to be related to my migraines. Now I can eat at a more manageable level, which is helpful for inflammation reasons because digestion is one of the bigger causes of inflammation. By making the work easier on my digestive system, I’m also limiting the inflammation related to eating too. So that’s one of the other things I’ve noticed.

Clint – So how does sorry, I just didn’t make the connection between how the vitamin B complex or seaweed derived if you were getting it that way helps with the overeating. Is it just that it seems to curb your appetite a little more by being adequately vitaminized?

Gabe – The connection is not exactly a cause and effect, but one of the things that I’ve noticed is that I had. From so many years of getting these migraines or at least feeling the migraine aura, one of the defense mechanisms that I had built in was that I would eat something, and this was partially because my father was hypoglycemic, so any time he felt his blood sugar going low, he would eat something. So I had this kind of sense that if my body feels funny, I need to eat something. I tested my blood sugar, my blood sugar was very good. That was not the issue, but I still had this built in response that eating kind of helped. And in fact, it did help because when you eat, very often you’re getting your vitamin B’s. Most nutritionists will tell you that you should have no problem getting vitamin B, the various vitamin B from what you’re eating. I’ve been eating, very strictly as per Paddison Program for 2 years and really making an effort to get vitamin B rich things into my diet. So, for example, lots of mushrooms, soaked almonds when I could handle them. They’re sort of in and out for me, and lots of seaweed, lots of dark leafy greens. I eat big bags of dark leafy greens each day. What was interesting to me was that even with all of this, I wasn’t getting enough in to really have a nice supply, my body. I’ve speculated I don’t know the answer to this, but I’ve speculated that it’s probably a combination of a few things, maybe an absorption problem, it may be just I need I need more than most folks for various reasons, and yeah, so I don’t know what the answer is between those, but the extra supplementation has been really helpful.

Clint – So it’s stopped the migraines and the related hand numbness, and that’s been going on for as long as you’ve been taking it.

Gabe – It hasn’t even been a concern. I used to worry about any kind of fasting or missing a meal because I thought, oh, no, that’s going to trigger a migraine. And now I can eat a lot less or even skip meals or I have a lot more flexibility when it comes to dealing with, spontaneous situations in life. I’m not as tethered to my food, and I think the other thing and maybe this is where I can bring in the vitamin D connection, too, is that I think it’s also contributed to this real uptick in my energy levels. The B vitamins are really important for metabolism purposes, from what I understand. Dr. Gomonack, her protocol, what she’s learned as a neurologist is that one of the factors with vitamin B production is that in the microbiome, there are bacteria that produce their own vitamin B’s. So we hear about this in the vegan world all the time because there’s some bacteria that can produce B12.

Clint – I’m cautious about anything other than recommending supplementation for B12, but I know that the other B vitamins or B vitamins in general are produced via bacteria. An improved microbiome tends to be an improved B vitamin portfolio.

Gabe – Yes. Just for the record, see, I suffer B12, too, because I figure, it can’t hurt. But in any case, what she has found is that when you have a lack of vitamin D for a long enough period of time, it changes the microbiome in such a way that it’s less able to produce vitamin B. So she has this protocol where she’ll get the vitamin D up to 60 to 80 nanograms per milliliter for 3 months with alongside supplementing with this B-100 complex. What that has done for her patients who have sleep trouble and not typical sleep apnea trouble. But these are say, young, trimmed and athletic women who have trouble sleeping, who have restless leg syndrome, things like that. She has found that the combination of vitamin D and B helps them sleep by fixing some of the nervous system issues. What she also says is that after a period of time, after two or three months of the vitamin D supplementation and the vitamin B 100, that if you overdo the B 100, you can get some kind of pain sensation at the nerve tips, fingertips, your feet and so on. And so what she typically does, she cuts back on the vitamin B, after being at proper levels of D for 3 months. She says that if you experience those sensations, if you stop the vitamin B 100, you’ll notice it within a day or two that the sensations of pain will stop. So that’s her research and that’s kind of what I’ve been experimenting with.

Clint – OK, interesting. Well, thank you. I’m glad that it’s working for you. Let’s move to the last of the bullet points here, which is the Water Kefir.

Gabe – Oh, yes.

Clint – We’ll talk about that and then how that’s helped the psoriasis aspect of your challenges. Also whether or not it has helped with the joint aspect.

Water Kefir

Gabe – So Water Kefir is for those who don’t know, Water Kefir is like Dairy Kefir, and it’s a similar kind of fermented product that is made with these little bacterial grains that sit at the bottom of a jar and they ferment in the case of dairy they ferment the dairy. In the case of water, they ferment sugar water, so what I do is I have a glass bell jar, actually, just on my kitchen counter, I could run to get it. I don’t know if you are going to do that, I’ll be right back.

Clint – Yeah, just grab it. I’ve never seen one of these before.

Gabe – Really? Well, you’re in for a treat there, Clint. See this jar here? It looks kind of creepy.

Clint – Got a Scobey at the bottom. Like if you would (inaudible).

Gabe – Very similar. And so what you have at the bottom here is you have these little grains of white kind of Scobey like type things. What they do is they ferment this water and it has the color that it has because what I put in here every night is I put it in some white sugar and I put in some a little bit of molasses. And what that does is that feeds the bacteria again. That’s the process of this.

Clint – More B Vitamins for you, through the molasses.

Gabe – What that does is it helps grow the grains and they ferment the water, so the water is bubbly and it has its nice kind of taste to it. In any case, I introduce this because it’s a fermented product, it’s kind of down pretty far on the reintroduction list. And I introduced it when I’ve been on the Paddison program for about 8 months, I think. At that point, I had kind of reached a plateau and I knew that Miso really helped me, so I thought, well, what’s another fermented thing that I can do? And so I thought, well, Water kefir is something I can do and moreover, what I do with my water Kefir is I actually take this and then I ferment oatmeal with it. So you had your podcast with Dr. Matthews talking about fermented oatmeal, and you mentioned how oatmeal was so helpful to you. Oatmeal has been very helpful to me, it’s one of my best friends. So I ferment my oatmeal with this and what I noticed in doing that was that that helped me clear up some of my psoriasis within a couple of weeks. It really helped me move out of that plateau. Now, there might also be a vitamin D connection there because that was coming out of winter so my vitamin D, I’m sure, was low. But in any case, it was a pretty direct correlation to the psoriasis going away.

Clint – Isn’t it fascinating? And we’re all looking whilst we have given some attention to supplements, isn’t it interesting that a much more sort of multifaceted natural approach is playing a big role here with the Kefir? It’s hard to pinpoint or it’s just not one specific hormone or vitamin that’s going on. We’re talking about the whole microbiome and fermentation and and the effects of the fermentation on the body. The uptake on that suggestion for our audience will be far less than just increasing vitamin D, and yet both appear to have had significant improvements for you. It’s just interesting how, the accessibility of vitamin D, so much more straightforward. But if people were to go down the fermented Kefir approach to, they might experience also great benefits. The reason that I’m a little cautious to lift it up, the reintroduction guide, which I know that you just mentioned, is because I’ve had several people try to do fermented water kefir and have had negative results. I don’t know whether or not that’s because of the batch that they created or this way they did it or it became an imbalance with other microbes, I don’t know. But it makes me reluctant to say, OK, everyone go and do this. It just because I’ve had other people say I tried it and it didn’t work. So what you’ve done obviously is create the right batch with the right approach and got great results, that’s great. If other people want to give it a go, fantastic. I just wanted to warn our audience that I’ve had some people not do well on it and had symptom problems with it.

Gabe – Right. And I think that probably is because it’s sort of a high sugar type thing. Which depending on how well your microbiome, where your microbiome is, that can really be a big factor. That’s kind of my own theory.

Clint – Yeah, no, that’s I think you’re spot on. It’s like kombucha. I had the fermented expert come on race, talk about kombucha and sauerkraut. And likewise, with kombucha, it feels too good to be true. When you drink that, it’s like this tastes like soda, this is brilliant, this is awesome, this is good for me. I can’t believe it. In the same way if you’ve got, say, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where the bacteria is higher up the digestive tract than it should be, and maybe this isn’t the right approach. But if you haven’t got that, maybe it’s going to be fantastic. But this is a big one where a big capital TEST give it a shot, see how it goes.

Clint – These are great suggestions. So to recap where we what we covered, we talked about the Earthing mat, and the improved sleep that you get from that and a sense of calmness in the body and rejoice, stress. Eccentric exercises for the tendonitis that you are susceptible to with PSA, and how that’s helped Achilles, elbow areas. We gave sprouting a good overview and helped both of us really are going through a bout sprouting phase you at a much more dedicated level than me by doing it at home. Vitamin D, how you were deficient even when you, eating healthily and living a healthy young man’s lifestyle. It just emphasizes how humans in general are deficient in vitamin D and it’s something we need to address. You’ve been doing some mega dosing and you’re going to get tested again soon. But certainly, anecdotally, do you think it’s been really helpful for both sleep avoidance of napping and also just feeling again of well-being. And the vitamin B 100 complex also helping no more migraines and again, a feeling that it’s helping, contributing even more towards sleep, no more overeating. Then the water key, those really cleared up the skin in addition to everything else that you’ve done. It sounds like you’re in really good shape and I know that health is a moving target, we can have off days and so on. But how do you feel today with all of these additional things and add an extra couple of years up your sleeve since the last time we spoke?

How Is Gabe Today?

Gabe – Sure, well. The last couple of weeks, I felt awesome, just I mean, just great high energy. I figured you’re you’re saying, high energy feeling as if I got my symptoms under control. But there’s always that little bit to remind you that, hey, you live with an autoimmune disorder, and t seems to me that I’m always reminded of that either through I have a tiny bit of psoriasis up here, and a couple of weeks ago before I started the vitamin D dosing, I was noticing a little bit of swelling in my knee, despite doing all the exercise, all the things that I do. And that’s gone away since with the vitamin D, but it’s always a question there kind of in the back of my mind. I don’t know if you still do this, if you have this habit, but I always kind of feel my knees and I compare, OK, is this there’s any swelling here, is there any swelling on this knww? Feel about the same. That’s still kind of in the back of my mind. Although what I would say now is that aside from just feeling great and feeling high energy and two things. The first is I have a lot of confidence now that I can solve problems as they arise. OK, I’m getting a little swelling, so something I introduced to my diet, is it something I’m not getting enough exercise? Last semester that was a question for me because I had a stressful new job. Is it now is it vitamin D is it vitamin B? these sorts of things, a lot of different tools.

Gabe – I also know that I have the habits in place that I can b a lifestyle that will fix those things, and that’s wonderful, too, because this healing process is not, it’s not like it just goes away. The fact that it stays with you also means that it shapes who you are and the way that you respond to it shapes who you are. And so when you build in these habits to your life, it starts to spill over into good habits in other people’s lives, too. That’s been a wonderful thing to be able to give back to people to say, hey, I’m doing this thing. This is what I have to do to be at my best so that in my case, so that I can serve and minister to people at really weird hours that night. Yeah, I have all this energy for that because of the way that I take care of myself and that opens a lot of doors of conversation and opens a lot of relationships, I found with my friends, my family. The final thing that I was going to mention. Well, that’s good enough for there.

Clint – It’s certainly good. If that is it alone, then it’s certainly adequate. To be able to, as you said, to have the capacity to handle all the other nice aspects of life of service, both through your faith and what you do through your in a future direction, but also with your friendships and with your family and stuff. And of course, no one looking after your own health so that you can have a long, healthy, happy life.

Gabe – Right. Right. And it’s a great gift. Well, maybe one other thought is that I also think that it’s helped me see this as a gift because I don’t take many days for granted now. And working with your community on your website, I know that I’m very fortunate in that my disease has not progressed to the point where I’ve had to have joints replaced yet or anything like that. But it’s been a real great gift insofar as it helps me not take anything for granted. Every day that I get to walk around and not have any problems with my knee or not have a flare up or just not be fatigued and I have a migraine, that’s another great day.

Clint – Yeah, most definitely. That’s just it’s huge, absolutely huge, so, we as you say, there are no days that we we take for granted. We wake up, we think has a body feel. If we ticking all the boxes, then it’s a happy day and we get into it again and we do preventative measures so as to make ourselves have the best chance to wake up with that same set of checklist the next morning in our mind. So thank you for helping us today with these suggestions. I am going to go and have my lunch and take my vitamin D, which I have not taken for many days. You get out of the habit with it, if it’s not daily, you it can slip by the by the wayside and eat some sprouts. And I’m going to the gym later and I’ll be doing my eccentric exercises for tendonitis that I get my elbows. I’ve got a whole routine, we did that training on elbow pain that I did a few weeks ago for support members. I’ve got my earthing that upstairs, like I’m thinking mostly of boxers my vitamin B might need looking at, but I feel like I’m on I’m on the path to success with today’s episode. So thank you very much, it’s been a lot of fun. I’m very grateful and thanks for your time and your information here Gabe it’s awesome.

Gabe – Thank you very much, Clint. A real pleasure to be with you as always, and thanks. Thanks for your inspiration, thanks for what you do with the community. And it’s also wonderful to see your kids running around too, you know, that’s wonderful. So thanks for sharing, sharing all of that with us.