Elaine was suffering from awful rheumatoid arthritis. She is now out of pain, and is stronger than she’s been in years. On top of this, she has halved her medication.

In this interview we discuss:

• After diagnosis, Elaine was losing the battle with RA symptoms.
• After working on her health on her own, she then booked in an RA Reversal Strategy Call and started a journey towards wellness with Clint Paddison and his coaching team.
• Results were fast. Her hands steadily improved, and today they can close into a full fist without pain.
• Elaine has halved her medication (Plaquenil) with her rheumatologist support and feels even better now than on the higher dose!
• Her confidence has skyrocketed and she is able to do things again with her family she could not do before.
• Her weather sensitivity has been reduced significantly – she is now fine in cold conditions.

Clint – In today’s episode, you’re going to meet Elaine. Elaine and I met, and she went through the challenges she was having with her rheumatoid arthritis, the medication she was on. And now we’re about eight months since we first met, and it’s a delight to be able to have her on the show and share how much progress she has made in those last eight months or so. We’re going to talk about overcoming sensitivity to the weather. We’re going to talk about coming off medication. We’re going to talk about becoming resilient. We’re going to talk about becoming strong. We’re going to talk about the importance of having community and being surrounded by people who are on a mission to wellness, and how much that has helped her, and a whole bunch more. Elaine, thank you so much for joining me today to go over your journey with this condition.

Elaine – Thank you, Clint, I’m really thrilled to be here.

Clint – We have gotten to know each other really well over the last sort of 6 to 8 months. It’s been a real pleasure to watch your evolution, to go back to that period, to set the scene. What were you going through when we first connected?

Elaine – I guess it was a lot of inconsistency. I would say I’d been on the Paddison program since November. We met in May of last year and it was November prior to that I started the program, but I was just doing it on my own. I wasn’t doing the coaching sessions and I saw great results, but I knew that it wasn’t where I needed to be. I knew that there was more that I could be achieving, but I wasn’t sure how to do it on my own. And so that’s why I reached out to you so that we could start doing the coaching sessions. It was immediate, it just bumped me up to the next level I would say, as soon as I started doing the coaching program.

Clint – What symptoms were you having at that time and what medications were you taking? Let’s even rewind, even further back before you started doing the do it yourself plan. Where were you at and where were you at when we connected? So that we’re setting the scene here for the sort of transformation that you’ve experienced.

Elaine – Sure. I developed rheumatoid arthritis in December of 2021 and didn’t get in to see a rheumatologist until April of 2022 and started the medication in June of that year. I am fortunate that I’m able to take one of the medications that has the least reactions with people, and that’s hydroxychloroquine. And I’m on a fairly low dose of 200mg per day. I certainly noticed an improvement. Some swelling went down, but I was still experiencing enough pain, that I knew that I needed to do something else. So, the rheumatologist was saying at that point that my next step would be to layer on methotrexate, and that involved a weekly injection. And for me, that really was just a hard no. I really did not want to go down that path of weekly injections and monthly blood tests. I held off on it. Coincidentally, that’s when I discovered your program. That was in November of 2023. I’d been on medication for well over a year, and it had taken me as far as I was going to go, but I still had some swelling in my hands. I had swelling in my toes that I just wasn’t able to get rid of.

Elaine – So I discovered your program. I started doing it on my own and I noticed an improvement. All of a sudden the swelling in my toes disappeared, the swelling in my hands disappeared, and I thought, wow, this is amazing. This is great. I started doing exercise. I was doing everything that I read about in your program, but I was still only getting to a certain point. I still had days where I was achy, particularly if it was rainy and cool and what have you. And I thought, I don’t know what I don’t know about this program. I don’t have anyone that I can ask, to say, is there something different that I should be doing? I got to the point where I was becoming afraid to eat certain foods, thinking that maybe that was triggering the reaction that my body was giving me. Even though I’d experienced great improvements, I knew that it wasn’t as good as I felt it could be. So that’s when I reached out to you.

Clint – We’re a little under a year, maybe eight or nine, ten, something like that. Months ago.

Elaine – So, it was May of last year that I reached out and just immediately knew just from talking to you for half an hour, as you were asking me questions about where I was at with everything and I just felt, no, this is what I needed. I really needed to take it to the next level. That’s when we started the coaching sessions and we set goals together. My goals were to be pain free and talking to my rheumatologist. Those were the two big ones. Talking to my rheumatologist about reducing the medication, and six months later, that’s what I was able to do. Trust the process is what you always say. I did trust the process, and it’s proven to reward me with good results.

Clint – We’ll get into all the details about what we did together and how you went about this, in this conversation. But what’s the sort of before and after situation from, say, May last year to how you are today, going through each of the areas that were affecting you and also the level of external influence being on drugs.

Elaine – At the time, just before I started the coaching sessions, I was hesitant to add foods back into my diet because I was still experiencing some discomfort and I just wasn’t sure what was causing it. So, fairly quickly, you assessed what was missing in my diet that was going to take me to the next level. I started to introduce certain foods that were essential in making my body stronger so that I could start to build more muscle. So that was a big part of the discussion that we had was around, starting with doing oatmeal for breakfast, Introducing it a little bit at a time to see how my body responded to it. It responded well. I was able to introduce oatmeal, and it made a big difference. I never would have thought something like that would make a big difference. And it did. And so those were the things that I just didn’t know, and I never would have figured out on my own if I wasn’t involved in the coaching sessions and getting your input on things. So that was one thing. You talk to me about not being afraid to introduce new foods and how to go about doing it safely and effectively. So that was important. But I think the other thing that was really key that you stressed to me was the importance of, exercise, regular exercise and continuing to improve my strength and doing it when you don’t feel like doing it because you’re going to feel better after you do it.

Elaine – you were right. You proved it to me and I well, I proved it to myself. So I think exercise was the other consistent exercise and continued testing of yourself to strengthen yourself. That was really important. The other thing was around oral care, the oral microbiome and getting onto a good routine. Although, I thought that I was doing well with it, the program that you have us on is fantastic and I’m sure has helped to improve. But, I mean it just immediately those few things really jump started my body and my body’s response in a positive way, and I started to see the few symptoms that I still had coming down gradually. There were other things, talking about the importance of sleep and the importance of keeping stress levels down, the importance of being out in nature, going for a walk, connecting with friends, all of those other what you might think of as sort of softer elements, but are so important in keeping a healthy mind. It’s looking at everything in a holistic way. So it’s not just a diet, it’s a lifestyle change, really is what it is. It’s embracing a lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle that includes a good diet, regular exercise, sleep.

Elaine – I mean, these are all the things that we probably already know, but it makes such a huge difference to those of us with rheumatoid arthritis. It’s so crucial for us to manage all of those things. But to be aware of it and to start to read your body, how your body responds if maybe you haven’t had enough sleep, or you haven’t had enough water, or you’re eating at weird times. Those were the things that I started to pick up on, depending on what my schedule was like, maybe if I was working a long day. I remember there was one instance, where I worked a really long day, and it was hot out, I probably didn’t drink enough, and I was stressed. I was eating at weird times, and I felt it the next day. I put something in my journal to ask you about it, and you came back and said, okay, here are the things to watch out for, and I did. I did exactly what you said. I made sure that I stayed hydrated, I made sure that I ate at a more decent time, I had the exact same kind of day and experienced a different result in a positive way. Those are the kinds of things that are just so important that I never would have figured out on my own. That’s where the coaching is so crucial.

Clint – I remember that day.

Elaine – Yeah.

Clint – We’ve enjoyed not just the process of getting you well together, but I’ve also enjoyed the process of getting to know you as well. I remember all of these little bits and bobs in the days and I know the work that you do. I know all of this stuff. This is a lovely conversation to have now with you, without burdening you, without that burden of all of those problems that you had when we first began. Your hands were bothering you. You were on a certain dose of the hydroxychloroquine or the Plaquenil, as some people may be more familiar with it. Can you describe how the hands are now? What’s going on with the Plaquenil and the dosage?

Elaine – Sure. My hands are great. Before I started the Paddison program, originally, my hands were probably about an inch away from being able to close into a complete fist. As soon as I started on the program and changed my lifestyle, changed my diet, that started to improve. But, there was still a little bit of residual stiffness and swelling. Gradually, particularly once I started in with the coaching and really got my diet to where it needed to be and was doing all the exercises and everything. Now, I don’t even think about my hands. I’m able to close them into a complete fist. I’m living my life without thinking about my limitations, because there are some of those limitations that I had are now gone. So it’s pretty amazing.

Clint – It’s just phenomenal. I hope the medical community watch these interviews. I hope people see this, not just other people in our community, people who watch us online and listen to the podcast, who hear this a lot. But, this message of being able to go from a consistent medication, we’ll talk about that next. But, actually tapering the medication whilst getting rid of symptoms, It goes against the understanding within the conventional medical community of what can be done with this condition.

Elaine – Absolutely.

Clint – It really does. It’s profound stuff and it’s not like you’re fasting for six months. You’re eating more than you have in a long time.

Elaine – I’m eating very well. I feel healthier today than I did before I developed rheumatoid arthritis. I feel stronger, I feel healthier, my mind is alert. I’ve got energy to spare, and it’s really a combination of all of those things. There were certain activities that I really did not think that I would ever be able to do again, that I’m doing. It’s just incredible to think of that. I was on the medication for a year and a half, I guess. One of the goals that we set was to be pain free and to talk about reducing my medication. Last November, that’s what I was able to do. I was able to go to my rheumatologist and have the discussion and say, here’s what I’m doing and here’s how I’m feeling. Obviously it ties in with the blood work and checking all of that to make sure that it was showing what I was saying I was feeling, which was feeling so good. On her suggestion she said, do you want to reduce your medication by half? Honestly, going into that conversation, I don’t know what I thought. I did not expect her to come back and say, do you want to reduce it by half. That really floored me in a positive way. It was very exciting. But I was also realistic with that because I didn’t know how my body was going to be, how it was going to respond to that reduction in medication.

Elaine – So I went into it with my eyes wide open, thinking, okay, this is great. I hope it works. I feel really good and I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and see how it goes. In February, about three months after I had reduced the medication, I went for my first blood work and there was really no significant change. Everything was still good, my markers were still extremely low, and my body was responding well. And I knew that by reducing the medication, I was getting something out of my body that I didn’t really want in there in the first place. Nobody wants to be taking medication, but you do what you have to do. It’s important to be doing what your body needs at the time. And my body needed to get rid of that inflammation. I couldn’t function the way I was before. The medication was very important for me for that period of time. But once I layered in this improved lifestyle with better eating habits and exercise and all of those things, it started to respond in such a positive way that I was able to reduce my medication by half, and I still have a goal of going further than that and getting off it completely. We’ll see how it goes. But that’s my ultimate goal for sure, is to get off it completely.

Clint – The dose that you’re taking now is the minimum of all minimums. Isn’t it?

Elaine – I’m taking essentially 100mg a day but it’s actually 200 every other day. And I have not noticed any change at all. You know it’s winter for us here and we did have some snow and we were able to go out snowshoeing and doing activities that really I hadn’t been able to do, since developing rheumatoid arthritis. And I was able to get out and enjoy being out in nature and pushing myself physically and getting back to the things that I enjoy that make me feel whole, make me feel like I’m living my best life. So that was pretty exciting.

Clint – Very exciting. Can you tell me, a little bit of the progression of the abilities with your hands. So, it’ll come no surprise to people who listen to a lot of these episodes that I’m a huge advocate. In fact, I’m obsessed about building grip strength. This was one of the things that you and I worked on a lot. Can you talk about what your hands were capable of when they were painful, and the way that you sort of protected them compared to what you can do now with your hands.

Elaine – Well, when I think back on when I was first hit with everything with RA. My hands were so bad that I could not cut my own food with a knife. I could not hold a knife to be able to cut my own food. I couldn’t lift a kettle. I couldn’t lift a pot. Everything was a struggle. Everything. Obviously the medication helped with reducing the swelling. But there was still even with the medication, there was still some swelling. I wasn’t able to wear rings that I had worn before. I was wearing compression gloves a lot. I was using heating pads on my hands a lot to help just reduce the achiness, and I would alternate between hot and cold, depending on how I was feeling and what the weather was like. But I still had stiffness and tightness and soreness and swelling. And, that has gone. All. I get a little bit of morning stiffness. I certainly will not lie that when I get up in the morning there’s a little bit of stiffness. But even in the last little while, even since reducing my medication, I was wearing compression gloves overnight and I’ve stopped doing that. Just in the last little while, I’ve stopped wearing the compression gloves because my hands would swell overnight because they’re not doing anything, and I’d wake up in the morning and feel a little bit stiffer and so on than I liked. So the compression gloves helped with that.

Elaine – But now I’m not even doing that. I’m getting up. There’s maybe a little bit of stiffness for a minute or two. But I just start my day. I just do my thing and I don’t think about it. I’m able to lift a kettle full of water, I’m able to lift a pan off the stove and with one hand. And part of that is obviously my grip strength, that when I first started the coaching program, you talked about being able to hang from a bar, and I thought, sure. In your dreams, I’ll be able to hang from a bar. But my husband set up a makeshift bar and I held on to it, and I was able to grip it. It was wide enough that I was able to put my hands around it and grip it, but I was just holding on to it and putting a little bit of weight on it by bending my knees. My feet were still on the ground and one day I thought, I’m just going to try. Well, I got a proper bar. I ordered a proper bar and my husband installed it. So, I thought, right, I’m going to try just lifting my feet off the ground and just see how it goes. What’s the worst thing that can happen? So I tried it and I was able to hold on for 10 seconds. And I thought, wow! This is incredible.

Elaine – And so I did that for, I don’t know, maybe four or five days. Then I thought, okay, Clint said that the magic number is 30 seconds. That’s what I’m going to aim for. So, I got on the bar and I lifted my feet up, and I counted to 30, and I was able to do it. And I’ve never looked back since. And just it blew me away. Now I’m able to lift myself up a little bit. I’m not able to do a pull up or anything like that. I don’t know that. I don’t think I would have been able to do it before developing RA, let alone afterwards, but I’m able to hang from the bar for 30 seconds. I’m able to pull myself up using my strength in my lats and so on. It’s maybe just an inch or so and I hold that for 15 seconds. But I’m continually building my strength and my hands it doesn’t sound like it would make sense, but my hands feel better after doing that. Just improving the range of motion, I guess, in my fingers and being able to grip like that makes holding a pot a piece of cake by comparison. Really. You would never think of the correlation between hanging from a bar like a five year old would do in a playground and improving how your hands feel. And it works. Trust the process.

Clint – I love it. It makes me emotional, this stuff. Because when you talk and I picture what you’re doing and I think about, where that’s come from in my life and how this has been, how the information has originated. It’s because of my suffering and the pain that I had in my hands. And I threw a leap of faith. Just kept working hard at the gym saying, I’ve got it almost like an exorcism. Drive this out of my body, drive it out of every joint that’s really miserable. It was only when I could hang for 30 seconds from the bar with my feet off the ground was I able to then finally almost squeeze out that last resistant, persistent. Such a problematic bit of swelling and inflammation that I had throughout my knuckles. It’s just so joyful to hear how you’ve had the same experience and gone through this as well. And I want everyone to pay such Attention to. What we’re talking about here is that the solution for fingers is grip strength.

Clint – Its grip strength. And if you can. Barely. Like Elaine was talking about, she had, like, the Lego hands. Right. So they won’t come down and go into make a fist. If that’s you, then we have a progression sequence that Elaine and I went through, which is we don’t do a bar straight away. We progress through some strength, building improved grip strength to the point where it’s conceivable to do a one second hang. And so, regardless of where you’re at the moment, there is a path out of it. There’s a way to get out of that situation. It’s very satisfying to observe and it’s obviously just euphoric to experience. When we notice our hands closing more, reduced morning stiffness, better range of motion both in the flexion and extension of those fingers. This is a joy to listen to, Elaine. This is like going through with you my past. I’m sure a lot of people helping them visualize where they might be able to go as well.

Elaine – It’s a journey. I feel so incredibly proud of what I’ve achieved with your guidance and support and the support of the rest of the community and everybody else. But, there is a lot of work that goes into this. It’s not something that you just. I had two years where I could not close my hands. Well, it’s not going to happen overnight that all of a sudden I’m going to be able to do that. And certainly reducing that little bit of residual swelling helped. Absolutely. But everything stiffens up when you’re not able to close them properly. And it wasn’t just my hands, my knees. I wasn’t able to kneel down for two years. That’s the other big thing. I remember one night having a dream that I was able to bend my knees and able to actually squat down on the ground, and I woke up and I thought, oh, wow. And I tried it. Of course I couldn’t do it because my knees were swollen. They were stiff. And now I don’t think about it, but there was a lot of work that went into that. I also go to a physiotherapist. I’m using functional coaching with the coach that you’ve brought on to the program. He’s fantastic. I’m putting the work in. But I was determined that I was not going to let this get the better of me. You have to keep at it and you just have to keep working away at it. And it’s baby steps and you see the progress.

Elaine – And that’s a self-fulfilling, motivating kind of thing. When you see that bit of progress, it’s like, okay, I’ve got this far now my next goal, it’s setting, goal setting. That’s one of the things that we worked on right at the very beginning was goal setting. And obviously we had the the big goals in mind. But there were also some small ones, like to be able to close my hand and make a fist again. It took me a while for sure. It took me quite a while but all of a sudden, I’m able to wear my rings. I didn’t have to get them resized, I didn’t touch them. Now there are some days when they’re actually loose on my hands. I’ve gone through several sizes of shoes. I had to buy all new shoes because my shoes no longer fit me well. Now the shoes that I bought no longer fit me because my feet have gone back to their original size. So, there’s a bit of a yoyo effect with all of this, but, it’s all positive. I’m happy to donate shoes that I can’t wear anymore because they’re too big for me. Because my feet have gone back to their normal size. I remember I had to wear compression socks and sandals because my feet were so swollen I didn’t recognize them. If I really think back on how bad it was three years ago, I guess it was April of 2022 before I was diagnosed. It was not something that I want to relive, but it’s important for me to reflect back on that because I never want to go back there again.

Elaine – I just I felt like everything had been taken away from me because my world got very, very small, very, very quickly because there was so little that I was able to do. But gradually, bit by bit, getting on the medication, reducing that swelling to the point where I could function again, then getting on your program and changing my lifestyle. That was a huge bump in in getting back to a more normal way of life and starting the coaching program like it’s all the milestones that I’ve experienced over this three year journey. I think back on it, it really is pretty incredible. And I know there are folks out there that have been on this journey a lot longer than I have, and I consider myself to be extremely fortunate and grateful that everything has worked the way it has. I know it’s a lot of effort on my part, but, through the guidance and coaching that you provide and supportive community and everything, it has transformed my life to I no longer think about any limitations. I just live my life. I’ve got goals of things that I want to continue to be able to do next and regain all of the things that I had lost. But, I’m living my life. I don’t think about it, I feel great, I feel motivated to continue this journey and continue the self-improvement.

Clint – Beautiful Elaine. I love it. I think that your goal of being able to keep this dialogue open with the rheumatologist and coming off that last little bit of hydroxychloroquine is definitely within your sights because, it’s not like you’ve stopped. It’s not like you’ve done all this hard work and now you’re back into sort of burgers and fries. I mean, you’ve expanded the healthy foods so much that you can now love the foods. You’ve become very, very competent with all the exercise which you’re engaging with, as you said, from multiple sources. You’ve got all this dialed in. You’re a completely different human being with a different microbiome, with a different antioxidant status in your body and a different nervous system. You’re a completely different set of like, biological makeup than what it was when you were suffering three years ago upon diagnosis. So it’s very hard to have a major setback unless it’s self inflicted with some ridiculous fast food adventure one night, late night. You’re not going to do that. So, I can see that you and I are on a mission to get you to that next stage. And of course, I know we’re sort of laboring the point, but everything’s done with the rheumatologist, so no one’s knows is out of joint. Everyone’s happy, everyone’s high fiving each other, and your health is ultimately the ultimate winner. I touched on right at the start. Weather sensitivity. This was bothering you. You did say to me several times that you’re worried about a change in weather systems and so on. You live in Canada. This is an area where, you’ve got a lot of cold weather for parts of the year. How has that reduced the sensitivity to weather alongside your health improvements?

Elaine – Weather definitely. And part of I think that the reason that I was thinking that was partly because I’ve always heard that people could predict weather changes by how their knees were feeling or whatever. So part of it was a preconception on my part that weather was going to affect it. I don’t honestly know whether even in the beginning stages it was or not, maybe it was other things, but I did feel as though, the weather could be cold and sunny and like winter cold and sunny and I was fine. But as soon as the the temperatures went up and it started to get rainy and so on. I did feel a change in the level of achiness or what have you, but over time, I think as my as my body strengthened and my response to all of these things seemed to lessen the frequency with which I was experiencing those highs and lows or, dips in how I was feeling got further and further apart. Obviously summer months, the weather is great. I felt great, I could conquer the world. And then the fall hits and the temperatures dip and the rainy season comes. This past season, this past fall and winter, I realized one day, I really don’t notice any difference until we got into winter and we had a snowstorm and we had three days of snow and everything, and I was achy.

Elaine – You know, It was the first time in a while when I was really feeling a little bit achy, and we talked about it and you said, yeah, it very well might be. And because as soon as the weather improved, I felt better. So, I thought, it’s very inconsistent. But it’s getting fewer and further in between these sessions and it doesn’t bother me. I just don’t let it worry me. If I feel a little bit stiffer, I just say okay, whatever and try to think if I’ve done anything different. Most times I haven’t and it disappears again. But it’s getting to be further and further apart and not as dramatic a swing like it’s I’m talking minor differences at this stage, and I think that it’s because my body has become more resilient over time as my body strengthens, as my gut microbiome has improved. I mean, I’ve gotten rid of symptoms that I had long before I ever had RA. I suffered from gluten intolerance and lactose intolerance. I was gluten and lactose free for a long, long time before I started this program. But I still had sensitivities and I didn’t know what was causing it. And as soon as I changed my diet over to this program, those problems disappeared. I think that some of who knows what triggered the RA for me, I have no idea.

Elaine – But I know that my gut started to give me problems in my 20s, that’s that’s a while ago for me now. I modified the way I ate, but I still had those problems. And as I got older, I found that there were more and more times that my gut was bothering me, so I think there’s definitely a correlation between the the health of your gut microbiome. And now that my gut is so much healthier than it was, and I love the food. I don’t miss anything that I am no longer eating. I don’t because I just feel and maybe in the beginning I did miss certain things and now I don’t, over time, as I’ve seen my body respond in such a positive way to me, there’s no going back. There’s no looking back. I’ve had friends say, now that you’ve been able to reduce your medication, can you go back to eating things the way you used to? And it’s like, no, this is me for life. This is what is allowing me to be reducing the medication and allowing me to be living my life pain free. And that is a small sacrifice to make. Believe me, I never want to go back to feeling the way I did three years ago. Never.

Clint – Amazing. Elaine, this has been tremendous and thank you for sharing all that you went through and how far you’ve come. It’s very inspirational and it’s been wonderful getting to know you over the last, eight odd months and continuing to help you on this mission. Congratulations on just the enormous amount of effort that you’ve put in and you’ve earned every single bit of improvements by putting in the work and keeping up the discipline. So, it’s very admirable and well done.

Elaine – Thank you. And thank you for all that you do. I can’t express my gratitude enough. This program has been such a godsend for me personally. And I know for others in the program, it just really has transformed my life. And hopefully anybody out there watching this, is it without effort? Absolutely not. There is definitely effort and sacrifice, but boy is it worth it. So thank you for everything that you do. I’m extremely grateful to you, your program and the community.

Clint – Thanks, Elaine. That’s lovely of you to say.