Nicholas, a previous guest, has seen significant improvements in his rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, and today shares with us his experience.

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We discuss in this interview:

• Nicholas was diagnosed in April of 2023 and started methotrexate, but experienced some side effects
• He then decided to go on a plant-based diet, achieving great improvements not only regarding RA, but for his health in general
• He was able to taper off several medications thanks to this change in diet
• Nicholas’ diet and exercise suggestions
• He is currently in a zero pain state
• Structuring our diet with the Paddison Program
• Preparing salads
• Getting back to wrestling with his kids

Clint – If you are looking for a podcast where we interview guests who have done tremendous things with their rheumatoid arthritis to reverse joint pain, to be able to regain their energy, to be able to restore hope, to be able to maintain low or no pain states for years, and in many cases, to be able to come off medications or to take the medications with the collaboration of their rheumatologist, then you’re certainly in the right place here on the Rheumatoid Solutions podcast. My name is Clint Patterson. I’m your host. And today’s guest is Nicholas. It’s midnight for him. So we’re going to launch right in here and get the good stuff early. Nicholas has been able to come off multiple medications. He is doing fantastic, and it’s great to have him back. We had him a year ago. We’ve got way more to share today. Nicholas. Welcome back, my friend.

Nicholas – Hey, man. Thanks for having me.

Clint – Yeah, I’m really excited to see you again. You look well. Tell us, for those who missed the last episode, or for those who are completely new to this podcast, and wondering what kind of transformation have you had in kind of a nutshell before we go into all the details.

Nicholas – Yeah, sure. So I was diagnosed in April of 2023, and started methotrexate. And over the summer there, I felt a little bit better. I wasn’t doing a whole lot of activities, and then in the fall, I went on a golfing trip with friends and managed it decently well. But, I had to increase my folic acid because of some side effects from the methotrexate. When I got a flu shot and I had a cold in early October, I just went in a downward spiral. Pretty crippling symptoms. And I work as a nurse. Every weekend I was working 3 to 4 days in a row. And by the end of those 3 to 4 days, I couldn’t make a fist. I had a lot of difficulty even just using a pencil to write. Every now and then, I’d wake up and my ankle was three times its normal size, or my hip was really tight. A lot of fear about my future. I didn’t know if I could continue working as a nurse. Didn’t know if I could continue any of my hobbies, like drawing or, shaping clay, stuff like that. So, it was a lot of fear of what the future held for me.

Nicholas – I started doing a lot of research and found basically every testimonial of people who had been on one medication or another. Any success they did find was fleeting. No one really had remission for more than like two years. And all the testimonials I was listening to, and that didn’t help my kind of dark outlook for the future. Then my doctor told me, since my RA was pretty well uncontrolled at the time, that she wanted me to go on a biologic, she wanted me to go on Humira, and going up to a third or fourth medication just didn’t seem like the way I wanted to move forward. So, I continued listening to more podcasts, and I ran across yours, did a weekend trip to my dad’s, I think the weekend before Thanksgiving of 23. And I did a deep dive on the way there. And on the way back, it’s about a two-hour drive. I listened to multiple episodes, and I was pretty sold on it by the time I got home. My dad had done a whole food plant-based diet previously a year before that for his cholesterol, and he had seen phenomenal results. Knowing that I had high blood pressure and likely high cholesterol down the road, thanks to genetics. Why not?

Nicholas – Let’s try this. My doctor was very apprehensive, but she was willing to let me try it. Within four days, I had no pain, no swelling. I started at four days before Thanksgiving. The day of Thanksgiving, everybody else is eating this giant smorgasbord in the United States. And I had my salad and my green juice. But I felt amazing. Like, everybody was like, oh, do you miss this food? And I’m like, I don’t miss hurting. I’ve had some ups and downs. I’ve had a few flare ups here and there. Nothing persistent. A lot of it has just been realizing that something I’ve been eating from the grocery store had an oil in it that I shouldn’t have. Cooking with oils, like you and I chatted about in our first interview. I completely cut that out of my repertoire. And so the only oil I ingest now is cold pressed olive oil, and only as a finishing oil on top of my salad or something. I don’t cook with oil at all anymore or use anything other than olive oil. I’ve seen huge benefits from switching to that.

Clint – Awesome. How are symptoms and drug usage before and after?

Nicholas – So before I was up to, I was supposed to be starting my fourth medication. I’m down to just the methotrexate and folic acid now. So, just those two. And the folic acid is obviously just for side effects of the methotrexate, not just for the RA. But outside of the RA meds, I was also taking two different blood pressure medications, one of which was at a max dose. and I’m currently not taking any blood pressure medications. I’m the only man in my father’s side of the family over the age of 32, who is not on blood pressure medication, and I’ll be 40 this year. When I turned 32 and I started taking the medication, I thought, this is the rest of my life type of a deal because my dad has seven brothers and they all have sons, and every single one of us is on a medication, and I’m the only one not at the moment. That’s pretty amazing as a side effect. I obviously I did this for RA, but so many other benefits as well.

Nicholas – That was pretty awesome. I think it was right before Thanksgiving, actually, in 24, I met with my doctor and I was like, my blood pressure’s been great, and she was like, all right, don’t take it anymore. We’re good. And I’ve been tracking it. I’m a nurse, so I was worried, you know. So I’ve been tracking it, but it’s fine. So it’s really cool. And then even my E.D.D. medicine, which I’ve been taking since I was 25. I’m on half the dose that I was. Obviously it’s just absorption in the gut. Now that my gut is in a healthier state, it’s not getting blocked by all the different things that I shouldn’t be eating. My sensitivity to medications is higher, so I don’t have to take as much. I think a big part of it too is the meditation. The mindfulness that I get from the meditation has really helped calm me down as well.

Clint – We’ll touch upon each of those things again. But where are you at with the RA medications? Which ones did you discontinue? I only think we heard about methotrexate. And then there were a couple of others that we don’t know about. And then you were offered a biologic, which you declined successfully by being able to actually go in the other direction with drugs. So help us with that one.

Nicholas – The biologic, the Humira, And then the hydroxychloroquine was the other one that she had started me on. That was the one that kind of tipped me over the edge to say I needed to find a different route, because I just didn’t want to continue taking more and more things. And then also the meloxicam and the steroid that I was on at the time as well. Both of those I was done with the meloxicam. Two days, three days after starting the diet and then the steroid, I tapered off. It took 10 to 14 days to get off of it, but I’ve been off of both of those since. Anytime I’m having any sort of aches and pains. Maybe some Tylenol, but honestly, I haven’t had enough persistent pain that I’ve taken in NSAIDs since. So, it’s been nice.

Clint – Okay, so what is it that you do? Let’s say someone’s watching this for the first time. They haven’t been listening to the hundreds before you. What’s your lifestyle look like now? To have such, such great outcomes with RA. And as we’ll talk about a mission to even taper the methotrexate at some point. What’s your lifestyle look like?

Nicholas – Much different than before. I cut out, like I said, all the oils. I cut out so many processed foods. I make basically everything at home. And that’s a big commitment, you know, for a lot of people, the convenience of being able to grab something to go. I do a lot of meal prepping, and I make things in batches so that I know for the rest of the week I can grab something and go out of my fridge. But, I just had to make a commitment to really start making things from scratch. I make my own hummus. I make my own tortillas. I do corn tortillas all the time. Sweet potatoes are always a go to. Lots of fruits. Lots of veg. I’ve actually even stayed away from a fair amount of nuts, because I find that if I eat too many nuts, I end up with some a little bit of swelling as well. On the food side, convenience is out the door unless you make it for yourself. If you make your own convenience, then it’s a little bit easier. But you’re not just going to stop somewhere and find something easy. As far as my exercise, prior to this, I worked out when I wasn’t in pain. Maybe 1 to 2 days a week and now I’m working out a minimum of 4 to 5 days a week.

Nicholas – When I say working out, it could be anything from yoga to going for a run. Doing yard work, in which I end up sweating and having a good heart rate for a while. I personally love to work out while I’m outside. I don’t have a pull-up bar in my house, but I do have a tree that I can reach a branch very easily, and I hang from that tree daily. And walk around barefoot in the yard. I do all these different things that have I’ve learned from your podcast. I feel like I take each thing with a little bit of a grain of salt, like, ah, will that really help? And most of them, I do them and I’m like, wow. All right. Fair enough. I listen to the podcast. And this one was probably two years ago now, about the oral microbiome. And so I really took my dental health, to another level as well. I flossed twice a day. I brush a minimum of twice a day. And I take those supplements that help your good bacteria out perform the bad bacteria. I think you and I spoke about grape seed extract in our first interview, and I take that daily as well. I’ve seen so much less responsiveness to certain foods. Like, if I do have something that I shouldn’t have, it doesn’t hurt me within six hours.

Nicholas – It takes maybe a day or so and much less like my body is in a state where I have more antioxidants ready. I’m not hitting those free radicals as often so that’s in a good spot too. And then beyond exercise and diet is the mindfulness. Every single time that I do yoga, I do a minimum five minute, meditation with it. And I’m doing yoga four days a week minimum. I’m trying to get to seven days a week. I’d really like it to become a practice where I do it daily. But I had never successfully meditated prior to starting all of this. I have EDD you know, I live in the West where we don’t let our mind calm itself very often. And I had always thought that it was something I’d like to do. It was. I thought that it’d be great for me. I just never could get around to it. and I dedicated myself and took the time to do that. And I’ve seen fantastic results. And honestly, within, I don’t know, the first week where I was doing 1 to 2 minutes, just trying to get myself into the rhythm. Just after the first week of doing it, I could tell that I was just a tiny bit calmer. My fuse wasn’t as short with my kids. You know, I was just in a better spot.

Clint – Okay. Awesome. How are your symptoms? So let’s talk about C-reactive protein, for example. Can you form a fist? First thing in the morning when you get out of bed, does it hurt to step onto your feet? Lifting things up in the kitchen to put away cutlery or grab a glass, does that hurt shoulders? Any of the above or anything else that you’re dealing with at the moment, which is bothering you?

Nicholas – I have zero daily pain. Unless I ingest something that I shouldn’t have or I have a significantly stressful event. I’ve had over the past year, maybe two flare ups that I know were just purely stress. And that shocked me a little. Even though you learn that stress is the number one cause of leaky gut. I had two events where I know I my diet was locked in, and I know I was just severely stressed that weekend. But, then, one of the things that kind of caught, was flying under the radar was store bought hummus. I was eating the Sabra brand, which was one of the ones that I hadn’t had any issues with, or at least I didn’t think I did. But I think it was just keeping me. My baseline was still above where I’m at at the moment. I found out after reading the ingredients for who knows how many times I had done it, that they had safflower oil in the hummus. I cut that out of my diet. It was pretty significant amount of what I was making or eating, and within, I don’t know, ten days or so I had no more kind of transient swelling at all.

Nicholas – Just recently, my wife and I started an allergy medicine that I’ve taken my whole life in the spring or in the fall with allergy seasons. Within 3 or 4 days, I started getting kind of achy. My wife mentioned, because she started this diet with me back in May of 24. She mentioned feeling bloated. Since starting the diet, she’s been much more aware of how dairy makes her feel when she does decide to have some. So, she was like, you know, this really kind of just feels like I ingested dairy. And I was like, okay, and for whatever reason, her saying that made it click to my mind that sometimes lactose is used in the compounding of medications. I went and looked it up on a free to use resource and sure enough, lactose like 20mg or something are used in each of those pills. I stopped that day, and so did she. We switched to another medication that doesn’t have it and haven’t had an issue since. I look through all my medications real quick to see if any were being compounded, and luckily none of mine are.

Clint – You are following the Paddison program for people who, again, aren’t familiar with some of our earlier podcasts, or what we do at all. Can you describe at the moment where you’re at with the eating plan in terms of breakfast, lunch and dinner? Because we get some comments in the YouTube videos underneath, where people are often curious to dig deeper onto the diet side of things. So could you do that for us and say, what do you have for breakfast? Do you snack? Do you not snack? Do you eat a huge amount of food when you have your meals? Are you in a restricted eating window? Talk to me about that.

Nicholas – I’m definitely in a restricted eating window, when I’m working. At least three days a week, I’m intermittent fasting. 16 and eight. 16 off, eight on. That’s just because when I’m at work, I usually have just a lunch around 10 p.m., and I usually eat when I wake up around like 3 p.m., in that window, I guess it’s only seven hours. But anyway, that’s kind of my window where I eat. And that’s it for the days that I work.

Clint – With night shift. Right. Night shift.

Nicholas – Sorry. Yeah. So, yeah. 3 p.m., I wake up, 10 -00 pm, I’ll eat my lunch, and then the rest of my night shift, which I don’t get off until about 7 -30 in the morning. I just have water and I’m fine. But I’ve been doing that for years, so it’s not anything of a new thing for me. On a normal day where I’m waking up and getting the kids ready for school and stuff like that. We haven’t changed our children’s diet, so they’re still having as they please. They can have dairy, they can have meat. So I’ll be cooking bacon for them and making pancakes and whatnot, and I really enjoy a coconut based yogurt with my grains and bananas and whatever fresh fruit I can chop up and put in it. That’s the flavor that I’ve always had. I’ve done yogurt since I was a kid, and honestly, the coconut based yogurts are delicious. They’re fantastic. No added sugar in this one, no oils or anything like that, and, do a little maple syrup on top as well.

Clint – Great. And then do you snack before? What about snacks, lunch, etc.?

Nicholas – So because of my E.D.D. medicine, my appetite is pretty suppressed in the middle of the day. I force myself to eat a little something for lunch. Otherwise, around 4 p.m., I’m ravenous, but I’ll eat a small lunch, usually just like a soup and a side. I do miso soup on a regular basis, make it at home, very easy. And then, you know, as a side, I’ll have an apple or I’ll have some carrots or something like that. Just something simple. Nothing crazy. And then for dinner, my wife and I have gotten pretty creative with different stuff. Found an Instagram channel where this guy makes all sorts of just elaborate salads. And none of them have anything that I can’t eat in them. I’ve been trying out all his crazy salads, and they’re pretty delicious. But my wife has a really good red cabbage and miso, dinner that she makes. We just we’ve been trying a whole bunch of different stuff and having fun with it. Once she joined in, it got more fun, because instead of having to try to figure out three different dinners for the night, We were making just the two of us and then the kids. So it’s easier.

Clint – The salad guy. Do you remember his Instagram?

Nicholas – Off the top of my head, no, but I will gladly send it to you. Then I’ll also send you the free resource to look up what the medications are compounded with because it’s free for anyone and very useful tool.

Clint – Will that tool enable you to look into every type of medication?

Nicholas – Yeah. You can search the medication at the top and it’ll give you the active ingredients, the inactive ingredients, and based on the dosage as well. Whether or not it’s a capsule compared to a tablet.

Clint – Okay. Awesome. What you just described. Just to nitpick this, because I know people love the details on the food. In terms of calorie intake, and I do not count calories and not interested in knowing other people’s calories, right? For me, it’s a something that overcomplicates the process of eating. But just from what you described, there’s just not enough food in your day to be able to work out and to maintain a strong, fit body like you have. Are you also doing, like, on some days, beans and rice and lentils and potatoes and corn and maybe some sourdough bread. And have you got other things like that going on?

Nicholas – So in my salad, I’ve been made fun of a few times at work because they say the bowl that I bring could feed the rest of the table. I mean, it’s a large bowl, and it’s a big salad. It’s got everything in it. I really enjoy a chopped salad. I’m throwing arugula, and spinach as a main portion of my base. But then you got tomatoes, you got jicama, you got whatever pepper I have at the moment. Probably some ginger and garlic. I throw it all. I got pumpkin seeds, I got sunflower seeds, I got my grains in there half the time, Edamame. I mean, it depends on the day and what I have in the fridge, but it is a big mash of food, and it’s good. Some of these salads I’m talking about, I mean, for example, he makes a roasted red pepper one. So, you put six red peppers in the oven and cook them until the top of them turn black. Then you take them out, take out the middle, take off the skins, and you’re going to chop them up into, dice them to forever. You got garlic, you got dates, lemon, you got all sorts of arugula and spinach and that one as well. And it ends up becoming more of a dip than a salad because of how wet the red peppers are. Then so what you do is you eat it with either a bread or a grain or what he does is he dices cucumbers and he scoops it with cucumber dices or not dices. Slices. And it’s neat. I’ve never had a salad that was a dip before, but it’s a fantastic flavor. I mean, it’s real good, and I make that one probably every other week or so. It’s very calorie dense salad.

Clint – Yes, that fills in some blanks for me because normally when we think of salads, we think of just some leafy greens. Maybe some chopped lettuce, chopped up carrot and beet on top. That’s fantastic. We’ll definitely get that name from you afterwards. And I’ll put it under the YouTube and also on the show notes on our website for our episode. What do you think is the hardest and the easiest parts of reversing RA using the strategies that you’ve been through. Just for you personally.

Nicholas – The hardest part has to be the convenience. I’ve traveled a little bit since starting the diet and planning ahead. Knowing, okay, how much do I need to take with me for? Because actually, we did a family trip to Disney World last winter. We drove from Illinois to Orlando, which is 18 hours, and then we spent a week in Orlando, and then we came back up. So I had to figure out what I was going to do for eight days, two very long car rides, and how I was going to feed myself. We mapped out how far the Whole Foods was or any other grocery store from our place that we were staying. So we knew that I could go grab, you know, what I needed for the week? We made sure we stayed in a place with a kitchen so I could make things at home. Whenever I do go on a car ride, I have a cooler that, you know, I have my grains, and I’ll have some salad stuff in it. So the convenience issue, it’s easier the more you do it.

Nicholas – But it’s definitely the hardest thing, because I wish that I could just stop at McDonald’s and be like, hey, do you guys have a grain bowl or, you know, like something like that? And, that’s just not a thing, especially in the Midwest. You know, you’re not going to find that here. We’ve visited a few big cities that have been very nice because it’s like, oh, look at all these options. But then most of those places are still using oil when they’re cooking and stuff like that. And so it gets difficult. But, thanks to Covid, I feel like the convenience thing isn’t as big of an issue just because during Covid, my wife and I started cooking everything at home. We stopped eating out altogether, basically because, uh, it just made more sense with the social distancing. And so we kind of just never left that coming into the diet. So as much as I wish or I long for certain things, that’s probably the hardest thing. The easiest thing is, if you just follow the guidelines and if you just stick to the diet, it works. You don’t have to do anything special. The way you have it laid out for the first ten days, for reintroducing foods, for making sure that you’re getting the exercise, which felt like a barrier to me at the beginning, just because I had not been active at all for the previous eight months prior to starting the diet.

Nicholas – I had been given the wrong advice that if I was swelling and sore not to use those joints because it could further joint damage. So, I had been very inactive going in. It felt like a mental barrier. What do you mean? I’m supposed to move this hurting joint. But it works. I mean, honestly, and the easiest thing is when you’ve been in a bad spot with RA, you know that, that stick is behind you. If you do stop this diet or if you do stop working out, you know what’s coming, right? I know that I’m going to be swollen and incapacitated in some sort of way, where I can’t do the things that I love and need to do to supply food for my family. So needing to work, knowing I’m going to get swelling if I don’t follow the rules makes it pretty easy to me.

Clint – That was going to be my next question, and you sort of answered it for me, but I’d like you to go there a bit further. If people are sitting on the fence and this isn’t like making a decision on the podcast, but literally if they’re just thinking, gosh, Nicholas, like it sounds awful having to go to Disney and cook your own food and take it to the park and think about doing this all the time, and living this lifestyle, like, why would you go to these lengths? And I get it, thousands of us who are in this community get it. But what drives you? What’s your big why behind why you’re doing this? And you’ve touched upon the, you know, if we look at, like, the carrot and stick, you don’t want to get hit by the stick, which is the pain. But is there also some carrot here, like where you want to get to and what you want to do with your life? And, I’d love to hear about that.

Nicholas – Yeah. For sure. I mentioned in the first time that we met that one of the best times was shortly after starting the diet, when I no longer had the swelling and the pain that I was actually down on the ground wrestling with my kids. I have five children. They’re all incredibly active, just like I was as a kid, and wrestling is something we’ve done since all of them were little. I missed that severely during those eight months that I was talking about where I was hurting and not moving as much. I don’t have to worry about, “am I in a good spot today?” My kids don’t have to ask me anymore. “Hey, Papa, are you feeling all right? Can we wrestle?” They just jump on my back, and that’s honestly a big thing for me. I love the fact that I can be active with my kids. Then the other thing too is, this is more a philosophical thing for me, I’d much rather treat the root cause than just keep putting a Band-Aid on it that I’m going to be spending money and potentially my future on the idea of having to switch from medication to medication when one my body got used to or when the side effects got too much, and only to find glimmers of respite from the disease.

Nicholas – But that didn’t seem like the lifestyle I wanted. I love the fact that following this diet, continuing to be active and mindful that I can just live my life like, yes, it sounds like, oh my gosh, you had to do all these things that most people don’t have to do. But, I also have a disease most people don’t have. You know what I mean? So, I could just continue taking meds and I say that, but I have a coworker who was diagnosed three months before I was, and she’s had a real struggle with this, and she is in a place in her life where she doesn’t think she can go through the diet type stuff that I’ve done. We’ve talked about this off and on, and her biggest complaint is that the steroids have just made it so impossible for her to not continue to gain weight, which then just makes everything worse with her joints and the pain. With the different medications she’s taking, she’s not found a ton of respite. And she just doesn’t feel good in her body, with the way that she feels right now. So I see that, and that’s also another example of where I don’t want to be.

Clint – How good do you feel? Not just sort of give us a score out of ten, but, when you show up to. I mean, how old are you now?

Nicholas – I’m 39.

Clint – 39. So you’ve probably just maybe been invited to a 20 year school reunion or had something like that. I mean, these things happen as we go through life. We’re seeing people we haven’t seen in a long time. Are you noticing now, at 39, that people you haven’t seen since high school or maybe at college or whatever, that they look at you as being the healthiest one. Are you noticing that that’s starting to happen? Because it certainly does with time. Those of us who do this, do this program.

Nicholas – Yeah. For sure. Last summer I had a wedding that a lot of my college buddies all showed up to, and I had to rent a tux because I didn’t have anything that fit me, because I have lost 65 lbs. I felt real good. I mean, it’s when I graduated high school, I was at the weight that I’m at now. I was a lot more fit, but, I haven’t been the size, since high school, basically. So all the guys who knew me in college, they knew me in this sort of shape for a short period of time. But they’ve known me since then as a bigger gentleman. Up in the two 50s. Showing up and being trim and just feeling good in my body. Not even compared to having RA, but just prior to even being diagnosed with RA. How good I felt when I thought I was fit. I feel fantastic right now, and obviously part of that is just the fact that I’m active all the time. So my body’s in a better shape than it’s been. But with the yoga and with the mindfulness, I’m at a headspace where I’m comfortable with who I am. I’m comfortable with how I look. I can move through anything in life right now and not feel pain. I can swing a golf club as hard as I want to swing, whereas my friends are all starting to taper back because they’re getting sore or whatever else. My buddy said he sneezed and threw out his back the other day, and he wasn’t joking. He really did have to go to the doctor for meds. I don’t have to worry about that, so it’s pretty great.

Clint – Yeah. And on a bigger picture, I know we’re laughing and we care about the buddies and stuff, but focusing on you bigger picture to come off the blood pressure meds is a big deal. To come off, the steroids, the meloxicam, hydroxychloroquine. I mean, come on, this is just so fantastic. And, you know, I’m just so happy that we’re connecting and going over this. What’s next for you? We touched upon the methotrexate in the crosshairs. You have no pain. So you certainly could be entering discussions with your rheumatologist about it. Worthwhile, pointing out that we don’t see any kind of trophy with coming off meds. We’re not promoting on this podcast ever that we should be trying to taper medications without consulting the rheumatologist or just because we feel like it. But at the same time, you know, anything that’s in the body that we’re taking that’s not natural. The body has to metabolize and has to work with and can come with side effects. And so if we don’t need meds. Well, why would we continue to take them? And so where are the discussions at at the moment on this topic.

Nicholas – So the last time I met with my rheumatologist was in January. I meet with her, I think, in a week, because I get my labs drawn tomorrow, and the last time we met, I had two flare ups since my previous meeting with her. And so she said, well, do we want to talk about going on another medication? No, I don’t I can tell you exactly what I ate both of those times. And that was my fault. Not the disease state. So she said, okay, well, you know, we’ll see you in next month, but, if you have any more flare ups between now and then, then I think that we’re going to need to really talk about another medication. And that was part of the reason that I dialed down on looking into my foods, and then also the medications to see what was in them and kind of reassess where I was. And that’s when I cut out the hummus. So I haven’t had a single flare up since our last meeting, and like I said, I feel fantastic at the moment. So I will be chatting with her just about here’s where I’m at, you know, and, knowing her and her conservative almost grimace on her face to agree that this is working, maybe she’ll say in six months she’d be willing to see me taper, and I might push for three months from now. Just, you know, I proved the last three months are good. Let’s go. Three more months, and then maybe we can agree to disagree and go for the taper. So we’ll see.

Clint – What works really well with the rheumatologist is doing if then statements. So you want to lead with if we can get my C-reactive protein to this level or below consistently for 2 to 3 months, then can we taper by 2.5mg? Would you say yes? If they say yes, great. Everyone’s on the same page. You’ve got that nice clear agreement. So that can be done in terms of your appointment with her next week and then in terms of strategy for you to hit that outcome, take a look at some key foods in particular. One, I like everyone to be eating oats. So I haven’t heard you mention oats. So this is just a tip. If you’re not already, take a look at micro dosing oats into your diet doesn’t need to be gluten free. They’re inherently gluten free anyway. They can get cross-contaminated when the fields are next to other crops, so you can choose a gluten free option. But otherwise, unless this is a known issue, I would micro dose some oats into your diet, see whether or not you can tolerate them at just a small like teaspoon level for a few days. If so, build, build, build because people who are most robust and most successful I find consistently eat oats.

Clint – Okay, so that’d be one thing. One thing I would look at. Why is that? Yeah, one of the reasons is because it contains beta glucan, which is a particular prebiotic fiber. That’s fantastic for our bifidobacterial lactobacillus. These bacteria strains that create short chain fatty acids. So if we can’t eat oats, a backup is barley. And so you can make barley soup or cook barley and even throw it on your salad and you can get it that way. So, there are a couple of options for you. That would be the only thing I’d modify because you’re doing so much really wonderfully. That would be the first thing that strikes me as a little modification. That might be the difference between her noticing like a 1.5 C-reactive protein to a two. You know, it could just make a difference. There’d be that. But everything else is just so, so good. You’re not going to change your night shifts. You know, I think we spoke about last time. Night shift work isn’t a healing strategy.

Nicholas – No, not at all.

Clint – But you’re getting away with it because your body’s acclimatized. And it’s not every single night. You’ve got multiple days during the week where it’s conventional.

Nicholas – Right.

Clint – So I can’t see any barrier in your way from being able to hit all of the goals that you want with your health. And it is absolutely awesome. So thanks so much for sharing with us this evening. We’re coming up to nearly one in the morning for you. So, you’ve put out yourself tonight to be able to help others who are going to be watching and listening to this. So thanks, Nicholas.

Nicholas – Not a problem. Thanks for having me.