We discuss in this interview:

• Anna’s consistent health improvements and pain reduction with the Paddison Program
• Her experience with Prednisone
• Changes in diet
• Exercise and its beneficial effect on mood
• The importance of listening to our body
• Exercises with a fit ball
• The benefits of meditation
• Stinging nettle and softening oils

Clint – Good day, thanks for joining us again. I say us, I’ve got a guest today who’s going to be sharing her improvements with her rheumatoid arthritis by following the Paddison program over the past almost 4 years. And as I like to do, I know nothing about our guest today. I want to sit through and listen to her, tell her story for the first time so that I can share with you as you listen or watch this. Her, revelations, her discoveries, her improvement and ask questions, and so together we can all learn from her. Her name is Anna, she’s from the Netherlands, a beautiful part of the world, and she joins me at 7 -30 a.m. for us to do this recording. I’m very grateful for the early start Anna, thanks so much.

Anna – Thank you.

Clint – Now, tell us what we’re in for. Give us the before and after so that we know the extent of your improvements here.

Anna – Ok, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t raise my hands. I couldn’t work, and it lasted a few years. I didn’t take medicines, I didn’t want to do it. I only took prednisone for one month, then I stopped and I didn’t take anything. Now I can move and walk, and it’s not completely gone, but it’s gone for 90 percent. So it’s a different life.

Clint – Yeah, that’s amazing. Over what time period did you witness these changes, has it been the entire four years since you started the program? Was it really slow and steady or was there a period of rapid improvement and then more of maintenance?

Anna – There was no rapid improvement, it was just very, very, very, very, very slow. I saw something happening, and then I look back half a year and I thought, well, I can do something more. So that was the process.

Clint – Very interesting. It tends to be the way, doesn’t it? It tends to be an improvement process that’s very subtle unless we’re fasting, in which case we can get really quick results in inflammation reduction. But if we’re talking about, living in a way that’s sustainable as a lifestyle in meeting our calorie each day, eating a diet that is nutritionally complete then yes, healing is very slow. In the Netherlands, one of your co-patriots, if that’s the right word, someone else from the Netherlands, Hannah, who has been on our podcast a few times, going back a few years now. Yes, she had a very, very slow improvement, very similar to yourself, and so many others, including me. And she got down to 2.5 mg of methotrexate after tapering year after year after year. Then she stayed on 2.5 mg of methotrexate for another 12 months before she then came off that entirely. So, this isn’t a race, it is just allowing the time that it takes for this process to occur. So now, before we get into the darker days, what sort of lifestyle do you lead?

Anna – Do you mean work?

Clint – Yeah.

Anna – I am an artist, I go to markets to sell my postcards, and I teach children to paint and to draw. Well, that’s basically it.

Clint – Oh, lovely. That’s very interesting to me because our children especially the eldest are learning to draw and she’s very passionate about it, so maybe offline we can talk about this. I love the fact that you have that creative ability and teach it. That’s really cool because my daughter is really interested in that.

Clint – Let’s now rewind a few years to when things were awful. Your job would have been impacted a lot because you are an artist, so you’re using your hands and you may be sitting or standing for long periods of time, which wouldn’t be comfortable. Talk us through how things were at that point.

Anna – Well, it started, I just had to shake hands and then that went away and build up very slowly after it was the feet, then it was my knee. So I could work around it a little bit, I can’t use this hand, so I’ll be used to other hands. But after a year, I couldn’t work around it anymore, it was everywhere. And walking started to be difficult, everything started to be difficult. So after one-half year or 2 years, I stopped working completely, I was just laying on the couch. And the one project I had was to go to the grocery store and get my groceries, that was it.

Clint – Do you live with anyone who could have helped you with this?

Anna – No, my partner had died 2 years before it all started. So I was alone and I have some friends, but I’m very independent, so I want to do a lot of things alone. But there were a group of friends who helped me with going to the market, so they drove me in the car and they helped me to unpack things. Yeah, I’m very grateful for that. In the beginning, they helped me with giving lessons with teaching, so they were also in the class and they help me with the children. But after a while, it was too much for me.

Clint – Hmm. Okay, and so what were your doctors saying?

Anna – I had a lot of doctors, but first I went to the rheumatologists, and well, she said, your numbers are very high. I forgot the numbers but they were the highest possible. You can use this and you can use this, you can use this, I just didn’t want to use anything. So I tried it as long as I could until the prednisone, I thought I will try it for one month because I want to live, and that one month was very good. I could move, I thought, well this is the life. But after a month, I didn’t want to do it anymore, because I know from you that it’s not good for the gut so I stopped. But after the Prednisone my hands were a little bit better. I could move them a little bit better and that stayed that way. So that was good.

Clint – It’s a good place to pause anyway because. You know, sometimes I hear this from clients, patients, or whatever you want to call it, people who are part of our community. What they say is that their rheumatologist says, well let’s try and knock this out. So in inverted commas by giving you some steroids for a month and see if that can sort of knock it out or take care of it and just sort of suppress the inflammation for a while. I’m always skeptical of this approach because, it doesn’t do anything towards the underlying cause, and in fact, what it does do is have the counterproductive impact on the gut that you just highlighted or you mentioned. It’s interesting for me to see that you’re an example where it did actually have a positive impact on inflammation and one of the reasons for that, as we think out loud, is that inflammation itself is one of the causes of leaky gut. So inflammatory cytokines at the epithelium trigger more intestinal permeability. So if we have a lot of inflammation in our joints, we have a coexisting inflammation of the gut lining and more intestinal permeability. And so, in your instance here, my interpretation of this is that Prednisone has suppressed the inflammation, which has reduced leaky gut more than the dosage created by taking the tablet. And the net result was less inflammation. That’s great, it doesn’t always go like that. So that was really good, and it gave you sounds like a little bit of momentum at that moment.

Anna – Yeah, it was a relief. But when I stopped the prednisone, almost all the pain came back, except pain in my hands

Clint – Right, yes, I see. Well, that leads us then into what did you do next?

Anna – I wrote it down. I went on with the diet, it was hard for me the diet because I didn’t like it in the beginning. When I went eating, I thought well, I’m going to watch a movie so I don’t taste it.

Clint – You know, one thing that is so great about your culture. And as I said in the sort of 10 seconds before we hit record, I did in my 20’s have a relationship with a girl from the Netherlands. What I learnt from that relationship and also through meeting her family when I was in the Netherlands and getting to know some other folks and her friends and so forth. That the Dutch have a way of being very honest, just straight up, no beating around the bush. This is the truth, and I’m going to tell it to you and I love it. It’s so refreshing, and I’m enjoying that about this conversation so thank you. You used to eat healthy foods by watching TV, so you’d distract yourself.

Anna – And I couldn’t see the sweet potatoes anymore, and oh my god. But after a year, I discovered some herbs, some things that made it more delicious for me, and I could eat some more. I could eat tahini, which tastes very good for me. So that was a little bit easier after a while to eat it. So now I’m not watching a movie when I’m eating.

Clint – Now you can just watch a TV show, which is shorter.

Anna – Yeah, sorry, this is the flu.

Clint – No worries.

Anna – I started to exercise, and that was very good for my mood because my mood was down, very, very down. My exercise, I started with 10 minutes,I just invented my own exercise just to move just to not lay on the couch but to do something. And after that 10 minutes, I thought, well, I’m feeling a little bit better, not just my body, but also my mind. So I went to a physical therapist and I asked for more exercises that I could do. She could see my body, what I can do, what I couldn’t, and then she gave me exercises with a ball. So I have a ball here in my house. I exercise using the ball for half an hour a day to strengthen my legs and lower back, my hands, and my shoulders. That was very good for me to do that every day, and I went to the gym. Now I can’t go there anymore, but that’s another story. But I went to the gym for two years, almost every day, and then I did the exercise with a ball. I also did cycling, but I started too quick too much so then my knee went thicker than it was. So I had to stop cycling for half a year and then I could build it up again. But that was not good.

Clint – No, but this is the process, this is the discovery, this is why all of us have our own detective hats on and there is no one single formula because each of us has different challenges. And so what we do is we have a map, right? We have the program, which gives us a map from A to B, and this provides us with a lot of detail. Within that map sometimes we have to deviate north-south. Sometimes we even head back in the same direction for 6 months like you’ve just described before we can then get back on track. No one can teach that, no one can predict or plan and show you that that can happen. And so at that point, you are the master of the plan and you need to observe how to adapt and change the approach, and that’s what you’ve done, which is awesome. It just goes to show that even though cycling typically is good for the knees and it was a good recovery strategy for my left knee, and I used cycling a lot. Actually shortly after my wedding, and I was cycling frequently as part of, my strength building and so forth. It doesn’t necessarily, therefore be completely problem-free and it might stir up some people’s like did stir up your knee. So I’m curious then, so given that strengthening and stretching, are 2 things that are really good for the knee, how did you achieve that using your fit ball?

Anna – I don’t understand the question completely.

Clint – Sorry. How did you improve your knee without cycling?

Anna – Ok. With the ball, with fit the ball. So strengthen my upper legs for half a year to a year, and then after that I slowly started to cycle again.

Clint – Yeah, good. Okay. Now I’m understanding why this worked. Your quad muscles and your glute muscles, your buttocks were too weak, meaning that as you were cycling the bike, too much pressure was being loaded into the knee joint. When you build up your knees through a more steady and short range of motion. Then, as the muscles got bigger, they take more load off the joint itself, and then the joint was able to handle the cycling because your muscles were doing more of the work as opposed to loading the knee. That’s my interpretation of that.

Anna – Yeah, I think so. And I also started to quick to. I did half an hour, I started with half an hour and then it was too much. I wanted to get it warm because it hurts, warm and then goes into the little places of your body. And that’s OK. So it was too much for me, but that was my learning process like you told before. Listen to my own body, just do what feels good for my body. That’s part of the learning process.

Clint – I want to ask a question around the fit ball because your situation is going to be exactly the same as someone else listening right now who’s really, really interested because their knees hurt and it hurts to cycle and they don’t know what to do. And you’ve just said that you circumvented this issue with the fit ball. So I want to ask you, with the fit ball, at first when you were really, really struggling, was it small range of motion. Just sort of bouncing on the ball and using your thighs to move you up and down with a short range of motion?

Anna – I did that, but it was too boring for me.

Speaker2 – Right, you couldn’t watch a movie. You probably saw them all by that point.

Anna – But very quickly I started by just laying on my back on the ball, I control the ball.

Clint – You lie on your back, and then were are you doing, sit ups?

Anna – Yes, something like this.

Clint – Yes. Oh, and then were you lowering your bottom and raising it up again?

Anna – Yes.

Clint – So that is a glute exercise, a buttocks exercise. Yeah, that’s it’s called a bridge, so you’re doing glute bridges? Okay, so you were doing that? Okay, good. Interesting. If you’re not seeing some of the artistic work from Anna here because you’re listening to this, she just drew basically creating a bridge. Your calf muscles are vertical, and then there’s a right angle at the knees and your shoulders are on top of the fit ball. Then what you do is you lower down your waist at the buttocks, and then you just squeeze your bottom and bring your core back up to horizontal. This is an exercise for building the buttocks, that’s what that does. So I’m interested to learn that was one of the main ones. What else did you do on the ball?

Anna – The same posture, but then I moved from here to here,

Clint – Right, left to right.

Anna – Left to right and then laying on my belly on the ball and then coming up for my back and then doing this for the muscles here. Those are the main four things I’m doing. And I also learned other things, but I’m only doing these 4 things now.

Clint – You’re right. They were the most important.

Anna – And stretching. So I’m laying on my back on the fit ball, and I stretch completely my shoulders very slowly, and I think that helped me to heal my shoulders because I can do everything now. I couldn’t do anything with my shoulder, I just couldn’t raise my hands for 2 years. It was because of the stretching on the ball after that half a year or a year, there was more space and more space every day more space.

Clint – Yeah, I love it, so I do that same exercise most days. And what we’re talking about again, if you’re not watching, is we’re basically it’s a chest opener. It’s just getting the shoulders right back, squeezing the shoulder blades behind you with your arms out to the side and I get the head back and everything. It’s the antidote to daily living. Daily living is when we lean forward to type the computer, to drive our car, to hold a baby, to eat our food, to pretty much do most things because our bodies say it tends to move towards where the eyes are going. And so we must open our chest up and stretch all those pectoral muscles which get very tight, and those front deltoids, the front of the shoulders, open that all up. That’s tremendous. It sounds like the physical side of things was really important for you, would it be fair to say that as an artist that you don’t typically get a lot of movement throughout the day? That’s cardiovascular or weight-bearing.

Anna – That’s true. I cycle a lot, I walk a lot before I got ill, I walked a lot, I cycled a lot. I did a lot of movement and I worked in the garden, I had a garden. So a lot of how do you call it, movement.

Clint – Alright. So okay, you’re already active, but you introduce some very targeted specific physiotherapy. And you change your diet dramatically and you got through the monotony of the diet by distracting yourself. How sort of significant was the progress with time? I mean, you must have been happy enough with the results to stick with this.

Anna – Yes. But as I told you before, it went so slowly that sometimes I thought that it doesn’t work. And because my mood was still going down, I started to meditate. I read a book by Jodie Spencer. I started to meditate because I couldn’t live anymore with myself how it was, so I thought, well, I’m meditating, my mood is going up, from there, maybe it’s easier to heal. So I started meditating in 2018 July, and I did it 3 times a day. I was so motivated, and I had the trick this trick. When I did meditation, I will mark it off.

Clint – Cross it off.

Anna – Yeah, that’s what motivated me. And now I have a lot of those papers.

Clint – So you had basically you got it doesn’t mean a dopamine hit, a happy hormone hit, every time you got to check off that you had meditated that time that day. And now you’ve got like pages and pages of checkboxes where you’ve meditated. And so that you’re obviously really found that that was beneficial for you.

Anna – Yes, it was very beneficial. When I meditated, the pain didn’t go away after the meditation, I had more distance to it. I thought, Well, there’s still pain, but it’s going over. It’s going over. It’s it’s temporarily, temporarily. And before the meditation, I didn’t think it was temporarily. I thought, this is my life. But with the meditations, there came some confidence that it’s going away. I’m still doing it every day and my meditation, I (inaudible) my own meditation. Now I’m talking to myself and I deeply talk with myself and I tell myself that you are healthy and that’s basically my meditation. I still do it every day for one time a day, for half an hour. My feelings they listen to me because, every week I’m improving I’m still improving. And I think it feels like a miracle. Well, I can talk to myself and I listen and my body is doing it again, it feels like a miracle. Perhaps it’s not a miracle, but it makes me very happy.

Clint – Yeah, I think the word miracle has connotations of not founded on science, and yet in the discussions that we’ve had recently, the summit presentation by Dr. Nisha Manek, and also the podcast interview that she did around about the same time where she gave a case study of someone with Ankylosing Spondylitis. In that sort of two-part sort of presentation series that she did. She put a lot of science around the ability of the brain with focused intention to manifest things in life, and that we are pretty much just vibrating energy at a nanoscopic level. With focused intention, we can create outcomes by using our mind. She spoke of the work of the scientist Tiller and his work and the ability of using focused intention to be able to change the PH of water. And this has been published in the medical literature. She gave the example of how on a work desk, if you’ve got items scattered all over the desk, you can order those items by putting a little bit of energy, by moving your hand over the items and putting them into a pile to create order. In the same way, your thoughts can be focused and brought into a singular, futuristic outcome that can, through that continuum focused intention, help to influence that outcome. So look, I fully believe what you’re saying and I think it’s powerful and I recommend it. And meditation is something that not just yourself, but a lot of us use to smaller or mostly and sometimes some people to a larger extent. But I find I get that separation from every problem in life just after five minutes of meditation, and my meditations pretty 101, I just sit and try and breathe and relax my body and calm my mind. Often, after three or four minutes, I feel like I’m good, I feel like that’s enough, I’m ready to go. But then, of course, it’s just my conscious brain trying to knock on the door again and say, Don’t forget about me. So I think that’s sensational. We’ve been reminded about the importance to meditate, and you’ve told us that this has been instrumental for you to continually feel better. You’ve stuck with the food despite its initial challenges with your taste buds in the transitional period. I’ll ask you more about food in a minute. And then the exercise whilst you were exercising initially, you went from just sort of casual recreational exercise into targeted physiotherapy, and this made a big difference as well to regain leg strength, muscle strength in the glute muscles to then transition back to the bike again. Let’s talk more about your diet, how much diversity do you now have in your diet?

Anna – I’m eating vegetables mostly, I’m eating the Greens without gluten. I’m eating thyme and nuts, roasted nuts. I’m eating everything warm because an (inaudible) person told me that it’s good for me to eat everything warm so I cook everything. Sometimes I with a little little bit of oil, I can handle that now. I stir herbs in the pan and that tastes good. I add coconut milk to my vegetables, I eat fruits but warm, I make them warm and seeds.

Clint – What about root vegetables, you said you got sick of sweet potatoes, but do you eat pumpkins or regular potatoes?

Anna – Yes, regular potatoes, pumpkins, no tomatoes.

Clint – And what’s for breakfast?

Anna – I have oats, oats, oats and I add dates.

Clint – Dates, Okay.

Anna – Apricots.

Clint – Apricots, great more dried fruit. Do you eat them?

Anna – Yes, a little bit, I put them in water the night before. Also the oates I put it in water the night before for easier digestion. Some nuts and fruits like apple or pear, something like that. So that’s my breakfast.

Clint – With the nuts added to that, it sounds like that would probably get you through to lunchtime, you might not need to snack.

Anna – No, after breakfast. I drink a little bit of coffee, so I make coffee. I throw almost everything out a little bit and then some oatmeal, and then I have coffee and some. Yeah, it’s just for the feeling and smell.

Clint – Yeah, you get the satisfaction and you feel like you’re not being restricted in what you love but you’re saying it’s only a little bit of coffee and the rest of it to be you said coconut milk or was it?

Anna – Oat milk.

Clint – Oat milk, Sorry. Yeah. Right. Okay. So what I’m picking up because all the nuances of each of us have a little bit different here and there, and there’s these aren’t guidelines. What I’m trying to illustrate here and to find out from you is that you’ve evolved a long way from the early stages of the pseudo greens, sweet potatoes, greens and so on. And it just goes to show that whilst you were at that point, highly inflamed eating simple foods. Now you are, as you put it, almost gone to no inflammation. But you have a much more diverse range of foods, including some that are higher in fat, which we know has some challenges if we’re highly inflamed. And we can only get there if we’re really well advanced with our gut healing and cellular membrane healing. This is sensational, I mean it’s really, really good and. What do your friends and family say about your transformation?

Anna – Well, yeah, my sister is very happy for me because she had to talk to me every day when I was crying, and I didn’t want to live anymore. And now when we see each other, I’m happy we can walk, so she’s very happy for me. My parents, they didn’t know that I was ill. But the rest of the family is happy for me and my friends.

Clint – Have you been back to the doctor again and asked the rheumatologist, or have you really put that on the back burner because you feel good and you’ve just continually improved slightly?

Anna – One time, I sent an email to my specialist and I told her I did this, I did this. I told her of the program, the Paddison Program. I didn’t hear from her but I think she read it and she’s seeing that I’m not coming back. Hmm. For two years, I haven’t been to the hospital. But she was open to it when I went there and I told her, I’m doing this, I’m eating curcumin and I’m doing that and I’m doing that, she was open to it, she wrote it down.

Clint – That tends to be quite an advanced level of knowledge in the Netherlands within the rheumatology community of the relationship between diet and rheumatoid arthritis. There is currently a study going on in your country looking into the relationship between a plant-based diet and rheumatoid arthritis. There is at least one rheumatologist that many of our community go to in the Netherlands because he is a supporter of what we do and understands the science. And so, it’s a good Country in terms of the medical knowledge of the natural and pharmaceutical balance. So that’s good to hear.

Anna – But when I first got to the rheumatologist, she told me diet has no influence on your illness. So I thought, well, I’m going to do it myself. But after two years, she has read things, I think, and she told me, Yes, diet has an influence on it, so she had studied. It happens in two years.

Clint – I don’t want to want to make to try and bridge too big of a gap, but I’ve always pictured the way that the specialists are going to learn this is through patience. my approach has not been to focus on doing a clinical trial on our program. Not that that isn’t valuable, and not that that isn’t something I want to do. It’s that it’s my belief is that if every second patient walks into their doctor and says, I’m doing this program and I feel twice as good as what I do last time I saw you. Then eventually that face-to-face contact with these messengers of the truth will eventually make them convert and have to read and research the existing science that’s already there. Right? Another publication about what we’re doing just goes on top of the pile of what’s already there, like if there were no more studies ever. The sufficient concrete evidence, to go down the path that you’ve gone down, right? What we need is for the patients to be walking in and telling their physician. This is what works, and eventually one after the other, after the other, they’re going to say, You know what? I’m the one that’s in the dark, I’m looking silly because my patients know more about their gut and about how to heal this disease than I do. That, I can tell you, is going to be how we transition the entire R.A. community. Because microbiome studies have been coming out now for seven, eight years. Rheumatologists are aware of the studies, but the studies will then go on to say and therefore we should investigate drugs that can manipulate the microbiome. And it’s like face plant come on, you’re kidding me. Why doesn’t the conclusion say, and therefore this is how you should eat to influence the gut? So, so anyway, what I’m insinuating is perhaps there is a little bit of a steady flow of patients, just like you coming into this rheumatologist’s clinic and telling her, Hey. I’m feeling better, this is what I did. And she’s starting to think, Oh, I better look into this because I don’t want to be the only one in my own clinic who doesn’t know how to reverse inflammation naturally. I know it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But as Dr. Gregor says, being a doctor is sometimes the ultimate disqualifier of nutritional advice. That’s an interesting statement from a doctor, and I think that it’s hard to be a physician, and a medical expert and also be a nutritionist. They don’t tend to go too well together, and I think that’s a fair comment. Any other wisdom pieces to share with us before we wrap up?

Anna – Ok, I exercised, and I have the stinging nettle, I have them on my balcony and when I still have a little bit of pain, I just do like this then the inflammation goes away.

Clint – So you tap the skin with the actual stinging nettle that everyone else tries to get away from and you’re deliberately tapping it against your skin?

Anna – Yes, and it always helps when it’s a nasty pain, and I do it with stinging nettle, the pain is just on the background, and after a few days, it’s gone. So there are people who cannot stand the stinging nettle, but I can stand it and it’s it’s very good for me.

Clint – Okay, I’ve got to ask another question about this. I saw you hold the stinging nettle under the pot so that you weren’t getting your good hand contacting the nettle? Are we talking about the same kind of stinging nettle. I mean, if we were to grab it with our bare hands and would it hurt us or am I? Is the word stinging nettle a little bit sort of misleading?

Anna – It’s hurting, and most of the people don’t like to touch it. And that’s just what’s helping. It’s all my herp books that say that because of your body, your body is making just a little inflammation and it’s helping the big inflammation that’s there.

Clint – Yeah, sure. Maybe because the inflammation is triggered at the surface skin level, which is a completely different inflammation that’s being generated internally in the synovium and that this different set of inflammatory interactions somehow creates an overall compensatory reduction in inflammation in the joint ss well. I’m only just thinking out loud, but that’s interesting. For those people who want to try this at home, are we talking about just a general local gardening shop, stinging nettle, right? We’re not talking about some exotic one that we can’t locate?

Anna – No. I think it’s growing everywhere in every country. You must not do it every day, just twice a week or 3 times a week, because otherwise, it’s too much for the body.

Clint – And how long do you do it on the inflamed joint?

Anna – How long?

Clint – How long do you apply the nettle to the skin?

Anna – Oh, just a few moments until I feel it, and then it’s enough.

Clint – Okay. Okay, you don’t want to be doing like a minute?

Anna – No, just when I feel it, it turns a little bit red, and then it’s OK. Not everyone can stand it, but.

Clint – I love that. You know, in all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never heard that one. Okay, thanks. Yeah. What other magic tricks have you got for us?

Anna – I have an oil, Mahanarayana Thailam, and I put it on my body twice a week. And that’s softening, it’s for circulation, which is a very good oil for for this kind of things

Clint – Have you written that down? How to spell that?

Anna – I’ll write it down?

Speaker2 – Then I’ll read it out.

Anna – Mahanarayana Thailam

Clint – Okay. Thank you. All right, great. So we’ve added the stinging nettles and that ayurvedic oil to our checklist. Is there anything else?

Anna – I also use CBD oil, 1 dropped on the morning, 1 drop in the evening, raw oil, and then I think it’s very good for me. Also personal, but for me, it works very well. Yeah. I also go to the acupuncturist once a month.

Clint – Interesting. Well, that is great. And how’s the knee now Are you feeling good under the knee?

Anna – Yeah, it’s almost healed, I can sit down, I can bend it completely.

Clint – So you can sit, down with your bottom on your heels.

Anna – Yes,

Clint – That is brilliant, that is one of the most encouraging and therapeutic positions. If you can continue to do that on a regular basis, it really is really cleansing for the knee so continue to do that.

Anna – Yeah, it feels great to do it after 3 years, 4 years, of not doing it. Then,

Anna – A few months ago, I thought, Well, I can do it, I just sit on my feet. That’s just great.

Clint – Do you have a photograph of yourself when you were in a lot of struggle? And then we could get a photograph of you sitting on your heels? I’d love to be able to do that comparison.

Anna – I can make a photograph on sitting on my heels, but I didn’t take pictures when I was so miserable.

Clint – Sometimes we want to avoid those times and we don’t want any recollection, do we? All right. Let’s get a picture, get someone to take a nice photo of you sitting on your heels and we’ll use that for the image for the podcast.

Clint – Anna, this has been just lovely having a chat with you. It’s been really, really enjoyable, and thanks for your honesty and thanks for a bit of a laugh here as well. And congratulations on everything that you’ve done with your health and keep it up. My message is always after at the end of these sorts of discussions, just not get complacent, because I’ve personally made a big mistake a few years ago and it took a lot of work to get under control. I’ve witnessed it as well, people getting complacent and then really having a big effort again to try and reel back the inflammation again, taking a long time to do so. So make sure you don’t go messing around and cheating and getting complacent. Keep doing what you’re doing, it’s fantastic, and congratulations.

Anna – Thank you, thank you very much for the program and for this podcast.

Clint – You’re welcome. I appreciate you and all that you’re doing. So let’s leave it there. Have a wonderful rest of your day and let’s talk again soon.