September 14

Shelly celebrates 1 year off drugs

We discuss how:- Shelly is celebrating 1 year off drugs and 1 month off medications thanks to the Paddison Program- She found great support in the Paddison Program community- Her liver levels were very high during therapy with Methotrexate, Sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine- She went on another therapy with Prednisone and Methotrexate that caused hair loss and fatigue- Within two weeks after starting the Program she was able to completely cut off Prednisone- Her blood tests are now on track- She now exercises has more control on her breath- She enjoys her health in a variety of ways





Clint: Here we are again Paddison Podcast another great success story is with us today. Shelly has joined us and she’s just up the road from where I am out here in Jupiter Florida. So we’ve set up a Skype call and we’re ready to go and the Internet is absolutely sensational. So Shelly we’re going to have a good video call today. How are you?

Shelly: I’m great. And it is just so nice for me to finally meet you face to face. I’m so grateful to you. I feel like I don’t want to seem like a crazy stalker but you feel like a good friend to me because you’ve been such a big part of my journey to good health. So thank you for allowing me the chance to meet you and share my story today.

Clint: Oh you’re welcome. You know one of the reasons that I do this, Melissa originally said to me if we can only just help one person by putting all this stuff together. And that was the spark of our efforts to share this with others. And so I guess the whole closed loop on that is to actually be able to then hear the improvements and life changes of other people. And so this is the best part of what I do. This beats doing anything else. It’s just hearing people who have improved their lives. So this is going to be really enjoyable. And what I do know is I don’t actually want to know the story before we start. You’ve only given me a few bullet points for me to help to guide this conversation but you know I’m going to be learning just like our audience as we go here as to what you’ve been through and so forth. But before we do that in traditional fashion as of late can you just give us a 30 second summary of where you were and where you are now as a comparison.

Shelly: Yeah well I can relate to your video that when I first stumbled across you I watched your video and your journey and it really just resembled mine and that it was kind of overnight. And it was little over two years ago. I woke up and suddenly I had all this inflammation and I had been very active and never experienced anything like that before. And it really took the turn very quickly and I found myself really difficult to walk and really difficult to do anything. Difficult to get out of bed, to shower or to brush my hair. I felt like a 90 year old woman overnight. And through a journey of about four to five months I was officially diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and they started me on the course of drugs which I’ll get into in more detail and eventually I just decided there’s going to be something more to this leg. If I did this to myself over the course of years whether it be through medications I was on as a kid or just eating processed foods, there was going to be a way that my body will heal and just really had the fight to find another way and found you and started the program and was then two weeks felt so much better. And then over the course of the last year I celebrated one year off of being all my drugs, all my medications last month, and I am celebrating that, like that’s huge.

Shelly: And I owe a lot of that to you and to the other people who encouraged me on your podcast. I watch them regularly because you need that. This is not an easy journey even being off the drugs for a year. It takes great discipline and fight every single day and good choices. And so I appreciate all the encouragement that you’re bringing, your community brings to me every single day and I hope that I can provide a little bit of encouragement to you.

Clint: Well you already have you know, I’m getting goose bumps listening to your story. So you know each one of these episodes I think it’s nice to go out to our audience and to sort of offer a different perspective on a different case study you feel like a different person’s individual journey and I think yours is going to appeal to people who haven’t been diagnosed very long ago. So they’re kind of maybe only had rheumatoid in the last few years or so. And you’re a wonderful example of someone who has embraced the evidence based Paddison Program early and adopted it and had tremendous results to be off all your medications. Now a whole year is fabulous and managing it entirely in a way that I describe as complete confidence and control. So maybe expand a little bit on how do you do that at the moment. When you start to get a little bit of a reaction as we call it instead of a flare as you start to get a bit reaction, what do you do.

Shelly: Yeah that’s a great question. And you know my journey has evolved over this last year you know because the process of healing is it’s a slow one. And so where I find myself now as you know I start my day with green filled pack smoothie, I pack as much variety of greens and my smoothie or my fresh juice in the morning. I do eat a lot of salads and a lot of fresh vegetables. I’m at the place now though where I can add some extra things into my diet. And I know kind of where that limit is and there are those things that I would love to indulge that I know that if I do, I’m gonna feel it a little bit. I’m going to feel a little bit of inflammation in my hands, not a lot because I’m healed so well but it’s just enough to go on mmmm….you really shouldn’t be eating that. And I get my smoothie or my juice, you know I get back to it.

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Clint: Yeah and that’s awesome. And that is exactly how it’s going to be from now. On my situation now that I can you know really push the barriers like I can have an oily Thai food for instance and that would have made me incapable of walking when I was in my really bad days, but I really don’t want to because I find the oils disgusting like really just washing up after a guest has had something like that at our house where there’s oils on the plate. And the time it takes and the extra soap to cut through the fats on the plate and I’m thinking what’s it doing, what’s going on inside you if you’ve just put all this in your body and when I eat that sort of food I just don’t feel right. For me it doesn’t translate to symptoms but I believe that if I did it every day that I could also experience a symptomatic return and I just don’t ever want to find out. I just think I know this is also clear. I see it every day when I work with people. It’s like Groundhog Day sometimes it’s like, hey Clint you know blah blah blah and then I tried some oils Oh boy am I in pain today. And I’m thinking Ok, like I don’t need to know again and again that would be the outcome if I was to eat that foods all the time. And so what I expect for you is that with time if you stick more and more closely to the simpler version of your current diet that you’ll continue to heal more and more.

Clint: So I had a question today inside our support membership and they said: Clint I wake up and my stiffness now has gone down to about 15 minutes. I woke up and I got morning stiffness for about 15 minutes. And people like to check in with me every time and they say do you still get morning stiffness? And I said absolutely zero like zero morning stiffness. But it took me years to get from where you’re at right now to absolutely capital letters zero morning stiffness that would have been yeah two or three years from where you are right now or maybe a little bit less. But I’ve always been cautionary because I’ve wanted to just create the most insanely awesome results for myself. And yeah. And at the consequence of maybe not being able to eat out at restaurants as much during that time. And so its up to all of us. Once we have the control we can then play that little game of do we want to push it a little bit because are going out to dinner with friends and we can have a little bit of food that we know a little bit risky but then we also know how to reset the next day. And you got and you’re straight back in your green smoothies and stuff. And so you’re in that control, you’re the puppeteer of your own future and its a powerful place to be.

Shelly: It really is. There is nothing like it, you know I have talked to a lot of people who find themselves with some kind of autoimmune and they’re like…I could never do that, I could never give up everything you give up. It’s too hard and I think well isn’t living in pain so much harder, isn’t giving up all the things you love even harder than that? So it’s just worth it, it’s just so worth it, to have your life back and to be able to live life the way God intended for you to live.

Clint: Yeah absolutely. And listeners might think, well you know what if it comes back and the truth is, here’s the truth right. You have all the tools to prevent it from ever coming back again. And I mean that, like I have no fear of this disease. This disease has been smashed and crushed and obliterated, ok? And the reason I have such confidence in my body and I can sort of project this into your mind so that you feel the same is because I saw my body change ever so slowly over the years. And when I would do something like we talked about like we make an error like if there’s some cheese in a mashed potato at a restaurant we don’t know or whatever the thing might be whatever it might be or even the stress or something, right, little thing here or there.

Clint: I saw the action-reaction behaviour in my body so clearly. For so long I know how my body reacts like intimately knowing someone that you’ve lived with closely for the last 40 years for instance right, you just know how they behave. They’re so predictable. Same with how my joint pains were. It was so predictable. And so now that I know how I eventually extinguished the smouldering of the flame and just got to a smaller and then slowly slowly it extinguished over a long time. I know that, should that flame you know want to reignite, I’ve just got the most ultimate weapon of anti- inflammatory. It’s like having this enormous fire truck parked out the back. And if anything just starts to smolder it’s just unleash the weapon of water on top of it. You know you just feel that degree of confidence. And so your confidence will build and continue to develop with time. Because as you go an additional year and then another year where your blood tests are great, your body feels great, You really develop this you know this feeling that you know what, you can do that you know.

Shelly: Absolutely. You know what’s really hard is when you’re on the medications and I know a lot of people are. I couldn’t tell what the food was doing because the medications are suppressing the inflammation and so I’m like I was on your program but I didn’t know what was working. And of course my rheumatologist said you know eat a balanced diet but it’s not the food, you’re gonna have to be on medications the rest of your life. She was not willing at all to reduce my meds. And part of my story is that it wasn’t until my liver levels started increasing like quadruple that she’s like okay we’ve got to start reducing the methotrexate. She took me off of all that eventually. My liver levels were still increasing. She finally took me off all the sulfasalazine, and then the hydroxychloroquine and she’s like I don’t know what’s going on it’s not the meds and I’m thinking how can it not be the medications? My liver levels were fine prior to me getting on all the medications and now they’re off the charts. And so she actually referred me to a liver specialist and I was off all meds and still feel angry. She said well it’s going to come back. You know the drugs are going to be in your system for about six months, your inflammation is going to come back. And I went to my primary doctor and told him what was going on because he has known me for years and he said I don’t believe you have anything wrong with your liver. What else are you taking?

Shelly: And I happened to be taking probiotic and Vitamin D. And I said should I start taking those two. He said you know let’s just rule everything out. Start taking everything. And it was over the course of the next two months my liver levels came back to a normal range and had my liver levels not gone up. I’d still be on the medications he has of that. And I think maybe I took a Vitamin D that was too high of a level potentially. I still haven’t figured out why. Well you know. I know the medications played a part in that.

Clint: Look, it’s like absolutely vanilla flavoured knowledge that Methotrexate will raise up ALT and AST which are the indicators that your livers start to blow. And then normally when people come off Methotrexate at least you know this is my non doctor observation of others. It only takes a few weeks for those liver enzymes to come back down. Now if you’re on triple therapy you’re also on the Plaquenil and the Sulfasalazine. Now plaquenil is a D-mod. So they’re all disease modifying drugs. All of these could have been impacting in such a way that the markers were so high that it took more than just a few weeks to come down. You know it’s not impossible that other supplementation was affecting the liver. But I’ve never heard of probiotics or Vitamin D having that effect. I mean it’s kind of like you know there’s some screaming upstairs and you know that your kids screams all the time. And then you know you remove the kid and the screaming is gone. But could it still be something else? Well probably unlikely. It probably was the kids screaming.

Shelly: Yeah.

Clint: Because we know that that’s what it does. Luckily ours don’t too often. So yeah. Those three drugs would have been the reason and then it’s just taken a few months for that for your liver to come down again after they were removed. Now tell us then about your experience on those drugs. In what order did you go on them. How did they make you feel both in terms of side effects or as some people like to put that “effects” right they’re not side effects. These are part of the effects of the drug. And also in terms of pain reduction. So I’m just curious your experience on Methotrexate, sulfasalazine, plaquenil in what order, what were they like?

Shelly: Well let me back up just a little bit. So I actually had to go to a different rheumatologist initially that my doctor referred me to. And when I went there it was at the absolute worst experience of my life. This woman she was supposed to have all my blood work because I had done it weeks in advance and I get there. She didn’t have any of my blood work. And she basically was trying to tell me I had symptoms that I didn’t have and try to diagnose me with lupus. But the thing that I have to share is that she ended up at the end of the day. You know I really wanted an answer. I didn’t know for sure that I had rheumatoid yet. I said well, I lead a busy life. I have two kids, I’m a wife. I have a very active job where I serve other people. How my (inaudible)ceased to function and she tells me well, the good news is that RA is not terminal. The bad news is you probably have to quit your job if you’re going to have to live a long life of pain and suffering. And had I not had my bestfriend come with me to that appointment. I would have thought that I hallucinated that whole conversation. But my friend heard me, hear those words. And I was just devastated. And she put me on prednisone, a high dose of prednisone and ultimately never went back to see her again.

Shelly: I had my pity party for about three days where I’m like I just been given a death sentence. Like my life is never gonna be the same. And then through my faith I just felt like God kind of shook me and said listen, this isn’t the life I have called you to live. You know you have purpose. And if you stick with me I’m going to walk you through this journey and I’ve created your body to heal. I just had to show you what that looks like. And so I found this other rheumatologist she immediately starts me on methotrexate. And as I read two weeks and she kept upping the dose in addition to the prednisone. She wanted me to be able to wean off the prednisone, but every time I tried the inflammation would just be crazy. And so then she started me on the second drug. My hair was falling out from the methotrexate. I’m one of the lucky ones that just didn’t tolerate that drug very good. And so my hair would come out by the handfuls and she kept starting me on the other drugs. I would say I handled all three drugs pretty well except for the hair loss. Except fatigue obviously was a big part, kind of a foggy head. But then it was somewhere in the midst of those three drugs that I found you. And within two weeks of starting your program and doing the three days and then the 10 or 11 days, I was completely off prednisone with no ill effects. And I thought, that spoke to me volumes, like I had been trying to get out of prednisone for months and it wasn’t until two weeks of your program I was able to cut it, almost cold turkey and had no problem in doing so.

Clint: That’s absolutely fantastic because you know that drug that’s the devil’s drug, that prednisone. You know I can’t offer medical advice and I hesitate to share my full and complete opinions about that drug on these public recordings but you know when I coach people how to get off that drug we normally put together strategies where we deploy lots of lots of different substitutions for pain relief so that they can get off that drug because that drug just causes so much leaky gut, it contributes to osteoporosis. It has all sorts of other side effects I’ve just had research put together for me that’s just in my inbox right now. Just looking at last night actually before I went to bed. It’s so difficult to get off the drug. Yeah, its just, I don’t think I’ve ever even put out to the world just how bad I think it is.

Shelly: Yeah.

Clint: Yeah.

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Shelly: I believe it, I was on it for at least four to five months I believe. And I said you know I know some people have been on it a lot longer than that but I couldn’t sleep. You know it’s hard to sleep with it. You’re always hungry. And not to mention everything that it’s doing internally. So I was so glad to finally be able to get rid of that drug. And you’re scared to get rid of it. I feel people’s, you know I really do have sympathy because you’re so scared to have the pain back that you scared to stop taking it. But your program and it made me able to do that very very easily.

Clint: Wow. Well that is awesome. And just before we close out the prednisone discussion, again none, no one should be stopping their drugs or adjusting their medication levels without speaking to their doctor. What we do and what I work with people personally within our support group is coach them how they can work with their doctor to achieve this. Prednisone is often a discretionary dose for patients meaning that if they need to take a little more they can if they want to type it down they can. And with those discretionary drugs then the path forward for the individual there is a little bit more flexibility. And so depending on how people have been instructed by their doctors, they have a certainly an opportunity to substitute which is the correct word, substitute some of the pain reducing methods that they use with ones that aren’t as detrimental or not detrimental at all to their gut. OK. So you’ve done great, off to a great start. Two weeks and you’re off prednisone. This has set you up now to have an equal battle because when you’re trying to heal with prednisone in the mix you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back. So now that you’ve gotten off the prednisone and you’re still on the other drugs what happened next?

Shelly: Well I’m feeling great at this point and I’m trying to talk to my rheumatologist about what I’m doing and she was not very interested in hearing about it. And she said don’t stop taking your drug. She was always threatening me to not stop taking my drugs. And I as much as I wanted her to reduce them to the least amount possible she was never willing to do that. And then steps in my liver levels.

Clint: Almost some intervention from God.

Shelly: It was, it was a blessing in disguise. Absolutely. I believe that because it allowed her to say OK, I need you to start taking everything. And I took a big gulp when she said Okay let’s stop taking everything. I’m like really? like you, you never wanted me to do that and now you’re telling me I can do that. And it was the best thing ever. As scary as that was it has been the beginning of my journey of being pain free drug free.

Clint: Wow. It’s profound. Now you know I even get very concerned when this situation arises when I’m working with someone, they say to me, look this is what the doctor said. And I actually say well my liver enzymes used to blow out as well. So one point my ALT and AST became very elevated when I was on maximum dose of tablet Methotrexate 25 milligrams per week. And what my rheumatologist did is he administered twice the dose of folic acid supplementation. And in my instance by shouldering the tablets either day of my methotrexate dose I was able to bring my liver enzyme back into the normal range just and so his suggestion worked perfectly for me. So if that hadn’t have worked I may have been also looking at having to come off that drug or try a different drug. And so the reason that I’ve mention that is because I consider coming off the drugs altogether because of the liver situation to also be very risky because I think that what we’re looking for is a period of stability. And you had a really good period of stability you felt great you were using our program to keep an internal calm and you were using the drugs to keep the symptoms calm. And that’s a good place to be because if you’re on our program and you’ve got very little to no symptoms because of additional medications then you’re healing because the foods that you’re eating are designed to heal and there’s an absence of foods that cause problems. And so long periods of low pain are healing months and so that was a good spot that you were in right then. And if we had been working together closely I would have said Shelly I actually think that you want to try and just keep the drugs the same and try and get your liver enzymes back under control using that little technique that I just described about folic acid supplementation and because you know you’re in a healing path you know you’re on a healing trajectory. And so the coming off was definitely risky but a big payoff. Now what happened when you went to see your rheumatologist a month or two later and you said, look I’m still fine.

Shelly: I’m a bad girl Clint, I never went back to her and I ended up having to go about an hour away just to find what I thought was a good rheumatologist. And so after she took me off the drugs, I haven’t came back to see her I probably should pay that visit to her though. And just to say hey look at me now. Do you have any questions. I’d like to tell you a few things.

Clint: Yeah, it’s funny. You know I’ve had that same thought myself. But then you know part of me resents the fact that I’d have to go and pay a lot of money just to tell them that what I said in the first place was working and then, them to say something that would almost certainly annoy me. And I don’t know what that would be but it would probably be annoying.

Shelly: It would. And I can guarantee you that would happen.

Clint: Right. It would probably something like well it’s going to come back any day now. And you all you’re doing is you’re taking a big risk on your life and all. I’m not sure. Now I kind of doing a little disservice to my rheumatologist. He was absolutely outstanding. And I know that he wouldn’t say that to me but I am sort of generalizing how rheumatologists are, my rheumatologist was absolutely wonderful. The most gentle and supportive man ever. And everyone in Sydney Australia or even in you know somewhat nearby cities I recommend they all go and see him. He’s fabulous and was completely supportive of everything I did. Shocked out of his socks when he saw the results and didn’t believe that I would get there. I do suspect throughout the process because it did take a very long time and he watched me go through a lot of pitfalls before I came out the other side. But boy, never did he force anything upon me that I didn’t want and just educated me along the whole path. So in your sense you’re God helping you was the experience you had with your liver enzymes. And for me it was to walk a couple of things. For me, one having the most supportive wife you could ever ask for in thousands of lives. Another was that I had a stand- up comedy career which I only work one or two nights a week and the rest of the time I could dedicate to my healing. And the third was having a rheumatologist that did not crush my belief. Every time I went to see him. So there are just three of I guess Multiple Blessings. But all right so you never went back. Now, have you been monitoring your blood tests? And how do they look.

Shelly: They look good. I go to my primary doctor and probably every four to five months. And we run the blood tests and it’s been a while since I’ve had a run. You know I think you’ve mentioned this in some previous podcasts some people their CRP or their SED rate they’re already normal, mine were kind of that way. I fell under that camp where even when I was diagnosed they were out of range. And so although I heard you recently say even though they were in range you get them to the very lowest of the low. And so that’s what I’m going to be looking at the next time I go in a couple of months I’m going to have him run that sensitivity so that I can see those test to see where I’m at. But I think I’m doing well. I would say yes the numbers are probably pretty good here.

Clint: Yeah. Thanks for being the most outstanding student, by the way it seems like you take on board a lot of the stuff that I’m putting out which is, you know, nice to hear too because sometimes you create these pieces of work and then you wonder does anyone really taking these on board. So that’s great. Yeah. You’ve got it all under control you’re going to get a high sensitivity CRP test, it’s actually a different test to the regular CRP test. Sometimes the doctor has to ask for it otherwise they’ll just run CRP.

Shelly: That does motivate you and that’s what I told my primary doctor. He’s like well you look good and I don’t think you need to come back and I’m like, but can I come back? Because it’s motivating to me to see that I’m on track. And I just want to keep doing what I’m doing. So he’s supportive of that and I’m thankful it’s good to have that doctor whether it’s your rheumatologist or your primary doctor who is on your side and able to give you the support that you need.

Clint: Absolutely.

Shelly: You’ll be glad to know that I work for a church. And so I talk to a lot of people and a lot of people have come up to me and they know I’m pretty open about what I’ve gone through and so several people who have had RA who do have a local rheumatologist who I actually recommend highly. Now even though I’ve never gone there and they actually have told them about what I have done and they’re wanting to pursue the Paddison Program and the rheumatologist who isn’t very supportive of getting the new dosages to the lowest denominator and having them do the Paddison Program so I think that’s fantastic that finally at least part of the community is listening to what patients are saying and what is working and that there is another alternative in addition to what they were telling their patients to do.

Clint: Yeah absolutely. Yeah. Someone said to me yesterday they found about us because of their rheumatologist. And you know that’s the highest compliment isn’t it. When the medical profession at the highest level are recommending a dietary solution that has been shown to get results for other of their patients you know that things are ever so slightly starting to shift. And I was just enjoying listening to you a moment ago and I wanted to share this with you, the way you were speaking so confidently and knowledgeably about topics about concepts around the rheumatoid arthritis topic. You know the way that we just freely talk about C-reactive protein and SED rate and ALT and AST. And what they are and how they influence them I mean the level of knowledge. Now the default level of knowledge within people with this disease within our community is so high. I mean we all have a great understanding of what’s going on, how to work on it, what the objective is. And I just feel so like impressed at the levels of conversation that we can now have about this. When I first went to my rheumatologist I mean you know nothing. You don’t know anything. Everything is scary. You don’t know what the concepts are. You don’t know what you’re trying to achieve. You don’t know what’s possible. You get told by everything on the Internet that you’ve got no hope. It’s like the first rheumatologist you went through. And so you know isn’t it good that we can sit here and we can have these kind of conversations. We’re masters of our own condition and yes just that’s just fantastic.

Shelly: It is. It absolutely is.

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Clint: So wow. OK. So what information would you like to share with our audience to impart some of your experiences or tell a story about something that might enlighten some people who may have went through a similar situation. You got some ideas you might like to share about your experience to help others.

Shelly: For me personally in addition to the Paddison Program and you incorporate so much of this into your program. You know Im always burning the candle at both ends when my RA kicked in overnight. And I was working too hard and not giving myself the time that I needed to really take care of my body. I wasn’t getting the rest that I needed. I would just say you know it’s really a whole approach. You got to look at your whole body and figure out what is causing stress in your life. And how can you balance your life in every area. How can you give yourself that time in the morning before you start a very busy day taking kids to school or going to work and give yourself some time to meditate or pray or get in the Bible whatever it is for you. Exercise is a huge component which I know we haven’t talked about yet but exercise is huge you know trying to sweat a little bit every day and giving yourself that time. It’s worth it and you have to figure out how to give yourself that time to really heal I think to your full potential. Yeah totally. I think in our culture we just we’re running all the time and we’re under just a lot of stress due to the way we live in in America around the world it doesn’t matter where we are. Everybody just runs, runs, runs and we have to just slow down a little bit and focus on ourselves and how we can wear our best health and our best being and I’ll be a better mom because of it. I’ll be a better wife because of it. I’ll be a better worker for my employer and I’ll be healthier. And that’s been a big takeaway for me in this last year it’s been a journey to health that it’s been a whole approach and just how can I take more deep breaths during the day and I do. I take a lot of deep breaths during the day and I don’t think I did that before. I think I was always just running. You can never catch my breath. I’m very intentional being very intentional.

Clint: Fantastic. And do you meditate in the mornings or do you try to.

Shelly: I try to a couple times a day, you know I will in the mornings. I’ll try to do some stretching. For me, I read the Bible and I try to just focus on something other than myself. And I will Journal I’ll write some stuff in a journal. Yes very calming and relaxing to me. And you know spend some time in prayer. But everybody has their own thing. Know it looks a little different but I think it’s really important to start your day in a calm way and then the first thing I put on my body is something healthy a nice green juice which you know I know a lot of people say how can you drink that. Well first it’s an acquired taste but then I love it now. You know your body starts to crave what it needs. And before when I was craving sugar I craved you know all the wrong things and now I can’t wait to have my green smoothie or my green juice. And so for those people who are hesitating, just give it a try just give it a try give it everything you have and you’ll be amazed at the difference that it’ll make in your health and your health is worth fighting for every single day and if you make a bad decision or a bad choice that’s OK. Your next meal is a new decision and any choice and you just get right back on.

Clint: So true. I like thinking these days about our foods and you know you mentioned the green smoothies. I like thinking of foods as to whether or not we’re serving our energy needs and our taste buds or whether or not we’re actually serving our gut bacteria. And so, I see that gut bacteria are like a par 5 on a golf course right. You don’t need to play golf to understand this metaphor. So simple sugars are like a par three. You take one hit and then there’s the hole and then that whole process is complete because it only goes a little bit down your small intestine and then a little bit further on you have a par 4. But what you’re really trying to do for optimal health is play a round of golf where you’re only doing par fives. Everything has to go a long way down right through the intestine so that it reaches where all the bacteria are so that they can get some food as well. That’s resistant starch and fibre. So when you’re drinking a green smoothie in the morning. You’ve got the simple sugars there. See you’re getting that instant gratification of that sweet taste. That’s your par three. Okay. And then you’ve got some probably undigested or unsmashed up mixtures of cellulose and fruit sugars that go about halfway through. And that’s your par 4. And then you’re getting so you’re getting some sustained kind of energy and then you’ve got all of the bulk of that fibre which is going all the way to the end and creating a smorgasbord for your healthy gut bacteria.

Clint: And so you know when our taste buds hit through the gut brain axis are being influenced by our gut bacteria. And every morning you’re feeding them a smorgasbord of fibre that they absolutely love. No wonder you want it every day because you just feel so good having it. And you know thinking of foods in terms of how much of this is going to end up deep within my digestive system to get to my gut bacteria I think is a nice fun way that I’ve been thinking of things recently and I wanted to share that as you talked about your grades.

Shelly: I like that analogy. My husband’s been in the golf business so I can totally understand your analogy.

Clint: Right it’s big here in Florida isn’t it particularly where we are here in Jupiter. I mean it’s good golf crazy certain times of the year I believe.

Shelly: Oh yes.

Clint: So how much would you say that your faith has influenced your outcome here. I know you said He’s led you to adopting our program and also we think there was a little touch there when maybe the liver enzymes. I know we have a lot of people who are believers in God and certainly I myself. So what are your thoughts on that.

Shelly: To me it changed everything. You know God has created in my opinion us for a purpose. And he doesn’t want us to live a life of pain and suffering and he doesn’t want us to be stuck at home because we’re just in so much pain that we can’t live life and you know we look at our bodies and how God created them. And it’s amazing what our bodies can do and you know you cut yourself and it heals. You break a bone and it heals. Why would that gut be any different than that. And so after my three days pity party God just said- girl, like come on don’t you know me better than that. Then I created you to heal. And I have this whole plan for you and so you know get your birches on and let’s get to work. And he just really created a real desire of knowledge in me. And that’s what I did all my research and just I couldn’t get enough. I still can’t get enough. I’m just constantly reading and just watching podcasts. And I love hearing about people’s successes and it’s just amazing to me in even in curing cancer. You know it goes well beyond autoimmune, cancer is kind of an autoimmune. And so my faith had everything to do with it and just having the hope and just the truth that God has something much better in store than living with this disease in a really bad state.

Clint: Yeah absolutely. Something that I always I agree with everything you’ve said, something that I have adopted in my life for a very long time and this has only come about through experience. But as I get older and I’ll be 42 next month I find that when things don’t work out for me in a way that I’ve desired and I’ve pictured I said that’s what I want and whether it be a trivial thing like I don’t know like in the past if I wanted to get on to a certain TV show as a performer or something and it didn’t happen or whatever it might be nothing. Why. Why. Because I deserve that. Words like that you know. And then after enough days of the pity party as you put it I realize and I take great comfort in realizing that there’s something even better beyond that that I’m not aware of and it’s not that that is actually where I’m meant to be going but it’s something even better. And when I’ve adopted that mindset I get a tingle and I get excited. And I believe it because that’s the most important thing and I believe it and I believe that God has put a tremendous path forward for me. And if I’m not meant to get on the TV show my career back home in Australia isn’t meant to be as high as what I had hoped as a stand- up comedian. Maybe I’m meant to be doing this. Do you know what I mean?

Shelly: I can’t I probably will get a little teary eyed talking to you about this but I just was so excited to talk to you face to face today because I had a feeling you were also a believer but I just know you were changing people’s lives in such a positive way. And even though this might not be your first career choice Oh man what a difference you are making in the lives of so many people. You have truly changed the path of my life. And you know there’s a lot of people who have struggled with this disease for 10, 20, 30 years and I’m fortunate that I found you as early as I did. But to anyone out there who’s been struggling with this for a lifetime it’s still not too late. You still have hope. You know just give it a try and see the improvement that your body will make. You know I always think it’s funny when the doctors say that it’s just your body attacking itself. You know and they kind of end it there. That’s not the end of the story. Let’s get to the root of the problem and take your health in your own hands. And even if your doctor isn’t saying that there is another path. You know and believe. But you said you have to believe it. And I did exactly what you said in your Paddison Program and I put a sticky note all over my mirror and everywhere that I was in the car and pain free drug free you know anything that motivated me. I had it blasted all over. Because we need those reminders because life isn’t easy, life is really hard. It’s a lot easier for me knowing that I have a God who loves me no matter what and who will always be there. But number two, to know that if we follow this plan and we believe it, we are going to see some improvement. That’s true for me. And I just thank you so much.

Clint: You’re very welcome. I think that the word hope you know is such a word that comes up so often and when I give presentations I always incorporate a section about hope towards the end and you can see the audience move. You know there’s an emotional connection with that word and I say that hope is just like love because you can go without love for many years sometimes and then someone just looks at you in a certain way or you know you just you feel something happens and in an instant a feeling of love can return.

Clint: And in the same way it is with hope because you can be without hope for a long period of time but then you hear one thing or you learn one thing and hope can come back in an instant. And I defined hope as simply being the game plan from moving from A to B and a lack of hope is simply not knowing what the game plan is to get from A to B. And once someone knows that they are on to the game plan, the whole game changes. Hope comes back in an instant and once we have that game plan and we see what’s possible and it makes sense, boom! there’s hope, and that’s with you know it’s exciting. Yeah.

Clint: So cool. All right. Well we’ve had a great chat. Is there anything else before we wrap up that you would like to share. Any final thoughts. I’d like to maybe if I may find out what’s next for you. What do you got planned. Have you got some trips coming up.How are you going to enjoy your precious health.

Shelly: Well you know I enjoy my health in a lot of ways. I love playing tennis or a game called Pickleball. If you’re in Florida it’s more of a retiree game but I love it. It’s kind of a cross between ping pong and tennis.

Clint: I’ve never seen it.

Shelly: Oh it’s a blast. I also enjoy getting out of the water kayaking or paddle boarding. And so I’ll be doing that but not in the next week. And you need to start getting prepared for hurricane Irma as well as I do. It looks like hurricane Irma is headed to Florida’s way. So that’s what I’m doing during this week.

Clint: Right. Yeah. Just as we’re recording this, were a couple of days out from being told at Irma’s coming this way so hopefully it’s not a disaster by the time we released this podcast. It will have passed by the time we have this released. But well, you’ve frighten me a little bit, we better stock up on a few more supplies that will be interesting to experience a hurricane here we haven’t so far only been here a few months so far. So Melissa did buy a few things at the store. As I mentioned just before we started recording.

Clint: And as an Australian We would grew up with like the world’s deadliest snakes, dangerous spiders, you know you can get killed any day of the week just step outside so we, especially where I’m from I’m from originally out and what you would call the outback so I’m about six hour drive inland over the Blue Mountains from Sydney outclassed a place called Dubeau and a little farm out there where my parents are still on the farm. And the deadliest snakes literally in the world have in the area and snakes and everything. So you know you just grew up with this attitude of what we say. She’ll be right. She’ll be right. It it’ll work out you know, and so she’ll be right. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I expect to be alive the next day.

Shelly: Yes. I like that a lot.

Clint: All right. Well thanks so much I really appreciate having this lovely conversation with you and I look forward to staying in touch with you and getting updates when you feel like sharing them about you know how good you’re doing and thanks for sharing your time with us.

Shelly: You’re welcome. Thank you so much.



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Methotrexate, prednisone, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Sulfasalazine


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